Naruto Immersive Replay, The Curse of the Sharingan

"S-Senior...?"

I abruptly released my blood-stained hand and turned around in a disheveled state.

—Look, Zhili.

—I am still a monster after all.

We became friends.

She would always drag me out to eat tricolor dumplings after a mission, rubbing her powdered fingers against my lips; I taught her how to improve her shuriken technique, and the faint scent of camellia blossoms in her hair would distract me.

Until that day, she excitedly showed me her newly developed forbidden technique, "This is called Izanagi! It's an eye technique that can rewrite death!"

The spell on the scroll coiled around my heart like a venomous snake. I smashed my teacup and protested vehemently, but she tilted her head in confusion. "Why? This can avoid unnecessary sacrifices."

“Zhili,” I grabbed her wrist and pressed her against the wall, “those whose fate has been rewritten… will be forever trapped in false happiness.”

Her eyes reddened. "That's better than death."

I was defeated by those eyes.

Just like how I lost to that bento box under the window back then.

The night I usurped the throne, Uchiha Xu's blood soaked the elders' seat.

When Chiri burst in, I was wiping my kunai by stepping on his head. She was sitting in a pool of blood, her clothes stained crimson.

"Why..."

I knelt down and cupped her face in my hands, blood dripping from my fingertips onto her trembling lips.

"Because I want to protect you."

After becoming the elder of the hawks, our confrontation actually became closer.

She refuted my radical proposal at the meeting, but secretly slipped me handmade wagashi afterward; I publicly mocked her pacifism, but sneaked into her room late at night to bandage the wounds she had from practicing magic.

The craziest place is under the cherry blossom trees at the shrine.

Amidst the falling petals, she suddenly kissed me.

Her soft lips tasted sweet honey. I gripped the fabric behind her waist so tightly I almost tore it apart, but I let go when I tasted the salty bitterness of her tears.

“Showa,” she murmured, pressing her forehead against mine, “stop killing people…”

At that moment, I almost said yes to her.

— He almost gave up his obsession with destroying the ninja world.

I only woke up and pushed her away when the Prajna totem felt burning hot on my shoulder.

“Chiri, the Izanagi you invented…” I stroked her moist lips, “is the real curse.”

Chapter 180 Hell

I stood in the center of the Uchiha clan assembly, with the elders' cold gazes behind me. "I am determined to take the position of clan leader."

My voice was very soft, yet it silenced the entire council chamber.

Zhili sat opposite me, her fingers clenching the cuffs of her tribal robe. Her eyes were still so beautiful, like black jade filled with starlight, but at this moment they were filled with the emotion I hated most—disappointment.

"Showa, did you really have to go this far?"

I laughed, my Mangekyou Sharingan glowing crimson in the shadows. "It's not that I want to leave, it's that this world is forcing me to."

That duel lasted for three days and three nights.

The water of the Naga River was evaporated by fire-style techniques, and the forest was turned into scorched earth by lightning-style techniques.

Chiri's illusions are like a gentle spider web, but I use the most violent methods to tear apart every inch of the chakra's restraints.

In the end, my kudu was pressed against her throat.

She held a knife to my neck.

We were covered in blood, but none of us stabbed anyone.

"Why did you stop?" she asked breathlessly.

I stared at the bloodstains on her eyelashes and suddenly remembered the first word she taught me to write that year.

--"like".

"Because is you."

After being stripped of my elder status, I broke into the Uchiha clan's forbidden chamber.

Dust floated in the moonlight, and the scroll recorded the legend of the Sage of Six Paths. "The Right Minister of the Prajna" was not a curse, but the sealed power of creation.

As my fingertips traced the ancient characters, I suddenly laughed until tears streamed down my face.

It turns out that what I hated all my life was my own salvation.

The Uchiha clan began to hold funerals frequently.

The Third Elder died in his own bathroom, his throat slit by a paper effigy; the Fifth Elder's mansion caught fire in the middle of the night, his charred body still in a struggling posture; the Seventh Elder was even worse off, when he was found he was just a skin, the flesh inside had all turned into pus.

Everyone knows who did it.

But no one dared to say it.

Jiri handed Izanagi over to the elders.

I stood in the shadows, watching her being surrounded by the crowd and listening to them chant "Hope for peace."

Foolish! They have no idea what kind of curse they are embracing.

"Is it worth trading an eye for a false resurrection?" I asked softly.

She didn't turn around, "At least I can save those who need saving."

I scoffed, but suddenly grabbed her wrist and pinned her against a pillar. "Chiri, when did you become so naive?"

"I did nothing wrong!"

I lowered my head and kissed her trembling fingertips.

—But I have it.

My biggest mistake... was letting you live in my fantasy.

"I'm going to find the power to eliminate the Right Chancellor. I'll come back and correct your mistakes."

Chiri finally looked at me, her pupils trembling slightly. "Showa, you can't save everyone."

"I won't save everyone." I turned and stepped into the rain, blood dripping from my fingertips. "I'll only save you."

On the day I returned to the Uchiha clan's territory, a pale rain was falling from the sky, and the air was filled with a sweet, rotten smell, mixed with the scent of scorched earth and rust.

The tribesmen lay scattered in pools of blood, some laughing, some crying, and some still muttering about a victory that never happened.

—They've all gone mad.

"Izanagi" spread like a plague, the Uchiha children played "death games," and the adults were obsessed with rewriting the battles they had failed to win.

Death became a game, life a gamble, and the entire tribe was plunged into a frenzied fantasy, unable to distinguish reality from fiction.

I walked through the sticky blood, along one familiar road after another.

"Where is Zhili?" I pulled up a tribesman who was still conscious. He had lost sight in one eye, the pupil of the other was unfocused, and a foolish smile was on his lips.

"Lady Zhili? She...she seems to have gone to the forbidden area..."

I let go of him and turned to run away.

By the time I found Chiri, my hearing had already died.

The world suddenly became very quiet, with only the sound of blood dripping from the eaves, like frozen berries falling on the snow in the forbidden area that year.

—The stars have gone out.

She lay in the ruins, her purple hair spread out, a pearl hairpin broken in two, stuck in the open book, "Detailed Explanation of the Forbidden Technique of Izanagi".

My knees buckled, and I didn't feel any pain even when the gravel pierced my shinbone.

(Just like when I crawled out of the forbidden area when I was six years old)

I want to call her name.

When she opened her mouth, blood gushed out, the scalding liquid dripping onto her pale cheeks, like re-dyeing faded cherry blossoms.

She was still clutching something tightly in her left hand. I pried it open and saw it was the straw butterfly I had given her that year, now soaked in blood and turned brown.

Only tears of blood fell, drop by drop, onto her face.

—It was just like the warmth of the heater she handed me the night we first met.

But now, no one will ever ask me, "Are you cold?"

I curled up in her gradually stiffening arms, like a child hiding in a forbidden shrine.

Trembling, I pulled the kunai from her chest and discovered that the handle was engraved with the Uchiha clan crest.

—It was his own people who killed him.

They were those madmen obsessed with "Izanagi," and those clansmen she had once desperately tried to protect.

I laughed, my laughter as hoarse as a demon's.

"Zhili..." I was finally able to speak, but she could no longer hear me.

"Didn't you say...we should save those who deserve it?"

But who will save you...?

My fingers traced her eyebrows, her nose, and her lips.

—That place once kissed me, with the scent of tea and the sweetness of plum wine.

Now, only deathly silence remains.

When the flames devoured everything, I finally understood the taste of despair; it was so cold.

I held her in my arms, kneeling amidst the ruins of the Uchiha clan, and burst into laughter. The laughter tore at my throat, spurting out mixed with blood and foam, but I couldn't stop.

—I've gone mad.

The power of the Right Chancellor of Prajna surged within me, and black curse marks crawled up my cheeks, spreading like a spider web across my entire body.

My Sharingan spun wildly, eventually settling into a pattern I'd never seen before: six tomoe twisted and intertwined, like blooming crimson camellia flowers.

“Zhili…look…” I took her pale hand and pressed it against my burning face, “I’ve become stronger…”

But she will never respond to me again.

I knelt before the shrine's stone monument for three days and three nights, digging my fingernails into the cracks in the stone until my fingertips were bloody and mangled.

Finally, I understood those ancient texts: the "Reincarnation Technique" can bring the dead back to life.

But the prerequisite is... you must possess the eyes of a sage.

I stroked the stone tablet and suddenly burst out laughing, "So that's how it is... so that's how it is..."

I stood up and staggered into the distance.

—Then go find it.

Even if I traverse the entire ninja world, even if I slaughter millions of people.

After Chiri died, my mental state completely collapsed.

Sometimes, I would wake up in the middle of the night, running barefoot in the rain, calling out "Father" and "Mother," as if I were still that child locked in the forbidden area.

But when the cold rain hits my face, I suddenly wake up and realize, "Oh right, they're all dead."

Then I would burst into laughter, laughing so hard I would kneel down and plunge my fingers into the dirt until they bled profusely.

Sometimes, I can't control the urge to kill.

One of the ninjas merely glanced at me, and the next second, my kunai slit his throat. Blood splattered onto my face, warm and sweet-smelling.

It was just like the rain on the day Chiri died.

I stared at my blood-stained hands, then suddenly collapsed and curled up, trembling all over.

"Zhili...Zhili..." I murmured her name, as if that would atone for my sins.