Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

"It's... the First Hokage?" Gaara's voice trembled.

He had seen that iconic spiral hairstyle in the history books. At this moment, the cuffs of the phantom were still stained with the undried green wood release essence, as if it had just come out of the forest of the Thousand Hands.

Bai Ye's fingertips uncontrollably traced the cracks in the mask.

The phantom of the first generation suddenly spoke, its voice mingling with the sound of pine trees and birdsong: "It's time to end this, child."

Chapter 703 The Highest Level of Puppetry

These words struck Bai Ye like a hammer blow to the heart.

He recalled the black liquid surging in the earth's veins, the eerie green light spots between the brows of the various daimyo, and Granny Chiyo's words before she vanished: "Sever the cause and effect of a thousand years"—it turns out that the so-called end is never destruction, but rather allowing the manipulated to regain their choices.

He took a deep breath and pressed the mask hard against the still writhing core of the puppet in the center of the underground palace.

The golden patterns instantly exploded from his palm.

Golden veins emerged beneath Bai Ye's skin, like living talismans, creeping along her blood vessels toward her neck and cheeks.

He could hear the faint cracking sounds of his bones, not from pain, but more like the joyful cry of some kind of seal being broken.

A muffled roar came from the depths of the earth's veins, and Madara's phantom broke through the soil. His crimson Sharingan swirled in the shadows, and a cold smile curled at the corner of his mouth: "You think you're the game-changer?"

It was just the third sacrifice in my plan.

"Sacrifice?" Bai Ye's voice trembled as the golden patterns spread, yet it carried a smile. "You've planned for a thousand years, using the daimyo of various countries as fertilizer, using puppetry to lock away free will—but you miscalculated." His pupils reflected the gentleness of the first phantom. "Granny Chiyo said that the highest level of puppetry is to make people believe they are making choices."

But true freedom is a variable that even the manipulators didn't anticipate.

The illusory image of the spotted figure suddenly distorted.

His Sharingan flashed with angry red light, but melted away like ice and snow the moment it touched the golden patterns: "Senju's chakra... and Uchiha's too?"

Who exactly are you?

His answer was the crisp sound of the bronze pendant shattering.

The old pendant that had always hung around Byakuya's neck suddenly exploded, and the blue of Wood Release and the gold of Sand Release intertwined to form a chain that shot into the depths of the earth's veins like a living dragon.

The black liquid in the underground palace emitted a sharp hiss, like a group of snakes that had been scalded, twisting and writhing frantically in an attempt to escape, only to be precisely entangled by the chains and pulverized inch by inch.

"Boom—boom—boom—"

The hearts of the puppets in each country exploded simultaneously.

Golden light pierced through the dome of the Daimyo's mansion in the Land of Fire; the thunderclouds in the Hidden Cloud Village of the Land of Lightning suddenly dispersed, revealing a clear sky; on the rock walls of the Hidden Stone Village of the Land of Earth, ice cones that had not melted for a thousand years began to fall in a flurry; on the sea surface of the Hidden Mist Village, the ocean currents that had been stagnant for a hundred years began to flow again; and in the desert of the Hidden Sand Village, clear springs began to seep from the dried-up riverbeds.

Morning light poured down from the cracks at the top of the underground palace.

As Bai Ye looked up, the golden mark on his neck, which he had once thought was a curse, was slowly fading, eventually turning into an ordinary, shallow scar, like a mountain path after the snow melts in spring.

He looked at Gaara, who was reaching out to catch the golden sand that fell on his shoulder. The sand grains condensed into small suns in his palms, so warm that it made one want to cry.

Mei Terumi picked up the water sword and gently ran her fingertips over her reflection in the blade—there was no weariness in the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, only a sense of relief at finally letting go.

She turned to look at Onoki, the old Tsuchikage, who was using Rock Release to rebuild the collapsed rock wall. His movements were slower than usual, but with a touch more gentleness.

"Is it over?" Gaara asked softly.

Bai Ye twitched the corners of his mouth and reached out to catch a ray of sunlight.

The light carried the fragrance of Konoha flowers, the hot wind of Sunagakure, the dampness of Kirigakure, the thunder breath of Kumogakure, and the earthy scent of Iwagakure—a mixture of countless flavors of freedom, more precious than any ninjutsu.

“No,” he said, “it’s the beginning.”

Before Ban's phantom completely dissipated, he took one last look at the chain.

He heard the First Hokage's voice echoing in the wind: "The combination of Hashirama's cells and Sunagakure's Magnet Release is a variable that Rasa traded his life for."

You see, true freedom is never one person's plan, but... the path that millions of people forge themselves.

Outside the underground palace, in the skies above the five great nations, the last glimmer of golden moonlight quietly faded.

Chapter 704 The Puppet Master's Embers

In the deepest stone chamber of Sunagakure, the musty smell mixed with the fragrance of aged ink wafted into Ebizo's nostrils.

His withered fingers traced the wormholes along the edge of the ancient sheepskin scroll, while the candlelight crackled and popped in the bronze lampstand, casting flickering light on the dark patterns on the scroll.

When he saw the spiral pattern in the lower left corner of the third page, his fingernails dug into the parchment, his knuckles turning bluish-white: "Wood Release... the First Hokage's Wood Release technique!"

A sliver of sunlight shone through the ventilation opening in the dome of the sealed room, falling directly on the back of his hand, which was covered with age spots.

Ebizo leaned closer, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints—the dark, vine-like patterns perfectly overlapped with the golden scar he had glimpsed on Byakuya's neck the day before.

His Adam's apple bobbed twice, and he suddenly tugged at his sleeve, causing the silver bell on his wrist to ring softly. The red pottery urn in the corner of the wall cracked open, revealing the scorpion-shaped puppet fragments wrapped in oilcloth inside.

"Click." He took the hollow mechanism box out of the puppet's chest cavity and stuffed the torn half-page of the ancient scroll inside, his fingertips trembling slightly.

This puppet is the prototype of "Hiruko" that Scorpion made in his early years, and the joints still retain the intricate carvings unique to young puppeteers.

Ebizo blew a breath onto the glass bead in the puppet's right eye, and the chakra mark inside the bead immediately turned a deep blue: "Go to the Wind Altar, take the underground ley line."

The puppet's legs suddenly straightened, and the sound of the springs at its joints trembling was very much like an ancient sigh.

Ebizo watched its retreating figure as it crawled out of the secret chamber, then looked down at his palm—the tingling sensation from touching the ancient scroll still lingered there, the residual chakra of the First Hokage's Wood Release, carrying a faint, gritty feeling, much like the fine sand from the Land of Wind that Rasa had brushed against his palm when he taught him hand seals.

The scorched earth of the ruins of Konoha, a thousand miles away, made Byakuya squint.

He crouched down, and as soon as his fingertips touched half of the bronze pendant fragment, memories flooded back like a tide: the intertwined Wood Release patterns flowing in the blood mist, the First Hokage's palm pressing on the baby's neck, the Sand Village's golden sand enveloping Hashirama's cells and seeping into the skin; Madara's cold laugh piercing through time and space: "You think this is a seal?"

This is the key he left for posterity!

"Cough..." Bai Ye suddenly covered his mouth, and a trace of blood seeped out between his fingers.

He then realized his knees ached from kneeling, and the golden patterns on the fragment were creeping up his fingertips and onto his arm like tiny, living snakes. "It's not Madara's seal..." he murmured, pressing the fragment to his chest. "It's the core of the puppet that the First Hokage... created himself." A gust of wind whipped up a charred Konoha headband, brushing against his face; the cracks on the headband bore a striking resemblance to the broken edge of the fragment.

Inside the highest council chamber of Iwagakure, the Fifth Hokage's military boots crunched over the ice.

As she threw off her battle robes and sat down, the twelve leaders of the Dark Guard behind her simultaneously knelt on one knee. The clatter of their armor startled the snow sparrows on the beams, causing them to flutter away. "Look," she said, pointing her gloved finger at the location of the Land of Fire on the map, where the scorch marks from before the golden moon went out still remained. "The daimyo of the Land of Fire is dead, and all the nations are eyeing the vacant mines."

The leader of the ANBU on the left looked up, a scar from his left eye running from his brow bone down to his jaw: "Lord Tsuchikage, are you saying... to use our puppet mine?"

"Puppets?" The Fifth Hokage scoffed, his fingertips tracing the rock-edged short sword at his waist. "Those pieces of scrap metal corroded by the black liquid should have been burned long ago."

But the mines of the Land of Fire contain the First Hokage's ley line lock, capable of triggering the ley lines of various countries. "She suddenly leaned forward, her pupils reflecting the flickering candlelight," the variable that Rasa sacrificed her life for, Madara hadn't foreseen; but neither had the First Hokage—"her blade tip lifted the map, carving a deep line at the border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Earth," the puppeteers of Iwagakure had already buried a second key in the ley lines.

The members of the secret service held their breath simultaneously.

Some noticed that half of the golden sand was sticking out of the Earth Shadow's sleeve, gleaming unnaturally in the candlelight, as if... it had been forcibly solidified by some force.

Outside Sunagakure, at the Wind Altar, the nascent puppet of Hiruko crawls along the sand.

Its iron claws carved deep trenches in the sand, and suddenly, its front claws came to a sudden stop—a faint smell of rusty water drifted through the air.

The puppet's neck turned 180 degrees, and its glassy eyes reflected the surging waves behind the distant sand dunes. The waves did not land, but instead solidified into chain shapes, gleaming with a ghostly blue light in the sunlight.

"Click..." A mechanical sound came from the puppet's throat as it tried to turn and escape.

But the water chains had already wrapped around its ankles, and clear springs seeped from the deep gullies in the sand, reflecting the purple chakra clouds that suddenly appeared in the sky—the water-style markings unique to Kirigakure.

Hidden in the secret room, Ebi suddenly looked up, and the candlelight went out with a "poof".

He groped in the dark, grabbed the copper bell on the table, and shook it, but could only hear the rapid beating of his own heart.

Chapter 705 Planting the Flag

A faint sound of water lapping against the water drifted from afar, mixed with the cracking sound of puppet joints snapping, much like the sound Sasori made when he left Sunagakure and smashed the last human puppet.

Meanwhile, on the ruins of Konoha, Byakuya was putting the bronze fragments into his arms.

As he stood up, the wind suddenly shifted, bringing with it a faint, almost imperceptible smell of rust.

He squinted and looked toward the direction of the mist, the shallow scar on his throat slightly burning—it was the key left by the first generation resonating, and also a new variable, surging toward this place along the earth's veins.

The sand at the Wind Altar was swirled into the air by the water chains, and Mei Terumi descended from mid-air, stepping on the waves, the hem of her light blue kimono billowing like a tide.

Water droplets gathered on her fingertips as she traced a chakra mark on the puppet's forehead—a unique intelligence-deciphering technique of Kirigakure.

Upon reading the contents of the ancient scroll fragment, her eyebrows shot up, and the water blade on her wrist swiftly pressed against the puppet's throat: "Wood Release Pattern?"

When did Sunagakure begin its connection with the old guard of the Land of Fire?

The mechanism in the puppet's throat suddenly turned, and its two glass eyes burst open simultaneously, releasing dark green poisonous mist like a snake's tongue.

Mei Terumi spun around and leaped away, her Water Release technique forming a protective shield around her. The poisonous mist crashed into the water curtain, producing a sizzling, corrosive sound.

She gazed at the sand, corroded into a honeycomb pattern, and a cold sneer curled at the corner of her lips: "Scorpion's puppet really did have a backup plan." Before she finished speaking, iron spikes suddenly burst from the puppet's chest cavity, one of which grazed her earlobe and pierced a deep hole in the sand—the bottom of the hole was inlaid with half a piece of bronze pattern similar to the fragment of White Night.

Inside the secret chamber of Sunagakure, Ebizo's silver bell suddenly shattered into pieces.

He staggered and grabbed the table for support, his palm pierced by copper slag. Blood dripped onto the parchment scroll, seeping into a strange spiral along the wood-style patterns. "The smell of water rust..." He sniffed, cold sweat soaking his collar—the distinctive sweet and pungent smell of the Water Release technique from Mist Village.

His fingers trembled as he reached for the communication puppet at his waist, only to find that the string had been burned through, and the charred ends were still emitting wisps of smoke.

Byakuya, amidst the ruins of Konoha, suddenly clutched his chest.

The fragments were burning hot under his clothes, making his skin red. He could clearly sense the collapse of the puppet a thousand miles away—not ordinary damage, but the core being forcibly dismantled by external force. "Someone has moved Ebizo's pawn," he murmured, his boots suddenly sinking into the sand.

Looking down, he saw black quicksand surging up from beneath the scorched earth, wrapping around his ankles as if it were alive.

"Crack!" A crisp sound came from not far away.

Bai Ye looked up and saw three abandoned Konoha puppets suddenly straighten up. In the hollow of their chests, black quicksand was condensing into new heart embryos.

Their joints creaked and groaned as they slowly approached him.

Bai Ye took two steps back, forming a hand seal to summon a kunai, only to see the puppet at the front explode with a "bang"—not from an attack, but from the heart embryo disintegrating on its own, with shards of sand splashing onto the back of his hand, scalding him and causing him to gasp.

"Evolution failed?" He squinted, noticing that the sand grains seeped into the scorched earth after landing, outlining tiny blood-red lines on the ground.

The wind swept through the ruins, bringing with it a faint wail, like... the screams of a living person being swallowed up.

The golden scar on Bai Ye's throat suddenly burned, and fragments of the first generation's memories flashed: "The ley line lock requires a human sacrifice." He suddenly squatted down, his fingertips digging into the sand where the blood lines were, and dug out half a miner's fingernail—still stained with fresh blood.

The furnaces in the Hidden Rock Mine spewed out crimson flames.

The fifth-generation Iwakage stood on the observation deck, watching the miners, controlled by the puppets, throw one puppet core after another into the molten pool.

Those cores, originally scraps corroded by the black liquid, now exuded a ghostly blue light under the high temperature, like countless eyes turning in the furnace. "The Eye of the Earth's Vein, complete." She removed her iron gauntlet, her fingertips pressing on the hilt of the rock-bladed short sword, the blade reflecting her cold, hard features. "Plant the flag."

Twelve Jonin from Iwagakure leaped up simultaneously, and the white flag with black rocks of Iwagakure unfurled with a "whoosh" on the cliff face of the Land of Fire's border.

The manipulated miners suddenly screamed, and blood began to seep from their skin, resonating with the blue light in the molten pool—it turned out that the so-called "smelting" was nothing more than feeding the Eye of the Earth with the flesh and blood of living people.

The Fifth Hokage glanced at the trembling miner, and as she turned away, her boots crushed a drop of solidified gold dust, which she had picked up at the border of Sunagakure the day before. "Rasa's gold dust... has become the best fuse."

The moon rises very slowly in Sunagakure.

Ebizo returned to his chambers in the dark. As soon as he lit the candle, he saw half a puppet joint on the windowsill.

His pupils contracted, and he reached out to touch it, only to see Chiyo's family crest etched on the surface of the joint—the mark of her most proficient "Thousand Machine Manipulation".

The night breeze lifted the gauze curtains, and he heard a faint metallic scraping sound coming from the courtyard, much like the soft clatter of a hundred puppets turning their joints at the same time.

“Chiyo…” He gripped the short sword at his waist, only to find that the scabbard was empty.

The moonlight outside the window was suddenly shrouded in shadow. He looked up and saw a hundred puppets floating in mid-air, each with eerie green flames burning in its eye sockets. The mask of the puppet at the front slowly lifted, revealing the face beneath... the face of his granddaughter, whom he had buried with his own hands.

Chapter 706 The Gamble of Sunagakure

The moonlight, like a rusty knife, cut through the paper windows of the Sunagakure advisor's bedroom.

Ebizo's fingertips were still on the empty scabbard, cold sweat trickling down the back of his neck and into his collar—he clearly remembered personally sheathing the short sword before going to sleep, but now there was only a dark red knife mark inside the scabbard, as if it had been melted by something scalding hot.

The metallic scraping sounds in the courtyard suddenly intensified as the joints of a hundred puppets rotated simultaneously, producing a soft, rustling sound similar to silkworms gnawing on leaves.

Ebizo looked up. Under the moonlight, the group of puppets floating in the air looked like dark clouds pressing down. The mask in the front row was slowly rising, and the face that was revealed made his Adam's apple tremble. It was his granddaughter, whom he had personally placed in the sandalwood coffin. There was still a small scar on her brow bone from when she was secretly practicing puppetry last year, where she was scratched by a wooden splinter.

"Grand...granddaughter?" His voice was lighter than a grain of sand in the wind.

"The puppet threads that Grandpa used before he died," the puppet's lips parted, its voice like sandpaper scraping against metal, "pointed directly to your study."

Ebizo's pupils suddenly contracted.

Three months ago, when Chiyo died of old age, he dismissed everyone under the pretext that "the head of the family needs peace and quiet before his death." However, he found the puppet thread wrapped around Chiyo's wrist in the sandalwood coffin. It was the secret control thread of "Thousand Machine Manipulation." The end of the thread should have been connected to the operator's knuckles. But when he cut the knot with his own hands, he clearly saw gold dust seeping into the end of the thread, as if it had been forcibly torn off by some force.

"You...you've been controlled by evil magic!" He took a half step back, his lower back bumping against a rosewood table, causing a teacup on the table to tumble to the ground with a "clink".

In the moonlight, the eerie green flames in the eye sockets of the granddaughter puppet suddenly shone brightly, and a hundred puppets simultaneously raised their arms, their metal fingertips gleaming coldly.