So, he worked. It took him months to enhance the Uchiha, Uzumaki, Senju, and various other bloodlines—refining them until they could rival even Kaguya's. But fusing them all into a single, cohesive genome proved far more difficult. He spent even more time editing each bloodline, attempting to make them work in harmony and strengthen one another. But in the end, that proved impossible.
So instead, he altered the structure. All the bloodlines would now exist to support a single core—the Uchiha bloodline. Because that was the one he cared about the most.
Why? Simple. He wanted Itachi's bloodline to be his foundation.
To him, Itachi was the most talented shinobi of them all. Sure, his potential might not have been as high as Hashirama's or Madara's, but talent wasn't about how far you could go. Talent was about how fast you could get there.
Even if others were technically more talented than Itachi, it didn't matter to him in the slightest. He was a die-hard Itachi fanboy, and that was that. Itachi would be the foundation—end of discussion. Fight him.
Anyway, once he finished crafting the newly enhanced Uchiha bloodline, he moved on to the next step: integrating all the talent he had gathered.
This part took even longer. Talent was a delicate aspect of DNA, far more intricate than raw power or physical traits. Installing it into the bloodline took months of precise, painstaking work.
Taking a deep breath, he began editing his own genetic structure, following the map he had so carefully constructed.
He didn't need tools or machines—he was using his own custom-made genetic editing jutsu. Tools were a hassle, after all, so he created a jutsu to bypass them entirely.
Up until now, he had avoided editing his own body out of caution. He feared it might interfere with his ability to make further changes down the line. Orochimaru, for example, had never been able to master Sage Mode because of his constant body-hopping. What if modifying his own bloodline created similar limitations?
Anyway, it took him hours of meticulous work before he had edited enough blood cells in his body. Once satisfied, he paused, feeling it—the newly enhanced Uchiha bloodline beginning to replicate.
He had stopped his original blood cells from dividing and accelerated the replication of the modified ones. As a result, the new cells rapidly spread throughout his body, replacing the old ones at an alarming rate.
At first, he felt nothing unusual. Calmly, he sat down to begin the process of removing the remaining unaltered blood.
Then it hit him. His heart suddenly started pounding with violent intensity, and his entire body began to emit blood-red steam, hissing off his skin like boiling water on metal.
He let out a cry of pain as his body collapsed to the ground, vomiting a mouthful of blood that instantly turned to steam upon hitting the floor. His skin began to burn from within, and tears of blood streamed down his face—only to evaporate into mist moments later.
Where had he gone wrong? The answer was simple: would fate truly allow something so overpowered to be born?
He was fated to fail, fated to overlook one crucial, unforgiving detail. Did he have enough energy to sustain the transition? Enough to fuel the complete replacement of his old cells with the new?
He didn't. The process forced his body beyond its limit—so far past it, in fact, that his own body was now cooking him alive from the inside out.
But the body wanted to live. The new cells surged forward, replacing his failing heart. His brain followed soon after, rebuilt by the enhanced bloodline. But rather than saving him, it only prolonged the inevitable, turning his death into a slow, agonizing process.
Still, he refused to give up. Dragging himself across the floor, he reached for Hashirama's cell sample and swallowed it without hesitation.
The effect was immediate. His body erupted with a surge of chakra, raw and violent. The energy flooded through him, reinforcing his heart and soul. He could feel it—his mind sharpening, his thoughts clearing with unnatural clarity.
Clear enough to realize one terrifying truth: His heart wasn't stabilizing. It was only beating faster.
'It shattered all of my gates…' he realized. The Eight Gates—the inner restraints that limited the body's potential to protect it from self-destruction—were gone. Completely shattered. And with them gone, so was his fate.
He was already dead. His body's full potential was being forced into overdrive, burning itself out in a desperate attempt to awaken the perfected bloodline. But even if the process succeeded… he wouldn't survive it. Not without the gates to hold him together. And so, he died.
His body disintegrated, turning to dust—so thoroughly erased that not a single drop of blood remained. Moments later, the earth trembled.
A violent earthquake ripped through the lab, shattering everything he had built. It was as if fate itself had struck back, refusing to allow such a thing to exist.
The world already had its story, its chosen players. And those who dared defy that script… Were erased.
In another world—a cultivation world. One unbound by preset fate. A world that allowed newcomers to carve their own paths.
Far below, within the vast mortal realm, what outsiders might mistakenly call the multiverse, countless lower realms stretched endlessly across the heavens. And in one of these lower realms, a mortal could be found.
A young woman, living alone in the mountains, far from the village nestled in the valley below. She stood at the edge of a cliff, overlooking the village with a frustrated expression etched across her face. Her brows were furrowed, as if the very sight of the place stirred something unwelcome within her.
How could she not feel this way? She had been driven out of the village simply because she dared to dream—because she had the audacity to believe she could one day become an immortal. For aspiring to be something greater than just a village girl, they had nearly stoned her to death. She had barely escaped with her life, forced to flee into the mountains.
"You all accept being at the bottom of this well but not me," she muttered, her voice low but steady. "I want to see what the heavens have to offer."
Determination blazed in her eyes as she turned away from the village, gazing out at the vast world beyond. And then—thunder cracked through the sky above, sudden and deafening. Startled, she looked up, eyes wide, as the heavens seemed to respond to her declaration.
She stared up at the sky, clear, blue, and cloudless. Not a single trace of a storm. Confusion twisted into unease. Something felt wrong. And before she could make sense of it… A bolt of lightning tore down from the heavens and struck her head-on.
There was no time to scream, no time to react. And yet… she wasn't injured. She simply collapsed, unconscious. But deep within her, something had changed.
In her womb, a child began to take form—life sparked from nothing. And at the same time, her body began to transform. The shell of a mortal slowly shed itself, replaced by something more. She had stepped beyond mortality. In that moment, she became a cultivator.