Chapter 163: The Mission of Team Minato

After solving the matter with the Uchiha, Ryo and Orochimaru became devoted to studying Hashirama's cells.

These cells were very important to Ryo. He had no siblings, and no imaginable way to ever get the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan. For now, his only way was Hashirama's cell, so he had to study them thoroughly.

In his battle against the Uchiha, Ryo felt that his 3 tomoe Sharingan was at the edge, with its power about to overflow. He was just a catalyst away from unlocking the Mangekyo Sharingan.

After studying the cells weakened by Madara, Ryo decided not to follow his method.

While this method could effectively alleviate the risk involved with using Hashirama's cells, it also greatly reduced their utility.

In order to use the Mangekyo without the risks involved with that, Ryo had to have a huge amount of Hashirama's cells in his body, close to half.

That wasn't what Ryo wanted. He didn't want his body to be occupied by someone else's cells.

Ryo's idea was go find a way to get his cells to have the proprieties of those of Hashirama.

There were leaps and bound between Hashirama's cells and regular ones; every one of the 1st Hokage's cells had great vitality.

It would be impossible for regular person to change his cell to ones similar to those of the 1st, but Ryo theorized that it could be possible to him through Ice Elementization.

The main use of this technique to Ryo was to absorb Natural Energy and change the structure of his cells.

Since it was done in one way, it might be done in another. With enough Natural Energy, Ryo thought that he might be able to imitate the structure of Hashirama's cells, to give his own stronger vitality and keep himself from going blind.

With that in mind, Ryo kept analyzing the DNA structure of the 1st cells to isolate the genes responsible for his vitality.

Off course, the human Genome is vast, and there research wasn't making progress for a while.

In the meantime, Danzo came over for Orochimaru several times, solely to persuade him to make him an arm made out of Hashirama's cells.

Because of his interaction with Ryo, Orochimaru was very different from what he was like in the Manga, and wasn't conducting any Human experiments.

Danzo wasn't able to control Orochimaru, so he could only ask him to help him politely. For this reason, he had to use all his cards and offer him the notes Tobirama's research on the 1st's cells.

Orochimaru was very eager to take these notes, and finally agreed to help him with making the arm.

Ryo and Orochimaru's research made great progress after obtaining the notes, and they were finally able to isolate the genes responsible of their vitality.

After Ryo extracted the genes, Ryo activated his Sharingan and memorized the structure of the cells with the help of Orochimaru's lab's microscope. (T/N: I study biology in college… so this is all….)

However, Ryo wasn't eager to try his method as he wasn't sure yet of its feasibility.

Later, he and Orochimaru experimented with mince and Monkeys, and the results were very promising.

After changing the cell structure of the two animals, they began to show extraordinary vitality.

After two more days of observation, Ryo determined that the animals weren't suffering from side effects. They were the same as before, just with more vitality. The experiment was a complete success.

The one problem that they had was that this change only brought the animals vitality. The immense Chakra of Hashirama should have another gene that's responsible of it. However, they couldn't find any way to duplicate that which was inherited in the Senju clan.

Although they had some disappointment, Ryo and Orochimaru were extremely satisfied with their results. They had managed to use scientific research to successfully find a way to reproduce Hashirama's vitality, without any side effect.

In this world where everything relied on Chakra, what they had accomplished was a great achievement.

Ryo soon calmed down. Although their experiment was a success, it wasn't time to apply it yet.

First, he didn't have enough Chakra to support the transformation. And second, he hadn't opened his Mangekyo yet.

After the experiment was completed, Orochimaru started working on making an arm from the 1st's cells.

He used the original cell that Danzo had given him, which meant that he was going to produce the same arm he made in the Manga.

Ryo was far from being involved with this process. He finally got to leave the lab after a whole month.

He had to squint to adapt with the sunshine, for he had not seen it all that time.

He entered Sage Mode to locate people around. After confirming that Shisui and Kushina were in the 3rd training ground, he used the Teleportation Barrier to get there.

"Hey Kushina ne san, Shisui, how are you?"

"Well, we're all good!" Kushina was immune to the sudden appearance of Ryo and Minato, and casually answered Ryo.

"Hello sensei!" Shisui was as respectful as ever to Ryo.

"I haven't seen you for a while Shisui! You seem to have gotten stronger! You must've been working very hard recently!"

"No, it's all thanks to Kushina san! All this time she had been fighting against me, so my strength increased so fast!" Shisui was very grateful to Kushina.

"Don't mention it! You're Sensei wasn't here, so I should teach you! I'm you're Sensei's Sensei you know!" Kushina laughed out loud.

"By the way, where are Minato and Kakashi?" after the three spent a while chatting, Ryo remembered that he could not locate Minato or his team, and casually asked.

"Minato took them to do a task!" Kushina said with some envy.

Being the Kyubi's Jinchuriki, even though she was proficient at using most of its Biju's power, Kushina couldn't leave the village as she wanted. She knew that very well, and could only envy her boyfriend.

"What mission?" Ryo's heart dropped.

"I don't know the specifics. I just heard Minato talking about it." Kushina said after some thought.

"Kushina ne san, has Kakashi been promoted to the rank of Jonin?"

"Ah yes! I gave him a Seal Scroll!"

Heating that, Ryo's doubts were confirmed. What Minato and his team were going to was the battle of Kannabi Bridge.

Ryo had no intention to change Obito's upcoming fate. He wanted him to awaken his Mangekyo with the help of Madara. But since he was too focused on research, he lost track of time and forgot about protecting Rin.

Ryo felt helpless. In order to ensure that his plans were to be foolproof, he decided to go to Kannabi Bridge.