Board Thread:Theories and Speculation/@comment-3568954-20180914014316

we all know that orochimaru is interested in the worlds secrets and to gain them he needs to live indefinitely. for that he created the living corpse reanimation, but transferring of ones soul into a new body causes the new body to degrade and after 3 years he needs a new host.

the most likely reason for this is that the new bodies DNA doesn't match orochimaru's we know with the Edo Tensei that in order to summon a soul from the pure land you must gain their DNA so the proper DNA is most likely what binds the soul to a body until death.

so what if orochimaru realized something. what if he used his living corpse reanimation on his own body, or a clone of it. by perfecting the cloning process orochimaru can than take possession of his own clone's body. because of this he wouldn't be limited to 3 years in a body. he would have an entire lifetime in a single body. when the time comes that said body is degraded he can simply hop into a new body ie one of the mitsuki clones. 