Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

Bai Ye did not deny it.

He gazed at the lapis lazuli patterns gradually lighting up on the stone pillar, recalling the Wood Release scroll his mother had given him before her death, recalling Chiyo's words when she bandaged his wounds at the Puppet Graveyard: "Puppet masters must learn to cut their strings," and recalling the row of explosive talisman boxes labeled "Land of Fire" and "Land of Lightning" that he had seen in the secret room before his consciousness faded—what Ebi had hidden was never Sunagakure's bombs, but the fuse that ignited the war between the five nations.

“This is the best solution.” He turned to look at Chiyo, his left eye now completely transparent, revealing the pale golden blood pact pattern beneath. “The spore puppet will decompose my chakra and merge with the sealing technique.”

The fluctuations of the Blood Pact Eye... He suddenly stopped, half a mouthful of black blood spilling from his throat, "He will be locked into the earth's ley lines, forever sunk beneath the Sand Village."

"And what about you?" Chiyo's voice trembled. She remembered the little beggar who held the broken puppet thirty years ago, and how he had casually said, "It didn't hurt," when he first used the puppet to shield her from an assassin's knife.

Bai Ye smiled.

His right ear began to fade, revealing the names of the past Wind Shadows on the Shadow Rock behind him: "I will become part of the earth's veins." He stretched out his translucent hand and gently touched Chiyo's hand—this time she didn't pull away, only feeling that the temperature was cooler than the morning dew, "That way... I won't be torn apart by time anymore."

"Wait!" Shuiyue suddenly lunged forward, the shards sizzling in his palm. "It's still jumping!"

Look at this!

Bai Ye's gaze fell on the fragments.

The pale golden light suddenly surged, casting a distorted shadow on his chest—the outline of the Blood Pact Eye when it was complete.

Chapter 857 No wonder it chose you

His pupils contracted sharply, and he finally understood what Ebizo meant by his last words, "the one who defies fate": the Blood Pact Eye was not a curse at all, but some kind of living being choosing a host.

So you're going to run away?

A cold voice came from the edge of the ruins.

A grey figure emerged from the morning mist, his black trench coat stained with undried blood, and his left eye wearing the same blood pact goggles as Bai Ye.

His right hand pressed against the short sword at his waist, his knuckles turning white from the force. "You think you can escape its pursuit by using Wood Release spores to decompose yourself?"

Bai Ye's breathing suddenly became rapid.

He recognized the dagger—it was the poisoned kunai that Gray Shadow had shielded him from three years ago in the Land of Rain; the scabbard still bore traces of the poison. "How could you..."

“I’ve been tracking the blood pact fluctuations for three days.” As the gray figure approached, the hem of his trench coat swept across the puppet remains on the ground. “From the Daimyo’s residence in the Land of Fire to Sunagakure, its thirst has grown stronger.” He stared at the fragment on Bai Ye’s chest, his gaze behind his goggles as if it were icy. “What it wants is not a host, but a vessel.”

Do you think that by using yourself as a seal, you can keep it asleep forever?

"Then what do you suggest we do?" Shuiyue's voice trembled. He could feel the frequency of the fragment's beating in his palm perfectly synchronized with Baiye's heartbeat. "We can't let it go and harm people!"

The gray figure did not answer.

His gaze fell on Bai Ye's gradually transparent left hand—where he still clutched the Wood Release scroll left by his mother, the vine patterns on the cover identical to those carved on the Shadow Rock. "The First Hokage's Wood Release..." he suddenly sneered, "No wonder it chose you."

The life force of Wood Release is precisely the nourishment it craves most.

Bai Ye's left hand suddenly tightened, causing the scroll cover to wrinkle.

He finally understood why the Blood Pact Eye had been backfiring ever since he awakened Wood Release—it wasn't a crack in time, but rather that thing had taken root in his body, using the passage of time as fertilizer, growing into a monster capable of devouring the entire ninja world.

“Therefore, I must become its end.” He pressed the fragment into the puppet core in his chest, and Wood Release spores immediately surged up, wrapping the fragment into a green cocoon. “I will use Wood Release to decompose it, and use my life as the final lock.”

The gray figure's pupils contracted sharply.

He saw the blood pact fragments struggling frantically within the cocoon, the green spores turning a strange purple, and Bai Ye's figure thinning at a visible speed, even his voice beginning to distort: ​​"Tell... Lady Chiyo, the puppet strings... are tied."

"Bai!" Chiyo rushed over, her fingertips brushing against the hem of his disappearing clothes, only managing to grab a handful of drifting Wood Release spores.

Shuiyue's cries were torn apart by the wind, and the sound of Gray Shadow's short sword being drawn, mixed with the shrieking of the blood pact fragments, exploded into a roar in the morning sky.

When the last wisp of Wood Release fluorescence disappeared, only half a spore remained in Chiyo's palm in the courtyard, still warm from her body.

Gray Shadow bent down to pick it up, his gaze behind his goggles becoming deep—on the surface of the spore, the faint traces of the blood pact pattern could be seen, like a severed snake still twitching its last.

"He...successfully?" Shuiyue stared at the empty stone pillar, where the sealing incantation still emitted azure-gold light. "That Blood Pact Eye..."

“No.” Gray Shadow’s voice was like ice. “It’s just changed containers.” He crushed the spores; a faint golden light flashed within the green powder. “Now, it’s in the ley lines of Sand Village, in every grain of sand.” He turned and walked towards the morning mist, the hem of his trench coat brushing against the bloodstains left by White Night. “And he…”

Chiyo gazed at the bluestone slab atop Shadow Rock, where the carvings shimmered in the morning light, like some kind of living pattern.

Chapter 858 White? White!

She suddenly remembered what Byakuya had said at the end, "tie the threads," and finally understood that those threads not only tied to the safety of Sunagakure, but also to the fate of the five kingdoms—and he was the thinnest yet most resilient thread.

The wind swept in from the direction of the desert, carrying the smell of gunpowder from the distant Land of Fire.

Chiyo crouched down and picked up the drop of blood that had congealed on the ground. Suddenly, she felt a warmth in her palm—from the blood drop, she could hear an extremely faint heartbeat, like the fluttering of a dying butterfly.

She suddenly looked up at the sand dunes behind Shadow Rock.

In the morning mist there, a figure could be vaguely seen kneeling on the sand, back arched like a shrimp, hands supporting the ground, blood seeping from between the fingers.

His face was buried in the sand, making it impossible to see his features, but a faint golden line was faintly visible under the skin on the back of his neck.

"White..." Chiyo's voice was as soft as a sigh.

She clutched the blood droplets, and as she stood up, the morning mist suddenly swept over the sand dunes, and the figure disappeared again.

Only the wind whips up the sand, carving winding tracks on the ground, much like the trajectory of drifting wood spores.

Meanwhile, in the cave on the other side of the dunes, White Night's consciousness was sinking into darkness.

He could hear a faint voice, as if coming from a very distant place: "Host's life force has decreased by 97%, blood pact fusion level..."

"Activate...the backup plan..."

Before his last shred of consciousness faded, he saw his mother's face emerge in the darkness, gently saying, "Let's go home, Xiaoye."

But this time, he didn't know where he would end up.

Bai Ye was awakened by a stinging sensation.

The first sensation to return was touch—my fingertips pressed against a cold, crystal-like surface, and every nerve throbbed as if pierced by countless tiny needles.

He tried to raise his arm, but found it felt as heavy as if it were filled with lead, and the muscle fibers protested as if they were being torn apart.

Next came the sense of smell. The air was filled with the smell of burnt rust, mixed with a familiar scent of puppet paint, the kind he had personally mixed using sand red scorpion shells.

"Cough..." He propped himself up to sit up, blood oozing from his throat.

As his vision gradually cleared, he froze—before his eyes was an endless expanse of white, like a sea paved with crushed moonlight, with countless broken puppet remains floating in it: half of a mechanical arm still held the posture of holding a knife, the broken puppet head with its empty eye sockets, and even the tailbone of the "Three-Tailed Isobu" puppet he had made, the chakra circuits on the dark patterns were still crackling, but could no longer gather any energy.

He looked down at his palm.

The faint golden lines beneath his skin were faintly visible, like crumpled gold threads, while the once abundant Wood Release spore energy in his chakra network was now reduced to a faint wisp of light, weaker than a dying firefly.

“I’m not dead…” His voice was hoarse, his knuckles pressed against his temples, fragments of memory beginning to surge—the instant the Blood Pact Eye shattered, the azure-gold light tore through space, the chilling glint of the gray shadow’s dagger, the warmth of Chiyo’s fingertips brushing against the hem of his clothes. “I’m trapped in the afterimage of the ‘Blood Pact Eye’.” He murmured to himself, the last syllable swallowed by the white space, even the echo dissipating completely.

"in vain!"

Suddenly, a female voice pierced through the void, like a pebble thrown into a deep pool, rippling outwards in the white space.

Bai Ye suddenly looked up and saw blurry images appearing in mid-air: Chiyo knelt in the courtyard of the Wind Shadow Mansion, the blood beads on her palm glowing with a pale gold light. Her other hand gripped half a broken sealing scroll, her knuckles white from the force. Suigetsu stood behind her, her forehead pressed against the bluestone slab of Shadow Rock, her pupils reflecting the faint light of some kind of tracking spell. Further away, Rasa stood on the high platform of the training ground, his kunai plunging fiercely into the sand table. "Seal off all roads leading to the Old Shadow Swamp!" His voice trembled with anxiety. "If that old bastard Gray Shadow dares to run away with the Blood Pact Core—"

"Can you hear me?" Shuiyue's voice suddenly became clear. In the image, she turned around abruptly, her hair brushing against the wind beside her. "We found traces of your spores, but they have stopped spreading."

Chapter 859 The difference between real time and the flow rate here

"Grandma Chiyo used your blood to activate the bloodline resonance, but..." Her Adam's apple bobbed, "but the resonance point appeared and disappeared intermittently, like a light that might go out at any moment."

Bai Ye subconsciously reached out to touch the image, but her fingertips passed through the floating spots of light.

He then noticed that his body was semi-transparent, and he could see the outlines of the puppet wreckage floating behind him. "Real time is different from the flow rate here," he analyzed through gritted teeth, cold sweat beading on his forehead. "Their current actions... happened during the time my consciousness was trapped?"

"You think closing the 'Eye of Blood Pact' will end everything?"

A sinister voice fell from above.

Bai Ye shuddered and quickly rolled over on the ground—this action exhausted his remaining spore energy. He fell to the ground and looked up to see the gray shadow emerging from the void.

The opponent's goggles were gone, revealing a pair of sickly red eyes. In his hand, he held a rhombus-shaped core fragment, the surface of which shimmered with azure-gold light, exactly like the Blood Pact Eye before it shattered.

"No, this is just the beginning." The gray shadow crouched down, the fragments casting a cold light in his palm, illuminating the sneer on his lips. "Look at these puppet remains." He raised his hand and waved it, the nearest half of the mechanical arm suddenly vibrating, black viscous fluid seeping from the broken end. "These are 'living puppets' forged by the first generation of puppeteers using the souls of living people. You thought the Blood Pact Eye was connected to the ley lines?"

Wrong. "His fingertips traced the patterns on the fragments," it said, "connecting to the remnants of the souls of all the 'living puppets' of the five kingdoms—and you are merely the key that helps me awaken them."

Bai Ye stared at the fragment, and the pale gold pattern on the back of his neck suddenly burned.

He recalled what Gray Shadow had said when he crushed the spores a moment earlier: "It's been moved to a different container." He finally understood: "The core of the Blood Pact Eye... wasn't destroyed at all; it was just transferred to the remains of these 'living puppets.'"

You deliberately led me to break the surface seal, causing the core fragments to scatter among the remnants of the puppet souls.

“Clever.” The gray figure stood up, the fragments spinning in his palm. “You broke a thread, while I…” He opened his arms, and all the puppet remains in the white space suddenly trembled violently, the black viscous fluid seeping from the broken ends forming a fine net. “That is the true weaver of the net.”

Bai Ye propped himself up on the ground and sat up, his translucent fingers digging deeply into the crystal-like floor.

He could feel the black, sticky fluid seeping into his body through his wound, carrying a chilling sensation.

In the real-life image, Chiyo suddenly looked up at the sky and shouted something as she opened and closed her lips—he couldn't hear it, but he saw the blood droplet in her palm suddenly burst into a dazzling golden light, like a small sun.

"You knew I would fail all along." Bai Ye stared at the gray shadow's reddened eyes, her voice laced with coldness over its weakness. "So you deliberately led me here..."

Gray Shadow's smile deepened.

With a light tap of his fingertip, the black slime instantly wrapped around Bai Ye's wrist.

Before his consciousness was swallowed by darkness, the last thing Byakuya saw was the tear stains on Chiyo's face in the real-life image, and the green fluorescence unique to Wood Release spores that suddenly exploded behind her.

Gray Shadow traced a silver arc with his fingertips on the core fragment, and the white space suddenly cracked open with spiderweb-like patterns.

Countless images surged forth, like scrolls unfurled by the wind—the Fire Country Daimyo held a wine cup at a banquet, his neck crawling with tiny puppet strings; in the ruins of the Lightning Country's training grounds, the Fourth Raikage's chakra blade pierced the chest of the Tsuchikage's guard, whose pupils were deathly gray; the clearest image was the secret chamber of Sunagakure, where a young Ash Kage knelt before the First Puppet Master's coffin, holding half a bloodstained core fragment in his hands, a sob escaping his throat: "I will make your ideals fulfilled in the cycle of reincarnation."

Chapter 860 True peace is won by the living.

Bai Ye's pupils contracted sharply.

His translucent fingertips unconsciously dug into the crystal floor, the images like scalding needles piercing through all his understanding of the "Blood Pact Eye".

He recalled the ANBU ninjas he had seen outside the Kazekage's residence, controlled by puppets, and the Sand Village puppet troops that suddenly went berserk during the Chunin Exams—it wasn't a coincidence after all; the Gray Shadow was weaving a web spanning decades.

"You think I'm destroying things?" The gray shadow's voice suddenly became hoarse, and tears welled up in its sickly red eyes. "The First Lord exhausted his life to create 'Living Puppets' so that the souls of the dead in the war could live on in another form; the Blood Pact Eye connects to the ley lines so that these remnant souls can be nurtured with natural energy."

But the five daimyo were insatiable. They tore up the peace agreement, using the puppets as weapons and the remnants of souls as fuel... He suddenly swung his arm, and the scene shifted to the horrors of the Third Shinobi World War: in the burning forest, Iwagakure ninjas controlled by puppets were slashing at the Kirigakure medical team, and the cries of babies mixed with the sound of metal scraping were ear-piercing.

Bai Ye's breathing became rapid.

He recalled that Chiyo had once said that the first puppeteer had carved the inscription "May the living cherish life, and may the dead rest in peace" in the puppet's abdomen before his death. It turned out that Gray Shadow had always held onto this obsession—using the constantly restarting Blood Pact Eye to allow history to correct its mistakes in the cycle of reincarnation.

But what about the ordinary people who are caught up in the cycle of reincarnation?

The pain of being manipulated, the blanks of having one's memory erased—aren't these another form of destruction?

"So you're using the entire ninja world as a testing ground?" Bai Ye's voice trembled, not from fear, but from anger.

He saw a little girl in a blue dress squatting in front of a burning house, picking up shards of porcelain. She was the child he had saved during a mission in Amegakure, but now, in another cycle of reincarnation, her fingers were crushed by the mechanical feet of a puppet.

The gray shadow's smile froze.

He gripped the core fragment tightly, his knuckles turning white: "You think I wanted this?"

Every time I restart, I have to erase everyone's memories with my own hands, including my own! "He suddenly ripped open his shirt, revealing a hideous scar on his chest," this was the wound from the Kazekage's Magnet Release during the third cycle; this... "His fingertips traced his abdomen," this was the mark left by the Mizukage's Water Dragon Bullet during the fourth cycle.

I remember every death, every failure, but they don't! His voice suddenly rose, like a shattered ocarina, "Just one more try, just find the perfect balance..."

"Enough!" Bai Ye shouted.

The translucent body shimmered with golden patterns due to the emotional fluctuations, like a candle flame that was about to go out suddenly blazing brightly.

He recalled the golden light that exploded from the blood bead in Chiyo's palm, and the faint light that danced in the pupils of the tracking spell when Shuiyue's forehead touched the bluestone slab—how could these vivid, warm existences be treated as experimental data?

He closed his eyes and gripped the last glimmer of light in the chakra network.

The energy of the Wood Release spores crawled along the pale gold lines throughout his body, every nerve screaming, as if he were being reforged in a furnace. "True peace is something the living fight for." He opened his eyes, his pupils reflecting the suddenly shrinking red pupils of the gray shadows, "not your self-righteous 'perfection'."

Before he finished speaking, his fingertips were already pressed against his chest.

There still lingered the burning pain from the black slime, but even stronger was the tremor of spore energy resonating with bloodline—the fuse that Chiyo had lit with her blood, connecting her to reality.

Chakra surged forth like a burst dam, forming a spiral bridge of light around him. At the other end of the bridge was the dazzling golden light in Chiyo's palm in reality.

Chapter 861 Help me destroy it!

"You're insane!" The gray shadow finally panicked.

He threw out the core fragment, and the lapis lazuli light shot towards the light bridge like a sharp arrow.