Starting with rogue ninjas, building the insect kingdom.

Deidara stood on the snow like an icicle stuck in the snow. To be precise, an icicle that could talk, get angry, and curse.

"Let me go! I'm the Earth Shadow!" His voice echoed through the snow, startling snowbirds on the distant treetops.

But nobody paid him any attention.

Several knights of the Holy Knights stood at a distance, watching him expressionlessly, as if he were a piece of trash thrown on the side of the road.

Occasionally, someone would pass by him, stop and glance down at him, then shake their head and walk away.

"Is that the new Tsuchikage?"

"I heard that's true. He was defeated by Lord Hirashita in one move."

"Tsk tsk tsk..."

"Is the adult really that impressive? I remember he was just a zookeeper."

"That's right, but you're far inferior to my Lord Feng Hua Nu Tao."

"It's nothing serious, just a resistance effect. Let's all go, let's all go."

Deidara's face turned bright red, whether from the cold poison or from shame, it was hard to tell.

But his body was frozen in place and he could not move. He could only stand there like a statue, letting passersby point and talk about him.

"This is so embarrassing." Deidara closed his eyes, wishing he could disappear into the ground.

Just as he was feeling sorry for himself, a pair of feet came into his view.

It was a pair of feet wearing white boots. The boots were very clean, and they left a trail of shallow footprints in the snow.

Deidara strained to lift his neck and saw a white-haired youth appear before him.

The man was about twenty-five or twenty-six years old, wearing a white overcoat, dark trousers, and handmade boots.

"Who are you?" Deidara's voice was weak.

"Don't move." The young man in the white coat unscrewed the lid of the thermos and carefully brought it to Deidara's lips. "Drink some water. You've been here for almost two hours. You'll get dehydrated if you don't drink some water."

Warm water flowed into Deidara's mouth, carrying a faint sweetness. Deidara greedily drank a few mouthfuls, feeling much better in his throat.

"Thanks," he said.

The young man in the white coat smiled, placed the thermos on the snow, and then took out a palm-sized metal box from the pocket of his coat.

He opened the box, inside which were neatly arranged several hollow syringes and several transparent test tubes.

Deidara looked at the things warily: "What are you going to do?"

"Don't be nervous." The young man in the white coat spoke gently. "I'm a researcher, and I'd like to take some tissue from your body for research. Fingernails or hair will do; it won't hurt."

"A researcher?" Deidara looked him up and down. "You're not a ninja."

"No." The young man in the white coat shook his head, gently clipped a few fingernails from Deidara's hand, and carefully placed a few strands of hair into a test tube with tweezers. "I only do research, I don't fight."

Deidara: "Oh, he shouldn't be weaker than the gatekeeper, right?"

"Maybe." The young man in the white coat did not answer directly, but instead sealed the test tube and put it back into the metal box.

"Oh right, I haven't introduced myself yet." He put away the box, squatted down in front of Deidara, and said, "My name is Hu, and I'm from the North. I'm a... well, how should I put it, a scientist who researches bloodline limits."

"Bloodline Limit?" Deidara blinked. "That kind of thing can be researched?"

"sure."

When talking about his profession, Hu Ke spoke eloquently, "What is the essence of bloodline limits? It is the special expression of genes. And what are genes? They are the genetic information that determines the traits of an organism. If we can interpret this information, theoretically we can replicate, transfer, and even create new bloodline limits... So as long as we understand DNA and can edit and graft it, theoretically, everyone can obtain this biological inheritance and become a perfect organism through repeated biological surgeries..."

Deidara could understand the individual words, but when they were put together, he couldn't understand them.

Deidara's mind raced, but it went blank. He finally gave up, saying, "What you're saying is too complicated; I don't understand."

Hu didn't explain further. Just then, another person walked over.

The man who arrived was a brown-haired young man, about twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, wearing a dark blue work uniform with several pens and a small ruler tucked into his breast pocket. He had a round face and wore round-framed glasses, making him look somewhat like a chubby bird.

"Phew, you're slacking off again." The brown-haired youth walked up, glanced at Deidara on the ground, then looked at the metal box in Hu's hand. "Whose is this?"

"The new Tsuchikage. Because he was too flamboyant, he was frozen here under the screen."

The brown-haired youth crouched down, looking Deidara in the eye, and sized him up from head to toe.

"You're the Tsuchikage? You're so young, is there no one else in the Land of Earth?"

Deidara's lips twitched. "Who are you?"

"Amdo." The brown-haired youth pulled a notebook from his pocket, opened it to a page with some complex mechanical diagrams, and said, "I research scientific ninja tools and androids. Simply put, it's about combining ninjutsu with technology to create tools that allow ordinary people to use ninjutsu."

"Scientific ninja tools?" Deidara asked seriously. "Never heard of them."

Amdo said awkwardly, "It's still in the conceptual stage. At this stage, everyone is mainly working on biotechnology armor, chakra armor, and various chakra weapons. Although these things can be considered scientific ninja tools, they are still far from my goal."

"I think your goal is too far-fetched," Hu interjected. "Scientific ninja tools are ultimately external things; everything still depends on oneself. You spend ten years researching gloves that can release fireballs, while someone else spends ten years training and releases a fireball ten times larger than yours. Isn't that a waste of time?"

"Then isn't your research on bloodline limits also an external thing?" Amdo retorted. "What's the difference between transplanting someone else's bloodline limit onto yourself and using a glove to launch a fireball?"

"At least the bloodline limit is part of the body." Hu retorted, "It's not an external object, it's internalized. If you use scientific ninja tools, you're useless the day the gloves break. I transplanted a bloodline limit, it's part of my body, it will never break."

"Heh, how do you know that scientific ninja tools can't become part of the body?"

"Moreover, in my view, the future belongs to technology, and the direction of future development is tolerability. Some things will eventually become obsolete and be eliminated."

Deidara overheard their discussion and felt his head spin, as if it were some kind of hypnotic book.

What kind of genes are inside? What kind of combination of flesh and machine?

He was thinking, is this still the ninja world?

Ohnoki didn't teach him any of these things back then, no wonder he was defeated, he's too outdated!