Naruto: The Scientific Ninja

Among the treetops, with a whoosh, Sasuke and the other three leaped across the giant branches, heading toward their own defense zone.

"Captain, we finally had a chance to connect with Lord Torifune and the others, why are you in such a hurry to return?" Tekudō asked, bewildered. He felt that the captain had behaved abnormally today. Born into a family of weapons merchants, Tekudō was very familiar with the art of dealing with people, and they had just missed a valuable opportunity to make influential friends.

"Didn't I already say? We have to get back to patrolling quickly," Sasuke replied, slapping Tekudō on the back of the head with irritation, nearly knocking him off the branch.

The truth was, Sasuke was in a great hurry to leave, not to patrol, but because he had used chakra to stimulate his tear glands too forcefully. The tears were still flowing, and he couldn't stop them. If he stayed any longer, he would easily be discovered, and it would also be very embarrassing.

"Tekudō, you all head back to the patrol first. I'm going to resupply," he finally said.

"Captain, no. What if the Sand ninja choose our defense zone to attack?"

"Don't worry. Aburame Shibi has released many of his parasites in our area, there will be no danger."

Sasuke persuaded the three, gave them some instructions, and then, taking the sealing scroll with the loot, he flew off toward the rear of the defense zone. After running for about five kilometers, he turned back, covered another two, and finally arrived at the base of a slightly hollow giant tree.

He used his sonar radar technique to its fullest to ensure no one was nearby, not even Shibi's insects. Then, he distributed chakra to his feet, climbed the giant tree, reached a hollow, and quickly slipped inside. The interior of the tree was hollow, and the hole led directly to an underground cave. As he descended, the space became increasingly spacious, until he reached a cavern the size of a living room.

Zizizizi...

As soon as he entered, he heard the familiar sound of a large number of water bats.

This cave was one of his labs. Although it was simple and the equipment was incomplete, its main advantage was that it was hidden. Without knowing Earth Style, it was rare to find such a secret cave on the front lines. He had found it thanks to his water bats; it was originally a python's nest, but the bats, its natural enemies, had taken it over.

The lab, if you could call it that, was very simple. It looked more like the breeding farm of an eccentric biologist than a research center. In the middle, there was a wooden workbench with a set of dissection tools, three cages with live water bats, and a dozen bottles of saline solution. Inside the bottles were not Hashirama cells, but preserved organs from low-level beasts, mostly bats.

"This one has great vitality, it didn't starve," Sasuke muttered, observing the three caged bats. Seeing that they were still alive, he pulled out a bottle of saline solution, placed the body of Kuro, his summoned beast, inside, and sealed it for future dissection.

"They say Suna's puppets are very valuable. I wonder how much I can sell them for?" he wondered, as he untied the loot scroll.

Except for the chūnin-level Black Ant puppet, which was well-preserved, the other three were severely damaged. The special jōnin's spare puppet was in pieces, and the other chūnin-level one was half-broken. However, the special jōnin's main puppet, a rare Red Scorpion model, was only cut in half and its parts were relatively intact. It looked very expensive.

"I'll keep this Red Scorpion puppet and sell all the rest."

Sasuke stored the Red Scorpion for future processing and packed the other broken puppets into a sealing scroll. Then, he went to the other end of the cave, moved a wooden frame hiding a wire mesh, and carefully slipped into a smaller, adjacent cavern.

This cave was long and extended upwards, with many fist-sized pores in the walls letting in light. The stone walls were covered by a dense colony of water bats.

As soon as Sasuke entered, he was besieged by them. He quickly unsealed a scroll from which a large amount of freshwater fish fell.

Zizizizi...

The bats sensed the smell of fish and swarmed the food like locusts. Sasuke grabbed a large fish, retreated to his lab, and blocked the entrance to prevent the bats from entering. After more than ten minutes, when the noise of the bats devouring the fish subsided, he waited another ten minutes in silence.

During that time, he fed the large fish to the three caged bats and extracted a bit of their venom.

Finally, he returned to the main cavern. "Their poison resistance has strengthened again. It took them several more minutes to go down this time," he muttered, observing the hundreds of bats passed out from the poison he had mixed with their food. The ninja world with chakra was truly irrational.

Wasting no more time, he quickly found all the bats that possessed chakra fluctuations, took out his tools, extracted the venom, packed it, and took it with him. In the end, the harvest from "Batch Number 7" was especially good, yielding nearly 500ml of poison.