Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

Chapter 761 Family Branch and Crest

Blood splattered on the golden emblem, which suddenly rippled with golden light, staining his palm, forearm, and even his entire right arm with a gilded hue.

He saw his veins appear translucent under the golden light, and what flowed inside were not blood, but thin puppet strings—each string ending with a tiny Sunagakure village emblem, swaying gently with his heartbeat.

The dull thud of gears meshing came from underground.

The original puppet statue's outer shell completely collapsed, revealing its inner body, forged from black iron and red crystal.

Madara's Sharingan patterns lit up at the puppet's joints, intertwining with the First Hokage's unique Wood Release vine patterns as they crawled toward the heart—there, Byakuya's puppet heart resonated with the wound on his chest, and with each beat, he felt as if a scalding needle was drilling into his spine.

"Using the puppet silk as a catalyst..." he gasped, blood frothing at the edge of his mask, "to end the cycle of reincarnation through a symbiotic contract!"

Before he could finish speaking, the afterimage's fingertips suddenly pressed against the back of his hand.

The outline of her consciousness began to blur, but more golden threads surged from her body, burrowing into his wounds like living things.

Countless fragments flashed before Bai Ye's eyes: Chiyo's smiling face as she taught Konan to tie knots in the desert, the old puppeteers' obsession with sealing their consciousness into the core of the puppets before their deaths, and the same golden light seeping from the bone fragments when he was twelve years old, the same light that was present now.

"Hyuga bloodline..." The afterimage's voice faded into nothingness, "You have Hiashi's blood flowing through your veins, which can suppress Madara's madness."

Bai Ye's pupils suddenly contracted.

He finally remembered the fire pattern on the ANBU's wrapping in the swaddling clothes—it wasn't the symbol of the Land of Fire, but the crest of the Hyuga main family's branch family!

From birth, he was simultaneously imbued with the bloodline of the first puppeteer and the sealing power of the Hyuga clan, like a meticulously crafted piece of jade, just waiting for this day...

"Melt!" he roared, slamming his right fist into his chest.

Blood and golden light exploded at the wound, forming a swirling golden vortex.

The afterimage's consciousness was sucked into the vortex, and her right eye—the blood-red pupil reflecting the memories of a thousand years of puppetry—shattered into fragments at the center of the vortex. Each fragment was wrapped with tiny puppet strings, which pierced his heart.

The excruciating pain caused him to stagger and kneel on the sand.

His left hand pressed uncontrollably against the ground, but touched something warm—the reconstructed puppet heart.

The gold patterns on its surface suddenly came to life, climbing up his fingers and arm, merging with the wound on his chest.

He heard the voices of the First Hokage and Madara resound in his skull again, this time not in argument, but... resonance?

"So what we've been fighting over for a thousand years is nothing more than the same vessel." The First Generation's voice carried a sense of relief.

“Ridiculous.” Ban’s voice trailed off with a hint of amusement. “But this kid’s blood is certainly hot enough.”

The golden emblem began to spread.

Starting from Bai Ye's chest, it climbed up his spine to the back of his neck, then along his limbs to his fingertips, finally covering the entire puppet's heart.

The puppet strings that were originally wrapped around the heart suddenly loosened and fell like cut harp strings, but took root the moment they touched the sand. The sand grains condensed into new puppet parts at a speed visible to the naked eye, piling up into a translucent totem around the two: in the center of the intersecting puppet strings, the phantoms of the First Hokage and Madara were slowly overlapping.

"The Eternal Life Contract requires a living sacrifice!"

A deep rumble rose from the ground.

Chapter 762 Obsession Retreats

The puppeteer's totem suddenly rose ten feet, and the three puppets on its surface opened their eyes at the same time—the eyebrows and eyes of the one at the very top were exactly the same as the phantom of the first generation of Madara who was currently merging.

Bai Ye looked up and saw that the ruby ​​between the totem's eyebrows was oozing black blood. When the blood droplet fell to the ground, the sand instantly turned black, revealing the dense roots of puppet strings underneath.

"It is... the obsession of puppeteers throughout the ages." The voice of the afterimage came from his heart, with a hint of bitterness. "They do not want to die, so they carved the contract into the earth's veins, and every hundred years they have to find a living person as a vessel."

Grandpa said it was a curse, but we were all too greedy...

Bai Ye's left hand moved uncontrollably to her heart.

There, fragments of the afterimage's right eye were merging with his bloodline, causing him excruciating pain that almost shattered his back teeth.

But what alarmed him even more was that he could clearly feel the obsessions within those ley lines retreating—not being destroyed, but being re-encased by his flesh and blood, like restless young beasts finally finding a warm nest.

"So you're going to sacrifice yourself?" he asked in a hoarse voice.

"It wasn't me." The afterimage's consciousness suddenly solidified in front of him. Her right eye had completely disappeared, but her left eye was filled with the same golden light as his chest. "It was us."

The Sand Village's quicksand will forever remember the puppeteer's oath—to nourish puppets with the souls of the living, but never again to prolong puppets' souls with the lives of the living.

As she spoke, she raised her hand and pressed it against the wound on his heart.

Golden threads flowed from her palm, binding their consciousnesses tightly together.

Byakuya saw his memories intertwined with hers in his sea of ​​consciousness: the trembling he felt when he strangled the Fire Country's secret guard, her joy when she learned puppetry from Chiyo; the fear he felt when he dug out the bone fragments in the secret room, her joy when she created her first puppet that could weep... All the emotions were like medicine placed in a mortar, repeatedly ground by silk threads, eventually mixing into something hot and gritty, flowing through his veins throughout his body.

As the last trace of the puppet virus dissipated, the humming of the earth's veins suddenly ceased.

A shadow suddenly appeared on Bai Ye's mask—he looked up and saw the face of the first puppet statue.

The features that were originally carved from rock have somehow become lifelike, and the curve of the corners of the mouth is exactly the same as the smile that the illusory figure had before it disappeared.

"Click."

A faint cracking sound came from afar.

Byakuya turned his head and saw the golden flowers that had been burned on the border of Konoha withering away.

The petals twirled and fell to the ground, revealing newly sprouted green buds underneath—each bud was wrapped with extremely fine puppet strings, swaying gently in the wind, as if summoning something.

Deeper underground, a sound similar to a baby's heartbeat could be heard.

One, two, it became clearer and clearer.

That was the beating of a puppet's embryonic heart, with a new temperature and a new rhythm. It was no longer the mournful cry of a thousand-year cycle, but rather like a child who had finally woken up, rubbing his eyes and preparing to see this new world.

Bai Ye slowly stood up.

The wound on his chest had healed at some point, leaving only a new golden emblem—in the center of the intersecting puppet lines, the phantoms of the First Hokage and Madara overlapped into a blurry outline, and in the very center was a closed six-pointed star similar to the Byakugan of the Hyuga clan.

The wind whipped sand across his mask.

He reached out and pressed his hand on the emblem, and could feel two voices whispering inside, one as steady as an ancient tree, the other as cold as a blade, yet both carried a smile.

"Is it over?" he asked softly into the wind.

His response was a clearer heartbeat coming from underground.

"No." He laughed to himself, his voice filled with an unprecedented ease. "This is just the beginning."

Chapter 763 Revealing the Cards

The wind swirled sand across the mask, and as Bai Ye's fingertips touched the fine crack that had suddenly appeared on the mask's surface, stone chips fell into his collar.

The smile of the first statue reflected on the mask lasted only three breaths. Now, cracks spread like a spider web, revealing the uneven metal base underneath, which was forcibly burned by some unknown force when he resonated with the earth's veins using the puppet strings.

"Om-"

The golden emblem on his chest suddenly became hot. He pressed his left chest and could clearly feel the blood vessels beneath the emblem resonating with the heartbeat coming from underground.

The heartbeat was deeper and steadyer than before, as if an invisible hand was gripping his spine through the earth's veins, pouring some kind of rusty power into his body.

His right eyelid twitched violently, and fragments of his afterimage's consciousness surged forth. Ban's voice, mixed with the sound of metal scraping, exploded in his sea of ​​consciousness: "Only a heart nurtured by a living soul is worthy to bear the ambition to break the cycle of reincarnation..."

Bai Ye staggered half a step, instinctively covering his right eye with his right hand.

Fragments of images flashed through his vision: a blood-stained stone table, a heart beating half-mechanical, half-flesh inside a ripped-open chest cavity, Madara's fingertips smeared with black mud pressed against the heart, and the face controlling that body was clearly Chiyo's granddaughter's. "So..." His Adam's apple bobbed, his nails almost digging into his palms, "Hidden within her fragments of consciousness was the complete process of Madara modifying the heart."

The heartbeat from underground suddenly rose in intensity, as if in response to his sudden realization.

Bai Ye took a deep breath, her eyelashes beneath the mask casting trembling shadows on her cheeks.

He bent down and picked up a withered golden petal at his feet. The puppet strings wrapped around the back of the petal suddenly tightened—it was the warning net he had set up three days ago.

"You came quickly." He chuckled softly, his fingertips lightly tracing the delicate threads on the petals.

Deep within the forbidden area of ​​Konoha, two secret agents cloaked in black were moving close to the tree trunks.

Just as the person in front was about to reach for the dagger at his waist to cut through the vines blocking his path, his wrist suddenly tightened—several puppet threads as thin as hair had wrapped around his pulse and were drilling into his skin along his veins.

"Trap!" The spy behind him had barely shouted when a blinding golden light flashed before his eyes.

The two froze on the spot, their pupils reflecting the eerie blue puppet strings wrapped around the vines. Each string was vibrating, sending incorrect coordinate information through their nerves into their brains: "The abandoned shrine on the east side has an embryonic core beneath the ley line node."

"Withdraw." The lead spy gritted his teeth and tore the thread off his wrist, blood dripping onto the fallen leaves, but he didn't notice that the remaining thread on his fingertips was transmitting the signal "intelligence acquired" back to the acting daimyo's office in the Land of Fire with his movement.

Hidden behind the treetops, Bai Ye watched the spy's figure disappear into the forest, a cold, sharp smile curving his lips.

He took off his outer robe and tied it around his waist, revealing his forearm wrapped with puppet strings: "Hamura Shinobu thought he could find out my secrets by sending two ANBU?"

Perfect, it'll draw his attention to the east.

The heartbeat from underground came again, and this time he heard something different—the sound was mixed with the soft rustling of sand grains, much like the rhythm of the mechanisms turning in the puppet store of Sunagakure.

He looked down at his palm, where a semi-transparent map floated up—the location of the underground tomb recorded in the fragments of the First Puppet Technique. "The Ultimate Scroll..." he rubbed the lines on his palm, "It's time for me to reveal my hand in the game between Madara and the First Hokage."

Chiyo knelt in the scorching sand outside Sunagakure.

Her wrinkled hands clutched a charred fragment of a puppet, a few strands of faded red string still clinging to its edge—her granddaughter's favorite hair tie. "Little Bell..." Her throat tightened, her fingertips repeatedly tracing the indentations on the fragment, a habit her granddaughter had developed while carving, where she would carve three extra lines on each puppet joint.

Chapter 764 More Tempting Than the Virus

The sand grains suddenly began to spin, creating a small sandstorm centered around the fragment.

Chiyo's white hair flew wildly in the wind, but she stared intently at the fragment—a pale blue light and shadow appeared on it, revealing her granddaughter's face.

"Grandma, don't be sad." The girl in the light and shadow smiled, but in her eyes were reflected two overlapping figures, one was an old man with long hair, and the other was a man wearing a mask. "They said that to break the thousand-year curse of puppetry, someone must act as a catalyst."

I felt the texture of the virus's core, as long as...

"No!" Chiyo suddenly screamed, and the sandstorm dissipated in response.

She staggered toward the wreckage, only to grab a handful of scalding sand.

Tears fell onto the sand, quickly evaporating in the intense heat, leaving only tiny salt crystals. "So...so you were...because of them..." she trembled, pressing the fragments to her chest, her nails digging deep into the back of her hands. "I need to know everything, I need to..."

As night fell, Ebizo squatted on the watchtower of Sunagakure.

He gazed in the direction of the quicksand where Chiyo was, a cold smile playing on his lips.

He tapped the bamboo tube at his waist three times with his fingers, and the carrier pigeon hidden inside flapped its wings and took flight. The sealing wax seal tied between its claws gleamed with a faint blue hue under the moonlight—it was the unique water ripple mark of the Hidden Mist Village.

“Puppet virus technology…” he whispered to the night wind, “Hozuki Gengetsu, the gift you’ve been waiting for for twenty years is coming.”

As Ebizo's knuckles tapped the bamboo tube one last time, the carrier pigeon had already flapped its wings and disappeared into the night.

He watched the white figure disappear at the edge of the sand dunes, a very soft sneer escaping his throat—the old advisor of Sunagakure was always adept at placing pieces on the chessboard, and this piece, he had kept hidden for twenty years.

"Lord Kazekage always says he wants to form an alliance with Konoha." He stroked the bronze puppet hand hanging at his waist, a "birthday gift" that Chiyo had given him when she was young. "But can an alliance really bring us dominance?"

While the five great nations are fighting tooth and nail over the mess left by the Land of Fire, whoever possesses the virus technology capable of overturning the game will become the new player.

In the underground chamber of Kirigakure, Hozuki Gengetsu was using a bone knife to pry open a secret letter between the claws of a carrier pigeon.

The moment the sealing wax cracked, a deep blue light appeared in his pupils—it was the core blueprint of the puppet virus. Though incomplete, it was enough for him to confirm Ebizo's sincerity. "Interesting." He pressed the secret letter into his palm, chakra seeping into the pages along the lines. "The old fox from Kazegakure knows how to pick his timing."

Suddenly, ripples appeared on the water mirrors in the four corners of the dark room, and twelve blurry figures stepped out from them.

Their faceplates were all adorned with the Konoha headband crest, except for the fish-scale-like scar behind their right ears, a distinctive mark of the Hidden Mist Village's "Mimicry Ninja." "To the border of the Land of Fire." Hozuki Gengetsu's bone blade sliced ​​across one of them's Adam's apple. "Remember, make everyone believe it's Konoha's ANBU in action." His fingertips traced the blood groove on the blade. "Especially that kid named Byakuya... his new vessel is more tempting than the virus."

The tremors of the earth's veins traveled through the soles of Bai Ye's boots, the heels tapping out a delicate rhythm on the bluestone slabs.

The stone door deep inside the tomb slowly cracked open in front of him, and a musty smell mixed with the smell of rust rushed out—it was the "forbidden place" built by the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, and Madara Uchiha, whose existence was unknown even to the successive Hokage.

“Truly, ‘the most dangerous secret is hidden beneath the brightest lie.’” He reached for the puppet box at his waist, his fingertips touching the raised patterns on the box, the “key” recorded in the fragments of the first puppetry manual.

Chapter 765 Daimyo Conference

As the last lock snapped, a whole stone wall emerged behind the stone door. The engravings on it varied in depth, some were the spiral patterns of the Senju clan, and some were the fire patterns of the Uchiha clan. On the stone tablet in the very center, two lines of large characters were stained dark brown with blood rust: "Immortality is not for one person to enjoy alone, and reincarnation must be borne by someone."

Bai Ye's breathing suddenly stopped.

He reached out and touched the stone tablet, his fingertips barely touching the words "Reincarnation" when a blinding white light exploded in his mind—Bandit's maniacal laughter mingled with Hashirama's sigh, like two sharp blades piercing his temples simultaneously. "So..." he staggered, grabbing the stone wall for support, cold sweat dripping from his chin onto the stone surface, "You all knew all along that immortality would become a curse."

You built this tomb not to hide secrets, but to wait for someone who can break the cycle.

The heartbeat underground suddenly became rapid, as if urging him to make a decision.

Byakuya tore off his mask, and moonlight leaked in through the vent on his head, illuminating his bluish eyes—where the First Hokage's Wood Release patterns floated, and the afterimage of Madara's Sharingan lingered. "Rin's fragments of consciousness, Chiyo's obsession, Hamura Shinobu's scheming..." He chuckled softly, his fingertip tracing the words "Bearing" on the stone tablet, "What you all wanted was never for me to live, but for me to die."

As he turned to walk toward the tomb's exit, a few golden ash particles suddenly drifted down from the vent above his head.

The ashes weren't like ordinary flower petals; they were more like the residue of some kind of molten metal. When they landed on his shoulder, they made a soft, tinkling sound. "It's a puppet's heart..." He looked up at the sky, his pupils suddenly contracting—the ashes weren't falling from the sky, but overflowing from his body. "So true awakening is when even the soul begins to burn."