Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

As Bi flipped and leaped onto the back of the Thunder Wolf, he caught a glimpse of another page slipping from the file in Golden Hammer's arms. The ink blurred in the rain, revealing a few words: "Thunder Shadow Stand... three..." The veins on his hand gripping the reins bulged. The Thunder Wolf roared, its hooves flashing with lightning towards the Land of Fire—he wanted to see for himself just how many layers of truth the History Museum's fire could burn through.

Meanwhile, bonfires in the northern snowfields of the Land of Fire illuminated half the sky.

When Kazama Shin threw the last copy of "The Remnants of the Northern Oral History Museum" into the flames, the raised lines of the pages were still visible on his palm.

That was the spore-forming technique Bai Ye taught him: mixing cedar pith with firefly phosphorescent powder, which would condense into words in the air when heated. "Burn!" he shouted to the villagers gathered around the fire, his Adam's apple trembling with excitement. "They can burn the paper, but they can't burn the stories from our mouths!"

The moment the flames erupted, the hairs on the back of Kazama Shin's neck stood on end.

Pale green spores spiraled upwards with the heat, gathering in the night sky to form lines of small, silvery characters: "Linye Village, Village Chief Takahashi Masao..." He recognized these names; three years ago, when he was still a copyist at the Shige, he had seen blood-written words carved with fingernails on the walls of the water dungeon.

The words rose higher and higher, like a swarm of glowing fireflies casting shimmering shadows on the snow.

"They've rebelled!" The shout of the Fire Release ninja from Shige came from the snowy slope.

Twelve fiery tornadoes, wreathed in crimson flames, hurtled toward the bonfire, but the larger the flames, the clearer the words in the air became.

The Chunin in the front row suddenly froze—he saw his father's name floating in the firelight. His father had suddenly "died" when he was ten years old. History records that he "contracted a terrible disease," but now there was a line of small print next to his name: "He was poisoned after witnessing the Shadow Substitution Ritual."

"Stop!" The Chunin's kunai clattered onto the snow.

He stared at his father's name in the air, his throat tightening, "This...this is my father's courtesy name..." The other ninjas exchanged glances, and the chakra chains of the fire tornado broke one after another, the crimson flames turning into sparks that fell down, making the snowfield even brighter.

Blood seeped from Bai Ye's palm amidst the ruins of Guiyuan Shrine.

Chapter 981 Rebellion

He knelt before the charred shrine, his fingertips digging deep into the soil, the Wood Release chakra of the First Hokage's bloodline surging into the earth's veins like a living thing.

The memory trees at the border of the five countries formed a network of light in his consciousness—these were the seeds of wood-escape that he had planted in each country over three years. Each tree was entwined with the hair, nails, and even half a drop of blood of the person whose memory had been erased.

At this moment, he could hear countless voices exploding in his mind: "My name is Takahashi Yumi, from Hayashino Village..." "Experimental subject R7, brainwave frequency 13.7..."

"Go." He shouted in a low voice, and his Wood Release chakra surged wildly along the earth's veins.

Suddenly, the flames in all the burning sites in the City of Fire rose eerily with blue flames, and blurry faces emerged from the sparks—the daimyo who had been replaced by shadow clones, the ninjas who had been destroyed, and the villagers who had been erased. Their names were branded into the flames like gold foil, and even the ashes seemed to be chanting: "I am still here, I am still here."

Beneath the dome of the Shigemitsu Palace, Fujiwara Shizuka's martyrdom robes were soaked in blood.

She knelt at the Speaker's feet, the silk scroll of the "List of Substitutes" in her sleeve trampled to shreds, yet she still recited: "Experimental subject R7, survived for seven years and three months..." The Speaker's Purification Order pressed against her throat, and the copper bell on the eaves emitted a dying whimper.

Suddenly, she felt a slight tremor in the ground and heard the crisp sound of trees sprouting buds coming from the direction of Guiyuan Shrine.

"Look!" The executioner's short sword clattered to the ground.

Fujiwara Shizuka looked up and saw a jade-green vine bursting from the ground, wrapping around her bloodied wrist, and carving a line of words on the bluestone slab at her feet: "Fujiwara Shizuka, the twenty-seventh rebellious historian of the History Bureau."

The Speaker's Purification Fire Token fell to her lap with a "thud." He stared at the Wood Release chakra flowing on the vines, his face paler than a corpse—it was a secret technique of the Senju clan, a "forbidden" technique that had been erased by the History Bureau.

“I once wrote for lies.” Fujiwara Shizuka stroked the engravings on the stone slab, blood seeping from between her fingers, spreading red plum blossoms over the word “rebellion.” “Today, I will live for the truth…”

In the bookstore of the Fire City South, Tanaka Hisashi's engraving knife makes the final stroke on a pear wood board.

On the newly carved cover of "The Chronicles of the Fire People," he deliberately engraved the words "Truth" larger than "Fire Country."

A child's exclamation came from outside the window: "Grandpa, look!"

The fire at the book-burning ground is speaking! He wiped the sawdust from his face, carefully put the woodblock into the iron box, and the lock clicked. He had also stuffed thirty copies of this edition into the interlayer of a spore paper copy and hidden them under the tea canisters of twenty storytelling stalls throughout the city.

"It's time to go to the book-burning ground." He straightened his graying temples in front of the bronze mirror.

The reflection in the mirror suddenly swayed, and he saw a pale green light rising in the sky outside the window, just like the "truth of the indestructible" that Bai Ye had mentioned.

At the book-burning ground at the westernmost end of Nanshi, a pile of new firewood had just been doused with lamp oil, and the light from the tinderbox illuminated the faces of the Shige secret guards—they did not notice that mixed in with the firewood were dozens of copies of "The Chronicles of the Fire People" on True Word Vine Paper, the spore layer on the edges of the pages stirring restlessly in the firelight.

The night wind whipped up a cloud of ash, which landed on the toe of Tanaka Hisashi's shoe.

He bent down and picked it up, only to find that it wasn't ash, but half a piece of burnt paper with words that flickered in the moonlight: "They thought I was burned, but I am in every grain of ash."

,

Tanaka Hisashi's fingers trembled slightly as he held the half-ash.

The handwriting flickered in the moonlight, much like his appearance when he was a young man copying classics in the History Pavilion, with the candlelight being blown about by the wind.

He ran his thumb along the edge of the charcoal—he had expected it to be brittle, but instead felt a fine, uneven texture, like the veins of some plant leaf. "Those who burn me also pass on to me..." he murmured, reading the new words on the charcoal. A chill ran down his neck—the "spore paper" Bai Ye had mentioned at the bookstore three days ago, could it not be paper, but... something alive?

"Grandpa!" came the shout of the young apprentice, Amu, from the back alley of the bookstore. "The fire at the book-burning ground at the west end has changed again!"

Tanaka Hisashi stuffed the charcoal into his pocket, grabbed the paulownia wood box behind the door, and ran outside.

Under the old locust tree at the alley entrance, Amu was standing on tiptoe, peering westward. In the moonlight, a bluish-green mist floated, resembling crushed fireflies. "Look, look!" Amu tugged at his sleeve. "The faces in those flames just smiled at me!"

The old man squinted.

Five hundred paces away, at the burning ground, the once crackling flames were now eerily quiet, and the faces floating in the blue flames were no longer blurry—a middle-aged man in a hunting robe with the emblem of the Land of Fire on his forehead; a little ninja with a bun hairstyle, his headband torn in two; and a woman holding a swaddled baby with a faded silver bell tied to the wrist of the infant in her arms.

Their mouths opened and closed, and whispers rippled in the wind: "My name is Minamoto Masahiro, and I was forty-one when I was replaced by the shadow." "I am Yano Kotsubaki, and my file was burned by the Purification Order during the Chunin Exams." "My daughter's name is Kiku, and her name shouldn't have been burned along with the midwife's ledger."

"Go get the chisel and clay." Tanaka Hisashi suddenly turned around, his nails digging into Amu's arm. "Now, immediately."

"Grandpa, have you gone mad?" Amu winced in pain. "The Shige Guards are about to seal off the area!"

“They’re not burning paper.” Tanaka Hisashi pulled open his shirt and patted the charcoal into Amu’s palm. “They’re burning seeds.” He stared at the ashes floating in the flames, watching them swirl and fall onto the bluestone slab. Instead of turning into powder, they were like a handful of black sesame seeds scattered on the ground—each “sesame seed” swelled up, cracked open, and revealed a pale green sprout inside.

Amu's pupils suddenly contracted.

He suddenly remembered the transparent powder that Bai Ye had sprinkled on the woodblocks three days ago when he came to the bookstore: "These are spores extracted from the roots of the divine tree. They will grow when exposed to fire and when exposed to soil." At the time, he thought it was just the crazy talk of a charlatan, but now, looking at the green sprouts emerging from the cracks in the stone slabs, his back teeth were trembling.

"Let's go!" Tanaka Hisashi dragged him into the bookstore, lifted the wooden planks of the cellar, and underneath were twenty boxes of clay neatly stacked. "Sieve all the charcoal ash into the clay, and press three names into each brick." He picked up a carving knife and quickly carved "Yuan Zhenghong" into the mold. "Remember, the bricks should be placed against the shady side of the wall so that rainwater can seep in and the spores will awaken quickly."

The candlelight in the cellar flickered.

Amu pinched the clay mixed with ash and felt an itch in his palm—not because the clay was rough, but because something was wriggling under his skin.

He looked up and saw Tanaka Hisashi's white hair glowing blue in the firelight. The old man's eyes were terrifyingly bright, like two inextinguishable flames: "When words grow on the walls of the slums tomorrow morning, Shi Ge's Clean Fire Order will not be able to burn them all off."

At the same moment, gold paint was falling from the dome of the Hall of the Ancients.

Fujiwara Shizuka knelt on the bluestone slab, blood dripping from the wound in her throat onto the inscription "Rebellious Historian".

Chapter 982 Becoming an Enthusiast

The Speaker's Purification Order still lay across her knees, its bronze flame pattern stained a dark brown by her blood.

The twelve execution guards, who had been forming a semi-circle, suddenly loosened their grip on their swords. They stared at the vines at Fujiwara Shizuka's feet, watching the emerald branches climb out of the hall along the cracks in the floor tiles. Each time they passed a bronze door, a line of small characters would be engraved on it: "Shadow Substitute Experiment Subject R7, survived for seven years and three months." "Shadow Substitute Experiment Subject S9, failed to separate consciousness, became insane."

"Shut up!" The speaker lunged forward to cover her mouth, but his wrist was entangled by vines.

He then realized that the texture of those vines was completely different from Hashirama Senju's Wood Release—more supple, more vibrant, like...like the roots of an ancient tree that had lived for a thousand years. "You colluded with rogue ninja!" he screamed hoarsely, "The Senju's secret techniques have long been...purified by the Pure Fire..."

“What is purified by fire is history, not bloodline.” Fujiwara Shizuka’s lips twitched, blood splattering on the gold thread pattern of his official robes. “Bai Ye said that the First Hokage’s Wood Release could bring trees to life, and it could also bring truth to life.” She watched the vines climb up the dome and carve crooked words on the murals filled with “The Shadow’s Wise Act”: “Three hundred and twenty-seven erased names are buried here.”

Suddenly, a commotion arose outside the hall.

A guard burst through the door, his armor covered in bits of grass: "My lord!"

The burning site on the south city wall... the ashes from the burned paper sprouted on the wall!

The speaker's face turned deathly pale instantly.

He released Fujiwara Shizuka's wrist and took two steps back, his boot heel knocking over the fire basin on the offering table. Sparks flew onto the vines, but only made the green shoots grow even more wildly.

Fujiwara Shizuka watched his staggering figure and suddenly smiled—not with the previous sorrow, but with a lighthearted sense of relief: "You see, fire can burn paper, but it can't burn the roots."

In the ruins of Guiyuan Shrine, Baiye's closed eyelashes trembled twice.

He sat cross-legged in front of the half-fallen shrine, holding a gray ball the size of a pigeon egg in his palm. It was a "remnant of an inscribed spore" dug out from the depths of the Sand Cavern's ley lines.

Fujiwara Shizuka's words were like a needle, precisely piercing the net of his perception—the roots of the memory trees of the five countries were trembling underground, with the roots of the Land of Fire being particularly violent, and countless tiny tendrils were drilling into the other four countries along the earth's veins.

"Time to water it." He chuckled softly, his fingertip piercing his palm, blood dripping onto the remaining pit.

The gray sphere cracked open with a "click," revealing the emerald green spores inside, each one shimmering like green sand studded with stars.

Bai Ye formed a strange hand seal, and chakra surged into the spore cluster along his fingertips. The originally still green sand suddenly boiled and turned into a cloud of green mist that shot into the sky.

"Fire can burn the paper, but it can't burn the roots." He watched the green mist being dispersed by the night wind and murmured, repeating Fujiwara Shizuka's words, "I want the words to come alive on their own."

Meanwhile, in the underground passage of the Konoha Archives, Onodera Ren's fingertips were pressed against the last stack of files.

She stuffed the "Shadow Double Experiment Log" into a waterproof oilcloth, then wrapped it in three layers of hemp paper soaked in beeswax—the beeswax was smuggled from the Dark Guard's medical unit, supposedly for its corrosion-resistant properties. "Tomorrow at 3:45 AM," she whispered to the janitor, Old Zhou, "the truck carrying the incinerated files must turn left, remember?"

Old Zhou's hands were shaking.

He'd sifted through the archives for ten years, and this was the first time he'd discovered so many words written in blood hidden within those burned "useless files." "Left...to the Garbage River?" His Adam's apple bobbed. "But Shi Ge said the Garbage River..."

"Hasn't Shi Ge told enough lies?" Onodera Ren stuffed the oil packet into the bottom of his bamboo basket and covered it with a moldy old ledger. "All you have to do is push the cart into the river bend, and the rest... is up to the water."

Three days later, in the early morning, in a fishing village on the border of the Land of Fire and the Land of Lightning, the old fisherman Asong pulled out an oil sac from his fishing net.

He used a fish knife to pry open the beeswax, and on the yellowed paper was written: "The success rate of consciousness separation is only 17%, the rest become mad."

"Obsessed?" Ah Song's grandson, Xiao Hai, leaned over to look. "That Master Ying... is he...?"

"Shh!" Ah Song quickly stuffed the paper into his pocket, but didn't notice that a piece of paper was swept away by the wind and drifted northeast along the river.

The thunderstorm in Kumogakure came without warning.

The Fourth Raikage was standing on the top floor of the castle tower, gazing at the churning dark clouds in the distance, when suddenly something fell at his feet—a half-sheet of paper, wrinkled from being soaked in water, with words on it as clear as if carved with a knife: "Shadow Substitute Experiment Subject S9, Consciousness Separation Failure, Insanity."

He bent down to pick up the paper, his knuckles turning white from gripping it so tightly.

A distant roar of a thunder beast echoed. Looking at the bloodstains on the paper, Bee suddenly clenched his fist and slammed it against the railing: "Investigate!" His voice boomed with the thunder, "Investigate all shadow clone records..." Bee's knuckles, gripping the half-piece of paper, turned white. A thunderstorm roared outside Cloud Village, and electric current crackled along the golden patterns on his headband.

The edges of the paper were still damp, but they were even more scorching than the Raikiri at his waist—the “successful cases of shadow doubles” that the Dark Division had presented three days ago did not contain any record of “failed consciousness separation”.

He suddenly remembered that when he went to the Land of Fire for a marriage alliance last month, the Hokage handed him a teacup with a blank scroll underneath. At the time, he thought it was just a diplomatic courtesy, but now it felt like a thorn stuck in the back of his neck.

"Lord Raikage!" The communicator's voice came through the ninja tool bag, "Iwagakure has sent an urgent report! They've retrieved a bloodstained fragment of the 'Shadow Substitution Experiment Log' from a water seepage point in the mine!"

Bi suddenly stood up, the wooden chair dragging on the stone floor with a harsh sound.

He ripped off his headband and slammed it onto the table, the clanging of gold jewelry mingling with the thunder outside the window: "Go and bring all the Lightning Release scrolls from the forge!" As he turned, his cloak swept away a teacup, the shards of the celadon reflecting his reddened eyes. "Tell all Fire Release ninjas, from this day forward—" He grabbed the copper seal engraved with "Purification Order" from the table and slammed it onto the scraps of paper. "No Fire Release techniques may be used to burn any documents!"

The bonfire at the Kitan Festival was brighter than in previous years.

Bi personally pushed the remains of the three Raikage puppets into the fire. The fake bodies, made of mechanical threads and human skin, curled up as soon as they came into contact with the fire, revealing the rusty iron frames underneath.

Following closely behind were the files retrieved from the garbage river. The pages were swollen from being soaked in water, but they unfurled into complete sections in the flames: "Shadow Substitute Test Subject T4 committed suicide in a secret room due to consciousness rejection." "Shadow Substitute Test Subject K8 had saved the Raikage's life at a festival before being replaced."

The Cloud Village ninjas watching held their breath.

As the last stack of files disappeared into the flames, the previously leaping flames suddenly solidified into a column, and a line of large characters emerged from the bluish-green flames, the strokes thick and heavy like those cleaved by lightning: "True shadows are not afraid of fire, false bodies fear light."

Chapter 983 Add Fire!

"This is... the First Hokage's Wood Release chakra fluctuation?" The Jonin Raino, standing beside Bee, narrowed his eyes. "But it sounds more like... something alive is speaking."

He didn't respond.

He stared at the faintly visible words in the firelight, his Adam's apple bobbing – the strokes of those words were exactly the same as those in the "Lei Ying Family Instructions" he had seen in his father's study when he was a child.

When the festival ended, several genin spontaneously picked up the remaining charcoal, wrapped it in cloth, and put it in their pockets.

The next morning, a crooked note appeared on the notice board at the west end of Yunyin Village: "The Book Protection Team is recruiting members to patrol at night and prevent the burning of books."

As the smoke from the chimneys of the snow-covered village drifted into the sky, Kazama Shin was crouching among a group of children.

Twelve-year-old Xiaotao held up a dark brick and stuffed it into the stove, the corner of the brick still covered with unwashed clay: "Grandpa said this is a 'fire brick,' it will tell stories when it's burned!"

Orange-red light rose from the stove.

Kazama Shin squinted and leaned closer, his pupils suddenly contracting—in the leaping flames, lines of ink appeared: "Spring sowing must not be later than Grain Rain, and 30% of the autumn grain must be reserved for famine relief." It was the "Field Edict" personally drafted by the First Hokage, Senju Hashirama. He had copied it seven times in the History Pavilion, and even remembered the cursive script of "Hashirama's own handwriting" at the end perfectly.

"Teacher Ashin!" Xiao Tao tugged at his sleeve, "The brick is moving!"

Kazama Shin then noticed that tiny green shoots were seeping from the cracks in the bricks, stretching out like vines as the fire spread.

Each vine that swept across the flames would shake off a string of new words: "The locust plague record of the eighteen villages on the border of the Land of Fire, which was concealed by a shadow puppet three years ago" and "The shadow puppet experiment in Sunagakure: the first human experiment conducted on children."

He suddenly stood up, and the hem of his cotton-padded coat swept the snow off the stove.

The warmth of his palm seeped through the coarse cloth onto the letter he held in his arms—the letter he had written to the "Well-Reading Society" last night. He had only dared to mention "preserving the tattered scroll with well water" before, but now the words in the flames burned him painfully. "Xiao Tao," he said, pulling off his scarf to wrap around half of the fire-printed brick, "go and get your grandfather's flint and steel." He gazed at the stove fire burning ever brighter in the snow, his breath condensing into white mist in the cold air, "I want the truth to drift along the smoke to every place where there is fire."

Three days later, floating characters frequently appeared in the northern night sky of the Land of Fire.

The smoke rising from the low-oxygen fire was shrouded in green mist, and each wisp of smoke condensed into lines of small characters, looking like stars adorning the night sky from afar.

The people looked up, holding up bamboo strips to catch the words in mid-air, copying and reciting: "What is being burned is not a sin, but the sprouting of the truth."

The burning site outside the City of Fire became another battlefield.