Being a rogue ninja is worse than being Hokage.

Naruto took a kunai out of his ninja tool bag and casually tossed it on the ground.

The next moment, a hand grabbed the kunai on the ground and pulled it off.

Naruto looked at the person who suddenly appeared in front of him, holding a kunai.

"Keep an eye on the surroundings for me."

The person who came gave Naruto orders.

The person who came was none other than Naruto himself.

"I see."

The Naruto who initially entered the Namen Hall was not the real Naruto, but a shadow clone used to gather information and investigate the safety of the Namen Hall.

The shadow clone responded to the main body, which had arrived with a Flying Thunder God Kunai after confirming that Namendo was safe, and then used the Body Flicker Technique to leave.

Naruto was left alone in the abandoned Namendo once again.

Naruto carefully put away the Flying Thunder God kunai in his hand and looked at the Namen Hall, which had collapsed beyond recognition.

He formed the Earth Escape Seal with his hands, and a rectangular earth pillar replaced the broken roof beam, supporting the entrance to the Namen Hall once again.

Naruto entered the Namen Hall without any difficulty.

The enormous central altar of the Namen Temple is miraculously well preserved.

This is probably because the altar itself has been reinforced and strengthened.

Naruto's gaze was fixed on the mask on the wall of the altar.

Three rows in a row;

Nine columns vertically.

In the Namen Hall of the Uzumaki clan, there are a total of twenty-seven Hannya masks with ferocious and terrifying faces and evil demon horns on the altar wall.

Chapter 12 The Soul Within the Corpse-Sealing Ritual

Except for a few Prajna masks that were damaged due to the collapse of the Namen Hall.

The other masks seemed to ignore the passage of time.

The mud-covered eyes on the mask, used for seeing, seemed to be scrutinizing Naruto, who had come here after a long period of time.

The goal is to find one's target among these twenty-seven roughly similar Prajna masks, differing only in inconspicuous details.

Without some methods, it can actually be quite tricky.

Naruto's gaze swept across the masks on the wall in sequence, and he spotted his target among the Hannya masks in the second row.

Naruto sensed the faint, emanating energy of a sealing technique emanating from the mask.

None of the other masks had this reaction.

The other masks are just ordinary masks.

Only this Prajna mask houses the Grim Reaper who guards and imprisons souls.

The Grim Reaper uses the mask as a prison for souls and is enforcing the seal of the Corpse Demon Seal.

"As expected... Konoha doesn't fully understand the Uzumaki clan's sealing technique, the Reaper Death Seal."

Due to a lack of information, they probably really believed that the Corpse Demon Sealing Seal was an absolute seal that, once cast, could not be unleashed.

In the original story, the Third Hokage and the Fourth Hokage, who were resurrected by Orochimaru using the Impure World Reincarnation technique, were both very surprised that Orochimaru could actually undo the Reaper Death Seal.

The Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, could hardly suppress his curiosity and directly asked Orochimaru how he managed to undo the Reaper Death Seal.

The original work explicitly describes three people who used the forbidden sealing technique, the Corpse Demon Sealing Technique.

It was none other than the Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Fourth Hokage Minato Namikaze, and Orochimaru.

The Third and Fourth Hokage's astonished reaction to their souls regaining their freedom.

This already shows that the Narutos were unaware of the forbidden technique of the Reaper Death Seal, and never imagined that there was a way to unseal it.

In the original work, the Corpse Demon Sealing Technique is indeed a mysterious forbidden technique whose method of use has been barely passed down, but more detailed information about it has long been lost in the distant past.

Even Orochimaru, who knew the method to unseal it, was not convinced.

His experience of learning about the "Dead Demon Seal Release" was full of twists and turns.

In the original work, Orochimaru is explicitly mentioned as someone who frequently studies the ruins of the Uzumaki clan and documents scattered in various places.

During the Konoha Destruction Plan, the understanding of the Reaper Death Seal technique was not comprehensive.

This prevented him from waiting for the defector Sasuke to come to his side, thus delaying the time when Sasuke was used by Orochimaru as a vessel for the Reanimation Jutsu.

After obtaining Sasuke, he was constantly tormented by the pain and suffering inflicted on his soul by the Reaper Death Seal.

Orochimaru then began to deepen his research on the Reaper Death Seal, and finally obtained a method to unseal it.

Unfortunately, Sasuke, who had grown up by then, refused to hand over his body and chose to kill Orochimaru.

The plan to retrieve Orochimaru's two souls from the Grim Reaper was delayed for a long time.

……

Recalling the information he knew about the "Dead Demon Seal".

Naruto reached out and took off the mask, turning it so that the front was facing him.

If the "Soul Imprisonment Technique" can forcibly retain the souls of those who were supposed to be exchanged for living sacrifices with the dead through Impure World Reincarnation in the mortal world.

So, if one sacrifices oneself to release the soul trapped within the Corpse Demon Seal... could one also use the "Soul Imprisonment Technique" to prevent the Grim Reaper from obtaining the soul of the sacrificer?

This was a thought that suddenly popped into Naruto's mind.

In the original work, didn't Orochimaru also use a similar method to deceive the Shinigami?

Death awaits the death of those who commit suicide as sacrifice.

But after Orochimaru regained the souls of his own hands, he entered the body of White Zetsu before his death.

"..."

After hesitating for a moment, Naruto finally removed the mask from his face.

Even if the ideas about the Soul Imprisonment Technique and the Reaper Death Seal Release are correct, Naruto doesn't need to use himself as a test subject.

Moreover, he took the mask in advance mainly for future contingencies.

Naruto still remembers that in the original story, when Orochimaru released the Reaper Death Seal, there were a total of five souls released by the Shinigami.

First, there are the complete souls of the First to Fourth Hokage.

Secondly, there's the soul of Orochimaru's hands.

What Naruto values ​​more now is the soul of Orochimaru's hands.

The soul is a distinct entity from chakra.

Chakra is classified into "spiritual chakra".

The secret techniques of the Yamanaka clan's mind and body system, and Orochimaru's Reanimation Jutsu.

These are the two most obvious uses of spiritual chakra.

Both techniques create a "soul exchange" effect.

However, spiritual chakra and soul are different.

If spiritual chakra is equal to the soul, then Orochimaru's souls in both hands were sealed by the Third Hokage using the Reaper Death Seal.

Orochimaru only needs to use the Reanimation Jutsu to transfer his spirit into a new container, and the Reaper Death Seal should naturally become ineffective.

But the result was obvious: the Reanimation Jutsu could not heal Orochimaru's hands, which had been sealed by the Reaper Death Seal.

No matter how similar they may be, spiritual chakra and soul are fundamentally two completely independent concepts.

It wasn't until the Fourth Shinobi World War that Orochimaru regained his ability to use ninjutsu by reclaiming the souls of his hands from the Grim Reaper.

Compared to Naruto, who directly knew the method to unseal the Reaper Death Seal, Orochimaru was still methodically exploring various documents of the Uzumaki clan.

Orochimaru is perhaps too preoccupied with the pain of losing his hands and soul to care about anything else.

That's why Naruto was able to get the mask before Orochimaru.

He could make too many deals with Orochimaru using Orochimaru's soul hidden in the mask.

For example... Orochimaru's research intelligence on the Uchiha clan.

Orochimaru and Danzo may simply have envied the power of the Sharingan.

But Naruto knew very well that as the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki, and with Ashura's chakra within him, he would inevitably become an enemy of the Uchiha clan.

His enemies are all guys with Sharingan.

As for why Orochimaru knew about Naruto's Reaper Death Seal Release...

Naruto was able to completely shift the blame onto Kushina Uzumaki.

Naruto went berserk in Konoha in his tailed beast form, but then suddenly deactivated it himself.

Given Orochimaru's intelligence network, it's impossible that he didn't know about this.

Naruto was able to suppress the tailed beast transformation—naturally, it was due to the help of Kushina's chakra within the Eight Trigrams Seal.

This is an absolute fact, a fact that even Naruto, who fabricated lies, cannot deny.

Then, within this fact, distort all the details—

—Kushina Uzumaki, a descendant of the Uzumaki clan, inherited the Nine-Tails from Mito Uzumaki, the wife of the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, becoming the second Nine-Tails Jinchuriki. Through Mito's guidance, she learned a secret about the Reaper Death Seal that even the Hokage didn't know.—

Finally, isn't it perfectly normal for a mother to tell Naruto, who also has the name Uzumaki, the secret of the Reaper Death Seal, in order to make up for the regret of not being able to teach her child because of her death twelve years ago?

However, Naruto is not planning to make any contact with Orochimaru right now.

Even without his hands, that guy is still a troublesome fellow.

Naruto carefully put away the mask and disappeared from the mask room.

As we had agreed with Karin before, let's lie low in the Land of Snow for now.