Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

Three days ago, while organizing the "Daily Records of the Daimyo of the Land of Fire," she discovered that the death records of the last five daimyo had been altered. The hidden marks under the ink were full of "shadow substitutes"—shadow substitutes used death row inmates to replace daimyo, and lies to exchange for power.

The sound of leather boots drew closer.

She quickly pulled off the cherry blossom hairpin from her waist, pried open the bamboo joint of the pen, and stuffed the scroll inside, her fingernails scratching bloodstains on the bamboo skin.

Old servant Zhang Bo was standing under the eaves at some point, his hunched back hunched like a drawn bow: "Does Miss want me to deliver something?"

His voice was hoarse like sandpaper, but Onodera Ren noticed the patch on his cuff—it was exactly the same as the old shirt that Zhang Erlang had been taken away by Shige three months ago.

“Uncle Zhang,” she said, placing the brush in his hand, “if I do not return in three days, throw the brush into the well in the East Market.”

Uncle Zhang's fingers curled up, his knuckles turning white.

He gazed at the silver fish pendant on Onodera Ren's waist—a token of authority for court historians—and suddenly remembered his son's words before his execution: "Mother, they burned my confession, but I carved 'no' in a crack in the wall." He swallowed hard and pressed the brush to his chest: "I remember."

The sound of leather boots stopped outside the door.

As Ren Onodera turned around, a cherry blossom fell from his hair and landed at Uncle Zhang's feet.

She pushed open the door and saw the glint of the surveillance department's blades flickering in the candlelight, like a needle piercing her eye.

The snowstorms in the North came earlier than usual.

Kazama Shin wrapped his coarse cloth coat tighter around himself and looked out at the snowfield outside the classroom—seven children were squatting by the frozen lake, carving words on the ice with ice chisels.

The youngest, Atao, held up an ice chisel and shouted, "Sir, why can't I carve this 'no' deeply enough?"

He walked over, and the lake water beneath the ice suddenly surged, washing away the "no" character carved by Atao, but freezing an even bigger "no" character deeper inside.

Kazama Shin laughed, his breath catching ice crystals: "Because it grows in water."

The children's laughter shattered the snowflakes.

Kazama Shin gazed at the center of the frozen lake, where the ice layer shimmered with a deep blue hue, like a giant crystal. Within it, countless "no" characters could be vaguely seen, drifting further north with the current.

Kazama Shin's breath formed ice crystals on his eyelashes. He squatted down and gently touched the shallow marks left by Momo's ice chisel with his fingertips.

Suddenly, fine ripples appeared on the ice surface, as if warm breath was rising from the bottom of the lake, carrying those crooked "no" characters deeper into the water.

His pupils contracted slightly—this temperature wasn't from naturally melting ice, but from the unique warmth of Wood Release chakra.

"Sir! The ice has melted!" Kojiro, who had pigtails, shouted.

The ice surface cracked with spiderweb-like fine lines, but it did not completely break. Instead, pale blue water seeped out from the cracks, and then re-condensed in the cold wind.

The character "不" (not) that was just carved was sealed deep within the ice layer, its strokes gleaming with a honey-colored light, like amber carefully preserved by time.

Kazama Shin looked up to the north, where the clouds were churning and turning bluish-gray.

He knew that the man had arrived—the man who used the Wood Release: Root System to connect the earth veins of the five countries, the man who buried the fragments of the ceramic bell in the ruins of the Guiyuan Shrine.

“Children,” he said, his voice trembling, as he grabbed an ice pick and drew blood on his palm, “give me your hands.”

The seven children hesitated before stacking their small, red, frozen hands together.

Kazama Shin pressed the blood droplets onto the ice surface, the red-stained snow water seeping into the cracks and intertwining with the "no" character within the ice.

The sound of horses' hooves came from afar, and three black-clad ninjas broke through the snow, their cloaks embroidered with Shige's golden crane crest—the fire-style scrolls at their waists gleamed with a dangerous orange light in the moonlight.

"Get back!" The leading ninja threw a kunai, which landed right next to Kazama Shin's feet.

He untied the scroll from his back and threw it into the air, his chakra exploding like flames: "Fire Release: Chain Explosion Bullets!"

Three fireballs, trailing flames, crashed into the frozen lake, causing white mist to rise from the ice due to the intense heat.

But the white mist did not dissipate; instead, it condensed into words in mid-air—"No burning, no recognition, no falsehoods." Each word was hazy with moisture, yet clearer than any cast iron.

The leader of the ninjas' pupils contracted sharply. The fireball extinguished three feet above the lake, and the sparks fell onto the snow, burning a small "no" character.

"This...this is sorcery!" He drew his kunai and cut his palm, the blood dripping onto the ice. He saw half a broken stele emerge from under the ice, its stone patterns mottled like old tree bark, and the character "no" was clearly engraved on the stele.

Kazama Shin suddenly laughed, his laughter shattering the ice crystals on his eyelashes: "This is the broken stele of the Northern Oral History Museum. Three hundred years ago, the History Museum burned down the entire mountain, but they couldn't burn away the mouths of the people."

The black-clad ninjas took two steps back, their horses' hooves carving deep furrows in the snow.

Kazama Shin bent down and picked up A-Tao, looking at the broken monument faintly visible under the ice: "Can you burn down the monument, burn down the ice, burn down the water in the well?" His voice, mixed with the child's sobs, carried far through the snow.

The moonlight at Cloud-Hidden Thunder Shadow Cliff was even colder.

Imagine standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down at a giant rock covered with the word "no".

The words suddenly glowed with a ghostly light in the night, like fireflies being lit, but even the most sensitive chakra detection array could not detect any fluctuations in the technique.

“Lord Kage,” the accompanying Jonin handed over the test report, “these words… seem to only exist when being watched.”

Bi's fingers rubbed against the rough rocks unique to the Land of Lightning, his knuckles turning white from the force.

He recalled the joint meeting with the Five Kage three days ago, where the Tsuchikage Onoki slammed his fist on the table and cursed, "Shigeru's lies have been going on for a hundred years," while the Mizukage Mei Terumi twirled her water fan and laughed, "Our Kirigakure's list of substitutes has long been ruined."

At this moment, these spontaneously emerging "no"s felt like a punch to the chest—it turned out that the one who should have been most awakened was himself.

Chapter 989 Refusing to Accept This Fate

"Pass down the order," he suddenly turned around, his red cloak fluttering in the wind, "From this day forward, all ninjas must personally write the word 'no' at the end of their mission reports to prove they are not spies."

Late at night, the candlelight in the guard room flickered.

Chunin Iwasaki placed the report under the paperweight, his pen tip hovering above the character "no".

He recalled the "cleaning up dissidents" mission he carried out last month, in which the report stated "mob resistance with weapons," but it was clearly an old woman holding a child.

Ink dripped onto the paper, spreading into a blurry dot. He suddenly grabbed the report and tore it to shreds: "I've been writing lies for ten years! I'm not writing anymore!"

The torn pieces of paper fluttered to the ground, and Iwasaki's shoulders heaved violently.

When the door was pushed open, he expected to be greeted by Raikiri, but instead saw Bee standing in the moonlight, a short sword in his hand: "Come with me to the Guardian Squad," the Raikage's voice was softer than usual, "to guard those 'no's' that cannot be burned."

The sewers of the North Well in the City of Fire reek of decay.

Bai Ye pressed himself against the damp brick wall, his fingertips pinching a sesame-sized inscribed spore.

This creature was cultivated using the First Hokage's Wood Release chakra and can follow the water flow to enter the drain hole of the water prison.

He untied the puppet string from his waist and gently pressed the spore into the crack in the tube wall: "She needs to know that she's not the only one who says 'no'."

Deep inside the water dungeon, Fujiwara Shizuka huddled on a damp, moldy straw mat.

Her fingernails had long been worn down to the bone, yet she continued to scratch on the stone wall—not to carve words, but to prove that she could still resist.

Suddenly, I felt a strange sensation on my fingertips, like warm water flowing over my skin.

She looked up and saw water stains on the wall slowly forming the character "不" (no), with the edges of the strokes gleaming with a pale gold hue, like ceramic glaze kissed by sunlight.

"Who are you?" she asked in a hoarse voice, her fingertips trembling as she traced the word.

The writing wasn't washed away by the water; instead, it became clearer the more it was traced.

She recalled the face reflected in the blood droplets when she carved the code on the stone wall three days ago—cold yet with a touch of warmth, like the ceramic bell buried in the ruins of Guiyuan Shrine.

“I don’t accept...this fate.” She pressed her forehead against the word “no,” her tears falling into the stone’s texture and seeping into the strokes of the character.

The sandalwood incense in the Hall of the Archbishop was burning brightly.

The speaker clutched the talisman of the silence barrier, cold sweat trickling down the back of his neck and into his collar.

He saw with his own eyes that ink marks appeared on the edge of the talisman paper, and the character "不" (no) started to grow from the lower right corner, like a worm gnawing on the paper, and in the blink of an eye, it crawled all over the talisman paper.

With a "crack," the talisman shattered into pieces, landing on his gold-embroidered shoes.

"Speaker!" came the servant's exclamation from outside the door, "The word 'no' is floating on the water in the East Well, West Well, and South Well!"

The speaker staggered backward, knocking over the "List of Shadow Standers" on the table.

Yellowed pages were scattered all over the floor, each with the word "No" written in blood on the back—carved by the fingernails of the prisoners who had been impersonated in their final moments.

He gazed out the window at the lights of the City of Fire, when suddenly he heard countless voices explode in his ears: "Don't burn, don't admit, don't lie."

The wind on the mountaintop rustles through the pines.

Bai Ye stood on the highest rock, gazing at the lights in the direction of the City of Fire.

He could clearly sense the chakra of the word "no" in the water prison, like a newly sprouted seed, penetrating through layers of stone walls and heading towards a brighter place.

“The more you try to seal it off, the more it will emerge.” He chuckled softly, pressing his fingertips to his chest—where the heartbeat mingled with the tremors of the five kingdoms’ ley lines, the echoes of the broken monument at the bottom of the frozen lake, and the warmth of Fujiwara Shizuka’s fingertips.

Deep within that water dungeon, a new "no" was seeping from the stone wall, clearer and hotter than before.

The character "不" on the stone wall of the water dungeon was growing at a speed visible to the naked eye. The pale golden veins climbed along the cracks in the stone like living things. As soon as Fujiwara Shizuka's fingertip touched the newly grown horizontal stroke, the entire wall suddenly trembled with warmth.

She stood frozen in place—the tremor didn't come from the stone wall, but from the faded silk ribbon in her hair.

That was something her mother had placed in her hand before her execution, saying it would allow her to "hear stories in the wind."

At this moment, the silk ribbon gently rose, drawing a small arc in the damp air, as if it were being supported by countless invisible hands.

“The chakra resonance frequency is rising.” Bai Ye knelt on one knee, his palm pressed against the scorched earth of the ruins of Guiyuan Shrine.

He could clearly sense that the wisp of chakra belonging to Fujiwara Shizuka in the water dungeon was subtly resonating with the seven wells in the Fire City, the bluestone slabs of the three main streets, and even the hoe handles of the farmers outside the city.

The inscription spores he planted three days ago are now exploding into tiny points of light in our senses, like tea dust sprinkled into boiling water—the old man selling sugar in the East Market carved "no" on the back of his sugar paintings, the embroiderer in the West Alley sewed "no" on the collar of her wedding dress, and even the cracks in the broken ceramic bowl smashed by a drunkard in the tavern spelled out the word "no".

"So she was already able to perceive things in reverse through the memory tree." Bai Ye chuckled softly, his knuckles touching his lips, a faint emerald light, unique to the first generation of bloodline, flashing in his pupils.

The Memory Tree was a forbidden technique used by Shige to erase memories, but he reversed it with Wood Release—just as a bent bamboo will always spring back, erased memories will take root in the subconscious.

He suddenly stood up, his fingertips piercing the scorched earth, and the First Hokage's Wood Release chakra gushed out like a living spring, weaving a dense vine net beneath the ruins.

These vines will extend along the earth's veins and eventually converge below the water prison to form an "echo conduit".

"Gather." He commanded softly, and the vine net suddenly tightened, gathering all the "No" chakra scattered in every corner of the Fire City.

Fujiwara Shizuka, inside the water dungeon, suddenly looked up. She heard something—not human voices, but countless tiny sounds: the clinking of abacus beads, the hum of a spinning wheel, the child's voice reciting the Hundred People's Canon, and... the lullaby her mother hummed before her execution.

The sounds that had been erased by Schiller were now creeping into her ears along the silk ribbon.

“You are not writing this alone.” Bai Ye stood at the highest point of the ruins, gazing at the lights gradually rising in the direction of the City of Fire, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Millions of people are writing for you.”

At the same moment, in the "Ink Fragrance Bookstore" in the Fire City of Minami-dori, Tanaka Hisashi was staring blankly at the roof tiles in the rainy night.

He was wrapped in a patched cotton robe, his fingers unconsciously rubbing the corner of the table—where the name of the nameless craftsman, which had been erased by Shi Ge, was engraved, and which he had secretly added with a carving knife.

Suddenly, a flash of lightning streaked across the window, and he saw the watermarks on the blue tiles slowly gathering into the character "不" (no), exactly the same as those in the well water three days ago.

"If roof tiles can display characters, what about stone tablets?" Tanaka Hisashi slammed his hand on the table, startling the candlelight on the desk.

What's so interesting about Chapter 990?

He recalled that when Shi Ge burned "The Nameless Man," the unburnt pages curled up into black butterflies in the fire and fell into the brick kiln to melt into "fire-character bricks."

If you grind the brick dust into powder and mix it with the ash from the mantra that can draw out chakra... he grabbed the bamboo pen on the desk and scribbled wildly on the scrap paper: "Nameless monument, blank surface, write the name you remember."

Three days later at dawn, the first batch of "nameless steles" were erected beside the seven ancient wells.

The monument was bluish-gray, with only tiny characters engraved at the bottom: "Write down the name you remember." Tanaka Hisashi squatted in front of the North Well Monument, watching the first old woman step forward—she tremblingly pulled out a patina-covered wooden plaque, which was her son's indenture. Shige had deleted the name from the household register to cover up the scandal of nobles pressing for debts.

The old woman scratched "Lin Erlang" on the surface of the monument with her fingernail. As soon as the ink dried, a pale golden light suddenly seeped out from the well wall, and a line of small characters appeared: "Lin Erlang was born on the seventh day of the third month twenty-three years ago. He was skilled in pottery making and was buried under the third locust tree in Xiqiu."

"It's a file that was erased by the Smithsonian!" The crowd erupted in excitement.

When someone calls out the name of a deceased wife, the patterns she embroidered appear on the well wall; when a child mentions a playmate who died young, the old alley where the two of them stole apricots appears on the well wall.

As night fell, the walls of the seven wells were covered with countless names, like a multitude of covered mouths finally opening.

Meanwhile, in the secret room of the Konoha Archives, Onodera Ren was scratching at a crack in the wall with his fingernails.

She hadn't seen the sun for three days. The coarse rice the guards brought was so hard it hurt her teeth, but she crushed the grains, mixed them with ink she had secretly hidden, and painstakingly copied the "List of Shadow Impersonators" in the cracks in the wall.

"Fujiwara Shizuka, a court historian, was replaced for recording 'daimyo embezzling disaster relief grain,' originally a death row inmate..." Her fingers trembled, and a paste of ink mixed with rice grains stuck in the brick seams, like a small gray-black snake.

On the fifth night, Onodera Ren was awakened by an itch.

She reached into the crack in the wall and touched not the rough brick surface, but soft vines—those pasty substances mixed with rice grains and ink had sprouted tiny green shoots.

Each vine has a fruit the size of a soybean at its tip, with words faintly visible on its skin.

She took a closer look, and her pupils contracted sharply—each fruit was inscribed with "Fujiwara Shizuka," the handwriting exactly the same as her copy.

"Miss, it's time to bring the water." A maid's voice came from outside the door.

Onodera Ren quickly stuffed the vine fruit into his sleeve as he watched the maid bring in a wooden basin.

The maid glanced at the crack in the wall, then at her pale face, and suddenly lowered her voice: "My father is a servant in the Imperial Archives, and he said the 'no' in the water dungeon can't be burned off." She pointed to Onodera Ren's sleeve, "Want me to help you take it out?"

In the dead of night, in a snowy village, Kazama Shin, wrapped in a sheepskin coat, pushes open the door of a wooden house.