Chapter 200: Eye Transplant
"Are you ready?"
A few days later, at the Sand Village hospital.
Outside the operating room, Yuji looked at Shimizu, Yura, and the fourteen Sand Village Jonin assembled before him and asked.
Some of these people were familiar faces. Some were veterans from the battlefields against the Hidden Stone Village years ago, and some were soldiers who had been stationed in the Sand Village and had served as leaders in the battles against the Leaf Village army.
Without exception, they were all senior officers and squad commanders, representatives of the Sand Village’s core fighting force.
"Yes," they answered, their eyes firm as they faced his question.
"I have already explained the risks of Sharingan transplantation to all of you. If anyone wishes to withdraw now, it is still not too late," Yuji said with a calm smile.
This was indeed what he intended. He was going to transplant Sharingan into Shimizu and the others.
The five Uchiha clan members currently in the Sand Village, combined with the two Uchiha members who had died at his hands during their capture, provided a total of seven pairs of Sharingan eyes available. For the time being, the primary value the living Uchiha clan members held for the Sand Village had been the continuation of their bloodline.
Even after their eyes were removed, he could use the Reverse Cursed Technique to cause the five Uchiha members to grow new eyes. However, the reopening of the Sharingan in these regrown eyes had not yet been achieved. This was because he had overlooked one thing. The evolution and activation of the Sharingan was tied directly to emotion.
Intense emotional states caused the brain to become more active, transforming the gaze into bursts of stronger spiritual power. But after the brain surgeries performed to control the Uchiha clan members, they had been effectively converted into puppets lacking genuine emotions and self-consciousness. Under these conditions, the Sharingan could not reactivate so easily.
He had been planning to explore surgical methods that might physically stimulate the relevant neural pathways, to see if Kimu and the others could be made to open their eyes again through some alternative means. If that still proved impossible, those individuals would serve primarily as reproductive vessels for continuing the bloodline. But even without active Sharingan, they were still functional ninja at a foundational level.
Their overall combat capability was still somewhat lacking without it.
Although it was theoretically possible to use the Reverse Cursed Technique to thoroughly treat and restore the brain tissue of those individuals, such brain surgery required an extremely long time and the interval between sessions was significant. Even with complete reconstruction, achieving one hundred percent recovery was unlikely. Brain tissue was the most complex and delicate structure in the human body.
Transplanting the Sharingan to suitable recipients was the most direct way to strengthen the village’s fighting power without wasting what was available. The chosen recipients were all Jonin, people best suited to bear the Sharingan’s requirements, and whose chakra capacity could satisfy the Sharingan’s consumption demands. As for the various transplant and physiological difficulties involved, none of them presented an obstacle to him.
However, before performing the surgery, he still wanted to confirm their willingness. Sharingan transplantation was not something to be forced upon anyone.
Furthermore, once a person possessed a Sharingan, even if they belonged to the same village as certain Konoha contacts and maintained communication with them, they would still likely be targeted by the Konoha Uchiha clan. This applied not only to Konoha but to other villages and ninja forces as well. Possessing a Sharingan would draw exceptional attention and carry certain dangers.
He had also quietly consulted with Rasa and Sasori beforehand to see if either of them had any interest in the Sharingan. Their answers had been almost identical. They simply looked down on it.
Although the Sharingan’s reputation was considerable, for fighters at Rasa and Sasori’s level, they had not fallen to the point of needing to borrow this kind of power to become stronger. Both possessed an innate pride in their own abilities that made the idea unappealing.
"Let us begin," Shimizu said, stepping forward to respond.
Among those present, Shimizu’s strength was undoubtedly the greatest. But Shimizu was acutely aware that after reaching the level of elite Jonin, further meaningful improvement in his own abilities would be extraordinarily difficult. That was the ceiling of his natural potential. The ninja world had always been cruel in this regard.
War had forced people to recognize and honestly examine themselves. Not everyone was a genius like Sasori. As people grew up, they had to learn to accept their own limitations.
From the time they had first met until now, ten years had passed. Shimizu’s objective strength ten years ago had already been limited, and his potential for further advancement had been very restricted even then. Therefore, apart from relying on external resources, Shimizu could not think of any other realistic path to becoming meaningfully stronger.
Furthermore, he and Yuji both understood that a year from now, the village would be facing another war. To play a meaningful role in the complete conquest of the Land of Rain, this price was nothing he was not willing to pay.
Furthermore, being selected to receive a Sharingan transplant meant they were beneficiaries of an opportunity that was not available to everyone. There was nothing to complain about in that regard.
Seeing their resolve, Yuji said nothing more and led them into the operating room.
The transplanted Sharingan would be in an active state from the moment the transplant was successful. Shimizu and the others would afterward have only one normal eyeball remaining in terms of their daily appearance. Like Kakashi in the future, they would need to keep the transplanted eye covered for most of the time, opening it only during combat to prevent the constant chakra drain that came with leaving the Sharingan active.
However, what he was doing here went considerably beyond the straightforward transplant experiments he had conducted on Kimu and the others during cranial surgery. With his capabilities, he could allow Shimizu and the others to obtain the Sharingan and then, through surgical modification of the relevant cerebral nerve pathways, give the user the ability to consciously choose when to open or close the Sharingan without external covering.
This meant the surgeries he needed to perform on these dozen or so people were not simple transplant operations. Each one required both eye surgery and targeted brain surgery.
After a full series of surgeries, by the time Shimizu and the others emerged from the operating room one by one, an entire day had passed.
And the surgeries were not finished.
Because next, he intended to transplant a pair of Byakugan. The recipients were two people, one eye each. His two students, Pakura and Yashamaru.
The Sharingan’s applications, while powerful, were somewhat situational in nature. By contrast, the Byakugan’s abilities were more comprehensive and applicable across a broader range of circumstances. For Yashamaru specifically, as a medical ninja, the Byakugan would also enhance his ability to treat and save people through its precise internal vision capabilities.
As for Pakura, considered a genius with the potential to reach Kage level in the future, he had not originally planned to involve her in this. But when consulting with Yashamaru about the procedure, Pakura had proactively put herself forward to receive the Byakugan, stepping into the position that had been intended for Sakamoto.
The more he understood Pakura’s thinking, the more he could see her reasoning. He explained straightforwardly that while acquiring the Byakugan would increase her combat capabilities, it came with both advantages and disadvantages. But Pakura’s attitude was completely firm. Unable to dissuade her, he ultimately agreed.
Fortunately, regardless of whether it was the Sharingan or the Byakugan, through the same cerebral nerve modification technique he had developed, both Pakura and Yashamaru would be able to consciously control when their transplanted eyes activated. To a certain extent, this mitigated a portion of the associated drawbacks.
However, there was one inherent difference. Whether the Byakugan was opened or not, its distinctive pale appearance was immediately visible to anyone looking at the eye. It was fundamentally different from the Sharingan in this regard and could not be fully concealed.
"Are you ready?" Yuji asked, wearing a blood-stained doctor’s coat after the previous round of surgeries, looking at the two people about to enter the operating room.
"Yes," Yashamaru said with a calm smile, appearing genuinely untroubled.
Pakura nodded firmly beside him.
"Come in then."
Following the others who had come before them, the two stepped through the doorway. The large door slowly closed behind them.
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STONES
