Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

"Are you all mute?" Bee slammed his fist on the sandalwood table, causing a teacup on the corner to bounce and shatter. "I'm asking you—" He suddenly leaned down and grabbed the collar of the leader of the Raikage team in the front row, chakra surging from his fingertips into the man's neck. "Who can slap their hand on their chest and say that I am the one sitting in the Raikage's seat right now?"

Chapter 957 The Water Mirror Opens

Cold sweat beaded on Captain Raiken's forehead, his Adam's apple bobbing under the pressure of chakra: "Kage...Kage, you personally cleaved through the Eight-Tails' rampage barrier last year..."

"A barrier?" Bee suddenly laughed, a laugh that boomed like thunder. "That original body imprisoned in the basement of the History Museum might also be able to manipulate chakra!" He released his grip, turned, and grabbed the Raikiri sword from the wall. The blade gleamed a ghostly blue in the moonlight. "From today onwards, all military agreements with other countries are suspended!" He slammed the back of the blade heavily against the Land of Fire's mark on the map. "Establish an internal investigation team and, within three days, dismantle every brick of the History Museum—"

Before the words were finished, a thunderclap boomed outside the window, causing the paper window to crack open.

Bi's pupils suddenly contracted, and he abruptly pushed open the window. A gale swept in the rain, wetting the red headscarf on his forehead.

In the rain, a ghostly light flickered in the direction of Thundershadow Cliff, much like... His Adam's apple bobbed, and he swallowed back the words he was about to say. "Meeting adjourned."

Thunder Shadow Cliff was three times steeper than usual on a rainy night.

Bi's bare feet trod on the slippery rocks, his fingertips tracing the vines on the cliff face—these wild vines he had seen since childhood were now wrapped in pale purple flower buds.

The topmost flower suddenly bloomed, its six petals swirling and falling, reflecting words in a puddle at his feet: "Your brother spoke his real name before he died."

Bi's breathing suddenly stopped.

Memories flooded back like a tidal wave—it was a rainy night fifteen years ago, when the Eight-Tails' rampaging chakra tore through the Cloud Village's defenses. He held his battered younger brother, Amaru, and heard him whisper in his ear, "Brother...I am...Killer Bee..."

“No…” Bi’s fingernails dug deeply into the vines, drops of blood mingling with rainwater dripping onto the petals. “I should have known…” His voice trembled, as if all his violence had been drained away, leaving only a hoarse pain. “Shige said he was devoured by the Tailed Beasts… but it turns out he was just replaced!”

A thousand miles away, in the desolate Yuyin Temple, the damp, musty smell mingled with the scent of sandalwood wafted into Orihime's nostrils.

She knelt before the sacred pool, her white veil for blinding her eyes heavy with moisture, her fingertips lightly tracing the thirty-six earthenware urns beside the pool—each urn containing memory spores from various places.

"Open the Water Mirror." Her voice was like a wind chime in the rain. Her hands formed a seal, and the sacred pool suddenly surged like boiling water.

Countless translucent figures rose from the bottom of the pool: an old woman from Sunagakure, a Konoha soldier, and a miner from Iwagakure. Their mouths overlapped, uttering the same whisper: "We have all been replaced."

With a crisp clang.

The temple gate was flung open, and a cold wind carrying mud blew in. A soaking wet ninja collapsed to his knees by the pond, his Adam's apple bobbing. "I...I am Takizo, a rogue ninja from Kirigakure. I participated in the Third Mizukage's puppet experiment..." He tore open his shirt, revealing a gruesome stitch running from his collarbone to his abdomen. "They extracted the Mizukage's consciousness and replaced him with a puppet."

The true Mizukage... is sealed within a cage in the deep lake of his bloodline limit.

Orihime's fingertips tightened suddenly, and the churning of the sacred pool abruptly froze.

She reached out, her palm hovering three inches above Takizo's forehead, and the ripples of perception spread like a spider web—in the flow of memories, the ninja in the white coat, the floating container of consciousness, the crystal coffin glowing blue at the bottom of the deep lake, every frame was painfully clear.

"What you said...is true." Beneath her white veil, her eyelashes trembled violently. "Why are you only saying it now?"

“My daughter had her tongue cut out by the Shige people.” Takizo’s tears mingled with the rain and fell onto the bluestone slabs. “They want me to replace the Fourth Mizukage, but I can’t do it… That child is only seven years old. Yesterday, she wrote ‘Dad’ on the mud with a twig, crookedly and awkwardly…”

Chapter 958 Roots are Faster than Knives

Orihime took out the bamboo tube from her waist and retrieved the last three spore carrier pigeons.

The carrier pigeon's feathers shimmered pearly white in the sacred pond's reflection. She gently blew on its beak, and Takizō's memories flowed into its brain via chakra. "Go." She released its grip, and the pigeon flapped its wings and soared into the rain. "To Sunagakure, to Konoha, to Kumogakure..."

The crystal mirror in the Shige Secret Hall shattered into twenty-one pieces, the inspector's scepter smashed onto the mirror frame, and the wooden head of the Shige God snapped in two with a "crack".

He stared at the shards scattered on the ground, each fragment reflecting a new name: "Aoba, Chiyo, Raikage... Good, very good." He turned and grabbed the puppeteer by the collar. "Activate the acceleration plan. Replace those three wavering Kage tonight!"

The cold air from the incubation chamber carried the smell of formaldehyde.

The puppeteer trembled as he opened the first hatch—the Tsuchikage candidate, who should have been asleep, suddenly sat up, his chest wrapped in pale purple vines, each leaf glowing with the unique fluorescence of the Mantra Vine.

"You...you shouldn't have woken up!" The puppeteer staggered backward, knocking over the consciousness extraction device on the control panel.

The candidate's fingers traced the vines, and a gentle smile appeared on his lips: "Ten years ago, I rescued an old woman who had gotten lost at the border."

She gave me a seed, saying, 'Truth will sprout.' His voice was as clear as a mountain stream; so this was the Truth Vine.

The inspector's scepter clattered to the ground.

He gazed at the light in the eyes of the person inside the cabin—a real, vibrant light, not belonging to any puppet program—and his Adam's apple bobbed: "Impossible... the Shadow Impersonation Technique is perfect..."

“Perfect?” The candidate reached out, and vines climbed up his fingertips to the inspector’s feet. “Look, even the corpse is resisting the lie.”

The sacred pond of the abandoned temple in the rain has returned to tranquility.

Orihime took out a piece of mulberry bark paper from her bosom and dipped it in the pool water to moisten the ink stick.

Although she was blind, her fingertips precisely traced the outline of the deep lake on the paper—the clearest coordinates in Takizō's memory.

"Lord Baiye..." she murmured softly, the tail feathers of the carrier pigeon still carrying the scent of jasmine from her hair, "The truth you sought, I have prepared."

The sound of rain leaking from the abandoned temple suddenly subsided.

Orihime's ear twitched slightly, and a corner of her blindfold was lifted by the wind.

She smelled the cool fragrance of snow water soaking pine needles—the scent of the ninja tool maintenance oil that Byakuya often used. "You've arrived." She rolled the mulberry paper into a thin tube, ran her fingertips along the edge of the roll twice to make sure that the contour lines of the deep lake matched the ripples in Takizō's memory perfectly, before handing it behind her.

A hand with distinct knuckles caught the roll of paper.

The calluses on her fingertips brushed against the back of her hand, like old tree bark rubbing against new leaves.

Orihime heard the crisp sound of the other person's thumb lightly tapping the paper tube, confirming whether the paper could withstand the penetration of Wood Release chakra. "Thank you for your hard work." Byakuya's voice was like bronze immersed in an icy spring. "The spore carrier pigeon's route wasn't intercepted?"

“The last three circled the Rain Concealment Barrier three times.” Orihime touched the bamboo tube at her waist; the empty pigeon nest still retained the warmth of the carrier pigeons. “The Shige’s stalker ninjas made their move when the third carrier pigeon flew over the Land of Rivers, but… they swallowed the bitter cicada flowers I planted.” A faint smile appeared on her lips. “Now, the Shige Inspector’s study should be filled with the stench of rotting carrier pigeon corpses.”

Bai Ye pressed the paper roll onto the spore-shaped wristband on her wrist.

The wristband was woven from live vines, which immediately rose up like the forked tongue of a snake that had smelled blood, with pale green sap seeping from their tips to melt the paper roll.

Chapter 959 Shadow Double

When he closed his eyes, the Wood Release pattern unique to the First Hokage appeared on his forehead, and blue chakra flowed into his wristband like a stream—the roots of the Memory Tree at the border of the five countries were awakening underground, and each root would carry the coordinates of the Deep Lake Cage, climbing all the dreams of the awakened before dawn.

“To the deep lake.” As he turned, the wind from his cloak overturned the candlesticks by the sacred pool.

The flames fell into the pool, creating a series of golden-red ripples that were reflected in his pupils, much like the light he saw when he first encountered the memories of the first bloodline twenty years ago.

The water pressure at the bottom of the deep lake made my eardrums ache.

Byakuya's Wood Release chakra condensed into bubbles around him, carrying him through the dark blue water.

The outline of the crystal coffin gradually became clear—it was a transparent coffin embedded in a crevice in the rock, inside which huddled a gaunt man.

His tongue had been cut off at the root, his gums were blackish-purple, but his hands kept scratching at the coffin wall, his fingernails curling and bleeding, carving dense "true" characters on the glass, like countless small swords piercing the retina of the white night.

"The Fourth Mizukage, Yagura Karatachi." Byakuya read out the name that came from the Memory Tree.

He pressed his hand against the coffin lid, and the First Hokage's chakra melted the seal like hot iron melting snow.

The person inside the coffin suddenly convulsed violently, turned his cloudy eyes toward him, and let out a wheezing sound like a broken bellows.

“I know you can’t speak.” Bai Ye bit his fingertip, and the blood droplet fell into the water. “But your nerve endings can still sense chakra.” He channeled chakra into Yagura’s brow, and the old man’s fingers suddenly stopped, and his cloudy eyes cleared.

He raised his hand and drew a streak of light in the water—not with chakra, but with the only remaining, most primal human method: mouth movements.

“Ste...George...never...tells...the...truth…”

The six characters drifted towards the lake shore with the water.

The Shige Anbu patrolling the lake suddenly covered their ears. They heard it, everyone who heard it heard it. It was a truth sharper than any ninjutsu, slicing open the puppet threads hidden behind their necks.

The training grounds of the Land of Earth were illuminated by torches as bright as day.

As Onoki climbed the steps to the platform, his boots crushed three flattened kunai—left behind by Shige's secret agents when they tried to assassinate him that morning.

He removed the Iwagakure mask he had worn for twenty years, revealing a face completely different from the portraits of previous Tsuchikage: the corners of his eyes lacked Onoki's signature wrinkles, and his nose was as straight as a mountain rock untouched by time.

“I am not Onoki.” His voice shook the flags in the training ground. “The real Third Tsuchikage was executed by Shigeo twenty years ago on charges of ‘wavering ideology’.”

They used puppetry to turn me into his shadow, and memory manipulation to make you believe that every wrinkle on my face is a medal of war.

The audience erupted in gasps of surprise.

An old ninja staggered toward the portrait on the wall, stroking the wrinkles at the corners of the person's eyes with his calloused hands—a stark contrast to the smooth skin of the person before him.

Onoki tore open his shirt, revealing a coiled purple thread at his chest: "This is Shige's puppet thread, made from the nerves of living people."

They call it 'Shadow Substitution Technique,' claiming it's for 'stabilizing the five nations,' but what's truly stabilized is never the nations, but their power to manipulate shadows!

"From this day forward, the Land of Earth will no longer have 'shadow substitutes'!" He drew his short sword and cut the threads, blood splattering onto the Iwagakure crest. "The new Tsuchikage must be a living person you truly trust, whose memory has been verified by a thousand signatures!"

Suddenly, a deafening roar of "Bravo!" erupted from the audience.

Chapter 960 Digging with one's life

A young ninja untied his headband and threw it into the brazier; the metal headband made a soft "hissing" sound as it fell into the embers. An old woman pulled a faded letter from her bosom; it was written by her son when he was a bodyguard of the Tsuchikage. In the letter, he wrote, "Lord Ōnoki's eyes are like rocks that can see through people's hearts"—now she finally knew that those were not Ōnoki's eyes, but Shigeru's puppets.

The dome of Konoha's archives suddenly lit up with a red light.

The moment Aoba's fingertips touched the cover of the "List of Shadow Doubles," an alarm blared like thunder.

He glanced at the names on the list: the Third Kazekage, the Second Mizukage, and even the successor to the First Raikage... Every page had the distinctive smell of ANBU's erasure ink, clearly indicating that it had been repeatedly modified.

“I must take it with me.” He tore off the coarse cloth lining of his shirt and quickly scratched the fabric with his fingernail—this was “Braille” he had learned from the vegetable-selling old woman, using needles to record words.

As the alarm drew near, he deliberately knocked over a bronze lampstand in the corner, the flames igniting old scrolls piled up there. "Intruder!" the guard shouted, echoing down the corridor. Aoba seized the opportunity to slip into the drain, where sewage immediately reached his chest.

The hunter ninja's chakra surge swept across his head three times.

Aoba held his breath, compressing his chakra into a pinhead-sized amount and hiding it in a secret compartment beneath the cesspool.

The putrid sewage filled his nostrils, and he remembered his mother's last words: "Ah Ye, the truth is like a seed buried in the mud; you have to risk your life to dig it up."

When the footsteps of the hunter ninja finally faded into the distance, he touched the uneven stitches on his inner shirt—the first half of the list had been etched into his flesh and blood.

The caravan from Sunagakure is loading its cargo.

Chiyo sat behind the bamboo curtain, watching the shop assistant stuff the freshly picked tea leaves into a coarse burlap sack.

Her fingertips traced the brown granules mixed in with the tea—seeds of the Mantra Vine, their shells wrapped in honey and soil, ready to sprout when wet. “Remember,” she told the leading merchant, “at each post station, exchange their water for rock salt from the Land of Earth.”

As the merchant bowed in greeting, he caught a glimpse of half a piece of mulberry paper peeking out from the old woman's sleeve—the coordinates of the deep lake on it still bore traces of water from the Hidden Pond.

"Yes, Advisor." He tied the tea bag tightly and attached the camel bells unique to Sunagakure. "I guarantee that the fragrance of these teas will spread throughout the five kingdoms."

As the camel bells rang, the setting sun cast long shadows on the wind-eroded pillars of the Sand Village.

It was as if even the stones were waiting, waiting for a seed to sprout from the soil on a night moistened by tea.

As the first wisp of tea smoke rose from the trading post on the border of the Land of Fire, Chiyo was poking at the charcoal brazier with a dry twig.

Sparks landed on the back of her age-spotted hand, but they couldn't rouse her gaze from the caravan's retreating figures—twenty camels had already rounded the mountain pass, the crisp sound of camel bells shattered by the wind, leaving only the rustling sound of tea leaves and Mantra Vine seeds rubbing together in the sacks, much like the whispers of insects beneath the old walls of Sunagakure.

"Grandma, change the tea!" A little girl with pigtails squeezed to the front of the table, holding up a half-broken bronze mirror.

The mirror reflected her hair, which was covered in bits of grass, and the scratch marks on the wooden pillar of the exchange booth—marks that the secret agent of the Shige had rubbed off with the back of his knife last night, marking the words "The Third Kazekage is a puppet."

As Chiyo bent down to retrieve the tea bag, she noticed a faded headband tucked in the maid's arms, its edges embroidered with cloud patterns of Iwagakure. "Good job exchanging this old item." She placed the tea bag in the maid's palm, her fingertips subtly pressing the raised corner of the tea bag—where three Mantra Vine seeds were wrapped. "Brew it strong. By the third infusion, your grandfather's face will appear in the mirror."

Chapter 961 Orthodox Oath

The little girl skipped and ran away, and suddenly the sparks in the charcoal brazier crackled and popped.

Chiyo squinted and saw a gray cloth fluttering in the shadows at the street corner—the standard disguise of a Smiths agent.

She gripped the withered branch tightly, her knuckles turning white, but she didn't call out to anyone.

She thought, "Let them show their claws, just like fishing for sandworms and waiting for them to break through the soil."

The soles of Agent Ajiu's boots were covered in mud from the exchange booth.

He crouched behind the broken wall at the end of the alley, staring in the direction the girl had run off into, his Adam's apple bobbing.

The poison sac in his arms hurt his ribs—it was Shi Ge's newly made "Forget-Me-Not Powder," which, when sprinkled into the tea pile, would cause the seeds of the Mantra Vine to rot into mud.

But the old woman's gaze just now seemed to see right through the bamboo tube hidden in his sleeve.

He touched the back of his neck, where the character "忠" (loyalty) branded by Shi Ge still remained, its heat making his fingertips tremble.

"Uncle!" A child's innocent voice boomed overhead.

A-Jiu suddenly looked up and saw six children gathered around him. The oldest was holding a clay doll with a missing ear, and the youngest was clutching a cracked shard of pottery. "You were wiping the words off the well yesterday!" the clay doll's owner poked him in the chest on tiptoe. "I saw you use a cloth dipped in water to wipe away 'Onoki is fake'!"

Ajiu's inner garment was soaked with cold sweat.

He took a half step back, his lower back pressed against the rough brick wall. "What does a little kid like you know?"

That's...that's just a fabricated rumor!