Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

"Let's go." Bai Ye wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and went inside first.

The inside of the altar was darker than the outside.

The dome overhead had a crack, through which moonlight leaked down, illuminating a stone platform in the center.

On the stone platform sat a slab of stone with a faint blue hue, its surface densely covered with runes that seemed to crawl around like living things.

Two people stood on either side of the stone platform.

Bai Ye recognizes the one on the left.

His long, pale hair reached his waist, he wore goggles over his left eye, and his right cheek was covered with dark red markings—he was a messenger of destiny.

He was leaning against the stone wall, a cold smile on his lips, as if waiting for a scene that should have been played out long ago.

The one on the right...

Bai Ye's pupils suddenly contracted.

That was the fourth generation Kazekage, Rasa.

But it wasn't the corpse Gaara killed in his memory, nor the stiff puppet resurrected through Edo Tensei.

He wore a Wind Shadow Robe, and the sand gourd at his waist gleamed with golden light. His skin was translucent, revealing flowing rune threads beneath, like a curse sewn into his body.

"Welcome," the Messenger of Destiny said, his voice like two stones rubbing together. "I knew you would come."

"Rasa?" Chiyo's sand blade clattered to the ground.

She staggered two steps, then suddenly stopped—that was not the Fengying she knew at all.

Luo Sha's eyes were empty, and a strange smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He was completely different from the man who had schemed against his own children for the sake of the village. It was as if something had been stuffed into his shell.

"You think you can stop me by breaking the barrier?" The Messenger of Destiny pushed aside the stone wall, and runic threads flowed from his fingertips, instantly wrapping around the four walls of the altar. "Unfortunately, you simply cannot understand the greatness of the 'Will of the Living'."

Bai Ye took a half step back, his back pressed against the rough stone wall.

He stared at the threads—almost identical to the Yin-Yang Twin Array he had seen before in the Fire Kingdom's Daimyo Mansion, only denser and sharper, like a net that would shred the entire altar.

“I see,” he said in a low voice, his tone cold. “You don’t want to collect wills, you want to collect the wills of everyone…”

“Turn into fuel.” The messenger finished for him, “The obsessions, desires, and fears of the living, these things come together to form a river, which will allow me…” His fingertips traced across Luo Sha’s chest, “to let all those who are meant to live live forever.”

Luo Sha suddenly let out a hoarse laugh: "Living forever...what a wonderful gift."

Chapter 592 Soul Burning

Bai Ye's bone wings instantly transformed into blades.

He rushed toward the nearest thread, and the bone blade wrapped in lightning chakra precisely sliced ​​through the runes—the moment the thread broke, Rasa's body swayed, and the runes on his face dimmed for a moment.

“Interesting.” The Messenger’s pupils narrowed to slits. “Your bone wings can actually simulate the first generation’s sealing technique.”

No wonder you've become my biggest variable.

Before the words were even finished, the altar shook violently.

The ground beneath Bai Ye's feet cracked open, and black mist surged out, like countless hands grabbing his ankles.

He felt his chakra draining away, as if someone was sucking it out of his pores with a straw.

Cold sweat trickled down the back of his neck and into his collar, but the temperature inside the swaddling clothes was rising higher and higher, scalding his palms red—it was the baby he had rescued from the daimyo's mansion in the Land of Fire, whom he was protecting to his chest, who was now clutching his clothes and emitting weak cries.

"Hang in there," he said to the baby through gritted teeth, more like he was saying it to himself.

He pushed the resonance of thunder to its peak, and the lightning on his bone wings almost pierced his retina.

The black mist that was pulling him sizzled as it was burned by the lightning. He took the opportunity to rush toward the Messenger of Destiny, his bone blade pointing straight at the other's throat.

"Too slow." The Messenger turned his head to avoid it, and as he raised his hand, Luo Sha suddenly pounced from the side.

Bai Ye had no time to react.

Rasa's Sand Release was faster than he remembered; golden sand grains wrapped around his wrist, and he suddenly pulled.

He stumbled and crashed into the stone platform, the swaddling clothes on his chest being thrown off—Ebizo cried out in surprise, his medical chakra shooting out like an arrow, barely catching the baby.

“The core stone tablet!” Chiyo shouted.

Bai Ye then noticed that Luo Sha was gripping the dark blue stone slab on the platform, the runes on his face throbbing wildly.

His hands were beginning to become transparent, as if flesh and blood were being swallowed by a stone slab, but his expression twisted into ecstatic joy: "With this, I can...I can..."

"You could be attacked from behind." Bai Ye wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. "Do you think you can control it?"

Luo Sha's laughter stopped abruptly.

His arm began to shatter, first his fingertips turning to dust, then his wrist and shoulder.

Black blood gushed from the runes on the stone slab, climbing up his veins and causing skin to rot and bones to be exposed wherever it went.

With his last scream still stuck in his throat, he dissipated into a cloud of black mist, leaving only the clanging sound of the stone slab falling to the ground.

Bai Ye rushed over and grabbed the stone slab.

He could feel the power struggling within the stone slab, like a wild beast trapped in a cage.

But when he inserted the stone slab into the groove on the stone platform, the runes suddenly reversed direction and began to surge towards the Messenger of Destiny.

"You have no idea what you've done!" The messenger's voice finally cracked.

He tried to back away, but the inverted runes wrapped around his ankle. "This will destroy the entire ninja world's consciousness network!"

"So what if it's destroyed?" Bai Ye said, panting, pressing down on the stone slab. "It's better than you burning it as fuel."

The altar suddenly fell silent.

The runes stopped moving, and the black mist slowly dissipated.

Chiyo's sand blade was still raised in mid-air, Ebizo was holding a baby, and the young ninjas were huddled in a corner, all staring at Byakuya.

He could hear his own heart pounding and feel his chakra draining away rapidly, like water from a leaky bucket.

"Is this... enough?" He looked at Chiyo, his voice as soft as a leaf.

Chiyo stepped forward, and Sand Release gently supported his swaying body.

Her fingers traced his bloodied cheek, and something shone in her eyes, a mixture of relief and heartache: "You did it, child."

But this is just the beginning... The future of the ninja world needs many more people like you.

Bai Ye wanted to laugh, but the movement aggravated the wound at the corner of her mouth.

He felt the scene before him begin to blur; Chiyo's face, Ebizo's medical scroll, and the stone slab on the platform all became double images.

The last thought was the cry of a baby in swaddling clothes, so small, so bright, like a star.

Then, he fell into darkness.

When his consciousness returned to that void, he heard someone speaking.

The voice was very soft, as if it drifted from a great distance: "His soul... is burning."

Chapter 593 Belief

In the void, Bai Ye's consciousness was like being thrown into boiling oil.

He saw himself on a snowy night when he was ten years old.

The father's blood bloomed on the ice, like a frozen red plum blossom; the mother's hand was still in the posture of pushing him out the door, and the kunai stuck in her throat was covered with a thin layer of frost.

The brazier in the cabin had long since gone out. He huddled behind the woodpile, his fingernails digging into his palms, listening to the sound of ninja boots crunching through the snow receding into the distance—it was the sound of the Iwagakure ANBU chasing after his parents, because they refused to hand over the scroll of the secret technique that could amplify wind release.

"belief."

The deep voice, like rusty iron chains, coiled around from all directions.

The shattered images began to distort, and the mother's corpse suddenly sat up, blood gushing from her empty eye sockets: "You said you wanted to protect the people who were important to you, but when we died, you didn't even dare to cry out."

The ten-year-old self crawled out from behind the woodpile, his face still covered in wood chips: "And then?"

Later you killed those Iwagakure ninja and burned down their stronghold, but what happened after that?

The civilian girl he saved when she was twelve years old knelt on the ground, the baby in her arms crying—it was a stray bullet he had shielded with his body during the war in the Land of Rain. The girl's husband was buried in the ruins, and her tears dripped onto the baby's swaddling clothes: "You said you wanted to end the war, but our village is still being bombed."

His teammate Archer, who died in his arms at the age of seventeen, had his throat slit by a water blade from Kirigakure. Blood and foam mixed with his words: "You said you wanted to change the rules of the ninja world, but look at the present—the daimyo of various countries are still using ninjas as tools, and haven't you yourself become a vessel for the stone tablet?"

Bai Ye's temples throbbed.

He tried to cover his ears, but touched something warm and wet—it was blood from his nose.

There was no wind in the void, yet the blood droplets floated eerily, condensing into a mirror before his eyes.

His appearance was reflected in the mirror: bone wings pierced out from his back, and dark purple runes were climbing up the wing bones, like a swarm of hungry ants gnawing at flesh.

"Your strength comes from your belief," the voice grew closer, carrying a rotten, sweet stench, "but is belief alone enough to sustain you?"

When the 'most precious person' becomes the price of your power, when your so-called 'salvation' is nothing more than another form of destruction, how long can you hold on?

The bone wings in the mirror suddenly made a crisp sound.

The outermost bone fragment cracked open, and runes seeped into it, instantly turning the originally snow-white bone fragments pitch black.

Bai Ye staggered backward, crushing fragments of memory at his feet—his trembling hand when he first killed an enemy, his dazed state as he watched children fly kites from the roof of the Daimyo's mansion in the Land of Fire, and the forced smile he gave Chiyo when he said, "I'll draw away the pursuers."

"I can't fall." He gritted his teeth, the taste of rust on his tongue. "There's still so much left undone—the orphans of the Land of Fire need new shelters, the babies of Sunagakure shouldn't be born under the shadow of war, and those ninjas used as pawns by the daimyo of various countries..."

"They don't need you." His ten-year-old self suddenly stood in front of him, his eyes empty black holes. "You're just another madman consumed by power. What's the difference between you and Rasa?"

"Shut up!" Bai Ye roared, his bone wings suddenly unfurling.

The dark purple runes were scattered by the shock, but then gathered together again as if they were alive.

He felt as if a red-hot iron rod was drilling into his brain, and with each movement, his chakra leaked out even faster—it was the backlash from the stone slab, gnawing at his soul when his consciousness was at its weakest.

In the real-life Sand Hidden Chamber, Chiyo's fingertips suddenly tightened.

She was using Sand Release to wrap around Byakuya's wrist, sensing the surging chakra within him.

What should have been a surging stream now resembled a water bag riddled with holes, leaking away every second.

Even more terrifying were the black threads mixed in with the chakra, which were crawling along the blood vessels toward the heart—the same symptoms that Rasa had when he died, only more insidious and more deadly.

Chapter 594 You Can't Save Anyone

"Sister, his temperature is dropping." Ebizo's voice came from behind.

The man, who always smiled with his eyes narrowed, now had a tense face. The medical scroll lay open on his lap, and his fingers pressed against Bai Ye's neck: "His pulse is as weak as a thread, and his chakra is so disordered..." He paused, "...worse than being under a tenfold genjutsu."

Chiyo didn't look back.

She stared at Bai Ye's pale face, where the wound that cut from his brow bone to his jaw was still bleeding. Blood droplets dripped down his chin onto the cushioned stone bed, forming a small, dark red sun.

Three days ago he was standing on the altar, his eyes like a quenched knife, but now he is like a crumpled piece of paper, ready to crumble in the wind at any moment.

"It's the backlash from the stone slab," she whispered, the sand grains forming fine needles in her palm as she gently pried open Bai Ye's eyelids.

His pupils were severely dilated, leaving only extremely fine black dots: "When he forcibly reversed the runes, he drew the power of the stone tablet onto himself."

That thing wasn't chakra, it was... "Her Adam's apple bobbed," it was the remnant of the ninja world's consciousness, carrying all the memories of war, betrayal, and despair.

Ebizo's fingers paused on the scroll.

He suddenly recalled the scene at the altar three days ago: when Bai Ye pressed down on the stone slab, the moment the runes reversed, he clearly saw a dark shadow emerge from the stone slab and wrap around Bai Ye's ankle.

I thought it was just my imagination at the time, but now it seems...

"You knew this would happen?" He looked up abruptly. "So you protected him with the sand blade on the altar?"

So you won't leave even a step now?

Chiyo's sand needles trembled slightly.

She remembered when Bai Ye fell towards her; the child's weight was frighteningly light, like a leaf dampened by rain.

She remembered his last words, "Is this... enough?", the last syllable of his voice seeming to melt away in the wind.

“He’s different from us.” She lowered Bai Ye’s eyelids, and grains of sand slid down her fingertips, piling up into small dunes on the stone bed. “We old folks have long been worn down by the rules of the ninja world.”

But he… “Her fingertips gently traced the scar at the corner of Bai Ye’s eye,” she continued, “he still believed he could change everything in his own way.”

"Naive." Ebizo sneered, but did not refute further.