Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

Onodera Ren quickly turned around, the wooden hairpin in his hair swaying—it was the communicator Aoba had given him.

She opened the briefing and added a sentence after "Luo Sha's Testament circulated among the people": "The content involves the conspiracy of the three shadows." Before the ink was dry, she pressed the wax seal of the archives onto it.

The words "Three Kage" were like a thorn in her side. She knew the Fourth Raikage's volatile temper, the Third Tsuchikage's suspicious nature, and even more so, she knew that the "Kage Substitute" who was now sitting in the position of Kazekage hated it most when someone mentioned "another version of himself."

In a side hall of the Shige Pavilion, Fujiwara Shizuka's hand, holding the wolf-hair brush, was trembling.

The candlelight, flickering in the draft of the "Announcement Refuting the Forged Book," was illuminated by a draft of the candle.

She recalled the scribe's words from this morning: "That fake will says the Speaker sent poisoned tea. You need to use the historical records of the past three hundred years to prove that the Speaker didn't even touch the teacup."

But as soon as she turned to the "Inner Court Chronicles" from ten years ago, she saw the passage she had copied by hand: "On the fifteenth of July, the Speaker brought the secret box into the Fengying Palace. Three days later, Fengying claimed to be ill." The ink still carried the fragrance of that year; it was written with pine soot ink specially supplied by the Shige Pavilion.

"The historian?" came the cough from outside the door. "The announcement must be presented to the daimyo before dawn."

Fujiwara Shizuka's pen tip pierced the paper, and the ink spread across the two characters "fake book" like drops of congealed blood.

As she gazed at the gradually brightening sky outside the window, she suddenly remembered the ashes that had risen from the incineration tunnel last night—the tattered pages of the "Shadow Substitution Agreement" that had been burned were now seeping into every well in the City of Fire, along with the spores of White Night, through the basement's drainage system.

(The sound of a night watchman's clapper came from afar, "Dry weather—be careful with fire—") Fujiwara Shizuka's gaze fell on the "Contemporary Records" on the desk. On the latest blank page, a line of small characters had appeared: "History can be altered, but people's hearts cannot be deceived." The ink was still wet, like a piece of red-hot charcoal, making her fingertips tremble.

As the alarm bell of the Shige Pavilion tore through the night, the wolf-hair brush in Fujiwara Shizuka's hand snapped on the Xuan paper with a "snap".

Ink flowed down the broken pen, staining the words "forged book" with a hideous black blot—the sound was all too familiar. During her seven years in the History Pavilion, she had only heard the alarm twice: once when the former Speaker passed away, and the other time when enemy spies were discovered on the border of the Land of Fire.

At that moment, the candlelight cast swaying shadows on the window paper. She stared at the scroll of images that had just been retrieved on the table, her Adam's apple bobbing.

The scroll is a dynamic record sealed using "shadow writing". She had just bitten her fingertip and dripped three drops of blood, and the scroll unfolded into a semi-transparent light screen on the table.

In the scene, the current Kazekage is standing on the high platform of the Sunagakure festival, raising a sake cup in his right hand to greet the people.

But the little finger of that hand was twitching at an extremely subtle frequency, like a puppet being pulled by strings—this was a sequela that only the first Hokage's substitute test subjects would suffer from. The First Hokage's annotation was found in the secret archives of the Shigeograph: "The nerve connection technique will damage the nerves in the little finger, making it impossible to control for life."

The date of the poisoned tea mentioned in the "memoir" was three days before the footage was taken.

Fujiwara Shizuka dug her nails into her palms, recalling the copy of the "Shadow Substitute Agreement" that Norifumi had slapped on her desk that morning, which clearly stated that "Subject R7 was confirmed to be brain dead on the day the poisoning occurred."

However, the "Wind Shadow" in the video appeared vividly at the festival three days later, with its little finger still twitching—clearly a living puppet created by the Shadow Substitution Technique.

"Lord Historian!" came the sound of the clerk kicking the door open. "The daimyo needs to see this announcement before 7 AM!"

Fujiwara Shizuka abruptly snatched the draft, the still-wet ink pages crumpling into a ball in her palm.

She laid out new paper, the wolf-hair brush hanging in mid-air, when she suddenly remembered the words that had floated to the surface of the well water last night: "History can be altered, but people's hearts cannot be deceived." Those words were like a piece of red-hot charcoal, now branded onto the back of her neck.

She bit her tongue and added a heavy sentence after the statement, “Upon verification by this office, the so-called will is inconsistent with the actual record: “If there is indeed a will, it should be written by the person himself.”

The moment the ink seeped into the paper's texture, the alarm bell suddenly rose a half-tone, like a snapped string on a musical instrument.

Fujiwara Shizuka's hand trembled, and the wolf-hair brush fell to the ground—this was a change in the alarm bell's tone, signifying the fall of the core area of ​​the Shige.

She watched the shadowy figures flashing past the window, then suddenly grabbed the scroll of images and stuffed it into her clothes. As she turned around, she knocked over the candlestick.

Flames licked at the "Contemporary Records" on the desk. Staring at the dancing flames, she felt for the first time that the gilded title stung her eyes.

The incinerator in the Department of Penitentiary Affairs spewed even more fiercely when the alarm bell rang.

Morikawa Satoru huddled in the ventilation duct of the recording room, the bitter smell of burnt paper lingering around his nose—this was the third time he had heard the incinerator working all night, the previous two being the night the former daimyo of the Land of Fire died suddenly, and the day after the Sand Village Shadow Substitution Agreement was signed.

At this moment, he looked down at the guards patrolling back and forth, his Adam's apple bobbing—the guards' waist swords had changed style, now they were the "Wind-Splitting Blade" of the Shige's direct secret service.

"They've increased guards and burned paper all night. What are they destroying?" Morikawa Satoru reached for the brass key in his pocket, a key mold for the records room that he had spent three months making by gluing rice grains together.

He held his breath and slid down the pipe. The moment his boots touched the ground, he heard the guards' footsteps approaching.

He crouched down and crawled into the hidden compartment behind the filing cabinet, his fingertips groping in the musty dust until he finally touched a protruding brick—the consciousness monitoring log of the No. 3 water dungeon in the basement was hidden in the interlayer of this wall.

The parchment made a crisp sound as it was pulled out, and Morikawa Satoru's hands trembled.

The first page of the log read: "Experimental subject R7, brainwave frequency 0.3Hz, under continuous monitoring." This was followed by seven years of records, with the latest page ending three days ago: "Brainwave frequency 0.2Hz, vital signs weak but stable." He recalled Kazama Shin's words about the "Rasa's last words" in the Snowfield Well, and suddenly realized that those words were not forged—they were fragments pieced together by experimental subject R7 in a state of blurred consciousness using her last neural signals.

"Someone's here!" The guard's shout startled Morikawa Satoru, causing him to knock over a file shelf.

He grabbed the logbook and rolled on the ground, lunging at the framing table of the funeral list just as the guard drew his sword.

The list was to be transported out of the city along with the death row inmates to be executed today. He trembled as he rolled the diary into thin strips, stuffed them into the lining with the name "Death Row Inmate Nomura," and then sealed it with glue.

As the guard's knife pressed against the back of his neck, he heard the sound of suona horns from a funeral procession coming from outside the prison gates—it was the pre-arranged signal between him and his contact: the suona playing "The Song of the Departing Soul" meant the list would be intercepted.

As the wind whipped sand and gravel across the border of Sunagakure lashed against Byakuya's face, he was clutching half a charred, torn page of a journal.

The torn pages were delivered by carrier pigeon by the messenger, and the edges still smelled of the paste from a funeral list.

Chapter 979 List of Heretics

He lowered his eyes and read aloud: "Experimental subject R7 still has weak brainwaves, which has lasted for seven years." The corners of his lips slowly curled up, like a snake's tongue licking a venomous fang—this was exactly the "second knife" he needed.

“Go and call Orihime here.” He gestured with his chin to the shadowy guard in the shadows. “Rewrite this line as ‘Second Memoir’: ‘They speak with my face, but I still see.’” Moonlight fell on his cufflinks, the Wood Release pattern of the Senju clan, which glowed slightly with his heartbeat.

He recalled what Lord Hashirama had said about "a knife that pierces the heart," and now it was time to plunge that knife into the throats of the five daimyo.

The thunderstorms in Kumogakure were fiercer than usual.

The Fourth Raikage gripped the newly received "second memoir" so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

He sat on the Thunder Pattern Throne in the council hall, with five trusted Jonin standing before him, each of their forehead protectors glowing blue from the lightning.

"If I also wrote a 'memoir,' who would you believe?" His voice was like thunder splitting the clouds, shaking the dust off the roof beams.

The five Jonin were frozen into stone statues.

The leftmost man, Jinchui, pouted, about to speak, when Bi suddenly slammed his fist on the table, his lightning chakra crackling in his palm: "Dare not speak? What are you afraid of? Afraid that Shige's pen will alter your memories? Afraid that I'm actually a puppet whose little finger twitches?" He grabbed the memoirs from the table and threw them, the pages brushing against Jinchui's face and embedding themselves in the wall. "I'm going to smash Shige's broken mirror right now—"

Before the words were even finished, in a side hall of the Fire Country's History Pavilion, the Speaker was smashing a crystal mirror to the ground.

As the mirror cracked into a spiderweb pattern, his eyes suddenly widened—ink-like words seeped from the cracks, slowly piecing together the fragments: "You have no right to burn it—it's not yours."

"Impossible!" The speaker staggered backward, knocking over the bronze furnace filled with tattered pages of the "Shadow Substitute Agreement".

Ashes rose and fell on his gold-embroidered official robes, like a layer of snow.

He stared at his distorted face in the mirror, when suddenly he heard a muffled thud from underground—the tremor of the "Purification Fire Array" activating.

At that moment, Byakuya, far away in Sunagakure, suddenly stopped in his tracks.

He looked down at his palm, where the Wood Release chakra unique to the Senju bloodline was burning hot along his fingertips, as if a fire was burning underground.

He looked up toward the Land of Fire, and in the moonlight, two clusters of eerie green light appeared in his pupils—Chairman Shige was finally going to use that final, deadly move.

The night wind from Sunagakure swept past his ears, carrying sand and gravel, while the Wood Release chakra at Byakuya's fingertips burned his skin.

He could clearly sense the tremors coming from the underground of the Land of Fire a thousand miles away—it was the "Purification Fire Array" surging in the deepest part of the Shige Pavilion, the fire attribute chakra dormant in the earth veins being forcibly awakened, and converging towards the Shige Pavilion Library along the talismans set up by the Speaker.

"You've arrived quickly." He chuckled softly, and the temperature of the Thousand Hands Crest in his sleeve suddenly rose, as if Lord Hashirama's will was resonating with him through his bloodline.

Three days ago, he had his shadow guards bury the "Reverse Burning Array" beneath the book-burning ground in the southern part of the Fire Capital. Now is the time to unleash it.

"Orihime." He called softly to the air, and a woman wrapped in a gray robe immediately emerged from the shadows of the alley, her calm eyes visible only beneath her veil—it was the leader of the shadow guards he had trained.

“Send the third batch of the revised edition of ‘The Chronicles of the Fire People’ to the South City, the batch made from the fiber of the True Word Vine.” He took out half a charred fragment of the diary from his pocket. “Tell the person who is distributing it to throw the book into the fire when the heat wave of the fire reaches the burning site.”

When Orihime took the tattered page, her fingertips touched the raised patterns on it—those were spore layers made using a secret method, which would crack when heated.

"Understood." She nodded, and as she turned, the hem of her dress swept across the ground, kicking up a patch of sand, before disappearing into the night in the blink of an eye.

Bai Ye gazed in the direction she disappeared, a faint smile curving his lips.

The logic of "purifying history with fire" is ridiculous. They always think that burning the pages can erase the truth, but they don't realize that true history is never on paper.

He recalled the old bookstore owner, Tanaka Hisashi, whom he had met in Nanshi three days ago. The old man's eyes gleamed as he touched the paper with the incantation: "This paper doesn't burn when exposed to fire; it seems to talk when it's on fire." Now, it was time for these "talking papers" to teach them the truth about what it means to be indestructible.

Outside the secret hall of the Fire Country's History Pavilion, the stench of blood was stronger than usual.

Fujiwara Shizuka gripped the official historian's jade token at her waist, her knuckles turning white.

On the bluestone slab in front of her, the low-ranking clerk who had just been executed was still convulsing, and blood gushing from the wound where his throat had been cut was creeping up the brick seams onto her shoes embroidered with cloud patterns.

"Next." The speaker's voice came from inside the hall, mixed with the crackling sound of the "Shadow Substitute Agreement" burning in the bronze furnace.

Today he wore a dark black sacrificial robe with gold trim, the cuffs embroidered with the Vermilion Bird, representing the "fire of purification," and every step he took felt like stepping on the bones and blood of others.

Fujiwara Shizuka suddenly recalled three months ago, when she was still the youngest court historian in the Imperial Archives. It was in this very secret hall that the Speaker touched her newly copied copy of "The Chronicles of the Land of Fire" and said, "Shizuka, history books should be like this crystal mirror, reflecting what I want the people to see." At that time, she bowed her head and replied, "Yes," with a fragment of "The List of Shadows and Imposters" that she had just stolen from the water dungeon hidden in her sleeve. Her heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was going to burst out of her chest.

Now her heartbeat has slowed down, so slow that she can hear the sound of her own blood flowing.

She gazed at the "Purification Fire Token" hanging from the Speaker's waist—the token that activated the purification fire array, which was now shimmering with a cold light as he moved.

The clerk's blood had already reached her feet, soaking the hem of her ceremonial robe.

"What you are burning is not heresy, but history!" Her voice, like shattered jade striking bronze, resounded in the corridor outside the secret palace.

Everyone froze.

The Speaker's hand hovered in mid-air, about to take the new volume of "The List of Heretics" handed to him by his attendant; the executioner held up a bloodstained dagger, the tip still dripping with the last drop of blood; even the copper bells on the eaves forgot to ring, and the wind blowing in only produced a hoarse wail.

Fujiwara Shizuka pulled off her historian's hat, and her black hair cascaded down like a waterfall.

She pulled a half-roll of yellowed silk from her sleeve and threw it forcefully at the Speaker's feet—it was the "List of Replacement Names" that she had secretly kept for three years while copying the palace diaries. It was filled with dense records of the daimyo who had been replaced, the ninjas who had been destroyed, and the villages that had been erased.

"In Linye Village, all 372 members of the clan were replaced by shadow puppets, and history records it as 'extinction by plague'; Kazama Shin's wife, having witnessed the shadow puppet ritual, was thrown into a water dungeon, and history records her as 'dying suddenly'; Experiment subject R7—" Her voice suddenly choked, and she knelt on the bluestone slab, her crossed legs pressing down on her blood-stained robe, "Experiment subject R7, still had brainwaves for seven years, and history records her as 'without vital signs'."

Chapter 980 Sudden Death

The bronze furnace in the secret hall exploded with a "boom," and the remaining burnt pages, along with sparks, shot into the sky.

The speaker's face flickered in and out of the firelight, and his hand trembled as he pointed at Fujiwara Shizuka: "You...you're wearing a martyr's robe!"

That's right.

Fujiwara Shizuka looked down at the plain white linen robe she was wearing, with the character "史" (shi, meaning history) embroidered in gold thread on the collar—this was the oldest rule of the History Bureau. If a historian wanted to die to prove his innocence, he had to wear a ceremonial robe unstained with any other color. No one was allowed to stop him at this time, otherwise it would be a desecration of "史".

The guards looked at each other, their hands holding halberds slowly falling to their sides.

"Fujiwara Shizuka, the twenty-seventh historian of the Fujiwara clan, died in the line of duty today." She closed her eyes, a low chant escaping her throat, "Hayashi Village, village head Takahashi Masao, wife Takahashi Yumi, eldest son Takahashi Kenta..."

Meanwhile, in the underground drainage system of the Konoha Archives, Onodera Ren pressed down the last leak valve heavily.

Amidst the roar of the seven hidden doors opening simultaneously, she heard Fujiwara Shizuka's shout from above—the sound pierced through the thick stone walls like a sharp awl into her heart.

"It's your turn," she whispered to the air, as if responding to an unspoken agreement.

The files, wrapped in waterproof oil paper, gushed down the drain, soaking her trouser legs.

These documents contain records of shadow puppet experiments from twenty years ago, maps of the water dungeon sealed during the Third Hokage's era, and... she touched the key hidden in her chest, the key to the deepest part of the underground vault.

As rainwater mixed with files rushed into the slum, several barefoot children were squatting by the ditch playing with paper boats.

The eldest boy picked up a bulging paper package, tore open the oil paper with his dirty hands, and a yellowed map unfolded with a "whoosh".

"Look, sister!" He ran towards the woman selling roasted dumplings next to him, holding up a map. "There are lots of little houses drawn here, and a big circle that says 'water dungeon'!"

The woman's hand trembled suddenly as she took the map.

She recognized the location of the circle—it was right under the abandoned well behind the Xishi Rice Granary. Her husband had said he was going to repair the well three years ago, and then he never came back.

The thunderstorm in Kumogakure continues.

The Fourth Raikage stood on the council chamber's terrace, watching the purple lightning streak across the sky, a crumpled piece of paper he had just received clutched in his palm.

The paper drifted from the Land of Fire, wrapped in lightning chakra, and had only one sentence written on it: "What cannot be burned is the real thing."

His thumb rubbed the edge of the paper—it felt different from ordinary paper, somewhat like… He suddenly remembered the “second memoir” that Bai Ye had sent three days ago, which also had this feel.

"Lord Raikage!" Kinchui's voice came from behind, tinged with unusual urgency, "The people of the southern city of the Land of Fire are saying that words have sprouted from the ashes of the Book Burning Ground!"

As he turned around, the lightning illuminated the dark undercurrents surging in his eyes.

He stuffed the crumpled paper into his pocket, and lightning chakra crackled at his feet. "Prepare the horses," he said, his voice deeper than thunder. "To the History Pavilion."

A carrier pigeon fluttered past in the thunderclouds outside the terrace, half a piece of burnt paper tied to its claws. The writing on it was even clearer in the rain: "They speak with my face, but I still see." Bee's Lightning Release chakra crackled and exploded on the soles of his boots, causing the bronze candlesticks in the Cloud Village council chamber to shake violently, and the golden gavel holding the newly delivered tattered file nearly fell to the ground. "Lord Raikage!" His voice was torn to shreds by the wind, "News has arrived from the border of the Land of Fire! The Imperial Archives has mobilized fifty Fire Release Jonin, and they are heading towards the Southern City Book Burning Ground—"

“Too slow.” Bi’s fingers slammed heavily on the table, causing the edges of the sheepskin map to curl.

This morning he had just unearthed the remains of three puppets in North Valley. Although the gold paint on the Thunder Shadow Emblem at the joints had peeled off, it still stung his eyes.

Those "experimental failures" erased from history books were actually real shadows lying underground for twenty years.

At this moment, he looked at the rain-soaked file in Jin Chui's arms, the edges of the torn pages still covered in mud—it had drifted over from the Land of Fire, and the texture of the paper was exactly the same as the "memoir" that Bai Ye had sent.

"Go and relay the order." He ripped off his cloak and tossed it to his attendant, his lightning-style hair crackling into blue arcs of light. "All fire-style ninjas of Kumogakure are forbidden from participating in any book-burning activities from this day forward." Kinchui opened his mouth, but was silenced by a sharp glare from him.

Bi's knuckles pressed against the corner of the table, his fingertips brushing against the chakra remnants on the puppet's remains that hadn't completely corroded. It was the bloodline limit of the previous Raikage, with a rusty smell: "Tell them that if they burn another page of the truth, they'll burn my Raikage cloak."

Thunder suddenly roared outside the council chamber.