Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

"Ahe, it's time to sleep." He said to his little apprentice who was dozing off on the table, but secretly slipped the talisman into his sleeve.

Wolf howls echoed through the snow. He gazed at the snow-covered mountain ridge in the distance, his Adam's apple bobbing: "Tomorrow, it's time to go to that abandoned shrine on the back mountain." As Kazama Shin's sheepskin boots crunched through the snow, the wooden door of the abandoned shrine on the back mountain was rattling loudly in the north wind.

The blood-stained talisman in his sleeve was already burning hot, and a faint red stain had seeped into his skin where it had touched—the blood that Granny Li had smeared on his wrist when she grabbed it and begged him at the village entrance. “My Gousheng has been switched for ten years, Mr. Feng, please let me touch the soul of my real son.”

The lake in front of the ancestral hall was covered with three inches of ice, and half a patch of unmelted lotus leaves was frozen on the surface, like a piece of dark green jade inlaid on white silk.

The families of the twenty-seven people who had been erased stood around the well, the old ones supporting the young ones, their hands bound together with thick hemp ropes—these were "blood-linking ropes" that Tanaka Hisashi had sent overnight, made from the clothes worn by the people who had been replaced, with each knot stuffed with a family member's fingernail.

"Grandpa, it's cold." The little girl with pigtails snuggled into Kazama Shin's arms. She was the younger sister of Tiezhu, the cowherd who had disappeared three months ago.

Kazama Shin pulled out a roasted sweet potato and stuffed it into her hand. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that Wang the blacksmith's hand was trembling—when his son was switched, he was standing in front of the blacksmith's shop, clutching a newly forged sickle. The blacksmith's palms still bore the calluses from those days of forging iron.

“Memorize all the names.” Kazama Shin raised his voice, his breath turning into frost on his brow. “What we need to call out is the real name of the person who was replaced. Grandma Li, you go first.”

Granny Li, her back hunched, took half a step forward, her hands, like withered tree bark, stroking the edge of the well: "Li Chengyan." Her voice was like a broken bellows. "My son's full name was Chengyan. When he was ten, he was fishing by the river when a man in a black cloak took him away. Later... later a 'Li Chengyan' came back, but he wouldn't eat the locust flower cakes I made, saying they were fishy."

Chapter 998 Anyone who wants to investigate me, feel free to do so!

"Li Chengyan!" Wang the blacksmith suddenly roared, his iron-like hands gripping the hemp rope tightly. "My son, Li Chengyan, could lift a 300-pound anvil when he was fifteen, but this 'he' can't even hold a sickle properly now!"

"Li Chengyan!" the little girl called out, as a sweet potato fell onto the snow. "Brother Tiezhu said he would weave grasshoppers for me, but this uncle only pats my head and says 'good boy'!"

The twenty-seven sounds overlapped, like a heavy boulder crashing into an icy lake.

Kazama Shin felt the frozen ground beneath his feet tremble, a sign that Wood Release chakra was surging through the earth's veins—he knew that Byakuya was at the Guiyuan Shrine, a hundred miles away, injecting the power of the First Generation's bloodline into the earth.

Suddenly, a thin crack appeared in the ice in the center of the frozen lake. What flowed out of the crack was not water, but a pale golden light, like countless fireflies swimming in the ice.

"Look!" Granny Li pointed southeast, her voice trembling, "Isn't that the direction of the City of Fire?"

Everyone looked in the direction she was pointing.

Dark dots were faintly visible falling through the snow, like someone falling from a height, or like... something disintegrating.

From further away came a heart-wrenching scream: "I'm not fake! I'm not!" The voice was grating, like metal scraping against the throat, as if shards of glass were stuck there.

“Blood recognizes blood, and a fake cannot be hidden.” Wang the blacksmith wiped his face, unable to tell if it was snow water or tears. “Tiezhu’s mother, did you hear that? Someone is calling our son’s name for him.”

The thunderstorms in Kumogakure came earlier than usual.

Standing on the terrace of the Cloud Hidden Castle, the scabbard of the Thunder Blade "Plowblade" struck the stone steps with a crisp sound.

Thirty-seven shadow guards knelt before him, the lightning patterns on their armor gleaming coldly in the dark clouds—these subordinates, who had followed him for five years, did not dare to raise their heads at this moment, because they knew that what was to be revealed today was the most shameful secret of the Hidden Clouds.

“The mirror reflects the image.” Bi’s voice was like rolling thunder.

The shadow guards at the front row trembled as they carried over the terracotta tiles, their surfaces still glistening with morning dew.

Bi drew the short blade from his waist and slashed a bloody gash in his palm—he deliberately didn't use chakra to heal it, letting the blood drip onto the roof tiles through his fingers.

As soon as the dark red blood droplet touched the pottery surface, ripples suddenly appeared on the tile, reflecting not his face, but a strange man: a scar on his left eye, a headband worn by a Cloud Village Jonin around his neck, with half a piece of broken jade tied to the inside of the headband with a red rope.

“This is Senzo, a Jonin from Kumogakure.” Bee traced the image on the roof tile with his thumb. “Twenty years ago, he died in battle against Iwagakure on the border of the Land of Lightning. Three days later, I ‘awoke’ with his memories, his habits, and…” He suddenly swung his sword and severed his left arm, “his life.”

There was no blood at the cut, only silvery-gray chakra fluid gushing out like paste.

The Shadow Guards gasped, and several of the younger ones vomited—they had followed the Thunder King for so long without realizing that the "Thunder Shadow" they were loyal to didn't actually have blood flowing under his skin.

"The first substitute was a death row inmate, then an orphan, and now..." Bi raised his severed arm, letting everyone see the metallic-looking bone fragment, "...is a 'material' made from chakra." He planted the lightning sword in the center of the terrace, the blade humming as it cleaved through the dark clouds, "From this day forward, Kumogakure will no longer use substitutes. Anyone who wants to investigate me, come and look!"

The shadow guards suddenly kowtowed in unison, the sound of their armor striking the stone steps sending dust to settle on the terrace.

The eldest shadow guard looked up, tears still streaming down his face: "What we followed was never the skin of a substitute, but your heart that protected Yunyin. The true shadow has returned, the true shadow has returned!"

In the ruins of Guiyuan Shrine, blood seeped from Baiye's fingertips.

He knelt on one knee before the charred shrine, his left hand resting on a stone slab engraved with the Senju clan emblem—the core of the Wood Release technique left behind by the First Hokage, which he had dug out from the ley lines of the Senju ancestral land.

The evening breeze lifted his outer robe, revealing the curse mark on the back of his neck, the link to the Tree of Memory.

“It’s time to wake up.” He whispered to the earth’s veins, his Wood Release chakra seeping into the cracks in the stone slabs like a living thing. “Let all the erased names return to where they belong.”

A deep rumble came from underground, like a giant tree breaking through the soil.

Looking up, Bai Ye saw the skies of the five kingdoms simultaneously glow with a bluish light—a sign of the awakening of the Memory Tree. Each leaf was engraved with the name of the person being replaced, and each branch was entwined with the longing of their relatives.

He could clearly sense that in the Land of Water, a thousand miles away, a samurai in disguise was clutching his chest and screaming in agony, his chakra surging through his veins, causing his skin to bulge with purplish-blue bumps; in the Hidden Stone Village of the Land of Earth, the Finance Minister's wig was torn off by vines, revealing the mechanical brain beneath; and in the History Hall of the Land of Fire, the Speaker who always held an abacus and sneered was currently having his ankle entangled by vines that sprouted from the ground.

"Why are you running?" Bai Ye's voice, mixed with the resonance of Wood Release, seemed to surge from all directions. "The first person you replaced was named Fujiwara Shuichi—you killed him, burned his household registration, erased his tombstone, and even threw his mother's memorial tablet into the moat."

Speaker Scott's face turned deathly pale instantly.

He clung desperately to the door frame, blood seeping from under his fingernails, but the vines tightened their grip, as if countless hands were dragging him toward the ground.

Dark red blood suddenly seeped from the wall, slowly congealing into a line of words: "Fujiwara Shuichi, born in the 46th year of the Land of Fire, died in the 62nd year of the Land of Fire, cause of death: substitute."

"No! No!" The speaker sobbed, "That's the rule, it's for the sake of the daimyo's stability..."

“Peace and stability?” Bai Ye’s figure suddenly appeared on the top floor of the History Pavilion, looking down at him. “Peace and stability bought with the lives of 3,721 nameless people, does it deserve to be called peace and stability?” He raised his hand, and the vines tightened abruptly. “Now, it’s time for the real names to take the stage.”

The night wind swirled the leaves of the Memory Tree across the eaves of the Fire City.

In a certain alley, an old man selling sugar paintings suddenly burst into tears—the sugar painting in his arms depicted a boy he had "never seen," whose eyebrows and eyes were exactly the same as his deceased son; at the post station, a courier tore off the "replacement official" from the form and rewrote the three characters "Li Chengyan," the ink still wet, yet as if carved into stone.

Bai Ye stood on the ruins of Guiyuan Shrine, watching the lights in the direction of the Fire City gradually illuminate.

The curse mark on the back of his neck emitted a warm light, a resonance of the first generation of bloodline—he knew that this storm stirred up by blood and names was finally about to overturn the shadow that had weighed on the five nations for a hundred years.

“The double has bled to death,” he said softly, his voice carried by the night wind. “It’s the real name’s turn to come back to life.”

Chapter 999 Awakening the Bones

The broken pillars of Guiyuan Shrine cast spiderweb-like shadows under the moonlight, and the curse mark on the back of Baiye's neck throbbed slightly with the tremors of the earth.

Beneath his closed eyelids, blue chakra pulsed on his retina, forming a star map—a signal that the seventy-two "Blood Name Symbols" distributed across five countries were simultaneously activated.

The chakra surges of the shadow clones surge like a tidal wave, the scream of a samurai from the Land of Water pierces through thousands of miles, solidifying into a sharp thorn in his consciousness; the mechanical brain of the Finance Minister of the Land of Earth sparks, and the smell of burning even seeps into the callus on his index finger along the chakra lines.

“Not all sparks need to be ignited by oneself.” He chuckled softly, a drop of blood from his bitten fingertip mingling with Wood Release chakra and forming a thread. “The anchor point planted by the First Hokage should awaken.” The thread burrowed into the crack in the stone slab at his feet, extending in seven directions along the earth’s veins—the “memory anchor point” that the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, had locked underground with Wood Release Roots when he established the Shikaku branch.

The moment each thread touched the anchor point, his temples throbbed, as if countless sealed memories were drilling into his brain through his veins: the cherry blossoms that Historian Fujiwara Shuichi drew on the wall with his blood before his death; the old woman from Iwagakure kneeling before the burned-out register monument, her voice hoarse from crying; the half-eaten sweet cake that the boy from Sunagakure gave to his sister on behalf of the Kage...

"The direction of the City of Fire." Bai Ye suddenly opened his eyes, his gaze piercing through the night and pointing southeast.

There, an even more intense surge of chakra was churning—the earthenware urn in the South Market had cracked.

When the shards of the earthenware urn pierced the back of Tanaka Hisashi's hand, he didn't even feel any pain.

Three hundred pieces of blood-stained ink, mixed with the stench of clay, spread across the ground. Three masked members of the Konoha ANBU were using kunai to pick up the blood-stained talismans. One of them had his headband gleaming coldly in the firelight: "The Imperial Archives has decreed that anyone who privately performs rituals in place of others will be punished for disrupting the order of the nation."

“Guoxu?” Tanaka Hisashi pulled off the blue cloth from his waist to wrap his wound. It was the kind of cloth that the copyists in his bookstore often used. “Guoxu means letting 3,721 names rot in the ground? It means letting their parents die without knowing which desolate grave their sons are buried in?” He took a half step back, pressing a fragment of a mirror tile against his back—it was picked up from the ruins of the History Pavilion, and the glaze still bore the cracks from the fire.

The kunai from the ANBU moved forward an inch, the tip almost piercing his Adam's apple: "If you say another word, I'll take you to jail to talk."

Tian Jiuzhong suddenly pressed his hand on the shadow mirror tile.

As the blood-stained fingertips brushed against the roof tile, a warm chakra seeped into the skin.

His pupils contracted sharply—yellowed pages of paper appeared in the cracks of the roof tiles!

The three characters "Elimination Order" with the ink still wet were painful to look at, and the Third Hokage's fire mark at the end was still tinged with dark red, as if it had just been dipped in blood.

"Look, everyone!" he shouted, raising his hand to splash the blood-red ink onto the roof tiles.

The onlookers, who had been huddled in the street corner, now crowded to the front—the contents of the purge order unfolded layer by layer as the blood-stained ink seeped through: "The household registration of the imposter is destroyed, their relatives are forbidden from erecting tombstones, and historians are forbidden from recording their deeds..."

"Is this a secret order from the Shi family?" The old man selling sugar paintings trembled as he touched the roof tiles. "The year my son became a body double, people from the Shi family did come to burn the family genealogy..."

"Nonsense!" The operative on the left swung his sword at the roof tiles, but the blade was deflected by the blood ink the instant it touched the surface. "This is a fake—"

"Forgery?" Tian Jiuzhong tossed the last half of the blood ink into the air. "Then what are you afraid of?" The blood droplets scattered in the night wind, like a handful of red stars.

He watched the blood droplets drift into different streets and alleys, his throat tightening: "Let the wind carry our names! Even if you burn the pottery urns and dismantle the altars, every tile and every brick touched by this blood ink will speak for those names!"

The hand of the member in the shadows froze in mid-air.

The leader suddenly reached for his earring—it was a communication talisman used by the secret service.

He listened for a moment, then his expression changed drastically. He uttered a low shout of "Retreat!" and the three of them disappeared behind the eaves like owls.

Bai Ye gazed at the blood mist rising in the direction of the City of Fire, a slight smile playing on his lips.

He could sense that the blood-red ink was seeping into every open window and into the cracks of every bluestone slab, carried by the wind.

Meanwhile, further north on the snow-covered plains, another spark is breaking through the ice.

Kazama Shin's cotton boots crushed the frosty grass stems.

His gray cloak was covered in snow, but the bamboo tube in his arms was burning hot—it was snow water warmed by the villagers' body heat, mixed with the chanting of three hundred names.

At three-quarters past midnight, the villagers around the well suddenly fell silent.

A thin crack appeared on the ice surface with a "crack," as if someone were scratching glass with a fine needle.

"Look!" The old hunter in the front row pointed to the well.

The ice cracks spread like a spiderweb at a visible speed, and a face emerged from each crack: an old man in a historian's robe clutching a broken pen, a young female ninja holding a baby, and a man in a straw hat stuffing something into the mud—an unfinished tombstone.

"Yamada Goro!" A roar suddenly came from a hundred miles away.

Kazama Shin's bamboo tube nearly fell to the ground—it was the chakra fluctuation of the Shadow Guard Vice Commander!

He had seen that man's file in the archives before, but now he heard the man shout in a broken voice, "I was in place of Yamada Goro... I stabbed him seven times with a kunai... His last words were, 'Let me kowtow to my mother for him...'"

The face on the ice suddenly moved.

The old man in the historian's robes turned to look at Kazama Shin, his lips clearly pursed as he said, "Write it down."

“From now on, this snow will be called ‘Awakening Bones’.” Kazama Shin picked up a piece of ice and put it into the bamboo tube. The snow water immediately overflowed the ice and condensed into the four characters “Yamada Goro” on the tube wall.

Suddenly, the villagers burst into tears. A white-haired woman rushed to the well, touching the face on the ice with her chapped, frozen hands: "Ahe, is that you? Mother brought you red bean rice..."

Beneath the ruins of Guiyuan Shrine, vines suddenly began to grow wildly.

Bai Ye stared at the green vines entwined around the stone pillar, and suddenly felt a burning pain in the curse mark on the back of his neck—that was the direction of the underground water dungeon.

He sensed a wisp of consciousness climbing up the vine, like a piece of paper being swept up by the wind, gently brushing against his chakra perception network.

"Interesting." He chuckled softly, then turned and walked deeper into the shrine.

The moonlight stretched his shadow long, and where he stepped, vines followed his footprints and burrowed into the ground, as if trying to awaken something slumbering.

Meanwhile, in the water dungeon of the Fire Country's History Building, Fujiwara Shizuka was soaking in neck-deep cold water, staring at the vines entwined around her wrists.

Suddenly, the vines glowed with a bluish light, and the blood ink from her fingertips seeped out along the vines.

Even more strangely, her consciousness was drifting uncontrollably upwards, passing through the top of the water dungeon, through the walls of the castle, and landing gently like a feather in front of the door to the third-floor basement—where the lock was making a soft "click" sound as the vines grew.

Chapter 1000: Did He Use a Forbidden Technique?

Just as the vines on Fujiwara Shizuka's wrist suddenly emitted a faint emerald light, Onodera Ren was being carried by that wisp of consciousness through the dome of the water prison.

Her "body" was as light as a piece of paper fluttering in the wind, yet she could clearly feel the cold hardness of the stone wall—every crack in the brick was permeated with the dampness of the Stone House over the past hundred years, mixed with a certain musty smell of wood.

The copper lock on the third basement level made a soft creaking sound as it was entwined with vines. The moment she "floated" to the door, the lock cylinder snapped into pieces with a "click".

The chill from inside the door, mixed with the smell of pine soot and ink, rushed out.

The first thing that catches the eye is an ebony coffin, its surface covered with spiral wood patterns, and the inscription at the top is illuminated by the moonlight: "Azure Leaf Fire Seed No. 1".

As soon as Onodera Ren's "fingers" touched the coffin lid, the vines on her wrist suddenly grew rapidly, weaving a green net in front of the coffin. A blood-red totem floated up in the center of the net—a pattern she had seen in her sea of ​​consciousness when she coexisted with Blood Ink.

“It’s blood ink…” she murmured, and the vines in her consciousness suddenly throbbed with pain.

Pale red blood beads seeped uncontrollably from the fingertips, dripping onto the center of the totem.

The wooden coffin made a muffled sound, and the moment the lid slowly slid open, she "saw" light—not the blue or red of chakra, but the tender green of spring buds breaking through the snow.

A seed wrapped in vines floated in the coffin, its surface shimmering with light patterns that echoed the vines within her body.

Fragments of memories suddenly flooded back: the silhouette of Hashirama Senju burying the seed in front of the Divine Tree, the First Historian writing "The fire is not a blade, the inheritor chooses for himself" on a wooden tablet with his blood, and the solemn look in the eyes of a woman wearing a straw hat sealing the seed into a coffin.

"That's what the first generation left for their successors," came Fujiwara Shizuka's voice, tinged with the hoarseness of water from the adjacent water dungeon. "It's not a weapon, it's a choice."

Ren Onodera's "hand" reached out uncontrollably towards the seeds.

When her fingertips touched that touch of green, her consciousness was suddenly pulled into a green ocean—vines grew wildly in her veins, blood and ink boiled in her bone marrow, and even her heart throbbed with the pulse of the seed.

When she came to her senses, the seed had disappeared, leaving only a bitter, woody taste on her tongue.

The moment I returned to my body, cold water rushed into my nasal cavity.