Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

"You are the creator of the Blood Pact Eye?" Bai Ye roared, his throat burning with chakra. "Or are you using me to complete some kind of ritual?"

The young man in gray finally reacted.

He stopped forming hand seals, his gaze sweeping over the core on Bai Ye's wrist, then over the taut jawline of the first puppeteer—that older version of himself was wrapping the last puppet string around the pillar of the Blood Pact Eye.

"The creator?" The young gray figure suddenly laughed, the laughter mingling with the battle cries that pierced the eardrums. "You should ask who placed the power of time into the puppeteer's hands."

"Byakuya! Grab my chakra!"

In reality, the gray shadow suddenly bit her fingertip and pressed the blood bead onto Bai Ye's brow.

Dark red blood lines darted into his skin like living things. In his illusion, Byakuya saw a golden-red chain of light hanging down from above, with Chiyo's puppet strings tied to the end of the chain—those were the scarlet chakra strings unique to Sunagakure, which were now radiating a scorching heat.

"Quick!" Chiyo's voice trembled with tears, "Your heart has stopped beating three times in reality, it can't hold on any longer..."

The illusion began to crumble.

A black vortex swirled at the edge of the scorched earth battlefield, sucking Madara's Fire Release, the First Hokage's puppet strings, and the young Gray Shadow's ring into the depths of the vortex.

Chapter 844 Let Me Try Again

The last thing Bai Ye saw was the face of the first puppeteer—a gray figure with a scar covering half his face, giving him the same cold smile as the young gray figure.

"Welcome to the web of cause and effect you have woven yourself."

The moment consciousness returned, Bai Ye sat up abruptly, his chest aching from the violent coughing.

He saw Gray Shadow slumped on the stone bench beside him, his shirt back soaked with cold sweat; Water Moon was using a broken knife to clear away the vines at the entrance, the blade adorned with wisps of translucent black mist—the remnants of the spacetime turbulence, which would dissipate upon contact with light.

"Awake?" Shuiyue didn't turn her head. "Just now, three remnant entities tried to crawl into your consciousness, but I chopped them up."

"Thank you," Bai Ye said in a hoarse voice, the core on his wrist suddenly becoming hot.

He looked down and saw dark gold chakra seeping from the spiral patterns, exactly the same as the ring of the gray shadow in the illusion.

The gray figure suddenly stood up and staggered, grabbing the stone wall for support.

His gaze avoided Bai Ye's eyes and landed on the extracted core on the stone platform: "The resonance of the time rift... is stronger than I expected."

"So you knew this would happen all along?" Bai Ye pressed down on Hui Ying's shoulder, his fingertips able to feel the tension in the other's muscles. "You knew the Blood Pact Eye was connected to time, you knew I would see your past?"

The gray shadow remained silent.

A muffled sound suddenly came from outside the ruins.

The three of them turned their heads at the same time and saw through the gaps in the vines at the entrance that the surface of the Old Shadow Swamp was boiling.

Bubbles burst one after another in the swamp, startling flocks of waterbirds and even causing distant withered trees to sway—as if some enormous creature was slowly rising from the depths of the swamp.

The muffled sounds of swamp bubbles bursting echoed one after another, and Bai Ye's pupils contracted due to the reflected light in the water—beneath the surface, dark blue chakra fluctuations surged, like countless giant pythons struggling to break through the mud.

He pressed the lock on the puppet box at his waist with his backhand, his knuckles turning white from the force. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the gray figure's Adam's apple bob, and his withered fingers unconsciously picking at the moss on the stone wall.

"Retreat!" The broken sword of the Water Moon was held horizontally in front of him, and the frost on the blade suddenly condensed into ice crystals. "The chakra concentration is soaring. This is not a natural anomaly."

Before the words were even finished, a crimson chakra line shot through the air.

Chiyo's figure flashed in from behind the vines, the wrinkles on her forehead twisting into a deep frown. The sealing seal formed by her hands shone with golden light in her palms: "Earth Flow Wall!" Her puppet strings wrapped around the waists of the three people, pulling them sharply into the depths of the ruins. Right where they had just stood, a black and red shockwave blew away half a stone brick.

"The barrier won't last a moment!" Chiyo bit her tongue, the blood splattering on the ground and forming a curse mark. "That thing is distorting space, is it the aftershock of the time rift?" Her gaze swept over the burning core on Bai Ye's wrist, and she suddenly grabbed his wrist. "You must sever your connection with the blood pact fragment!"

If this drags on any longer, the flow of time will crush your consciousness into dust!

“No.” Shuiyue’s broken sword suddenly plunged into the ground, the blade vibrating and buzzing. “Severing the resonance will trap his consciousness in the spacetime turbulence forever—I’ve seen the spacetime ninjas of Kirigakure try it, and in the end, all that’s left is an empty shell that can breathe.” She turned her face to the side, the beauty mark under her left eye flickering in the shadows. “Do you want to gamble?”

Are you betting he can find a clue before the backlash?

Bai Ye's temples throbbed.

The afterimage of the illusion was still burning on his retina—the cold laugh of the young gray shadow, the scar of the first puppeteer, and the puppet layout that completely overlapped with Ebizo's sand table were now drilling into his brain along the core spiral pattern.

He suddenly grasped Chiyo's hand, the heat of his palm making the old woman frown: "Let me try again."

Chapter 845 You Saw Something You Shouldn't Have Seen

"Are you crazy?" The gray shadow suddenly pounced, its withered hand gripping Bai Ye's arm tightly. "The lingering spirit in the time rift has its eye on you!"

Those three black mists were just outposts—

“But I saw Ebizo’s ancestors.” Bai Ye interrupted him, and the gray shadow’s fingers suddenly tightened. “In the sand valley a hundred years ago, they knelt at your feet, their foreheads pressed against the sand, saying, ‘Please grant me the power to control inanimate objects, sir.’” He saw the gray shadow’s pupils shrink and his Adam’s apple bob. “So the Sand Village’s puppetry technique is not a tradition at all, but a ‘gift’ from your clan?”

The gray figure's hands were trembling.

He suddenly released Bai Ye, staggered back to the stone wall, and the veins on the back of his hand, covered with age spots, bulged: "That was... a deal."

To stop something even more terrifying from emerging from the rift, we need a force capable of manipulating time.

"So you chose Sunagakure?" Byakuya's voice suddenly turned cold. "Using puppetry as chains to bind the power of time to the land of the wind?"

The roar of the swamp suddenly rose in intensity.

Cracks appeared in Chiyo's barrier, and a dark shadow broke through the water and shot straight into the sky—it was a monster pieced together from countless broken swords, bone fragments, and rusty puppet parts. Each limb was wrapped with dark gold chakra threads, and in its chest cavity, a blood pact eye was slowly rotating.

"It's the manifestation of a lingering regret!" Shuiyue's broken sword erupted with a blinding cold light. "It's absorbing the energy from the time rift!"

Bai Ye suddenly closed his eyes.

He could feel his consciousness being pulled by some force, as if an invisible hand was dragging him into a crack in time.

Fragments of illusion surged forth once more: the trembling back of Ebizo's ancestor, the spiral ring handed over by the young Gray Shadow, and the image of the first puppeteer pressing the Blood Pact Eye into the core of the puppet.

He bit his tongue, the taste of blood exploding in his mouth, forcibly anchoring his consciousness to the image of that sand valley—the old steward-like man was presenting a scroll of parchment to Gray Shadow, the ink on the yellowed pages still wet with the words "Ei Lao".

"So... the origin of Sunagakure's puppetry is the contract you use to raise 'grave guardians'," Byakuya murmured in the illusion.

The excruciating pain felt like a sharp blade piercing through my skull.

He suddenly opened his eyes and found himself lying in the mud at the edge of the swamp, his trouser legs soaked in foul-smelling black water.

The gray figure stood five steps away, its hunched back resembling an old tree struck by lightning. At its feet, the monster emitted a piercing shriek, its Blood Pact Eye's pupils locked tightly in Bai Ye's direction.

“You saw something you shouldn’t have seen.” The gray shadow’s voice sounded like it had been sanded. “The secret of the Sea Elder Clan, the truth about the time rift, and…” His gaze swept over the Blood Pact Eye in the monster’s chest, “the scheme I laid out with the bloodline of my entire clan.”

Bai Ye propped herself up on her knees to stand up.

Mud dripped through his fingers, yet he felt more lucid than ever before—the image of his ancestors kneeling in worship in his hallucination still flickered in his mind, and the contract terms on the parchment scroll were rippling in the depths of his consciousness as his memories resurfaced.

He wiped the mud off his face and looked at the gray figure with a sharp gaze: "Now, I know how to break this cycle."

The monster's shriek suddenly changed tone.

The blood pact eye in its chest cavity cracked open with a spiderweb pattern, and the dark gold chakra lines broke off one by one, as if torn apart by an invisible hand.

The core on Bai Ye's wrist was now burning hot, and the light flowing from the spiral patterns resonated with the energy released when the monster shattered.

"Watch out!" Chiyo's puppet strings wrapped around his waist, pulling him to one side.

The monster's shards of bone flew past his ear, and the black water that splashed up when it hit the mud shimmered with a silvery-blue hue under the moonlight—the color of the flow of time.

Chapter 846 The Person Who Planned All of This

Bai Ye gazed at the gradually dissipating monster remains in the distance, a slight smile playing on his lips.

He touched the core on his wrist and could clearly feel that within those streams of light lay the secrets of the Sea Elder Clan, buried by the Gray Shadow a hundred years ago.

"It's time to close the net," he said softly, his voice carried away by the wind in the swamp, but it stirred up a storm in the gray shadow's eyes.

Deep within his consciousness, the yellowed parchment scroll was slowly unfurling. Below the words "Hai Lao," a line of small, blurred characters appeared quietly: "If a contractor harbors disloyal thoughts, the Eye of the Blood Pact will devour the fate of their race—" Bai Ye's knuckles were still stained with the mud of the swamp, yet he unconsciously clenched them as he uttered those words.

He could hear his own heartbeat, clearer than ever before—the image of the old steward presenting the parchment scroll in the illusion was still burning on his retina, and the small print below the word "Hai Lao" was like a needle piercing his memory: If the contractor harbors disloyalty, the Eye of the Blood Pact will devour the fate of his race.

It turns out that Gray Shadow's scheme began to be woven a hundred years ago.

“You are not just a guardian, but one of the people who orchestrated all of this.” His voice was low, yet it cut through the thick fog of a swamp like a blade.

The gray shadow's back was hunched even more, and the moonlight shone through his sparse white hair, revealing a dark red scar on the back of his neck—the mark of the puppeteer's blood pact.

He didn't deny it, his bark-like fingers stroking the faded puppet thread pouch at his waist: "I just want this world to stop repeating the same mistakes." His hoarse voice carried a kind of aged weariness, as if he were talking to himself.

Chiyo's puppet strings suddenly taut in her palm.

She stood on a withered tree five steps away, where Sasori's modified Hiruko puppet had three chakra threads hanging down, the ends gleaming with the eerie blue of poison needles. "So you allowed Ebizo to revive the ancient puppeteers?"

Let them control the fate of various countries? Her brows furrowed into sharp blades, the wind lifted the stray hairs on her forehead, revealing two deep lines at the corners of her eyes—the marks left from when she rescued over a hundred Sand Village ninjas on the battlefield.

The gray figure raised its head.

His eyes gleamed murky in the shadows, like two old wells covered with thin ice: "I didn't give permission, I just..." His Adam's apple bobbed, and the veins on the back of his withered hands bulged, "...couldn't stop it."

The sound of water birds taking flight came from the depths of the swamp.

Shuiyue had somehow circled around to the side and behind Huiying. Half-dried bloodstains hung from the decapitation sword at her waist, and her left hand unconsciously stroked the sharkskin pattern on the hilt.

This former Seven Ninja of the Mist never hid her suspicions, and now a cold, mocking smile appeared on her lips: "Sounds dangerous."

How do we know you won't take this opportunity to tamper with the past?

Gray Shadow's gaze swept over the broadsword at her waist, then returned to the throbbing core on White Night's wrist.

He pulled something from his robes, his movements so slow it seemed he was racing against time—it was the core of a bronze puppet, its surface engraved with twisted runes, dark golden chakra seeping from its cracks, crawling like a living thing. “This is the true key to the ‘Blood Pact Eye,’ allowing you to briefly rewrite history.” He held the core in his palm, and the runes suddenly lit up, casting eerie spots of light on the back of his age-spotted hand.

Shuiyue's fingertips were already on the hilt of the sword, and the shark teeth of the Executioner's Blade emitted a faint hum.

But Gray Shadow didn't look at her, only staring at White Night: "Because only those who truly understand the meaning of puppets can control them." When he said "understand," his voice suddenly became clearer, as if he had returned to his youth when he was teaching apprentices in the puppet workshop.

Bai Ye gazed at the core.

Chapter 847 I Cannot Change the Whole History

Its temperature traveled through Gray Shadow's palm, carrying a familiar burning sensation—the same heat as the Blood Pact Eye that the first puppeteer pressed into the core of the puppet in his illusion.

He recalled the trembling back of Ebizo's ancestor kneeling in the illusion, and the spiral ring that Gray Shadow had handed him when he was young. Suddenly, he understood what Gray Shadow meant by "understanding".

"Have you ever seen the soul of a puppet?" the gray shadow asked softly, as if asking Bai Ye, or perhaps asking the fragments of time in the wind.

Without waiting for a reply, he handed over the core, his withered fingers gleaming pale in the moonlight. "Now, it's your turn to make a choice."

Chiyo loosened the puppet strings in her palm.

She looked at Bai Ye with worry, expectation, and above all trust in her eyes—this old advisor who always talked about "the future of Sunagakure" was now like a general handing the last arrow to the archer.

Shuiyue lowered her hand from the hilt of the sword.

She tilted her head to examine Bai Ye, the suspicion in her eyes fading and replaced by curiosity: "Interesting. I'd like to see what tricks you can pull."

Bai Ye reached out and took the core.

The heat of the bronze made his fingertips tingle, and the dark golden chakra surged into his veins through his palms, stirring up a small storm in his meridians.

He could clearly sense the surging energy within the core, the secret of the Sea Elder Clan buried by the Gray Shadow a hundred years ago, the cause and effect settled in the rift of time, and the incantation carved by the first puppeteer with his bloodline.

“I see.” He chuckled softly, his fingertips tracing the incantations on the core surface. The distorted symbols suddenly became clear in his eyes, as if rearranged and recombined by some force.

In the illusion, the words on the parchment scroll surged deep within his consciousness: "If the contractor harbors disloyal thoughts, the Eye of Blood Pact will devour the fate of his race." This warning resonated with the energy in his core, exploding into a sea of ​​light in his mind.

Gray Shadow's pupils contracted slightly.

He gazed at the core in Bai Ye's hand, a faint smile appearing on his lips, as if he had finally laid down the burden that had weighed on his shoulders for a hundred years.

The wind in the swamp suddenly changed direction, bringing with it a stench of decaying moisture.

Byakuya raised his head and looked into the distance—there lay the direction of Sunagakure, where Ebizo's conspiracy was brewing, and the ambitions of various daimyo were surging like undercurrents.

He could feel the energy pulsating within him, as if responding to his unspoken plan.

"It's time to get serious," he said softly, his voice carried away by the wind.

Under the moonlight, the incantation on the bronze core shone even brighter, as if proclaiming for him: this game of chess that has been entangled for a hundred years is finally about to be broken.

The heat from the bronze core burning in Bai Ye's palm traveled through his meridians into his heart.

He could clearly sense the trajectory of the dark golden chakra surging in his veins, resonating like the bloodline of the first puppeteer from a hundred years ago—the cause and effect buried in the rift of time by the gray shadows were now surging in the depths of his consciousness in concrete images: the trembling back of Ebizo's ancestor when he knelt in worship, the flashing incantations in the dungeon of Sunagakure, and the blood-red words "devour the clan's fate" on the parchment scroll in the illusion.

“I cannot change the whole history,” he suddenly said, his voice colder than the wind in the swamp.

His fingertips unconsciously tightened, and the runes on the core surface rippled in the moonlight. "But I can stop Ebizo's plan."

Chiyo's puppet strings trembled slightly in her palm.

She leaped down from the withered tree, and a gust of wind swept across Byakuya's shoulder as Hiruko's chakra threads brushed against him.