Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

Wood Release surged within him, and he suddenly threw the entire book into the air.

With a hand seal formed at his fingertips, vines shot up from the ground and wrapped around the book. Azure flames climbed up the vines and instantly devoured the pages.

The ashes did not scatter; instead, they coalesced into a green snake, carried by the night wind straight to the heart of the Fire Kingdom—where the eaves of the Shige Tower loomed faintly in the darkness.

“This is an invitation to Shi Ge.” As Bai Ye turned around, the hem of his robe brushed against the back of Kazama Shin’s hand. “Tell the Awakening Bone Society to retreat to the North Gate before dawn.” Before Kazama Shin could reply, he had already disappeared into the shadows of the trees.

At this time, in the southern market of the Fire City, the oil lamps in the underground bookstore were covered by cloth curtains, leaving only a tiny light.

Tanaka Hisashi squatted on the bluestone slab and applied "Memory Ink"—ink mixed with the blood of the replaced person and Awakening Snow—to a blank page of a scroll of "History of the Land of Fire".

His fingertips were stained with black and red ink as he wrote next to "Records of the Three Generations of Daimyo's Personal Campaigns": "Kage-body Matsumoto, the third generation of doubles. The original owner died of poisoning at the age of twenty-four."

“Engrave the printing blocks,” he said to the old craftsman huddled in the corner, his voice low. “Each character must be three times darker, so that the printed ink can seep into the back of the paper.”

The old craftsman's trembling hand had just touched the carving knife when he suddenly heard footsteps overhead.

Tanaka Hisashi suddenly pulled the oilcloth over the printing plate and looked up to see two children in gray shirts clinging to the ventilation opening.

The older boy blinked, raised the broken copper bell in his arms, and shook it—it was their agreed-upon secret signal.

“Let’s go to the teahouse.” Tanaka Hisashi stuffed the carved pages into the boy’s arms. “Just say, ‘The storyteller tells a new joke, and there are three generations of bodyguards and doubles.’”

Half an hour later, the tea drinkers at Zuixianlou heard the most deafening "story" of their lives.

A little girl with pigtails stood on the octagonal table and recited in a clear voice, "Speaking of Matsumoto, the Shadow Guard of the Land of Fire, on the surface he followed the daimyo to conquer the northern border three times, but in reality..." She deliberately dragged out the word, "The first time, the original owner of this body personally led the expedition and was shot to death by a poisoned arrow from the enemy country; the second time, he was a substitute and fell off a cliff and broke his leg; the third time..."

"The third one is a stand-in's stand-in!" someone in the back row suddenly shouted.

Amidst the uproar, a merchant from the Wind Kingdom wearing a straw hat suddenly ripped off his mask, revealing a scar running from his left eyebrow to his jaw: "I'm in place of my brother! Before he died, he grabbed my wrist and said, 'Don't let the historian write my name,' but they still wrote, 'Mr. So-and-so from the Wind Kingdom, died loyally protecting the caravan'—my brother never even went to the caravan!"

The sound of the teacup shattering mingled with gasps of surprise.

The message, as if it had grown wings, flew with the carrier pigeons at the post station to the Land of Water, the Land of Thunder, and the Land of Earth.

At midnight, at the post station at the border of the five countries, people began to tear off their face coverings and rip off their wigs, crying out their erased names.

In the water dungeon of the Fire City, Fujiwara Shizuka dug her nails deep into her palms.

Suddenly, ripples appeared in the puddle at her feet, reflecting the scene on the fourth floor of the Smithsonian's underground vault—a bronze mirror shrouded in black mist, where Speaker Smithson was dripping blood onto the center of the mirror.

"The Mirror of the End is about to be activated," she murmured, the blood ink from her fingertips seeping into the puddle and activating the vines in the cracks in the wall.

The vines grew wildly along the earth's veins, reversing the flow of Aoba's memories and injecting them into the mirror.

The blood-red words on the wall began to twist and recombine, eventually forming a line: "The mirror does not reflect the heart, but only sins."

When the muffled sound of a mirror shattering came from the direction of the Shige Pavilion, Bai Ye was squatting on the old locust tree outside the Shige Pavilion.

He stared at the black mist seeping from the basement ventilation shaft, and the bell in his throat suddenly rang out with a clear, melodious sound.

Wood Release techniques coalesced into thin roots in his palm, which then burrowed into the basement walls along the tree bark—his plan was to seal off all the ventilation openings, leaving Speaker Shige with nowhere to escape.

Chapter 1008 I'm just...the next substitute!

The night wind swirled up a few ashes that landed on his shoulder; they were the lingering warmth of the "Collection of Remnants of History".

He watched as the wind lifted a corner of the window paper on the third basement level, revealing the shadows of stacked books inside, and a cold light flashed in his eyes.

"It's time to settle the score," he said in a low voice, his fingertips already touching the brick seams of the ventilation duct.

Just as the wooden root of Baiye was wedged into the brick seam of the ventilation duct, a muffled sound of gears meshing suddenly came from deep within the basement.

His pupils contracted slightly—Steward's automatic purification mechanism had been triggered by the thick smoke.

The vines on his fingertips tightened suddenly, and the bluish-gray "Memory Vine Ash" seeped into the underground storage along the roots of the Wood Release technique. It was a smoke made by mixing Bone-Awakening Snow, Blood Ink, and his modified Puppet Master Poison Powder, specifically designed to break through mental barriers.

"Here I am." He chuckled softly, then leaped down from the old locust tree.

When the boot landed, the heel crushed half a charred roof tile, a remnant of the fire at the Shige Pavilion the day before.

The bronze door at the entrance to the basement was slowly closing. He raised his hand and shot out three kunai, which accurately nailed into the door hinge groove. With a metallic scraping sound, a half-foot gap was barely left in the door.

Thick smoke billowed out from the cracks in the door, carrying the stench of rust and ink.

Byakuya held his breath and sensed the movement. His chakra spread along the Wood Release Root system, clearly capturing the activity on the third floor of the underground vault—Chairman Shige's footsteps were trembling as he stumbled towards the fourth floor where the Bronze Mirror was located.

"The Mirror of the End," Bai Ye recalled the fragments of memory Fujiwara Shizuka had passed on in the dungeon. That ancient mirror, which Shige revered as the "Eye of Truth," had now become the Speaker's last bargaining chip.

The hum of the mirror activating came from deep within the basement.

The bell in Bai Ye's throat suddenly became hot. He pressed the bell down, and his palm could feel the vibration of the runes—a sign of the resonance between the first bloodline and the ancient artifact.

“Fujiwara Shuichi…” he murmured the name, and the blood-written words he had seen in the “Records of Remnant History” the day before suddenly came vividly to life in his mind. “Are you in the mirror?”

"Bang!" The booming sound of the mirror opening shook the basement dome, causing dust to fall.

Bai Ye climbed up the wooden roots to the top of the basement and, through the gap in the air vent, saw Speaker Shi Ge kneeling before the bronze mirror.

The black mist on the mirror was dispersed by the chakra of the purification mechanism, revealing a blurry human figure.

The speaker's age-spotted hand pressed against the mirror, his voice cracking with emotion: "Mirror Spirit, I swear on the blood oath of the Shige Pavilion for a hundred years, I beg you..."

Before the words were finished, blood waves suddenly appeared on the mirror.

Bai Ye's pupils suddenly contracted—that was Fujiwara Shizuka's Blood Ink ability!

The vines she planted in the dungeon's puddles are now channeling fragments of memory back into the mirror, following the earth's veins.

In the bronze mirror, the black mist was stained crimson, and the originally blurry figure gradually became clear: a young man with eyebrows and eyes that were seven-tenths similar to Fujiwara Shizuka, and a scar on his forehead that ran diagonally from his left eyebrow to his chin. He was the owner of the blood-written words on the last page of the "Records of Remnant History".

"Shuichi Fujiwara!" A scream came from the fourth basement level.

Bai Ye turned her head and saw Fujiwara Shizuka climbing up the vines in the shadows below the vent.

Her prison clothes were soaked with the stench of the water dungeon, and black water dripped from the ends of her hair, but her eyes burned with a bright light—the light of memories sealed for twenty years finally breaking through the soil.

When the man in the mirror spoke, his voice was exactly the same as Fujiwara Shizuka's: "Shizuka, you've finally seen me."

Speaker Shige staggered backward, knocking over the "History of the Fire Country" on the table.

"Impossible!" Veins bulged on his neck. "I am the Speaker of the History Council, and I have guarded the historical record for you for thirty years..."

“What you are guarding is authority.” In the mirror, Fujiwara Shuichi’s fingertips pierced through the lens and pressed against the Speaker’s brow. “Twenty years ago, you killed me with a shadow clone technique, peeled off my face, and wrote in the history books that ‘the first Speaker died of illness.’ You thought you could lock away my remaining consciousness with the Mirror of the End, but you didn’t know that blood ink could awaken altered memories—including your own.”

The speaker suddenly covered his face.

His skin began to contort, and the wrinkles receded at a visible speed, revealing a younger face underneath; in an instant, that face became even older, as if being peeled away layer by layer like an onion.

Beneath each layer of skin are etched different names: "Shuichi Fujiwara," "Masao Matsumoto," and "Goro Yamazaki."

"No!" the speaker screamed, grabbing a short knife from the table and slashing it at the mirror.

But suddenly the bronze mirror glowed with golden light, and when the blade struck the mirror, the impact caused his hand to crack.

“This mirror is connected to the earth’s veins!” Bai Ye murmured at the top, finally understanding why the Speaker dared not completely destroy it—the End Mirror was originally a seal used by the first generation to suppress the “memory graveyard.” Once destroyed, the remnants of the erased person’s consciousness would go completely berserk.

More violent tremors came from underground.

Byakuya felt a sharp pain in his Wood Release: Root system. He sensed a massive chakra awakening—the "memory graveyard" sealed by the First Hokage in Shiro's possession, burying the remnants of the consciousness of all those who had been replaced by shadow clones.

Spiderweb-like cracks appeared in the ground, and hundreds of mutilated corpses crawled out from the cracks. Some of them wore warrior armor, while others were wrapped in coarse cloth from peasant women. Blood and ink were still stained under their fingernails, and they tightly clutched broken pens, tattered scrolls, and even half a blood-stained piece of clothing in their hands.

"Give me back my name!" The first mutilated corpse spoke, its voice like the scraping of broken porcelain.

"Give me back my name!" The second, the third... a hundred voices overlapped into thunder, shaking the stone chips falling from the vaulted ceiling of the basement.

Their gazes were all fixed on Speaker Shige, whose rotting fingers were poking at his throat—there, the bloody words "Substitute Zero" were appearing on the back of his neck, like a brand that could never be washed away.

The speaker slumped to the ground, the dagger clattering to the floor.

"I'm not the murderer..." He stared at the approaching mutilated corpse, tears mingling with blood and foam streaming down his face. "I'm just... the next substitute!"

Bai Ye stood atop the basement, watching this scene unfold.

The bell in his throat no longer burned; instead, it evoked a warm sensation—it was the first generation of blood responding to the call of the graveyard of memories.

He reached out and caught a piece of the falling scroll. The blood-written characters on it were blurred, but the four characters "Fujiwara Shuichi" were still clear.

"What you're waiting for isn't a hero," he said softly, his voice mingling with the screams of the mutilated corpses, yet clearly reaching the ears of every remaining consciousness. "It's a name."

The hundred mutilated corpses suddenly came to a standstill.

Different expressions appeared on their decaying faces: relief, resignation, and sorrow, which eventually converged into a kind of almost pious light.

The leader of the samurai corpses raised his broken pen and drew a bloody line on the ground, pointing it directly at Speaker Shige's feet.

The green light of Wood Release emanated from Bai Ye's fingertips.

He gazed at the deep pit gradually cracking open in the center of the underground vault, where a ghostly blue glow emanated from the earth's veins—the natural medium through which the "Altar of Memory" was constructed.

Chapter 1009 Returning Name to the Soil, Roots Returning to the Desolate Tomb

He knew that when the first rays of dawn pierced the skyline of the City of Fire, this place would become a resonance field for all those who had been erased.

But at this moment, he simply watched as Speaker Scrivener was slowly surrounded by the remains of corpses, and whispered:

"Starting with you, return your name to the earth."

Outside the basement, the first rooster to crow at dawn began to crow.

Bai Ye's figure blended into the morning light, leaving only scattered scrolls and gradually clearer ley lines on the ground—the initial outline of the "Altar of Memory" that was about to unfold.

The morning light pierced through the eaves of the Fire City, casting the first golden thread into the basement of the Palace of History.

As Byakuya's figure materialized from the light, the green light of Wood Release seeped through his fingers into the cracked earth veins—those eerie blue glows trembled with his chakra, like a cluster of stars being awakened.

"Onodera," he called out.

From the shadows in the corner, a girl dressed in a dark-patterned kimono immediately brought out a sandalwood box about half her height. Inside the box were hundreds of charred scraps of paper, with dark red bloodstains on the edges.

Those were the "blood names" sifted from the ashes throughout the history archives—the names of those whose names were erased before they were burned before they could be recorded in history.

Onodera Ren's fingertips trembled slightly when they touched the topmost talisman paper.

She remembered that just three days ago, she was kneeling at the Speaker's feet as a page, copying the false history. Now, however, she had to personally re-embed those crushed names back into the earth.

"My lord, can these... really awaken them?" She looked up, her eyes reflecting the fluorescent light from the earth's veins, like holding a handful of extinguished candle flames.

Bai Ye didn't answer, but simply placed his palm on the back of her hand.

The warmth of the Wood Release seeped into her skin, and the girl suddenly saw the blood-red characters on the talisman—"Fujiwara Shuichi," "Inuzuka Takeshi," and "Inari Haru." Each name rippled in the green light, like a stone that had sunk to the bottom of a lake being stirred up.

“They never truly died,” he said in a low, hoarse voice, a bell ringing softly in his throat. “They were just locked away in the ink of the Smithsonian.”

A muffled sound came from deep within the basement.

That was the remnants of memory from the graveyard of recollections responding.

Onodera shuddered and hurriedly took out a talisman and embedded it into the crack in the stone along the veins of the earth.

The moment the four characters "Fujiwara Shuichi" touched the eerie blue fluorescence, the air in the entire basement trembled—dark red blood ink seeped from the cracks in the walls, meandering down the stone bricks like a river, eventually converging into a human figure.

Suddenly, the iron bars of the water dungeon burst with a blood-red light.

Fujiwara Shizuka knelt in the knee-deep water, drops of blood from her bitten fingertips dripping onto the spread-out silk.

Her long hair was loose, and the silver hairpin in her hair had long been broken, but she still wore half a broken cherry blossom hairpin—it was given to her by her brother, Xiuyi, before he left home.

“Xiuyi, courtesy name Mingyuan.” She murmured, a drop of blood falling onto the center of the silk, “The chief historian of the History Pavilion, died on the seventeenth day of the seventh month of the first year of the History of Fire.”

The blood-red ink followed her words, outlining the Fujiwara clan's genealogy on the silk.

The four characters "Fujiwara Shuichi" at the very top suddenly swelled up, as if trying to break free from the constraints of the silk.

Blood began to seep from the stone walls of the water dungeon, and dark red characters climbed up the cracks in the bricks: "For refusing to write the 'Imitation Edict,' he was personally killed by the Speaker on the fourth floor of the underground vault." As soon as the last "floor" was written, the blood-red characters on the entire wall suddenly exploded into a blood mist, which condensed into a blood-stained dagger in front of the iron window—the very same dagger that the Speaker had dropped yesterday.

"The murderer is on the stage." Fujiwara Shizuka's voice, shrouded in blood mist, pierced through the heavy stone door of the water dungeon and crashed into the morning light of the basement.

In the main square of the Fire City, Chiyo's wooden clogs shattered the morning dew.

The paulownia wood box she was holding gleamed coldly in the sunlight, its lid carved with the puppet patterns unique to Sunagakure.

"Unroll the scroll," she ordered the Sand Village ninja behind her.

The moment the wooden box was opened, hundreds of yellowed pages fluttered like butterflies, forming a long timeline in mid-air—"List of Candidates for the Third Kazekage's Stand" and "Agreement on the Stand Agreement for the Fourth Kazekage, Rasa." The bloodstain on the last page was particularly striking: "Sasori, puppeteer, refused to become a human puppet stand-in and died in the Akatsuki organization."

"The Kazekage Stand originated with the third generation, commissioned by the Shige." Chiyo's voice was like sandpaper rubbing against a gong. Her cloudy eyes were fixed on the Shige Speaker on the high platform. "My grandson's blood should have been counted on the heads of you people who use pens as knives long ago."

The buzzing sound of thunder blades piercing the ground could be heard from the edge of the square.

Bi, carrying the Eight-Tails Folding Fan, stood at the forefront of the Cloud Village Shadow Guards, his Lightning Release chakra flowing through the blade, scorching the ground with black marks.

"Cloud Hidden, witness." He only said four words, and the thirty lightning shadow clones behind him simultaneously took half a step forward. The lightning collided with the puppet patterns of Sand Village and the blood ink of Shige in the air, sparking tiny sparks.