Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

“Mr. Tian, ​​I’m listening.” His voice was hoarse, and he gripped Tanaka Hisashi’s cold wrist with his other hand. “I remember everything you say.”

“Go find Kazama Shin…” Tanaka Hisashi’s pupils began to dilate, and his withered fingers suddenly tightened, almost crushing Saeki Hotaru’s wrist bones. “Leave my eyes… to the academy.”

The last word dissipated in the exhaled breath.

Saeki Hotaru watched his fingers gradually loosen, her Adam's apple bobbed, and she reached out to close her eyes, which were still stained with ink.

Moonlight streamed in through the window, illuminating the cracks on Tanaka Hisashi's neck. Green shoots were sprouting at a visible speed, weaving a fine net across his pale skin.

"What do you need your eyes for?" Saeki Hotaru reached for the short sword at her waist, the scabbard still bearing the bloodstains from when her eyes were gouged out. "You can't even see yourself..."

The sound of the dagger being drawn was soft, yet it rang out jarringly in the empty post station.

He lifted the black cloth covering his eyes, revealing his only remaining right eye reflecting the moonlight, with the scar of an old injury still visible at the corner of his eye.

The moment the blade pressed against his eyeball, he closed his eyes briefly—back when his eyes were gouged out by the Otsutsuki Anbu, he had fainted from the pain; now, for Tanaka Hisashi's last wish, he felt that the pain was a kind of redemption.

Warm liquid trickled down his cheeks and into his collar. He gritted his teeth and put his eyeballs into the ceramic bowl, grinding them with the blood ink he had prepared beforehand.

When the ink mingled with the green liquid in his eyes, a wisp of pale blue smoke rose up, condensing into the character "信" (xin, meaning letter) at the rim of the bowl before quickly dissipating.

“These are your eyes, and your memories.” He wrapped the ceramic bowl in cloth and drew three wisteria flowers on the seal—this was his secret code with the Snowfield Village. “Mr. Kazama will understand.”

Three days later in Xueyuan Village, the morning mist had not yet dissipated.

"Aya, don't touch it!" Kazama Shin had just jumped off his horse when he saw the girl with pigtails standing on tiptoe to reach the ceramic bowl on the windowsill.

He quickly stepped forward and caught it. When his fingertips touched the bowl, his palm trembled slightly, as if someone had tapped a pebble on the bottom of the bowl.

“It’s a letter from Mr. Saeki!” The girl clung to his arm to look at it, the red ribbon in her hair swaying in the wind. “I still have the painting he sent last time, which I put up on the kang (heated brick bed).

The moment the ceramic bowl was opened, the scent of ink mixed with the aroma of fresh grass wafted out.

Kazama Shin dipped his fingertip in ink, and the coolness shot through his veins to the back of his neck—it wasn't ordinary ink, it was living ink, flowing beneath his skin as if searching for something.

"Tonight we'll hold a blind writing ceremony." He looked out the window at the vine forest and suddenly spoke, "Write the names you remember while blindfolded, using this ink."

The children's cheers startled the sparrows on the eaves.

As the last rays of the setting sun sank into the mountain valley, the earthen bed in the school was covered with white paper.

When the cloth strip was used to cover the eyes of the most mischievous Hikaru, the boy secretly pulled off the cloth strip and laughed: "Kazama-sensei, I can write 'Mom' even with my eyes closed!"

"Write with your heart." Kazama Shin retied the cloth strip, his voice as soft as a sigh. "Write about the people you most want to remember."

When the first drop of ink fell on the paper, the oil lamp suddenly burst into flame.

Xiao Guang's hands trembled uncontrollably, and the ink traced out the word "Mom," then extended into half a flower, a cradle, and a hand covered in dough—the image of his mother kneading dough in front of the stove, a scene he had forgotten since he was three years old, now emerging from the ink.

"That uncle is laughing!" Aya suddenly pointed to the ceiling.

Everyone looked up and saw a ray of light streaming in through the window, illuminating the "Mr. Tian" she had written.

The ink characters seemed to come alive and floated up, forming Tanaka Hisashi's face in the air: he wore an old straw hat, clutched a manuscript in his hand, and had ink stains in the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, just like when the children first met him.

"Mr. Tian!" "Mr. Tian has come to see us!"

The children's shouts crashed against the earthen walls, making the paper windows rustle.

The face gently shook its head, but the corners of its mouth curved upwards, as if to say, "Don't be sad."

As Kazama Shin watched it gradually turn into specks of light and merge into the vine forest outside the window, he finally couldn't hold back and knelt down, covering his face. As those specks of light disappeared into the vine leaves, he heard Tanaka Hisashi's voice, as gentle as the handwriting in the manuscript: "Pain is for remembering, not for trapping you."

Meanwhile, the entrance to the underground water prison.

Bai Ye stood in front of the collapsed cave, watching the newly sprouted vines spread across the mountain rocks like giant pythons.

Under the moonlight, the vine veins gleamed with a bluish-green light, and each branch was adorned with unopened flower buds, exactly matching the branded markings on his shoulder.

"Sister Jing?" He touched the short sword at his waist; the vine pattern on the scabbard was getting hot.

A faint sound came from deep within the cave.

He followed the vines down, the damp wind carrying the smell of earth hitting his face, until he saw the stone tablet in the center—the tablet, which was originally covered with forbidden spells, was now woven by vines into a line of words: "Sister Jing, Ye Ming is gone, but his name lives on."

"Was Yeming your childhood name?"

The sound came from the surface of the monument, without echoing, yet it penetrated straight into his bones.

Bai Ye suddenly looked up and saw Fujiwara Shizuka's figure floating in front of the monument: she was wearing an old prison uniform from the underground water dungeon, with bits of grass still stuck in her hair, but the hatred in her eyes was gone, leaving only a chaotic gray, like a piece of pottery whose color had been washed away.

"You think I hate you?" Her lips didn't move, but her voice was clear as if it were right next to my ear, "No... I hate the world that has to kill my son."

Bai Ye's fingers clenched into her palm.

Three years ago, he broke into the water dungeon to save her, but she used her last chakra to crush his headband. At that time, he thought she hated him for not coming sooner, but now he realized that she hated that fate only allowed one of her mother and son to live.

“Sister Jing…” His throat tightened, “I will make this kind of world disappear.”

The ripples on the monument suddenly intensified, and Fujiwara Shizuka's figure began to blur.

Just as Bai Ye was about to reach out, the scar on his left shoulder suddenly burned with pain, as if a hole had been burned into it by hot tongs.

He staggered and grabbed the stone tablet for support, when he heard a childish voice emerge from beneath his skin, trembling with tears yet firm: "Brother... this time it's my turn to protect you."

He stood frozen in place, the bloodshot eyes tinged dark red by the moonlight.

That was Aoba Hachi's voice, the voice of a seven-year-old child he had seen in the cleansing records, the voice of a child who was taken away by the Otsutsuki.

"Qingye?" he called softly, his throat dry.

The wind blew in from the cave entrance, making the vines rustle.

Bai Ye touched his left shoulder; the once pulsating brand had cooled down, and the green buds had stopped growing at some point, as if waiting for something.

As he gazed at the dust rising from the crumbling stone tablet, he suddenly recalled Tanaka Hisashi's dying words—"The cleaners shouldn't have a leader." Perhaps from this day forward, what should be protected is never any particular person.