Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

In the underground bookstore of the Land of Fire, Tanaka Hisako had just stuffed the last volume of true history into a crack in the wall when he saw vines seeping out from the wall.

The vine tip lightly touched his brow, and as the cool mark appeared, he heard countless voices explode in his mind—the cough of his grandfather when he taught him to copy scriptures, the snickering of the bride under her veil in the burned "Records of Weddings and Funerals in Various Countries," and the choked sob of a boy when he was twelve and copied love letters for someone, saying, "I want to remember the way she smiled."

The thunderstorm in Kumogakure hadn't stopped yet. Bi stood atop the castle tower, letting the rain soak the marks on his forehead.

On the street below, an old woman selling grilled fish clutched a faded family photo and wept; a man carrying farm tools suddenly knelt in the middle of the road and shouted "Sister!" to the empty space; even the winery owner, who always said "Why bother remembering the past," held up a wine jar and murmured to the moon: "Mother, I can finally taste the sweetness in the osmanthus wine you brewed."

"Seven days later, the mark will be automatically activated." Bai Ye's voice, mixed with the mist, entered everyone's ears. "If you keep it, you will live with all the memories; if you erase it, you will return to your former purity."

When Ren Onodera returned to the village where he grew up, he stumbled upon a father and son fighting under a locust tree.

The father grabbed his son's wrist and pressed it against the millstone, trying to rub off the light blue mark: "Your mother was killed by Iwagakure ninjas, and her blood splattered on half the wall!"

"I've been begging the cleaners every day, just so you'd forget about this!" The son cried, pulling away, snot bubbles still on his face: "But last night I dreamt she touched my face, it was warm... Dad, I don't want her to only exist in your dreams."

She didn't try to dissuade them; she simply built a bamboo pavilion at the entrance of the village.

A wooden sign hangs in front of the pavilion, inscribed with "Memory Crossing" in vine sap; inside the pavilion are two small tables, on the left is a celadon bottle containing the golden-glowing condensed memory dew; on the right is a rough pottery bowl containing the clear water of the River of Oblivion.

On the first night, an old woman came with an empty medicine bottle, begging for the Dew of Memories: "I want to hear my grandson call me 'Grandma' again." On the second night, a young girl trembled as she picked up the River of Oblivion: "His eyes were open when he died, and I'm afraid to dream of him again."

On the third night, the moon was mostly obscured by clouds.

An old soldier in faded armor pushed open the bamboo curtain, the sound of the armor plates clashing startling the sparrows under the eaves.

He stared at Ning Yilu for three breaths, then suddenly grabbed the porcelain bottle and emptied it completely.

Wine dripped down his beard, but he seemed to have lost his spine, collapsing to his knees with a thud: "I remember... that year in the Land of Rivers, those children who called me 'Uncle,' when I charged in with a knife, they even stuffed wild fruit into my arms..."

Inside the castle tower of the Land of Lightning, Hisama crushed the third secret letter impeaching him.

Three purification envoys sent by the Cloud Hidden leadership blocked the entrance. The elderly man in the lead patted the purification scroll at his waist: "You have arbitrarily stopped the purification process. Do you know your crime?"

"Sin?" Bi curled the corners of his mouth and pointed out the window.

The envoys gathered at the edge of the viewing platform, their pupils suddenly contracting – throughout the entire Cloud Hidden Plaza, from white-haired elders to toddlers, the blue marks on their foreheads were connected, forming a huge vine pattern as they joined hands.

They sang ancient tunes that no one had ever heard before, their voices like mountain streams, like the waves of pine trees, like the most authentic human voices before they were cleansed.

"This is..." The old man pressed his hand to his chest, where the plum blossom brand suddenly burned with pain. "Impossible!"

The purification mark is...

"It's a chain made of memories." Bi drew his lightning-patterned dagger, the tip of which lifted a strand of the old man's white hair. "But when the other end of the chain is tied to thousands of 'I remember,' your technique becomes a joke."

At this moment, in an underground bookstore a thousand miles away.

Tanaka Hisashi touched the bulging scroll of paper in his arms—it contained records that 127 people in Snowfield Village chose to retain their memories, 53 people in the border town of the Land of Fire chose to forget, and he had transcribed the ancient tune of Cloud Hidden Plaza into three whole pages using shorthand.

He gazed at the rising mist outside the window, then stuffed a sheepskin bag into his bosom, containing the collected remnants of the Dew of Memory and the sediment from the bottom of the Bowl of Oblivion.

"I have to go to the Land of Wind." He blew on the candlelight, and sparks flew onto the edge of the scroll, making the words "Selection Statistics" flicker. "I have to write all of this down." The clear sound of the short sword being drawn startled the snow falling from the eaves. Tanaka Hisashi's knuckles, gripping the hilt of the sword, turned white from the force.

He stared at the pale blue mark on his palm—the mark left by the trembling hand of the distillery owner three days ago when he was collecting data in the Land of Thunder. "It's the pattern from the osmanthus tree by the stove when my mother was brewing osmanthus wine."

At this moment, the mark burned with his heartbeat, as if urging him to unveil the parchment scroll hidden in the scabbard of his short sword—a "selection list" he had compiled over three months in seventy-two cities across five countries.

Chapter 1045 The Cleaner Paradox Notes

"Young friend, are you looking for sealing wax?"

A hoarse question came from behind the broken wall.

Tanaka looked up and saw three hunched figures straightening up from the scorched earth.

The oldest man had a blood-soaked cloth wrapped around his left hand and a half-worn, blood-inked brush in his right. Undried silk was scattered at his feet, with ink still dripping from it: "We are recopying the family genealogy."

The writing on the silk was crooked and distorted, with some places blurred by bloodstains, like blooming red plum blossoms.

Tanaka Hisashi squatted down and saw that the first line read "Three generations of the Zhang family: father Zhang Shouye, mother Chen Aju, son Zhang Tiezhu," while the second line read "Burned in the spring of the 42nd year of the Fire Country, the monastery was burned."

His Adam's apple bobbed: "That year...you burned the family genealogy."

“It’s been burned.” The old woman in the middle stroked the silk with her fingertips, which had no nails. Her nails had been removed by the purifiers with a branding iron years ago. “The purifiers said that ‘the name is poison,’ and burning it would save your life.”

We rushed towards the ancestral hall with torches in hand. My husband's hands trembled like leaves as he burned his father's memorial tablet—he said he heard his father crying inside the tablet.

The youngest old man suddenly knelt down, his knees pressing down on a piece of charred wood.

That charred wood used to be the carved corner of the genealogy cabinet. He crookedly added the character "Li" to the charred wood with his blood-ink pen: "I burned twelve genealogies, and I turned to the last page of each one, writing the names of the living people in my sleeve."

Later, the purifier said, "Even memories need to be burned," so I had my name engraved under my gums.

Last month, blue marks appeared. I peeled back my gums, and the marks were still there, deeper than I've lived.

Tanaka Hisashi's short sword clattered to the ground.

He trembled as he reached for the "Scavenger Paradox Notebook" in his pocket—a fragment of a manuscript written in blood by Fujiwara Shizuka in the dungeon, which he had copied twelve times.

At that moment, he pulled out the thinnest book, dipped it in the old man's blood-soaked cloth, and added a line on the title page: "Atony is not the end, remembering is the beginning."

"Take it." He shoved the notebook into the old woman's hand. "Every name you write is a knife."

The old woman's hands trembled violently as she held the notebook. The blood-ink pen fell with a "smack" onto the three characters "Zhang Tiezhu," the ink spreading out like a flower.

As Tanaka Hisashi bent down to pick up his knife, he heard a child's voice carried on the mountain breeze in the distance—it was the tune from Snowfield Village, an ancient tune he had heard in Cloud Hidden Plaza.

Kazama Shin's gray shirt was lifted by a corner by the mountain wind. He squatted in the ruins, watching the children stuff paper rolls covered with names into the pottery jars.

Seven-year-old Xiaokui clutched her pencil tightly, refusing to let go: "Teacher, I wrote 'Atao,' but I don't know who Atao is."

“Amo, it’s you.” Kazama Shin gently held her hand. “A hundred years ago, this was the first orphanage. Before each child was taken away, their name would be erased.”

The little mole on your wrist is exactly the same as the mark on the dominoes I found in the ruins.

Xiao Kui's eyes lit up. As she stuffed the rolled-up paper into the earthenware jar, her fingertips brushed against the dent on the jar's wall—a fingerprint left by a baby struggling.

When the last jar was buried, the earth suddenly trembled.

Blue mist surged from the cracks in the ground, transforming into a hundred or so translucent shadows: a girl with pigtails, a boy with a runny nose, and a baby clutching a rattle drum.

They floated to the earthenware jar, reached out to touch it, and the scroll of paper flew out of the jar with a "whoosh" and landed steadily in the palm of the phantom.

"Atao." The phantom figure with pigtails looked down at the scroll, tears dripping onto the words "Atao." "I finally have a name."

Kazama Shin's temples throbbed as he suddenly heard Fujiwara Shizuka's voice, as if coming from the bottom of a distant well: "You did very well... braver than me." He looked up and saw a blurry image appear in mid-air—the moment the bronze bell fragment pierced the mechanism, Fujiwara Shizuka's lips curled up, but tears welled in the corners of her eyes.

That was the last recorded image of her, hidden in the crystal deepest part of the dungeon, which he had pried out three days ago with vines.

"I'm just... continuing your journey in your place," Kazama Shin said to the air.

His bruise suddenly burned with pain. He looked down and saw Xiao Kui tugging at his clothes: "Teacher, that sister is laughing, just like you."

On the ruins of Guiyuan Shrine, Baiye gazed at the blue star trails flowing in the sky.

Those stars are the rays of light from every blue mark on the land of the five kingdoms, connected together like the rattan balls that my mother used to weave.

He pressed his hand to his chest, where the green shoots had pierced through his ribs, and with each heartbeat, a faint sound would enter: "I remember Grandma's hands," "I remember his eyes," "I remember what my name is."

"Does it hurt?" Ren Onodera's voice came from behind.

The hem of her skirt was stained with blood and ink, which she had gotten on it when she was applying the River of Oblivion to the last ten people who chose to forget in the bamboo pavilion of "Memory Ferry".

Bai Ye shook his head: "Their memories are rooted in my body, more real than pain." He turned to look at her, moonlight falling on the wisteria blossoms in her hair. "You ask me if I still want to live?"

Onodera Ren didn't say anything, but simply handed over the wooden box he was holding.

Inside the box were seventy-two glass beads, each containing a wisp of memory—she had retrieved them from the pool of blood ink. "These are the last fragments kept by those who choose to forget. They say, 'At least remember the choice you made.'"

Bai Ye reached out and caught the wooden box. The moment his fingertips touched the glass beads, a girl's voice rang in his mind: "His eyes were still open when he died, but I remembered the shape of his eyelashes." He suddenly smiled: "From today onwards, everyone who chooses to remember is a cleaner."

Before the words were finished, a streak of crimson light flashed across the sky, like a torn piece of silk.

Bai Ye's green bud suddenly throbbed with pain. He stared in the direction where the crimson light had disappeared and heard a faint cracking sound coming from the depths of the Star River of Memory—that was the signal of the "End Protocol," seven days earlier than expected.

Following his gaze, Onodera Ren frowned and said, "The Blood Ink Tower..."

At the border of five countries, flames simultaneously erupted from eight blood-ink towers.

In the firelight, countless people raised their hands to their foreheads, their blue marks flickering in the night sky like stars scattered by the wind, or like a raging fire.

Bai Ye gripped the wooden box tightly, and the tendrils of Qingya sprouted from between his fingers, entwining each glass bead.

He gazed in the direction where the crimson light had disappeared and said softly, "It's time to go and fetch them."

The moment the crimson light tore through the sky, a metallic taste rose in Bai Ye's throat.

The sprout within him was trembling in a way he had never felt before—not the pain of being torn apart by an external force, but the heat of roots penetrating his bone marrow, as if countless tiny sounds were surging up his blood vessels, crashing into a sea of ​​light at his temples.

Chapter 1046 The Holy Spring for Cleansing Evil Thoughts

As he gazed at the flames rising from the border of the five countries, he suddenly remembered the tattered scroll of paper he had found in the underground water dungeon three days earlier.

Aoba Hachi wrote in his own blood: "The mission of the cleaners is to make the world clean, but in a clean world, even pain is swept into the gutter." At this moment, the flames of the eight blood ink towers were not destruction, but a kind of response—the vines that he had nurtured with his Wood Release were climbing along the earth's veins, burning out translucent patterns in the flames.

"So you had a backup plan all along." Bai Ye chuckled softly at the wind, his knuckles turning white from clenching his fists.

The wooden box in his palm still held his warmth, and the fragments of memory within the seventy-two glass beads resonated with Qingya, each beat etching a new name into his heart.

He bit his tongue, and as the metallic taste spread, he suddenly understood: the answer to Aoba's eight questions, "A clean cleaner or a living person in pain," was never in the choice, but in the responsibility.

His fingertips touched the short sword at his waist, the scabbard still bearing the vine pattern carved by the old priest of Guiyuan Shrine.

He slashed his palm open with his backhand, and as the blood dripped onto the scorched earth, a faint cracking sound came from beneath the ruins.

When the first vine sprouted from the rubble, he saw pale blue veins emerging from its surface—the sunflower that Xiao Kui had drawn on the back of his hand yesterday.

The second and third vines sprang towards the Blood Ink Tower like living creatures, each branch entwined with faded strips of cloth, chipped wooden plaques, and even half a rusty copper bell.

“Grandma’s hand.” He heard a whisper from within the vines. Turning his head, he saw a translucent flower blooming at the top of the vine, the face of an old woman floating on the petals, with soot still clinging to the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. “His eyes.” Another flower bloomed on the left, revealing a boy, his eyelashes covered in icicles, exactly as Xiao Kui had described “the shape of his eyelashes.”

Bai Ye reached out and caught the falling petals. The petals shattered into starlight the moment his fingertips touched them, but the starlight did not dissipate. Instead, it drifted towards the distant firelight.

"white night!"

When Onodera Ren's voice came rushing over on the wind, he was looking up at the vines weaving a net of light in the night sky.

The bloodstains on the hem of her skirt had dried, but the wisteria blossoms in her hair were more vibrant than ever—he had coaxed them open this morning with his Wood Release technique, saying he wanted to give them to "the bravest array master."

At this moment, sparks clung to her hair, and she clutched half a blood-stained array diagram in her hand. Her eyes shone with an astonishing brilliance: "The trajectory of the Blood Ink Vine growing against the flames is the natural foundation of the 'Memory Forging·Eternal Inscription Array'!"

Just as Bai Ye was about to speak, Lian grabbed his wrist and pointed to the mountain path.

The figure of the old woman in the gray robe swayed in the firelight. The back of her hand, which was leaning on her cane, was covered with age spots, but the blue mark on her forehead was like an activated gem, flashing. "She was the one who chaired the purification workers' meeting three years ago," Lian's voice trembled, "the one who personally burned three hundred copies of the family tree."

When the old woman approached, Bai Ye smelled the scent of pine soot ink on her.

She stared at the array diagram in Lian's hand, her Adam's apple bobbing: "When I burned the family genealogy back then, a little girl grabbed my skirt and cried, saying that her father had carved it with his fingernails." She suddenly raised her head, tears welling in her cloudy eyes, "I burned her memories, but her cries have been burning in my ears for three years."

Lian immediately knelt on one knee, the vines in her hair sweeping across the scorched earth: "Please be the seventh caster."

Use your pain to forge an unbreakable skeleton for your memories.

The old woman's cane slammed to the ground with a thud.

She knelt down, her wrinkled hands stroking the vines in Lian's hair, then touching the still-bleeding wound on Bai Ye's palm.

Finally, she sat down in the center of the circle formed by vines, her voice like sandpaper scraping against a stone: "This old bone of mine should give that little girl from back then an explanation."

The moment the seven people held hands, Bai Ye felt a warm current flow down his arm and into the array's core.

The flames of the Blood Ink Tower suddenly reversed, transforming into a crimson river that poured into the vine-woven net of light.

He heard Lian chanting the incantation, each word like a nail, driving those floating fragments of memory into the air—this time not into crystal or a wooden box, but etched into the wind, the clouds, and every inch of land licked by flames.

The alarms in Kumogakure went off at that moment.

The moment the messenger bee was crushed, the black blood seeping from its body condensed into Gu patterns in the palm of the hand.

He stared at the surging flames outside the tower and tapped his knuckles on the stone table: "The Purifier Envoy has activated the 'Soul-Eroding Gu,' intending to devour the spiritual power of the Azure Seal holder during the explosion." He turned to look at the Dark Guard members kneeling on the ground. "Go, shut off all the gates of the water purification system."

The leader of the secret agents looked up: "Then what will the common people drink?"

“The underground Blood Ink Spring.” Bi pulled off the Cloud Hidden Headband from his waist, the metal edge gleaming cold in the firelight. “Three years ago, when they threw blood ink into the spring, they said it was a ‘holy spring to cleanse evil thoughts.’”

Now, let them taste whose evil thoughts are soaking in the holy spring.

When the faces of their ancestors floated to the surface in the wooden bowl of the first household, Bi stood atop the tower and smiled.

He saw the old blacksmith crying while holding a bowl, his tears dripping into the bowl, making the reflection on the water's surface even clearer; he saw a little girl with her hair in two buns tugging at her mother's sleeve, calling out "Grandma's earrings," while those earrings were pinned to the bottom of her mother's chest in a red cloth.

The heartbeat of the entire Cloud Hidden City suddenly became clear, like a war drum being struck, traveling from the east to the west, and then crashing back to the east.

The purifier's scream rang out when his heartbeat was at its most rhythmic.