Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

In the illusion of the trial ground, nine-year-old himself is pressed onto the altar, with the elder's wooden sword pressed against his heart.

The whispers of the First Will, tinged with the scent of blood and rust, pierced his ears: "You are a new beginning, the torchbearer of peace..."

"Enough." Bai Ye gripped the short knife tightly, but the tip of the blade stopped three inches away from the illusion.

He saw another version of himself slowly raise his head—not the terror he remembered, but a weariness that showed he had seen through everything: "If you kill me, will you be free?"

Or... is it just a matter of changing who takes the blame?

The short knife clattered to the ground.

Bai Ye crouched down, meeting his gaze at the illusionary version of himself: "I won't kill you," he said, his voice so soft it was as if afraid of waking something. "I'll just say: I'm no longer your vessel."

The altar suddenly collapsed.

The core of his Wood Release technique emanated from his heart, hovering between the two of them, gleaming with a ghostly green light.

Bai Ye reached out and grasped it, the scalding chakra stinging his palm, but he didn't let go. Instead, he pressed the core back into his chest: "This blood is mine now."

The earth's veins began to tremble violently.

The original carvings on the stone wall melted slowly, like wax poured with boiling water, revealing dense new carvings underneath—"Tanaka Hisashi," "Ishikawa Masao," "Matsumoto Kenichi"... these are the real names spontaneously carved by the "journalists" from the five countries.

Above ground, the nine thousand-year-old vines of Guiyuan Shrine broke off simultaneously.

But no one noticed that at the base of the rotting vines, nine new shoots were emerging from the soil, their tender green branches trembling and pointing in different directions—east to Cloud Hidden, west to Sand Hidden, north to Rock Hidden, and south to Mist Hidden.

The stone gate of the silent corridor creaked.

Bai Ye leaned against the stone wall to stand up, a thin layer of sweat beading on his forehead, but he smiled very softly.

He touched his chest and could feel the Wood Release core pulsating in sync with his own heartbeat.

The door opened.

As Bai Ye walked out of the corridor, moonlight fell on his shoulders, casting a long shadow.

He gazed at the flickering lights in the distance—those were the "Ming reporters" holding torches, copying the newly engraved registers on the street.

A faint sound of recitation drifted on the wind, and he heard someone say, "Bai Ye, real name..." He paused, but did not stop walking; his eyes, however, brightened, like stars piercing through the clouds.

Moonlight spilled over the ruins of Guiyuan Shrine, stretching the white night's shadow long and thin, like an ink mark about to melt into the night.

He stumbled slightly as he stepped down the stone steps, his palm resting on the cord binding the short sword at his waist—where the scorching heat of the Wood Release core still lingered.

But when I looked up towards the South Market, the fog in my eyes had dissipated, leaving only a clear, star-like light.

The wooden door of the underground bookstore was knocked on at midnight.

Tanaka Hisamasa was proofreading his newly copied copy of "The Nameless Record" by the light of a soybean oil lamp. The names "Hayashi Enzan" and "Matsumoto Kenichi" on the pages still carried the scent of ink.

The moment he heard the knock, his pen stopped at the last vertical stroke of the character "田" (field) – it shouldn't be Old Chen delivering paper, nor the patrolling soldiers.

Chapter 127 The Altered History of the Cloud Hidden Army

The moment the door opened, a man in a black patterned short shirt stood on the steps, his hair glistening with night dew.

Tanaka Hisashi's throat moved, as if he wanted to say, "What brings you here?" but he was first taken aback by what the other party handed him: it was a wood release seed the size of a fingernail, with faint blue patterns on its surface, much like the erased marks in the earth's veins.

"No monuments, no altars." Bai Ye's voice was softer than the night breeze as he brushed his fingertips across the seed. "Let the name grow on its own."

Tanaka Hisashi's fingers trembled slightly as he caught it, and his palm immediately warmed up, like the heartbeat of holding a living creature.

When he looked up, he met Bai Ye's clear eyes—there was no longer the cold hardness of before, nor the emptiness controlled by will; instead, it was like a mountain stream that had witnessed the changing seasons, calm yet concealing deep currents. "You...are you leaving?"

“My roots are in the human world, I don’t need to be here.” Bai Ye took half a step back, his figure disappearing into the shadows at the alley entrance. “What they need is not a god, but a hand that can hold a pen for itself.”

Tian Jiuzhong opened his mouth, but in the end he only held the seed tightly.

He heard the footsteps fading into the distance, mixed with the low whimpers of stray cats in the back alleys of the market. He suddenly remembered the peasant woman's words that he had copied down last month: "My husband said before he died that he would only have lived a full life if his name was remembered by the wind." At this moment, the warmth in his palm really felt like a wind that would blow across five countries.

When the seeds were planted in the foundation of the bookstore, a faint smell of blood and rust seeped from the soil.

Tian Jiuzhong patted the mound of earth firmly with a copper ruler engraved with "Unknown," and the oil lamp cast a swaying shadow on his hunched back.

He didn't know that when the last handful of soil covered the seeds, nine new shoots were pushing aside the rotting vine roots in the ruins of the Guiyuan Shrine a thousand miles away; nor did he know that in the cracks of the stone of the "Memory Altar" of Muye, green vines were winding their way along the earth's veins.

The next morning, as the first rays of sunlight pierced through the clouds, a thin crack appeared in the bluestone slab of the underground bookstore.

The moment Tian Jiuzhong lifted the bamboo curtain, his breath almost stopped—a green vine, half a person tall, sprouted from the foundation. There were no words on its leaves, but it was wrapped in a layer of faint blood mist, like moonlight soaked in ink.

He leaned closer and sniffed, a familiar scent wafting from his nose: the blood ink thickened from copying books, the cinnabar added by the old craftsman when making paper, and the aroma of all the erased names fermenting underground for a hundred years.

At the same moment, the stone altar of Konoha's "Memory Altar" turned bluish-gray.

Onodera Ren knelt before nine nameless stones, dark red sap seeping from the blood-ink vine on his wrist.

She pressed her fingertips against the nearest vine, the stinging pain shooting through her veins to her temples—in an instant, a hundred memories flooded back: a border farmer clutching his son's hand before he died, reciting his family's genealogy word by word; a Hiroshi Kawakami ninja using his last chakra to carve "Hiroshi Kawakami" on his scabbard as he was stabbed in the chest by an ANBU; a mother from the Land of Fire embroidering her daughter's real name "Sakura" into a swaddling cloth, the stitches stained with postpartum blood.

Her eyelashes trembled violently, and her eyes burned, but she was not as eager to interpret it as before.

Instead, he tore off the bamboo flute from his waist and wove his memories into an off-key melody.

The children gathered around the stone altar craned their necks to listen. Suddenly, a little girl with pigtails burst into tears: "My grandfather's name... my grandfather's name is 'Shimizu Masao'!" She threw herself into Onodera Ren's arms. "Mother said grandfather was a rogue ninja, but just now Fujitori said he was killed by Iwagakure's rock spikes while saving the villagers..."

Onodera Ren wiped away the tears on her face, her fingertips stroking the girl's hair: "From now on, you are all historians." She watched as nine vines climbed up nine nameless stones, and blurry engravings began to appear on the stone surfaces—not the achievements of a hero, but the names of countless "I"s.

The wind swept past the altar, and the children's songs drifted along the streets of Muye, like seeds of spring falling into the ears of everyone who passed by.

As the setting sun bathed the stone tablet at the South Gate in a golden-red hue, Tanaka Hisashi stood before it, holding the first volume of "The Nameless Record."

The pages were licked and rolled by the flames, and the ashes swirled into the sky, where they solidified into hundreds of faces: there was an old soldier with a full beard, a woman wearing an apron, and a craftsman with a carving knife at his waist.

The onlookers held their breath, and someone suddenly shouted, "That's my grandfather!" Another exclaimed, "That's what my mother looked like when she was young!"

As the night deepened, Tanaka Hisashi sat beside the monument, holding a carving knife.

He heard light footsteps on the stone path and looked up to see two masked men in black creeping towards the stone tablet. "Don't move," he said. The two men paused for a moment, but then quickly drew their short knives—but before they could raise them, green vines suddenly sprang from the ground and wrapped around their wrists.

"Let go!" the man in black on the left shouted urgently, his wrist marked with red welts.

The man on the right suddenly froze, staring at the name that slowly appeared on the stone tablet: "Lin Yuanshan..." He trembled as he tore off his mask, the moonlight illuminating his pale face. "This is my father's name!"

Twenty years ago, he was accused of treason... but the inscription on the monument says he guarded the border for seven days, and was ultimately assassinated by his own people...

The man in black on the left also pulled off his veil, his eyes instantly reddening: "My mother... her name is 'Matsumoto Yumi'?" He looked at the woman with the blue headscarf smiling at him from the ashes floating in the air.

The two knelt on the ground at the same time, their cries shattering the silence of the night.

Tanaka Hisashi walked over and handed them the carving knife: "The name won't be ruined... unless we shut up first." He pointed to the stone tablet, "Now, you two are the new carvers."

The tower in Hidden Cloud Village resembles a sword piercing the sky in the night.

Compared to sitting in the wind at the top of the tower, the old wound on his palm had healed. The blood that flowed out when he cut it was no longer turbid chakra fluid, but bright red human blood with body temperature.

He took out the Thunder Blade, and sparks flew as he rubbed the stone fragments against the blade.

In the distance came the shouts of the Cloud Village ninja on patrol. He looked at his reflection on the blade and suddenly smiled—a smile that lacked his former rage and the confusion of being a "stand-in," but rather seemed to be waiting for a rainstorm in which he himself had to wield the blade.

The crisp sound of the thunder blade striking the stone shard, carried by the night wind, drifted towards the five kingdoms.

As Bi's thumb grazed the blade for the final sharp edge, the commotion beneath the Cloud Hidden Tower suddenly pierced the night.

His ears twitched slightly, and the stone slab fell to the ground with a clang—that was in the direction of the patrol compound, mixed with the shouts of the old-fashioned shadow guards and the cries of the people.

"The true image returns to the heart!"

Give my father his innocence! "Check the historical records!"

Check the list of those killed in the attack on Iwagakure village twenty years ago!

Bi tapped his knuckles twice on the hilt of the knife.

He remembered that three months ago, on a night like this, someone burned half a cartload of wooden slips outside the photo studio—those were altered versions of the Cloud Hidden War History.

Chapter 128 You're All Braver Than Me

He overturned the table back then, and his lightning chakra shattered the window paper. But now, listening to the commotion, what surged in his chest was not irritability, but a kind of astringent heat.

He bent down to pick up the stone shard, wiping away the blood and rust with his fingertips—it had broken off when he was testing the blade.

"Lord Shadow!" The patrol captain's voice came from below the tower, trembling with tension, "These rioters say they want to go into the archives and search through old files, and we're..."

"Step back." Bi's voice was colder than the night wind, but softened slightly when he landed.

He rose, sword in hand, the sound of his boots tapping on the stone steps echoing within the tower.

As the moonlight streamed over his shoulder, he caught a glimpse of his own reflection on the scabbard—no murky chakra patterns of a second substitute, only the crispness of an ordinary ninja.

The lanterns in the patrol courtyard swayed in the wind, illuminating more than twenty people: an old man with white hair clutched a faded cloth bag, a young man held half a scroll of bamboo slips in his arms, and a woman carried three green oranges in her blouse—they were offered before the tombstone of the deceased.

The old-school shadow guards' kunai jingled at their waists, but they were rooted to the spot by a single glance from Bi.

"The Cloud Hidden Archives..." Before Bi could finish speaking, the old man's cloth bag suddenly slipped off, revealing half of his blood-stained headband. "From this day forward, it will be open to all bereaved families."

Whoever wants to investigate, should write it down.

The air seemed to freeze in an instant.

The first to move was the young man carrying the bamboo slips. He knelt on the sand, and the bamboo slips scattered all over the ground with a "clatter". "My mother said that her father was a deserter, but I copied the oral accounts of seven neighbors..." He was interrupted by a sob before he could finish speaking.

The white-haired old man staggered and grabbed Bi's hem, his withered, bark-like fingers almost digging into the fabric: "And what about you?"

Do you still want to be our shadow?

The light in the old man's eyes as he looked down was just like the ever-burning lamp beneath the portrait of the First Raikage that he had seen in the dark room years ago.

Back then, he thought he was just a shadow, but now, gazing at the flickering lights of Cloud Village in the distance, he suddenly smiled: "Me?" He crouched down and picked up the old man's headband, "I'm just... someone who's willing to remember."

As the wind carried these words across the walls of the patrol office, the moonlight of Sunagakure bathed the stone tablet of Kenichi Saeki.

Chiyo's cane tapped softly on the bluestone slab as she gazed at the offerings piled up like a small mountain in front of the monument: dried figs, a wooden plaque carved with puppet patterns, and even half a piece of candied fruit that hadn't fully melted—those were secretly placed there by the village children.

Three young shadow guards were taking turns keeping watch. When the girl on the far left saw her coming, she hurriedly tried to bow, but Chiyo stopped her with a look.

“He always said that a puppeteer’s knife should be used to carve the smiles of the living, not to stained with blood.” Chiyo’s fingertips traced the four characters “Saeki Kenichi” on the stone tablet, which she had carved herself.

Twenty years ago, this historian who insisted on recording the names of defeated generals was accused of "colluding with the enemy," and now his name has been circulating in the winds of Sunagakure for a whole month.

A sudden tingling sensation arose in my sleeve.

Chiyo took out the piece of blood-ink vine. The vine was sprouting new leaves at a speed visible to the naked eye, and a line of small words appeared on the leaf: "The lotus has set off for the Land of Wind." She stared at the words and laughed, her wrinkles filled with moonlight: "Good... the spark should not be confined to one place."

On her way back to the house, she went around to the brazier in the back alley.

The fragments of the scorpion puppet were piled up to half a person's height in the pottery urn: the Red Sand Scorpion missing its left arm, the Third Kazekage puppet missing its tail stinger, and the Thousand Manifestations Umbrella that had once been stained with blood.

She picked up a piece of nail polish painted with a scarlet peony, her fingertip tracing the chipped edge—it was something Scorpion had cut with a kunai when he was sixteen, in a fit of pique.

"Burn it," she said to the maid who was waiting nearby.

The moment the flames rose, sparks shot into the night sky, illuminating the figure of a boy wearing a blue headscarf.

He tilted his head and smiled, just like when he used to squat in the puppet workshop, holding up a newly made little wooden puppet and saying, "Grandma, look!"

Chiyo closed her eyes, tears falling onto the edge of the brazier. "You are all... braver than me."

On the Gobi Desert outside Guiyuan Shrine, Bai Ye suddenly stopped.

When he turned around, the nine new shoots behind him had spread into a forest, each leaf shimmering with a bluish-gold light, like stars scattered on the ground.

Above the ruins of the shrine, countless names flowed along the vines: "Lin Yuanshan", "Matsumoto Yumi", "Shimizu Masao"... but not a single word pointed to him.

He unsheathed the sword, and the last line of his carving remained on the rope binding the hilt.

As the sand seeped through his fingers, he remembered the night Tanaka buried the seeds of the Wood Release, and the sound of Onodera Ren teaching children to sing by the altar of memories. "My roots are in the human world, I don't need to be here," he said to the wind, his voice crushed by the sand and scattered into the wilderness.

The moment he turned around, he heard very light footsteps behind him.

It wasn't the sound of a sand crab crawling by, nor the sound of wind sweeping away fallen leaves; it was the soft rustling of a ninja's clothes brushing against vines as he gathered his chakra.

He didn't turn around until that green figure stood beside him—Onodera Ren held a new leaf in his hand, the blood ink in the veins of the leaf slowly forming words: "I've come to continue the path you've walked."

Extremely subtle vibrations came from deep underground.

On the chest of that withered skeleton wrapped in a white robe, the last Wood Release seed throbbed once before falling completely silent.

It once carried the will of the first generation and drove the blood of the White Night, but now it is like a candle wick that has completed its mission, leaving only a wisp of smoke.

As the sandstorm swept past the stone tablet, carrying new leaves, the stone corner, half-buried in the yellow sand, finally emerged. The upper part of the character "白" (white) was entangled by vines, and the last stroke of the character "夜" (night) was covered by newly sprouted branches.

And in the gaps between the vines, one can vaguely see newly carved marks—not a name, but countless overlapping strokes, like the wind, like the rain, like all living people, using their body heat to rewrite the earth's memory.