Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

Chapter 971 False Records

“The name must cross the river,” she whispered, immersing the earthenware pot in the water.

The river suddenly swirled, and the ashes of the paper drifted towards the center of the river with the eddy, like a flock of white butterflies.

She heard the distant sound of the watchman's clapper, but she heard a different sound—footsteps, coming from the other side of the sacred river, growing closer and closer.

The holy river suddenly swirled, drawing the ashes bearing the child's nickname into the center of the eddy.

The wind lifted the white veil covering Orihime's blind eyes, revealing the pale blue veins at the corners of her eyes—she could clearly sense that the "memory waters" at the bottom of the river were radiating heat, like a giant beast that had been sleeping for many years finally shaking off the dust.

"Sister!" Twelve-year-old Xiaotao tugged at her sleeve, and the paper boats in the bamboo basket rustled in the night wind.

This is what Orihime begged for from door to door yesterday: the widowed old woman folded it out of old window paper, the carpenter's son drew a crooked sun on the bottom of the boat, and even the most mean-spirited rice shop owner stuffed three pieces into her hand—"My short-lived little pillar should also have a boat to cross the river."

Orihime crouched down, her fingertips tracing the frostbitten back of Momo's hand: "Remember what your elder sister taught you, call out names when you launch the boat." Momo nodded emphatically, the blue cloth rope on her braid brushing against the old scar on her wrist—a scar left three years ago when the Shige secret agent tore up her record of the "List of Rebels."

"Let's launch the boat!" someone shouted.

Hundreds of children crowded to the bank, and the paper boats fluttered towards the river like white butterflies.

Orihime heard a chorus of children's voices: "Grandma Li!" "Blacksmith Wang!" "Brother Chunsheng!" A little child called out in a childish voice: "Mommy, your boat didn't sink!"

She reached out and caught the splashing water. In her palm lay half a paper boat wreckage—the paper fibers, which should have rotted, were covered with a layer of pale gold powder, as if sprinkled with stars.

It's the name spore of White Night!

She suddenly remembered the ceramic bottle that the Rain Village caravan had delivered the day before; the spiral pattern remaining on the bottom of the bottle was exactly the same as the craftsmanship of the puppeteers from Sunagakure.

On the seventh day after the paper boat drifted downstream, seven children were squatting by a rock on the riverbank of a village on the border of the Land of Fire. "Brother Amu, look!" Little Pear, with pigtails, held up half a paper boat, on which the words "Chen Afu" were written crookedly in charcoal.

As Kazama Shin passed by carrying his lesson plan, he saw them using twigs to make rubbings of their names on the muddy ground.

"This is..." His voice trembled, and his Adam's apple bobbed.

Three years ago, when he was exiled, the "Shige Fragments" he burned himself contained the name "Chen Afu"—the medicine boy who died while testing medicine for the First Hokage.

Little Pear looked up and wiped her face with her muddy hands: "The stones by the well can talk!"

Kazama Shin ran after him.

A pale green liquid seeped from the cracks in the bluestone bricks of the old well at the village entrance, crawling along the lines to form a line of small characters: "Zhang Shouyi died as a substitute for a drug tester." He knelt down, his fingertips touching the characters, a chill running through his fingertips straight to his heart—this was the "inaccurate record" that his superior had crossed out with vermilion ink when he was a copyist at the History Bureau.

"Teacher, is this true?" Xiaoli tugged at his clothes.

Kazama Shin looked into the children's shining eyes, then suddenly smiled, but tears fell onto the bluestone slab: "It's true."

"You must write these names in a notebook, carve them on tree branches, write them on the edge of the well..." He grabbed Little Pear's hand and pressed it against the well wall, "so that every gust of wind will read them aloud for us."

Meanwhile, in the dungeon of the Fire City's Prison Division, Morikawa Satoru was using a copper shovel to turn over the ashes in the incinerator.

The fire burned all night, and the tattered pages of the "List of Rebels" curled into black butterflies in the flames, but the small words he had copied onto the back of the paper—"Wife ill with no medicine" and "Children young and needing to be fed"—could not be burned away.

The letter in his arms hurt his chest; it was from the Kazama Trust Caravan: "The ashes of the Prison Department should go where they should go." Morikawa Satoru stared at the faint ink marks in the ashes, then suddenly used the tip of his shovel to pick up half a piece of unburnt paper—"Lin Sanlang, beheaded for saying 'the price of rice should be lowered'."

His Adam's apple bobbed as he poured the entire shovel of ashes into the earthenware jar he carried with him, then sprinkled some coarse salt on top and covered it up.

Three days later at the morning market, when Morikawa's daughter was selling pickled vegetables from a jar, salt grains from the rim of the jar fell onto the muddy ground.

As the fine spring rain fell, several tender green vines suddenly sprouted from the mud, each vine tip bearing a small, millet-sized fruit with faint characters on its skin.

“Father!” The little girl tugged at his clothes, “Words have grown in the mud!” Morikawa Satoru squatted down, his fingertips brushing against the fruit. The peel split open, revealing the small words inside: “Lin Sanlang”.

His hands trembled violently, and tears fell onto the muddy ground. Two more vines sprouted from the puddles, bearing the names "Wang Erniu" and "Zhou Xiaoman".

In the ruins of Guiyuan Shrine, Baiye knelt on one knee, his palm pressed against the moss-covered foundation stone.

The First Hokage's chakra seeped into the earth's veins along with his Wood Release, and he could clearly sense that from the Hidden Rain River to the border of the Land of Fire, from the prison dungeon to the muddy ground of the morning market, pale golden naming spores were growing wildly along with the water, salt grains, and vines, like an invisible net, reconnecting all the erased names.

"It's time to end the formation." He murmured as he stood up, his fingertips tracing the vine-patterned wrist guards at his waist.

Suddenly, the wristband glowed with a bluish light, and countless tiny green shoots sprouted from beneath his feet, climbing along broken pillars, crumbling walls, and even the cracked ground.

He closed his eyes and focused his mind, as memories of the First Hokage flooded back—it was here that Hashirama Senju used Wood Release to connect the ley lines of the five countries.

At midnight, seventeen ancient wells within thirty miles of the Fire Capital simultaneously emitted soft sounds.

The peasant woman drawing water approached with a torch, and lines of small characters appeared on the well wall, swaying in the reflection on the water: "We remember your name."

Morikawa Satoru stood by the river at the edge of the village, gazing at his reflection in the water.

His Adam's apple bobbed, and his voice was as soft as a sigh: "Father..." This was the first time in thirty years that he dared to utter that name—"Madasuo Morikawa," the old scholar who was executed for speaking up for the starving people.

Behind the broken monument of Guiyuan Shrine, Baiye gazed at the faint glowing lights floating in the well in the distance, a very faint smile playing on his lips.

He reached out and caught a falling vine leaf. The first name slowly appeared on the leaf's surface—the first name erased from the jade book he had burned in the History Pavilion of the Fire Kingdom.

The wind surged from the depths of the five kingdoms' land veins, carrying a faint whisper.

Bai Ye gazed at the night sky, the First Hokage's chakra surging within his blood.

The broken monument of Guiyuan Shrine gleamed with a bluish-gray hue in the night wind. Bai Ye gazed at the fluorescent light floating in the well thirty miles away, his Adam's apple bobbing.

Those names, carried by salt grains, vines, and well water, are like stars shattered on earth—but stars fall, and names are washed away by rain.

Chapter 972 Night Raid on Iwagakure Village

His fingertips rested on the vine-patterned wristband, and the First Hokage's chakra surged in his veins like a scorching river, burning his eyes until they ached.

"Not enough," he murmured, his voice shattered by the wind amidst the ruins.

Simply making a name appear is useless; the historian's pen can erase it once, and it can erase it a second time.

Someone has to carve these names into paper, into bricks, into the bones of living people—someone has to dare to write them.

The wristband suddenly felt hot in his palm. He took off the wristband wrapped with green vines and gently ran his fingernails along the gaps in the vine patterns.

A thin, green membrane peeled off from the texture; it was the "inscription spore" cultivated by the first generation using wood magic, which could allow the text to take root on any medium.

He held the green membrane as he walked toward the altar, beneath which lay the earthenware urn he had buried the day before, its body engraved with the family crest of the first Thousand Hands.

"It's time for the Tanaka family's woodblock printing skills to be revived." He stuffed the green film into the mouth of the urn, and as he sealed it with clay, he rubbed his fingertips against the urn wall, as if he could feel the temperature of a hundred years ago through the clay. Tanaka Hisashi's grandfather had printed the first edition of the "People's Code," and those woodblocks that were burned by the History Museum of the Land of Fire should now be gathering dust in the cellar of the Bookshop Street.

He whistled, and the homing crow on his shoulder flapped its wings and flew over, its red beak gently catching the hemp rope at the mouth of the jar.

"Go to the bookstore street in Nanshi and find the man wearing an indigo shirt with ink stains on his left wrist." He whispered to the raven in its ear. The raven tilted its head, pecked at his fingertips, and then flapped its wings and disappeared into the night.

In the dungeon of the Fire Country's Prison Department, Morikawa Satoru's pen nib bleeds a pale blue ink onto the back of the death warrant.

This is ink he made by mixing indigo juice with firefly powder. During the day, it only appears as watermarks, but it becomes visible when exposed to fire.

He huddled under the oil lamp in the night watchman's room, the watchman's drum rang outside the window at the third watch, and the snoring of his colleagues came from next door.

A thin layer of sweat beaded on his palm as he wrote, "Li Chengyan, innocent, imprisoned for his words," the pen tip trembled so much it almost pierced the paper.

“My father said that words are the tombstones erected by the living for the dead.” He recalled the vine fruit his daughter pointed out to him at the morning market, and the “Morikawa Masao” that floated up in the well—the name he had kept hidden in his throat for thirty years.

He folded the death warrant he had written into small pieces and stuffed them into a coarse cloth bag containing unclaimed belongings. The bag was still stained with blood, left behind by the grain thief who was executed that morning.

Before dawn, blue smoke billowed from the chimneys of the crematorium.

An old woman scavenging for scraps squatted beside a pile of ashes, when suddenly she cried out in surprise—on a half-burnt piece of cloth, pale blue words flickered like fireflies. “Li Chengyan, innocent…” She tucked the cloth into her bosom and went home to spread it against the leaky wall.

The next day, when it rained, a line of small characters appeared on the muddy ground at the base of the wall, creeping along the watermarks towards the corner of the neighbor's yard.

At the oral history post station on the border of Sunagakure, Chiyo held a piece of mulberry paper up to the sunlight.

Thin, hair-like fibers of Mantra Vine were wrapped within the paper's texture. She lightly scratched it with her fingernail, and ink immediately seeped out from the broken fibers: "Lord Ōnoki stopped the massacre of Iwagakure back then because..."

"Grandma, Uncle Tsuchiya, who was discharged from the army three days ago, is here." Apprentice Xiaoju lifted the curtain, and the wind blew in sand, carrying with it the smell of old leather and rust.

Chiyo looked up and saw a hunched old man with a faded cloth covering his left eye and a chipped teacup in his right hand—the mark of a Sand Village ninja.

"Tell me about your time as a scout on the border of the Land of Wind." Chiyo pulled over a straw mat for him to sit on, and Kiku had already spread out a scroll of paper, her brush dipped in ink mixed with vine juice.

The old man's Adam's apple bobbed, and he spun the teacup three times in his palm, as if turning the sands of memory: "That year there was a severe drought, and we intercepted a grain truck..."

Three days later, the carriage, disguised as a merchant caravan, drove up the Konoha mountain road.

The man driving the cart always touched the back of his neck—that was the mark Chiyo had given him. In a hidden compartment under the cart floor, twelve volumes of "The True Record of Sand" were wrapped in tung oil cloth.

When they reached Eagle's Beak Cliff, seven or eight hunting ninjas sprang out from behind the rocks, their knife tips pressed against the coachman's back: "Inspect the goods!"

The leader of the hunters lifted the tarpaulin, revealing a cart full of salt and spices.

He drew his dagger and plunged it into the salt pile, then picked up a spice and brought it to his nose, suddenly stopping—on the bottommost salt packet, there was a very faint line, like vines crawling across it.

He squinted and leaned closer, tapping the salt block with the back of his knife. Salt grains fell down in a flurry, leaving nothing on the coarse cloth underneath.

"Let's go!" He waved his hand, and the scabbard patted the coachman's back.

When the carriage started moving again, the mulberry paper in the hidden compartment trembled slightly, and the words in the paper texture slowly unfolded between the fibers as the carriage bounced along with the ruts.

Meanwhile, in the mountains outside Konoha, a boy wrapped in a tattered cloak was carrying firewood into a cave.

He wore a Konoha headband on his waist, but he covered the mark with mud—it was a genin named Aoba, who had been hiding in the mountains for seven days to avoid capture.

The wind swept pine needles past the cave entrance, and he suddenly heard the fluttering of birds. Looking up, he saw a raven flying overhead, with a piece of mud-stained paper hanging between its claws.

As the corner of the paper drifted into the hole, the newly kindled flame on the green leaves licked it.

He frantically tried to pick it up, but in the firelight, he noticed bluish patterns appearing on the corner of the paper, and he could vaguely make out a few words: "...night raid on Iwagakure Village, in reality..."

The wind outside the cave suddenly picked up, making the flames flicker and the words appear and disappear, like an itch tickling the heart.

Qingye held the corner of the paper close to the fire, his throat tightening—this was something he had been searching for for three months, something that wasn't in the history books, something those "shadow doubles" dared not write.

He gazed at the gradually brightening sky outside the cave, his fingertips tracing the vine patterns on the corner of the paper, when suddenly he heard the sound of horses' hooves in the distance.

The sound of horses' hooves, whipped up by the wind, shattered the silence in the cave, and cold sweat instantly broke out on the back of Qingye's neck.

He shoved the corner of the paper into his pocket, grabbed half a piece of charred firewood, and smashed it against the campfire at the cave entrance—sparks crackled and popped, illuminating a few crimson points in the pre-dawn darkness.

As the sound of horses' hooves drew closer, he crouched down and felt his way to the crevice behind the cave. His back pressed against the cold rock wall, he listened to his own heart pounding violently in his chest, like the beating of a war drum.

He didn't dare to peek out until the sound of horses' hooves turned onto the downhill road.

The corner of the paper was digging painfully into his chest. When he took it out, the words in the blue pattern were even clearer than before: "In the autumn of the third year of Tianqi, all three hundred members of the Fire Kingdom's envoy delegation were slaughtered at the border of Yanyin."

“No.” Qingye’s fingernails dug into his palm. Three months ago, he had copied the “Six Kingdoms Alliance” in the Shige Pavilion and it clearly stated: “In the third year of Tianqi, the Huoyan and Er Kingdoms met at the border and jointly established the “Treaty to Cease War”.” He remembered the ink on that scroll of silk. The first line, “The daimyo of the Huo Kingdom personally led the delegation,” had the word “personally led” in ink that was three parts darker than the surrounding words, as if it had been deliberately emphasized.

The mountain wind lifted the tattered edge of his cloak, making the corners of the paper rustle.

Chapter 973 Nameless Commoners

Aoba suddenly remembered the painting "The Signing of the Peace Treaty" deep inside the Shige Pavilion—a silk painting in color, depicting the daimyo and the Tsuchikage holding hands, with a tent behind them flying the flags of the two countries, and even the gold patterns on the tent were depicted in exquisite detail.

But when he looked closer, he felt that there were some unnatural wrinkles in the shadows of the tent, as if something had been covered with paint.

“I have to go tonight.” He ripped off his mud-stained headband from his waist and scraped off the Leaf Village mark on the inside of the headband with his dagger—a secret mark he left when he stole the Shigeru key.

As the moonlight climbed over the eastern hill, he was already squatting on the old locust tree behind the Shi Pavilion, staring at the half-person-high crack at the base of the wall—the bricks he had loosened with stones three days ago were now making a soft, grinding sound in the evening breeze.

As the night watchman from Shiget turned the corner tower with his lantern, Aoba's breath almost stopped when the lantern's light swept across the base of the wall.

Only when the lantern light disappeared at the end of the west corridor did he slide down the tree like a raccoon. As he squeezed through the cracks in the bricks, a piece of skin was scraped off the coarse cloth on his back, and it stung painfully, but he didn't care.

The key to the hidden compartment is still there—sealed with wax in a wormhole in the beam.

When he took out the key, his fingertips were covered with wood chips from insect infestation, which clung to his palms with cold sweat.

As the copper lock on the third door clicked softly, he heard a soft, almost whimpering sound escape from his throat.

The scroll depicting the signing of the peace treaty was placed at the bottom of a sandalwood box. When the silk was unrolled, the musty smell of ink mixed with the scent of turpentine wafted out.

Qingye pulled out a small coarse cloth bag from his pocket, inside which was a developing powder he had made by grinding pine soot, alkaline soil and firefly shells—a powder he had secretly learned from a pharmacy apprentice and spent half a month preparing.

He held a fine brush and gently swept it along the shadows of the tent in the painting.

When the first dark mark appeared, his hand trembled violently, and the brush fell to the ground with a clatter.

Moonlight streamed through the window, illuminating dark red stains on the silk—bloodstains covered in turpentine, trickling down the tent canvas and spreading into shocking dark patches on the muddy ground.

Further away, the daimyo's right hand hangs at his side, the "alliance jewel" he was holding is gone, replaced by a bloodstained dagger, the notch on the blade perfectly matching the rubbing of the "Iwagakure Assassin's Weapon" he had seen in the prison archives three months ago.

“I see…” Qingye’s voice choked in his throat. He took out a corner of paper from his pocket and pressed the torn page against the edge of the scroll.

The vine fibers in the paper suddenly shimmered, perfectly overlapping with the dark patterns on the silk—this was the echo and confirmation of the original inscription spores.

The night market in the southern part of the Land of Fire was bustling with activity.

Kitahara Shimo stood on the newly built bamboo platform, her moon-white shirt glowing red in the light of the tavern's lanterns.