Naruto: I, the villain template, was hailed as a savior.

Chapter 218 If you're worried about getting your hands dirty, then I'll do it for you.

Nagato was already prepared when he saw the candlelight, waiting for the unknown danger that awaited him the moment he stepped inside.

However, the moment he took a step and "saw" the scene before him, his body froze on the spot.

For him, ordinary bloody scenes no longer shock him; he only shows this look of astonishment when there is a fierce conflict between imagination and reality.

But what he was seeing now was indeed vastly different from what he had expected.

There were no enemy traps, no overwhelming killing intent, and not even a terrifying, bloody wind.

Only a few dark figures hung silently upside down in mid-air, swaying naturally and making eerie crackling sounds.

It's a feeling that's hard to explain.

It's like standing in a dimly lit room filled with dolls, knowing full well that they are lifeless objects, yet still feeling countless eyes focused on you.

The complete absence of life told Nagato that they were all dead, but a strange intuition made him feel that they were alive.

This was the first time he had encountered such a bizarre situation.

"call!"

Forcibly suppressing his doubts, Nagato once again stepped into the shadows.

Yahiko, whose mind was in complete chaos, followed instinctively until he passed through the middle and bumped into a dark figure, at which point he came to his senses.

Click...click...

The robes brushed against the dark figures, making a rustling sound, and the figures swayed slightly, producing a crisp collision sound.

Yahiko finally realized why these voices sounded so familiar.

He felt as if he had returned to the time when he risked his life to retrieve the corpse, amidst the strange noises of the puppets that echoed in the heavy rain and thunder.

"That's Uncle Eda, that's kid Nakao, and that one, that's Granny Iwatani..."

As Yahiko walked through a forest of shadows, his eyes widened as he scanned the faces of the shadowy figures, and surprisingly, he saw many familiar faces.

There are big and small, old and young.

Yahiko enjoys traveling around the Land of Rain, partly to understand the true situation of the people and partly to search for people with various talents.

These people were all civilians whom Yahiko had seen and remembered. They were all within the area to be naturalized under the Dawn Project. After this war ended, they would be brought under the jurisdiction of the Dawn and receive its protection.

Now, appearing here without their knowledge, there can only be one possibility...

The civilians in the settlements where these people lived were all taken away without anyone noticing, and no one was even able to cross the river that divided the north and south alive to file a complaint.

"..."

Unbeknownst to him, Yahiko's chest began to heave more and more, and his breathing became heavy and deep, like a broken-down exhaust fan.

He swore that he had never felt such chest tightness, even when practicing breathing techniques, as if his stomach was being squeezed out of his mouth.

Seemingly afraid that the disgusting scene would actually occur, Yahiko covered his mouth as he looked at the dark figures whose internal organs had been ripped out.

However, the throbbing of his temples with each breath revealed the barely suppressed rage and ferocity he was displaying.

"Sunagakure... they're turning living civilians from the Land of Rain into puppets?!"

"How dare they? How dare they?!"

Hearing Yahiko's deep, suppressed voice behind him, Nagato's slightly lowered face became somewhat gloomy, looking as if it were frozen solid.

But the more this was the case, the more he had to remind himself to stay calm. If they both lost their rationality, they were very likely to make the wrong judgment.

If I'm not mistaken, this place, which they initially thought was a base for hiding troops or supplies, was actually a base used by those bastards from Sunagakure to conduct human experiments.

After all, no matter how crazy the Third Kazekage was, he couldn't possibly use civilians from the Land of Wind for experiments. Using civilians from an enemy country was obviously a better choice, and it was a very "reasonable" one...

Although it is unknown what kind of experiments Sunagakure is conducting, judging from the incomplete appearance of those puppets, they are probably just failed products of the experiment.

While pondering, Nagato suddenly caught a familiar scent. Without hesitation, he stopped and, without turning around, gestured for Yahiko behind him to stop and be quiet.

—The smell of blood, an extremely strong smell of blood.

Nagato looked at the door in front of him, his senses extending to the other side.

In that instant, he felt the hairs on his body stand on end.

Through the door, I could sense countless figures slowly pacing back and forth, like countless lost souls wandering there.

But despite the large number of people, there was only silence, a deathly stillness, and the only sound was a faint crackling sound, which was chilling...

Click!

Nagato held his breath, frowned, and gently pushed the door open a crack.

Sure enough, peeking through the crack, one could see that behind the door was a laboratory. Under the dim blue light, figures appeared and disappeared on the intricate network of roads.

Unlike the failed experiments, although these figures walked with faltering steps and stiff gait, Nagato still sensed a faint vitality in them.

Living? Dead?

It feels more like a mindless living dead.

"What is that..." Yahiko asked in a low voice from behind.

Before he could finish speaking, Nagato raised his index finger to his lips to signal silence, and a scarlet thorn slowly emerged from behind him.

Yahiko immediately understood his meaning, but he did not stop him. He simply held his breath slowly, his gaze gradually darkening...

呲! !

Thorns behind Nagato suddenly sprang out from the crack in the door, piercing the dark figure closest to the gate.

Almost without hesitation, he aimed at the eyes, one of the most vulnerable points in the human body. The area behind the eye socket is directly connected to the nerves of the brain, and a single strike could eliminate it.

With a short, sharp whistling sound, the thorns shot towards the dark figure's eyes with tremendous kinetic energy; one could almost see the thorns piercing the brain and blood splattering everywhere.

But the next moment, the dark figure with its back to the door seemed to have eyes in the back of its head, and suddenly raised its arm to protect itself behind its head.

Clang!

Sparks burst and flew through the air, the sound like piercing iron, the hardness of the impact causing Nagato's expression to change.

The thorns were actually blocked?!

The burst of sparks briefly illuminated the face of the shadowy figure—a very ordinary, even somewhat weathered, man's face, except that his eyes were lifeless and numb, and his complexion was pale and bloodless.

Without the slightest hesitation or delay, several thorns instantly shot out from behind Nagato, this time binding the shadowy figure tightly and pulling him forcefully to Nagato's front through the open door.

Click! Click!

Thorns tightened around the neck of the dark figure, lifting it high in front of Nagato. The hands, which had been transformed into ironwood, were still struggling to scratch at the thorns binding its neck.

The veins on his pale face were bulging, suggesting he still felt pain.

At the same time, he noticed that the guy was wearing some remnants of clothing, which seemed to be the standard uniform of the Rain Village ninja.

"...Rain Ninja? They can feel pain? Aren't they just puppets?"

Nagato narrowed his eyes slightly, a sense of irritation rising in his heart.

Thorns held it tightly, their sharp thorns piercing its neck and vocal cords, rendering it unable to make a sound.

Bang!

Nagato punched it in the jaw. The "person" in front of him took the heavy blow. Although its jaw was dislocated, its hands, like iron clamps, continued to claw at the thorns.

"They have lost their original self-awareness and are left only with bodily instincts."

Nagato quickly memorized the information he had gathered, then crushed its limbs with thorns. The texture was indeed different from flesh and bone. He frowned and said, "To transform a human into a puppet capable of independent movement and a degree of aggression?"

The thorn pierced into the left chest, near the heart. This time, Nagato clearly felt something like a heart, but even after it pierced him, it was still wriggling and struggling slightly.

"What on earth is this thing?" Nagato's brows furrowed even more deeply.

Just as Nagato was carefully observing and trying to figure out what this thing was, a crisp cracking sound suddenly came from inside the monster in front of him.

boom!boom!

Under his gaze, a spinning, sharp circular saw suddenly emerged from his abdomen, gleaming with a cold black light in the dim lamplight.

Just then, Yahiko, who was behind Nagato, drew his sword from his waist.

The scorching blade sliced ​​past him, as if trying to set his eyebrows ablaze, and instantly severed the puppet's head, which slammed to the ground with a dull thud.

"..."

Looking at the body that had finally stopped moving, Yahiko gritted his teeth with a complicated expression.

Nagato tilted his head slightly, seemingly glancing at him, then crouched down and looked at the rolled-off head. He used his short sword to pry open the skull and, sure enough, saw the traces of the cursed seal.

Cursed seals, a branch of sealing techniques, are spells with binding effects. They are usually set through contact, and the person targeted will be bound by the caster. The binding effect can be strong or weak, and can either immobilize the target or control them.

As far as Nagato knew, every member of the Hyuga clan of Konoha would have a cursed seal called "Caged Bird" branded on the eldest son of the main family when he turned three years old.

The main family can use this curse seal to damage the brain nerves of branch family members and seal their Byakugan, thereby controlling the branch family. This curse seal will accompany the branch family members throughout their lives, and will only be released when they die.

The Hyuga clan's "Caged Bird Seal" is a very advanced cursed seal. In addition, there is the "Self-Karma Binding Seal," which binds the body's movements, as well as cursed seals used openly and secretly by various ninja villages to prevent information leaks.

While spells that control consciousness and actions are rare, they wouldn't surprise Nagato. What truly surprised him was that Sunagakure would use spells in this way.

First, the person is transformed into a puppet with a certain degree of lethality, and then sorcery is used to control the remaining part of their brain.

"It's somewhat like the 'Mind-Body Transfer Puppet' of the Mountain Clan," Nagato said, frowning.

The Mind-Body Conversion Puppet is a secret technique used by the Mountain Clan. It is a spell that involves creating a "mind-body conversion technique" into a talisman and attaching it to a simple little puppet. This spell can bind the spirit of another person to the little puppet's body.

Sunagakure replaced the small puppets with real puppets modified from humans. The real challenge lay in how to transform humans into puppets.

"If this wasn't a spontaneous act by the Multi-Eyed One... it seems the Third Kazekage has probably even pulled out the Sand Village's most treasured forbidden technique in order to win the war."

Not all ninjutsu and secret techniques are known to the world. In fact, there have been many extremely dangerous techniques in history, but for various reasons, they have been kept secret by the major ninja villages.

Those things are the true "foundation" of a ninja village. The price to be paid may be high, but the power gained in the end will be immense.

Realizing this, Nagato suddenly felt a headache coming on.

The unknown is the most troublesome. If you don't know how to activate it or even what the effect of the technique is, you are completely in the dark and it is easy to be caught off guard and difficult to develop targeted tactics.

"So you mean we've figured out the weaknesses of Sunagakure?"

Compared to Nagato, Yahiko's ideas were much more optimistic.

Looking at the numerous dark figures on the other side, his eyes flickered slightly as he said, "Luckily we discovered it early, otherwise it would have been a real problem if Sunagakure had created enough of these puppets."

Although it's unknown whether Sunagakure has any plans, these puppets that don't require individual control are practically the perfect nemesis of "demons".

Both are "of the same kind" that can only be killed by cutting off their heads. Apart from being weaker than "ghosts" in terms of intelligence and recovery ability, these puppets are even stronger in terms of fearlessness and execution.

"……you're right."

Nagato remained silent for a moment, then, quite unusually, acknowledged Yahiko's statement, his tone turning cold as he said, "Neither these demonic things nor the people who created them can be released!"

"The question is, how do we find the people who made them?"

Yahiko glanced at the shadowy figures inside the door, but quickly realized what Nagato meant, and his expression suddenly stiffened.

No matter what kind of spell it is, even an extremely sophisticated and advanced spell like "Caged Bird," although it allows one person to control a group of people at the same time, there is still a distance limitation between the caster and the recipient.

In other words, the people who manufacture and control them must be located within this base.

"So, why not just kill everything that can move?" Nagato's calm and collected tone sent a chill down Yahiko's spine.

His lips parted slightly, he hesitated for a moment, and finally whispered, "These puppets, these people, if the curse is lifted..."

"If the cursed seal is lifted, the situation will only get worse."

Before Yahiko could finish speaking, Nagato interrupted him coldly, saying, "Besides their brains and skin, they have nothing left. They can't eat, they can't drink, they can't laugh, they can't cry..."

"What's the point of continuing to live, except to be used as a weapon?"

"Besides, even if I sympathize with them, do you think they'd just stand there and watch me go and kill the caster, then come back to find a way to save them?"

Having said that, Nagato ignored the speechless Yahiko, turned to look at the door, and said coldly, "If you're afraid of getting your hands dirty, then I'll take the blame for this blood debt."

As he finished speaking, nine thorns stretched out from behind him, their snake-like shadows reflected on the ground.

(End of this chapter)