Chapter 595: The Possibility of Biological Ascension

Chapter 595: Chapter 595: The Possibility of Biological Ascension

Chapter 595: The Possibility of Biological Ascension

"What is this thing?"

Amado looked at the object in front of Kenichi with obvious surprise.

Kenichi glanced at it and smiled.

Naturally, it was the fragment of Kaguya’s consciousness.

Kenichi had already kept Kaguya’s consciousness imprisoned here for an entire day.

After one night, the intensity of its struggling had weakened slightly.

But only slightly.

Even now, the fragment continued thrashing violently within the container.

Kenichi could not help but admire it.

This was only a tiny fragment of Kaguya’s consciousness, yet it had nearly shattered a specially designed containment device.

From that alone, one could imagine just how terrifying Kaguya herself was.

"Just an experimental subject."

Kenichi smiled.

"Her consciousness is fairly interesting, though, so I want to run a few more experiments on it."

Amado’s expression immediately became somewhat sympathetic.

He understood Kenichi’s personality quite well.

Kenichi could be extremely cold and ruthless when research was involved.

If something possessed significant scientific value, he rarely cared much about the subject’s opinion.

Without question, whatever was trapped inside that container had now become Kenichi’s newest experimental material.

Kenichi stared thoughtfully at Kaguya’s violently struggling consciousness.

Her resistance was genuinely impressive.

That made him curious.

Was she really that opposed to what he had shown her?

He had deliberately filled those implanted memories with romantic scenes based on the absurdly sweet novels and romance stories he remembered from his previous life.

The sort of scenarios that supposedly made readers clutch their hearts and scream about how sweet the relationship was.

Or...

Could it be that many of those romance novelists and romance anime creators had never experienced actual romance themselves?

Kenichi found the thought increasingly plausible.

Still, judging from the reaction of the woman who had provided the recorded experience, the scenario should have had at least some effect.

Her face had become extremely flushed, and her emotions had fluctuated violently throughout the genjutsu.

If Kenichi had lingered around afterward, he suspected she might even have started looking at him differently.

So the problem was probably not the scenario itself.

It was Kaguya.

After all, Kaguya was fundamentally an alien.

She was not the same as an ordinary human.

The cells of the Otsutsuki Clan possessed significantly lower metabolic activity than human cells, and their metabolic cycles were much longer.

Kenichi had already confirmed this to some extent through Kaguya’s blood.

Perhaps the romantic situations that humans considered sweet and emotionally stirring were simply boring or irritating from Kaguya’s perspective.

Even if Kenichi’s theory was correct, however, he had no intention of changing the experiment.

The current emotional experience was already the most suitable one he had designed.

Creating an entirely different scenario would only waste more time.

More importantly, Kenichi had no reliable way to determine what kind of emotional experience Kaguya would actually respond positively to.

So it was better to keep the process simple and direct.

As for whether it would work...

Kenichi did not care that much.

If the experiment failed, he could always escape from this timeline when the time came.

But if it succeeded...

The benefits would be enormous.

At the very least, he could gain a far more reliable method of turning Kaguya into an ally.

There might be some side effects.

Kenichi would deal with those after he actually succeeded.

Right now, success itself was still uncertain.

"Oh, right."

Amado suddenly remembered something.

"The blood sample you asked me to analyze is finished."

"Do you want to take a look?"

Kenichi’s interest immediately sharpened.

The blood sample he had given Amado belonged to Kaguya.

In Kenichi’s eyes, that single drop of blood was enormously important.

It was connected to several of his current research directions.

The sample had been preserved from the time when Hagoromo and Hamura sealed Kaguya.

That meant the blood contained Kaguya’s genetic information after she had already consumed the chakra fruit of the Divine Tree.

For Kenichi, this was extremely valuable.

By studying the sample, he might be able to determine exactly how Kaguya’s genes differed from ordinary Otsutsuki genes after consuming the chakra fruit.

More importantly, he could investigate how the chakra fruit altered Otsutsuki biology in the first place.

Because of that, Kenichi currently considered Kaguya’s blood even more important than his time machine research.

The time machine was not going anywhere.

His Golden Finger was also still slowly researching the fundamental power of time.

There was no need to rush.

Kaguya’s blood, however, offered an entirely different opportunity.

"This blood is fascinating."

Amado walked beside Kenichi as they headed toward the laboratory.

"It contains an extraordinary amount of genetic information."

He glanced sideways at Kenichi.

"So what exactly did you give me?"

Kenichi chuckled.

"What do you think?"

"Do you think it’s human blood?"

Amado raised an eyebrow.

He was intelligent enough to understand that Kenichi would not ask such a question without a reason.

Thinking back over the results of his analysis, Amado quickly shook his head.

"No."

"I don’t think it belongs to a human."

The genetic information was simply too different.

"Normally, the human genome we’ve analyzed isn’t nearly this large."

Amado continued.

"But the genome extracted from your sample is almost twice the size of an ordinary human genome."

"So I’m quite certain this isn’t human blood."

Kenichi nodded.

He agreed.

Still, even he was slightly surprised to hear that Kaguya’s genome was almost twice as large as a normal human’s.

With that much genetic information...

It was basically an even larger mountain of spaghetti code.

"It’s honestly difficult to imagine."

Kenichi sighed.

"Something carrying that much genetic code can still maintain a perfectly functional body."

"And not just functional."

"Kaguya’s body is absurdly powerful."

The chakra fruit truly was an extraordinary thing.

But if Kaguya’s genome was almost twice as large as a human genome, another possibility became increasingly interesting.

Had Kaguya only become like this after consuming the chakra fruit?

After all, Kenichi already knew that although Otsutsuki genetics differed from human genetics, the difference should not normally be this enormous.

"Exactly."

Amado nodded.

"Human genetics already contain countless vulnerabilities."

"Certain mutations, deletions, duplications, or abnormalities can cause congenital diseases before a child is even born."

"And yet the owner of this blood possesses an enormous amount of additional genetic information while remaining completely functional."

He could not help sighing.

The more deeply one studied science, the more mysterious the world became.

For Amado, any being capable of possessing blood this strange had to be extraordinary.

"Yes."

Kenichi agreed.

"The owner of this blood isn’t just an overwhelmingly powerful shinobi."

"Biologically speaking, she’s also extremely close to perfect."

"At the very least, with our current technological level, we can barely identify any meaningful flaws."

That was genuinely how Kenichi viewed Kaguya.

Her genome was absurd.

Humanity had studied genetics for generations, yet genes were still often compared to an enormous mass of spaghetti code.

One change could unexpectedly affect something completely unrelated.

A tiny defect could cause catastrophic consequences.

That complexity was precisely why many people found the concept of mechanical ascension more appealing than biological ascension.

Mechanical ascension seemed comparatively straightforward.

Build sufficiently advanced machines.

Replace weak biological components.

Continue improving the machinery.

But biological ascension required mastering genetics itself.

If the genetic problem could not be solved, then genuine biological ascension was impossible.

Thinking about that made Kenichi increasingly excited.

Genes might be an enormous mountain of spaghetti code.

But once that code was fully deciphered, analyzed, and made usable...

It would become an extraordinarily powerful weapon.

It was similar to a video game.

The underlying program might look incomprehensibly complicated to an ordinary player.

But someone who understood the programming language could manipulate that code and transform those complex instructions into something useful.

That was essentially how simple cheats worked.

Of course, those kinds of cheats were normally useful only in single-player games.

Online games were another matter entirely.

But Kenichi was not interested in studying online games.

After all, there was no chance the Otsutsuki Clan had uploaded their genetic information onto some centralized network for remote management and maintenance.

That would be absurd.

If Otsutsuki genetics could genuinely be uploaded to some network, monitored by specialists, edited remotely, repaired, and optimized whenever necessary...

Then the Otsutsuki Clan would not look anything like it currently did.

At the very least, there probably would not be such a rigid division between the Main Family and Branch Family.

And the entire clan would be far stronger.

If they had truly reached that technological level, their civilization would be terrifying beyond imagination.

So Kenichi considered such a possibility extremely unlikely.

What mattered now was something much simpler.

Study Kaguya’s genome thoroughly.

Compare it against other Otsutsuki genetic samples.

Identify and isolate the portions that did not normally exist.

If those additional genes had indeed appeared because of the chakra fruit...

Then Kenichi could potentially reverse-engineer exactly what the Divine Tree fruit had done to Kaguya.

If he succeeded in that...

He felt that he would have essentially mastered a method capable of dominating the current Shinobi World.

He could potentially mass-produce subordinates completely loyal to him and then strengthen them using whatever mechanism he extracted from the chakra fruit.

Their individual quality might not be extraordinary.

But if the numbers became large enough...

Even mediocre enhanced soldiers would become troublesome.

And that was one of the gifts Kenichi intended to prepare for Isshiki.

Kenichi still felt that relying solely on the current high-level fighters of the Shinobi World to defeat Isshiki was somewhat unreliable.

So he intended to compensate with numbers.

Absolute strength could certainly overwhelm quantity.

But enough opponents could still create distractions, consume chakra, force reactions, and expose openings.

Kenichi’s more specific plan was to mass-produce people capable of using the Mangekyo Sharingan.

Then he would throw those Mangekyo users at Isshiki and have them continually wear him down with different dojutsu.

Every technique Isshiki had to defend against meant one more piece of information revealed.

Every bit of strength he wasted on expendable fighters improved the odds for Kenichi and the others.

This was one of Kenichi’s contingency plans.

And he was fairly confident he could make it work.

After all, he already understood methods for stimulating the development of the Mangekyo Sharingan.

"It’s really difficult to imagine that something like this exists in the Shinobi World."

Amado sighed.

His understanding of the deeper secrets of the world was still limited.

But he knew one thing clearly.

Kenichi was currently among the most powerful shinobi alive.

If even Kenichi described the owner of this blood as terrifyingly powerful, then there were clearly beings in this world far beyond anything Amado had previously encountered.

"The waters of this world run very deep."

Kenichi’s gaze returned to Kaguya’s consciousness fragment.

He silently calculated the probability that his conditioning experiment would succeed.

If it worked, excellent.

If it failed...

He would simply use another method.

Kenichi quickly lost interest in continuing to stare at the container.

After confirming that Kaguya’s consciousness remained securely imprisoned, he followed Amado away.

There was still much more important work waiting.

Kaguya’s blood.

The two entered the laboratory.

The instant Kenichi stepped inside, he saw an enormous sequence of data displayed across the computer monitors.

He stared at it.

Then his head began to hurt.

That entire mass of information represented Kaguya’s genome.

Amado had already warned him that it was enormous.

But seeing it personally was different.

Even Kenichi found the scale somewhat ridiculous.

Yet as he continued staring at the genetic data, excitement gradually replaced his headache.

This was an opportunity.

As long as he could first separate Kaguya’s normal Otsutsuki genes from the additional genetic information that distinguished her from the others...

Then he might be able to identify which genes had appeared or changed because of the chakra fruit.

Kenichi rubbed his hands together.

"Then let’s get started."

"It’s been a long time since I seriously worked on genetics."

His eyes remained fixed on the data.

"First, we separate Kaguya’s ordinary genetic structure from everything extra."

"Then we find out exactly what the Divine Tree fruit added."

....

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