Demon Cultivation

According to the information provided by Kurotsuchi, while the golden apple was indeed a great attraction for the new Fire Daimyo, it seems his greed was even greater. He secretly sold the golden apple to Onoki through the black market, gaining a huge amount of money, favors, and who knows what else.

It seems the price was simply too shameful to give details about.

And his plan was to ask for another apple after some time, repeating this virtuous cycle a few times unless he got sick and decided to keep it for himself.

This reveals a few points.

Firstly, I'm going to kill the current Fire Daimyo for being too clever. I can accept him not eating it to save it for an emergency or to save someone in the family, but this...

This is just taking us for fools!

"And I will take care of it. I've wanted to eliminate a Daimyo for a long time to complete my list," my wife Ameyuri said happily.

"Don't give him a quick death."

Since the Daimyo believes he's so clever, let him learn a lesson along the way.

"I wasn't planning on it," she said in a tone I recognized; I love this woman—"No one messes with our stuff!"

With that point settled...

There's also the fact that Onoki secretly ate the golden apple and despite regaining his good shape, he still fell at the hands of Orochimaru before he could take advantage of his recovery to do something significant.

It may seem like a trivial difference, but it shows that the battle they must have had was at least two levels above what I initially estimated.

Orochimaru also took Onoki's body, which completely ignited the anger of the entire village, and I can be fairly certain that he will undergo the Edo Tensei process at some point.

Because of this, Kutotsuchi decided, after seeing the overall picture of the world, to try to join our three-way alliance. This would leave Konoha in... a VERY bad situation if she succeeds. Among several concessions and requirements cited, one of them is to hunt down Orochimaru.

I was planning to do something similar with Obito later; what a coincidence...

Now, why would Orochimaru need a resurrected Onoki?

Setting aside his technique, the only remarkable thing he has is that he can...

Fly.

Hmm, what are the chances that Orochimaru has deduced that our village is in the sky after all these years?

Perhaps the cloud furniture was too obvious a clue?

Or did one of his snakes see my people summon the Kinton cloud?

But he would still need to locate the village, and Onoki doesn't have enough chakra to fly to that height to... Oh.

Right, the Edo Tensei Onoki has unlimited chakra, so theoretically, he has no flight altitude limit and can unleash his disintegrating light beam left and right.

This warrants taking some precautions, and fast.

The vast majority of measures on the Sky Island are camouflage, detection, foreign spatial blockade, and basic defense. If it were to be attacked by Onoki at this moment, a good portion of the island would be split in half, and I'm not sure if it could hold up.

And I've invested too much time and effort into it for Orochimaru to suddenly arrive, standing on the back of a resurrected Onoki like an immortal cultivator riding a sword and with a wave of his hand, tear the village apart with a square Kamehameha launched by the elderly dwarf.

I can almost imagine him shouting something like: "I will bring down the heavens and become immortal!"

Wait, actually, Orochimaru already has a demonic cultivator vibe if you think about it... Maybe he was one all along!

Suppose the darn snake has deduced that the village is in the sky and that he needs to find means to fly.

Onoki acquired.

Then he would need to know where the village is, assuming he also suspects that we can move like the Land of Sky did. How would he try to find us?

Would he start studying meteorology?

Would he try to do something with Obito's help?

I can't think of it right now, but it's not like they haven't collaborated before for similar goals.

I have the "immortality" Orochimaru desires, and at the same time, I still have Madara's Rinnegan, the Gedo Mazo, and Black Zetsu. Even if it's just the first two, Obito desperately needs them if he wants to fulfill his plan of living in a fantasy with Rin.

I never understood why he doesn't put himself in a genjutsu and leave the rest of the world alone, but oh well. He's a disturbed and blackened person; they're not usually the type of people to reason with over a cup of tea in the afternoon.

I'm going to need Mariko's help to prepare some additional barriers, and I think Mikoto had some knowledge like the Formation of the Four Red Yangs, which she learned in her clan's library (and I stole a while ago), that we can use as a reference so we don't have to start from scratch.

Well, I have to go to Mabui to inform the Raikage of Iwagakure's proposal and then contact Temari for a later meeting.

What are the chances that they'll accept the proposal?

The ignorant would say none, since we could simply conquer Iwa with another push, but in fact, it's not that easy for a simple reason.

They don't have as many ninjas!

Suna and Kumo already have their hands full with the new territory of what was once Kirigakure (they still haven't finished digesting that massive gain), and now that they're squeezing more from the Land of Fire, eliminating surface area and resources from Konoha, they're simply running out of personnel to employ.

You have to consider that our three-way alliance has taken care of three-fifths of the world map!

At least, the revealed map.

If there were people available, the first to fall would be the small defenseless lands they have on their borders, not the one defended by Iwagakure tooth and nail.

So let's see how things will unfold, but I have a good feeling about it.

------------

Are there any ATLA fans out there?

Well, just so you know, I started an ATLA FF today, on my Patreon.

This one will be exclusive to there, as a reward for the support of many.

As for the remaining three Naruto ones (one per village), those will come out as usual, in advance on Patreon and then there, so nobody panic.