Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

In the old patrol post beneath the ruins of Guiyuan Shrine, Tanaka Hisashi's hands trembled.

He had just dipped half of the bronze plaque into the blood ink bottle when a dynamic image appeared in the liquid: in the fire, the gray-robed man carried the young Bai Ye out of the fire, while the "corpse" left in the center of the fire was slowly sitting up, the brand on its left shoulder glowing dark in the firelight.

“So…” His throat tightened, “the one who escaped back then was Aoba Hachi, the real Fujiwara Yoake…”

The bronze medal suddenly became hot, so hot that he let go of it.

The last scene before the image disappeared was the gray-robed man's right arm as he turned around—wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage, with a vine-shaped scar faintly visible beneath it.

“The scar of the White Night…” Tanaka Hisashi staggered and steadied himself against the pile of charred wood, “It was left when he saved his ‘brother’.”

He took out his pocket watch to check the time, and the hands stopped at 1:45 AM—the exact time when Kazama Shin had said he was going to the altar at the bottom of the well.

The well water in Xueyuan Village has been tasting strange lately. The schoolteacher said a few days ago that "there is something carving words at the bottom of the well."

At this moment, white mist is rising from the wellhead in Xueyuan Village.

Kazama Shin gripped the iron hook and slowly lowered it into the well.

His boots were covered in unmelted snow, and he carried in his pocket a wooden plaque he had dug up during the day under the old locust tree at the east end of the village, on which were engraved two overlapping names: Fujiwara Yomei and Aoba Hachi.

The oil lamp flickered on his desk at home, and the sparks from the wick made the engravings on the wooden plaque appear and disappear.

The oil lamp cast a dim yellow light on Kazama Shin's desk. His fingertips repeatedly rubbed the engravings on the edge of the wooden plaque. The charcoal-printed pages were spread out on the table, the ink still wet, the lines like a twisted snake.

When he gently tapped the raised star-shaped patterns on the back of the wooden plaque with his fingernail, the plaque suddenly emitted a buzzing sound, and its temperature instantly soared to the point of being scalding hot.

"Hiss—" He hurriedly withdrew his hand, only to see a pale blue mist rising from the surface of the wooden plaque.

The light and mist condensed into fragments, piecing together a picture before his eyes: a six or seven-year-old boy was tied to a rusty rune chair, his pale wrists marked with red welts from the silver chains.

Chiyo, dressed in a dark-patterned kimono, stood in front of the control panel, her fingertips resting on the bronze instrument: "Blood purity 97.3%, separation program initiated."

"No!" The boy's cry pierced the light mist, and a blue light cleaved his chest like a knife.

Kazama Shin saw half a ball of light rise from the boy's body, like a dandelion seed blown away by the wind; the other half fell into the churning pool of blood below, the splashed blood droplets forming the mark "Number Eight" on the pool wall.

Chapter 136 Are You Still Alive?

Outside the glass of the monitoring room, a woman dressed as a shrine maiden knelt, the vermilion birthmark on her face particularly glaring under the light—her face bore a seven-tenths resemblance to the reclusive Fujiwara Shizuka in the underground water dungeon, but with an added touch of vivid sorrow.

"The Watchers family never produces twins..." Kazama Shin recalled the whispers of the old men in the snow, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Because one of the twins must be sacrificed." His fingers unconsciously tightened their grip on the rubbing paper, the ink spreading in his palm. "So White Night..." He looked at the overlapping names on the wooden plaque, his voice as soft as a sigh, "Never a survivor."

He was a shell created from nothing.

The haze of light on the wooden sign suddenly dissipated, and the cawing of crows came from outside the study window.

Kazama Shin shivered, stuffed the wooden sign into the innermost hidden pocket of his robes, and kicked over the charcoal pencil case at his feet as he turned around.

The charcoal rolled to the doorway. He crouched down to pick it up, but caught a glimpse of a dark shadow flashing past through the crack at the bottom of the door—it was the chakra fluctuation of the Cloud Village.

His pupils contracted slightly, and he quickly blew out the oil lamp. In the darkness, only the hands of his pocket watch moved in the dim blue light: it was four quarters past midnight, and there should be some movement over there.

Bi knelt on the straw mat in the Cloud Village council hall, cold sweat dripping from his forehead down his chin and into his collar.

The Soul-Cleansing Bell in the Inspector's hand was ringing clearly, each sound like a fine needle piercing his temple.

He could see his memories being extracted into threads, swirling around the bell's mouth—the excruciating pain of his spine being pierced by vines, the cold laughter of the Otsutsuki messenger during the pain-bearing ritual, and the burning itching of plum blossom marks on his skin after each cleansing mission.

"Jonin-level," the inspector's voice was as cold as ice, "why has the purge of Snowfield Village been suspended?"

Bi bit the tip of his tongue, and the taste of blood exploded in his mouth.

He recalled the half-piece of blood jade he had found in the forest three days ago; the array patterns on it perfectly matched the branding of the one who bore the pain—this was no coincidence. "The reversal failed." He lowered his head, his nails digging into his palms. "Those erased memories are like living things; the more you try to cleanse them, the more stubborn they become." He pulled out a forged scroll from his pocket, its cover bearing fake scorch marks. "This is a record of the scene."

The moment the inspector took the scroll, Bee's gaze swept over the ninja tool pouch at the inspector's waist—inside was a demon-sealing talisman engraved with the Cloud Village clan crest.

He lowered his eyes, his fingertips rapidly forming hand seals under the straw mat, writing his true deduction into a private scroll: "We are all backups."

Whenever the one who bears the pain collapses, the system awakens the next one to be branded. "Before the ink was even dry, he used chakra to seal the scroll into a hidden compartment in his sleeve."

"Step down," the inspector waved his hand.

As he stood up, the plum blossom mark suddenly burned intensely. He saw himself in a hallucination standing by the blood pool, Qingye Ba's face overlapping with Baiye's face, saying, "Next, it's you." He clenched the scroll in his sleeve, a low laugh escaping his throat—since it's a backup, then be a rebellious backup.

He turned and walked toward the corridor outside the council chamber, his steps steady as if he were crushing some kind of destiny.

The temperature inside the beam of light is rising.

Bai Ye stared at Qing Ye's outstretched hand, his fingertips almost touching the calluses on the other's palm—marks left from years of wielding a sword, in exactly the same position as the calluses he had developed while practicing Wood Release.

"Don't touch him!"

The roar coming from underground was like thunder.

Bai Ye turned her head and saw Fujiwara Shizuka standing unsteadily in the crack of the dungeon dome. Her hair tie was loose, and there were pebbles stuck in her messy hair. She held half a blood-stained bronze bell fragment in her left hand, and blood was still dripping from the wound on her right wrist.

“You will become the second ‘stake’!” Her voice trembled with tears, “nailed to the cycle of reincarnation by the Otsutsuki, forever and ever!”

Aoba Hachi's hand hovered in mid-air, and drops of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth dripped onto the vines between the two of them, blooming into eerie flowers.

He looked at Fujiwara Shizuka, the madness in his eyes suddenly shattering into starlight: "Mother..." His voice was as soft as a dream, "You're still alive?"

Bai Ye's heart clenched suddenly.

He had never heard Qingye Ba call him "Mother" before, and he never imagined that the man who always tapped his shoulder with the back of his knife in the dark alley would speak in such a soft tone.

As for Fujiwara Shizuka—that reclusive woman who always flipped through blood-inked books in the water dungeon—the sorrow in her eyes at this moment made her look as if her spine had been ripped out.

"Ah-hachi..." A shard of Fujiwara Shizuka's bronze bell struck the vines between them, "I'm so sorry..."

Amidst the deafening crack of snapping vines, the beam of light resembled a burst bubble.

Bai Ye felt something being pulled from his heart, and he staggered and fell, crashing onto the ground covered in rubble.

When he looked up, Aoba Hachi's figure was blurring. He saw the brand on the other's left shoulder overlap with his own old scar, and heard the last words: "Little brother, when you wake up next time... I will kill you with my own hands."

Suddenly, the ground cracked open, and pitch-black blood ink gushed out from the ground, spreading like a river around Bai Ye.

Ancient inscriptions emerged from the blood-ink surface. He squinted to decipher them, cold sweat trickling down the back of his neck—"Sacrifice one's own child to exchange for peace in five kingdoms."

Before her consciousness began to fade, Byakuya heard Fujiwara Shizuka sobbing: "Yoru, you're not my child... I'm just raising this shell for her..."

The winds of the wasteland whipped up blood-red ink, weaving it into a cocoon around him.

When the wind of the wasteland, carrying sand and gravel, brushed against her eyelids, Bai Ye's eyelashes trembled first.

He woke up slowly, like a cocoon soaking in warm water. First, his fingertips touched the sticky blood ink, which had a familiar, sweet and pungent smell—the smell of the blood-ink book in Fujiwara Shizumizu's prison.

Then a dull pain came from the back of her neck, and fragments of memory rushed up along her nerves: the overlapping marks of Aoba Hachi before he became invisible, Fujiwara Shizuka crying and saying "You are not my child", and the inscription on the monument that floated in the Blood Ink River: "Offering sacrifices to one's own child".

"woke up?"

A low, husky female voice drifted into my ears on the wind.

Bai Ye turned his head and saw Onodera Ren kneeling beside him, his plain kimono sleeves stained with blood and ink, his fingertips wrapped with thin vines, the other end of which was embedded in the blood-stained cocoon on his left shoulder.

Her eyes were tinged with blue, clearly she had been watching for a long time. When she saw him open his eyes, her lips relaxed slightly: "The Blood Ink Cocoon is draining your chakra, I'm using the Vine Armor Technique to transfer spiritual energy to you to withstand it."

Bai Ye tried to sit up, but found that her arms were stuck tightly with blood ink.

He stared at the pale blue veins that had surfaced on the back of his hand, and suddenly asked, "Fujiwara Shizuka... the 'Yoru' she was talking about, is that me?"

Lian's fingers paused, and the spiritual energy fluctuations on the slender vines briefly stopped.

She withdrew her hand, took out a ceramic pot from her bosom, poured half a cup of water, and handed it over: "When she used the bronze bell to break the resonance chain, the blood ink backfired and entered her sea of ​​consciousness."

Chapter 1037 You went to the abandoned nursery?

Now, in the dungeon, when she's lucid, she says, "Ye Ming must die," and when she's delirious, she cries out, "A-Ba, don't be afraid."

The water rolled down my throat, carrying a rusty taste.

Bai Ye gazed at the desolate wasteland stained black with blood ink in the distance and suddenly remembered Qingye Ba's last words, "younger brother."

It turns out they really are related by blood—or rather, they are flawed products of bloodline created by the Otsutsuki.

He touched his left shoulder, where the brand was still burning hot, like a thin needle piercing the bone: "If I'm a substitute... wouldn't the real Yeming have died long ago?"

Lian didn't reply, but simply took out a blood talisman from her sleeve.

The edges of the talisman still had cinnabar on them, indicating that it had just been drawn.

She lifted his left shoulder and gently pressed her fingertips on the brand: "This is the Interruption Spell, repainted using the murals from the underground water dungeon."

It can temporarily block the summoning of the Otsutsuki bloodline. "The moment the blood talisman was applied, the burning sensation subsided by a third, but Bai Ye saw that her knuckles turned white—she was suppressing her trembling."

"Tanaka Hisashi went to the border of Sunagakure." Ren suddenly changed the subject. "He said he was looking for the ventilation shaft of the underground water prison."

Before the words were finished, the sound of paper cranes flapping their wings came from the distance of the wasteland.

Lian reached out and caught it. The paper crane unfolded into a strip of paper in her palm, with Tanaka's handwriting: "The vent signal worked. Sister Jing left a blood letter: 'Ye Ming must die.'"

Bai Ye's fingers crumpled the edge of the pottery pot, his knuckles turning white.

He recalled the image of Fujiwara Shizuka holding up a fragment of a bronze bell in the dungeon—at the time he thought she had come to save him, but now he realized that what she was holding might have been a double-edged sword.

At the same time, on the earthen wall at the border of Sunagakure, Hisashi Tanaka was crouching in the shadows.

He was wrapped in a faded doctor's robe, and the medicine pouch hanging at his waist contained a wooden plaque given to him by Kazama Shin, with the frequency of the nurse's code engraved on it.

He took out a piece of broken porcelain and tapped it three times on the brick seam below the vent—long, short, long.

The sound of rats gnawing came from inside the wall.

Tanaka Hisashi held his breath and saw a blood-stained strip of cloth floating in the drainage ditch, its edges still covered with moss.

He quickly picked it up and, by the moonlight, deciphered the inscription: "Sister Jing woke up once and said, 'Ye Ming must die,' and then she fainted again."

"So she wasn't trying to save her son after all..." Tanaka Hisashi's Adam's apple bobbed, and his nails dug into his palms.

He took out the parchment he always carried and quickly marked it with a charcoal pencil: "There is a hidden ditch three feet below the vent, and a gap in the left wall is big enough for one person to fit through." He paused for a moment, then added: "Jing-jie's words may be an attempt to break the cycle."

Deeper underground in the water dungeon, he clung to the damp stone walls, listening to the distant footsteps of the patrolmen.

The gray mask he wore was taken from the patrol team's corpses, and the smoke bomb he carried was still warm from his body.

As soon as the patrolman's footsteps turned the corner, he kicked the smoke grenade away with a sharp "crack," and the yellow toxic mist shot upwards through the ventilation shaft.

"The olfactory puppet has malfunctioned!" came panicked shouts from outside.

Bi took the opportunity to break open the wooden door of the archives, where a logbook bound with chains was placed on the desk.

He drew his dagger and severed the chains. The words on the first page made his pupils contract: "The ninth experiment has failed. The Night-Bright Split has shown a rejection reaction. Permanent sealing is recommended."

As he turned the page, the ink became increasingly scribbled: "They say I'm crazy, but I know... only by killing the living one can the dead child rest in peace." He closed the journal, his fingertips brushing over the words "dead child"—that must have been the real Yoru, the original form that had been crushed by the Otsutsuki as a vessel.

The Bai Ye who is alive now is just a breathing backup.

"So she wasn't crazy, she was just too lucid." Bi stuffed the log into his pocket and heard the patrolman's footsteps approaching.

He ripped off the gray mask and threw it into the brazier. As he turned and rushed into the dark alley, the moonlight shone on the wall—where a newly drawn charcoal arrow pointed deeper into the dungeon.

On the wasteland, Bai Ye loosened the crumpled clay pot.

He stared at the blood-red talisman swaying in his lotus-like hair and suddenly said, "I'm going to the dungeon."

“You only have 30% of your chakra left.” Ren pressed down on his shoulder.

“But I need to know,” Bai Ye stared at the blood-stained mark on his left shoulder, “why they chose me as their replacement.”

The cawing of crows could be heard in the distance.

Kazama Shin, wrapped in a coarse cloth cloak, emerged from the mountain hollow on the other side of the wasteland.

He was holding a rubbing board in his arms, on which were the blurry patterns of the underground water dungeon altar—he had made a rubbing of it from the outer wall of the dungeon overnight.

He gazed in the direction of Bai Ye and Lian, then touched the cloth bag in his arms, which contained oral accounts from villagers in three villages: "Our children, too, have dreamt of being nailed to the altar."

As Kazama Shin bent down to arrange the rubbings, a smear of blood-red ink seeped from the corner of the plate, blurring into the outline of an infant on the ground.

The blood-red cocoon of the wasteland shimmered with a bluish-gray hue in the morning mist, and Bai Ye's fingernails dug deeply into his palm—he should have realized long ago that this sticky sensation was not a natural product.

As he moved, pale red liquid seeped from the cocoon walls, like a punctured blood bubble, revealing the interwoven ink lines beneath, each one wrapped with tiny incantations.

As the sound came from outside the cocoon, Byakuya's Wood Release chakra was already gathering at his fingertips.

But upon seeing who it was, his hand slowly fell down again—Shin Kazama was squatting beside a pile of rubble three steps away, his coarse cloth cloak stained with grass clippings, and he was holding a rubbing board in his arms, the edges of which were stained with undried blood ink.

“I collected seventeen oral accounts from the villages in the south.” Before Kazama Shin could speak, he lifted the hem of his cloak to reveal a string of wooden plaques hanging from his waist. “Children in every village said they dreamed of being nailed to an altar.” He pointed to the rubbing board, its crooked patterns gleaming eerily in the morning mist. “This is a rubbing of the underground water dungeon altar, and it perfectly matches the ‘blood pool pattern’ described by the villagers.”

Bai Ye tore off the last few ink threads, and the cocoon shell shattered into blood droplets that fell to the ground.

He noticed that Kazama Shin's knuckles were trembling—not from the cold, but from gripping his fist too tightly. "You went to the abandoned orphanage?" he suddenly asked, remembering that Kazama Shin had mentioned before leaving that he wanted to check the records of abandoned babies from twenty years ago.