Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

"Absurd!" The eldest elder slammed his fist on the table, his white beard trembling with rage. "The shadow double system has maintained stability for fifty years, and you're trying to—"

The loud crack of lightning tearing through the air interrupted his words.

The thunderbolt struck the stone table, splitting the long table of the council hall in two. Fragments of electricity crackled and danced in the charred crack: "Fifty years?"

"You've fooled five Raikage with substitutes!" He approached the elder, lightning crackling creeping from his neck to his cheeks. "Anyone who dares to say 'stability trumps the truth' again, I'll show them what kind of storm a nation oppressed by fifty years of lies can unleash."

The elders were pale, and Heitu quietly tugged at Luo Sha's sleeve.

Rasa shook his head, gold dust condensing into a thin stream in his palm: "The monument to the inscriptions in the Land of Wind has also shown unusual activity. I support making it public." Kurotsuchi bit her lip, Earth Release chakra dancing at her fingertips: "Land of Earth...follow the Raikage."

When the meeting ended, he climbed to the top floor of the castle tower alone.

The night wind whipped up his cloak, revealing a gruesome old wound on his waist—the mark of silver-gray liquid seeping from his bones when he awakened as the second substitute.

He opened his palm, and in the moonlight, he could see extremely fine silver threads under his skin, like memories sewn in with needles.

“I am not him,” he whispered to the moon, his fingertips tracing the wound, “but I can be more real than him.”

Meanwhile, at the "Master Reporter" training center in Sunagakure, Chiyo's puppet threads were piercing the young man's temple like silver needles.

The young man remained unconscious, yet his lips continued to open and close: "The door is open... They're calling..." Dark green fluctuations surged within his chakra circuits, strikingly similar to the Wood Release patterns of the First Hokage that Chiyo had seen in the ruins of the Guiyuan Shrine.

"Sand Barrier." She waved to the guards, and the yellow sand instantly condensed into a semi-transparent dome, isolating the courtyard from the outside world.

Suddenly, green vines sprouted from the "Kenichi Saeki" stone tablet on the young man's chest. The vines climbed up his fingertips to Chiyo's feet and wrote a line of small characters on the sand: "The candidates are not the end, the cycle of reincarnation has not stopped."

Chiyo's pupils suddenly contracted.

She recalled her conversation with Bai Ye three days ago, and the cold glint in his eyes when he said, "The First Generation Project is not over."

It turns out those skeletons weren't the end, but the beginning—someone had laid a trap deeper inside, using memories as bait and blood ties as the line, to catch...

"Grandma!" The apprentice's exclamation interrupted her thoughts.

She looked up and saw the sky beyond the dome. The tremors of the earth veins in the direction of the Guiyuan Shrine were turning into visible light patterns, like a huge net, spreading from the Land of Fire outwards.

When the night fog of the City of Fire seeped into the ruins of the Shige, Bai Ye's boots were already covered with three layers of ash.

He avoided all the sentries and went down along the direction of the strongest tremors of the earth veins until he touched that familiar Wood Release barrier—the seal of the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju. The thin slit in the center was opening and closing with the pulsation of the earth veins, as if it were breathing.

The skeleton still sat cross-legged at the bottom of the basement, moonlight shining through the collapsed dome onto the Wood Release seed on his chest, flickering like a heartbeat.

Bai Ye drew a short knife from his sleeve and slashed a bloody line across his palm.

The moment the blood droplet fell, a ghostly blue light suddenly shone from the eye sockets of the withered skeleton, and a mechanical voice emanated from the hollow jaw: "Identification in progress... Memory Bearer Bai Ye, dual-source core matching... Silent Corridor, open."

The sound of the ground cracking was like the tolling of an ancient bell.

A blue stone staircase extends downwards, and a chilly, damp, earthy smell hits you in the face.

Bai Ye gripped the hilt of his knife tightly, but did not draw it—he knew that force was not needed here, but answers were required.

“I’m not here to inherit,” he said into the depths of the steps, his voice echoing against the stone wall. “I’m here to ask: For whom are you guarding this place?”

His response was an extremely faint hum, like breathing.

At the same time, the nine green vines at the Jishou Guiyuan Shrine suddenly bloomed simultaneously, their pink and white petals falling, each petal reflecting an unfamiliar name, as if someone had pulled them from the abyss of oblivion and gently placed them under the moonlight.

Bai Ye lifted his foot and stepped onto the first step.

Suddenly, the stone walls on both sides of the steps glowed faintly, and he saw his shadow stretched very long, longer than all his memories, longer than all his lies.

At the end of the shadows, blurry outlines swayed—like many boys, bound by ropes, being pushed onto the altar.

The stairs groaned softly beneath my feet, like the sigh of some ancient mechanism being awakened.

As soon as Bai Ye's boots touched the second step, the stone wall on the left suddenly emitted a bluish-gray glow—traces that had been soaked in chakra for a thousand years.

He looked up and saw the reliefs seeping out from the stone patterns. The first image was of a boy, about fifteen or sixteen years old, with his wrists bound by ropes and blood on his forehead. He was being pushed onto an altar made of dead wood. Below the altar stood an old man in a divine robe, his wooden sword pointing at his heart.

“It’s the Saeki family’s festival,” Bai Ye murmured, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

He remembered that in the original owner's memories, the Saeki clan would sacrifice their purest offspring to the ley lines every ten years, euphemistically called "communicating with the gods."

He stood below the stage as a "candidate" and watched his cousin being pushed up. When the wooden sword pierced his chest, the boy's blood splattered on his face, warm like a ball of fire.

At this moment, the blood droplets in the relief were flowing down the stone wall, accumulating into dark red puddles on the steps. When he stepped on them, his shoes felt sticky.

Third stage.

A new scene appears on the right stone wall: a courtyard with broken walls and ruins, charred corpses lying around, and the old steward lying at the gate, still clutching half of the bloodstained family crest in his hand.

That was the night the Saeki family was massacred. The original owner of this body hid in a dry well, listening to the muffled sound of the butcher's knife hitting the wooden door.

The flames in the relief suddenly came to life, and sparks crackled and splashed onto the back of his hand, burning him and making him wince—this was no ordinary memory projection; the First Hokage's chakra was materializing his pain.

Chapter 125 Mission

"You want me to wallow in these fragments?" Bai Ye smirked, his fingertips subtly wrapping around wood-based threads.

He had seen Chiyo use threads to probe mechanisms when dismantling puppets in Sunagakure, and now he infused chakra into the threads, which moved along the stone wall.

The moment the thread touched the crack in the stone, his pupils contracted slightly—those seemingly natural patterns were actually the veins of the First Hokage's Wood Release technique, each crack being an iron bar of a prison of memories.

The so-called "Silent Corridor" is actually a mental prison built by the First Hokage using chakra, trapping all those who try to seek the truth.

When we reached the tenth step, the air suddenly became bitterly cold.

His breath condensed into white mist in front of him. When he looked up again, the reliefs on the stone wall in front of him suddenly disappeared, replaced by a semi-transparent phantom – Hashirama Senju, wearing a faded coarse cloth jacket, with a wooden staff hanging down in his hand, and dirt still stuck in the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, as if he had just walked from the ridge of a field.

"You were originally a vessel." The phantom's voice was like the wind blowing through an ancient pine tree, carrying a hint of sorrow. "I used the Wood Release core to seal the rage of Hashirama's cells, and used the First Hokage's bloodline as a catalyst, so that the spark of peace could transcend time."

You carry the ideals I could never fulfill.

Bai Ye stopped in his tracks.

He could feel the chakra fluctuations overflowing from the phantom, the gentle wood attribute unique to the First Hokage, but beneath it lay a subtle sense of oppression—this was not a mere remnant of memory, but a trap set by the First Hokage's will, attempting to crush his independent consciousness with the weight of "ideals".

“Container?” he repeated the word, then suddenly laughed.

With his left hand forming a seal quickly, the short sword drew a third bloody mark on his palm. This time, instead of letting the blood droplet fall, he wrapped it in chakra and threw it at the phantom's face.

The moment the blood droplet touched the phantom, vines unfurled, their bluish-gray branches, laden with barbs, coiling around the phantom's neck like living creatures.

The phantom's expression twisted for a moment. "You are resisting the mission that should be yours."

“A mission?” Bai Ye stepped forward, the vines tightening with his movement. “When the children of the Saeki family were sacrificed, you said it was a mission; when the Shadow Replacement was replaced, you said it was a mission; when I was implanted with the Wood Release core, you also said it was a mission.”

But who has ever asked us if we want to be containers?

Suddenly, thorny buds burst forth from the vines, piercing through the phantom's chest.

The phantom emitted a soft sound like shattering glass, and before dissipating into specks of light, it uttered its last words: "Reincarnation will not end because of one person."

"Then let me be the one to end it." Bai Ye whispered to the empty space, and the wood release threads at his fingertips suddenly vibrated—it was the tremor of the earth's veins, more violent than before.

He realized that every step he took in the corridor was breaking the memory shackles set by the first generation, while the "Ming reporters" outside were dismantling these shackles in another way.

At the same time, the sandalwood scent of the "Memories Altar" in the leaf was replaced by the smell of blood and rust.

Onodera Ren knelt between three "Ming reporters" who were trapped in an illusion. Her right wrist was wrapped with vines formed from congealed blood ink, which were probing into the sea of ​​consciousness between the three people's eyebrows.

The first thing you see is a chaotic scene: an altar, a dry well, a broken sword, just like the fragments in Bai Ye's memories.

Delving deeper, her pupils constricted—deep within the memories of the three people, a pale green chakra thread was intertwined, like an invisible rope, stringing their consciousness together.

“The source…is in the Fire City’s underground vault.” She murmured, her left hand rapidly forming hand seals, attempting to transmit the warning to Bai Ye through the blood ink.

But just as half a blood bead had condensed, it suddenly solidified into a blackish-red crystal, falling to the ground with a crisp sound.

“A higher level of control…” she gritted her teeth, and the vines on the back of her neck suddenly glowed red—a sign that she resonated with Wood Release.

At this moment, the red light was spreading along her blood vessels toward her heart, as if urging her to become a "channel" so that the original will could transmit instructions through her body.

“I’m not making a passageway.” She drew a short knife from her waist, pressing the tip against the densest part of the vines at the back of her neck. “I’m making a thread-cutting knife.”

The moment the blade sliced ​​through the skin, blood mixed with ink splattered, and the vines trembled as if wailing.

She felt as if something had been torn from her mind, like a thorn that had been pierced into her marrow finally being pulled out.

The three reporters woke up at the same time, holding their heads and panting. One of them, an old woman, grabbed her hand and cried, "Young lady, I dreamed of many children... They said they didn't want to live for others anymore."

Onodera Ren pressed his hand against the wound, and blood seeped from between his fingers, writing the character "断" (broken) on the ground.

In a village on the border of the Land of Fire, Tanaka Hisashi's oil lamp swayed in the wind.

He squatted in front of the old farmer's earthen stove, his notebook spread out on his lap, having just written down the old farmer's words: "The child in the white robe said, 'I don't want to live for others anymore.'" Before the ink was dry, his fingertip pressed a deep indentation into the word "for"—this overlapped with the keywords in the twenty-three oral histories he had collected: "for," "container," and "not oneself."

Late at night, he piled up the manuscripts he had written that day in the courtyard and lit a tinderbox.

The instant the flames rose, he clearly saw a figure emerge from the ashes: a young man with his back to him, standing on the descending steps, with a pale green light in front of him, as if confronting someone.

“You’re not representing a person,” he whispered to the flames, the wind carrying the ashes northward. “It’s representing ‘ideals.’”

But ideals shouldn't involve cannibalism.

Night falls early in Hidden Cloud Village.

Bi stood on the top floor of the historical archives, gazing at the distant firelight.

Villagers rushed towards the scene carrying torches, and the elderly man at the head of the group held up a wooden sign with the words "We want our own memories!" written in blood.

"Lord Shadow!" The guard came running up, panting. "They said... that there is evidence of 'living for someone else' hidden in the archives."

He clenched his fist, and lightning-attribute chakra crackled in his palm.

He recalled the ley lines he had seen in the Land of Fire three days ago, and the cold light in Bai Ye's eyes when he said "the first generation project is not over"—perhaps, the real storm had only just begun.

The bluestone steps of the Cloud Hidden Archives glowed red from the torchlight. Dozens of villagers holding wooden signs crowded in front of the iron gate. The old hunter at the front was banging on the door knocker with his hoe: "Burn the Substitute Book!"

Our Ah-He served as the Raikage's bodyguard for three years, and when he died, he didn't even have a tombstone with his real name engraved on it!

Standing atop a three-zhang-high wall, lightning-attribute chakra crackled beneath his feet.

He could see the Shadow Guard Captain gripping a kunai, his knuckles white—a signal from the old-school ninjas that they were about to fight. "Step back," he growled, his voice booming like thunder.

Chapter 126 New Sprouts Hiding in the Wilderness, Who Is Looking Back?

The Shadow Guard captain looked up and met those electric eyes. His Adam's apple bobbed, and he finally gritted his teeth, put away his weapon, and led his men back to the wall.

“You’re not burning the booklet,” Bi said, leaping off the wall, his landing causing the flagstones to crack. “You’re burning the words ‘substitute.’” The crowd fell silent. Amid the crackling of the torches, he heard the old woman sobbing, “My husband, before he breathed his last, held my hand and said, ‘I lived my whole life for someone else, and I’ll even take my name to the grave…’”

Bi's palms suddenly felt hot.

He looked down and saw a silvery-gray liquid seeping from his old wound—it was the "pseudo-blood" unique to the second substitute. In the past, no matter how deep the wound was, only this translucent chakra condensate would flow out.

But at this moment, the liquid was mixed with a few streaks of bright red, like crushed morning glow.

He reached out and caught a drop; the sensation was no longer cold and slippery, but rather warm and sticky.

"From this day forward, the doors to the Cloud Hidden Archives are open to everyone." He raised his hand, and lightning bolts shot from his fingertips to the ground, drawing a charred line between the crowd and the shadow guards. "Those who want to check the records of substitutes, those who want to copy the clan register, come in."

But…” He paused, his gaze sweeping over the old woman clutching a faded letter in the crowd, “I won’t let the fire of history be lit.”

The old woman suddenly took two steps forward, the letter rustling in her trembling hands: "Can I...can I read the letter he wrote?" Nodding, she stood on tiptoe and held the letter up to the torchlight.

The yellowed pages were stained with ink: "Ah Hui, my real name is Ishikawa Masao, I'm thirty-nine years old, and I used to be a blacksmith serving as Raikage's bodyguard..."

It's better than closing your eyes.

The wind lifted his cloak, and he heard sobs rising and falling in the crowd, heard children asking in their childish voices, "Is this Father's name?", and heard the rustling of the shadow guards' armor—this time it wasn't preparation for battle, but someone taking off their headband to reveal their nickname engraved underneath.

The blood was still seeping from my palm; this time it was completely red.

He opened his eyes and saw the old woman's tears dripping onto the letter, blurring the four characters "Masao Ishikawa." "So..." he whispered to the wind, "I've started bleeding too."

Meanwhile, limestone was falling from the dome of the Sunagakure "True History Garden".

Chiyo slammed the scorpion puppet fragments onto the sandalwood table, the crisp sound of the bronze joints colliding drowning out the elders' roars: "With the Shadow monopolizing the history pen, they can write the death of a Stand as 'heroic martyrdom,' and the blood of the rebels as 'traitorous stain'!"

"Insolence!" The Grand Elder slammed his hand on the table, causing the teacup to bounce. "Has your old body been corrupted by evil energy from the earth's veins?"

Chiyo sneered, her withered fingers tracing the engravings on the puppet fragments: "Look at this—'Kankuro the Puppet Master' when Sasori was twelve years old, which you have ground down and recarved into 'Sunagakure Anbu'." She suddenly stopped, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes tightening sharply—a slight tremor came from the ground, and bluish-gray vines were climbing up the base of the pillar, weaving a line of blood-red characters on the stone pillar: "Sasori of the Red Sand".

Everyone in the room was shocked.

Young bodyguard Matsumoto suddenly stood up, his face flushed red under his headband: "My father was a double for the Third Kazekage. When he died..." His Adam's apple bobbed, "...he was clutching a piece of paper in his hand with 'Matsumoto Kenichi' written on it." He removed his headband, revealing a pale pink scar on his forehead. "I want to register as a reporter. From today onward, I will only pledge allegiance to my real name."

Chiyo's pupils contracted slightly.

She saw the blood-red words on the vines glowing, as if countless eyes were looking through the earth's veins—it was the erased true name awakening.

Deep within the Fire Country's ley lines, Byakuya's boots sank into the mire of memories.