Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

She coughed and clung to the stone wall of the water prison, the blood that spilled from the corner of her mouth falling into the water, the spreading red mixed with a very faint blue.

“So…” she wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth, a smile blooming in her eyes, “this is what it feels like to be chosen.”

In the secluded chamber of Sand Hermitage, a thousand miles away, Ebizo tapped the sand-sealing talisman on the table with his fingertips.

Two shadow guards stood bowing in the shadows, their breathing heavy beneath their face masks—both had purple marks on the back of their necks from the effects of shadow magic, making them “living vessels” secretly cultivated by Sunagakure.

“Go to the City of Fire and infiltrate the Blood Festival.” Ebizo lifted his teacup, the oily tea reflecting his sinister eyes. “Byakuya uses the blood of the Shadow Impersonator to awaken the True Name, and we will use the blood of the True Name to counter him. Let those fools believe that… Sunagakure is the true controller of the Fire Seed.”

The left-hand guard's Adam's apple bobbed: "Sir, I've heard about the first generation..."

"Shut up." Ebizo suddenly crushed the teacup, the porcelain shards piercing his palm, drops of blood dripping from between his fingers onto the sealing talisman. "The era of the First Hokage is long gone." He threw the talisman into the brazier, and the flickering flames suddenly twisted into a translucent phantom—it was Hashirama Senju!

The old man's voice resonated like the earth trembling: "...Two sparks must not be lit at once..."

Ebizo's pupils suddenly shrank to pinpoints.

He stared at the illusory figure, then drew his dagger and slashed his wrist, spilling the blood into the brazier.

The moment the phantom was scattered by the blood, he heard his own hoarse voice: "Then let the twin flames burn out the path of Sunagakure."

The blood-stained tokens at the five countries' post stations spontaneously combusted almost simultaneously.

In the Snow Station of the Land of Thunder, a merchant traveling at night saw a talisman rise with eerie blue flames, yet the characters remained undamaged, instead being branded into the stone wall with a "whoosh"; in the Boat Station of the Land of Water, a fisherman stared at the blood-red characters that suddenly appeared on the gunwale of his boat—the name of his younger brother who had died in battle ten years ago; in the Stone Station of the Land of Earth, the Finance Minister's mechanical prosthetic ear suddenly exploded, and he heard countless unfamiliar voices shouting "Give me back my household registration," causing the prosthetic eye to crack with a "crack."

Beneath the broken pillar of Guiyuan Shrine, Baiye suddenly opened his eyes.

The curse mark on the back of his neck looked like it had been splashed with hot oil. What rushed up his spine to his forehead was a chakra with a sandy feel—it came from the direction of Sunagakure. It was completely different from the clear and refreshing "Blue Leaf Fire Seed." It was like a piece of rotten wood covered with yellow sand, trying to burrow into the earth's veins.

“A fake spark.” He chuckled softly, and the vines formed from Wood Release chakra at his fingertips suddenly turned southwest.

As the roots surged underground, they enveloped a bluish seed—the "Second Spark" he had just awakened from the shrine's earth veins.

“Since some people want to set off fake fires,” he said, gripping the vines until his knuckles turned white from the force, “then let real fire burn through their shells.”

Moonlight spilled over his shoulders, illuminating the direction in which the vines stretched out—southwest, the border of Sunagakure.

There was an abandoned mine pit, its entrance covered by a newly built stone wall. The sand and gravel drifting out from inside the wall carried a faint smell of blood and rust.

As the night wind swirled sand past his ears, Bai Ye had already slid three inches down the mine's stone wall.

His night clothes were stained with the moss-green color of the broken pillars of the Guiyuan Shrine, blending into the surrounding charred rock face. Only the dark red curse mark at the corner of his eye glowed slightly with his breath—a trace of the First Generation's bloodline resonating with Wood Release.

The smell of blood and rust wafting from deep within the mine suddenly intensified.

He tapped the stone wall with his finger, and the Wood Release chakra at his fingertip slithered into the crack like a thin snake, instantly sketching the scene inside the wall in his mind: a circular altar with a bluish-gray puppet standing in the center, its joints wrapped with faded scarlet ribbons, which was seven-tenths similar to the ancient totem recorded in the "Blue Leaf Secret Order".

The chakra fluctuations at the deepest point were wrong; they were like a sponge soaked in rotten blood, pulsating in rhythm with some kind of incantation.

"The Shadow Guard's blood." Bai Ye narrowed his eyes.

The sand-like chakra sensed in the Land of Fire two days ago has finally materialized—Ebizo used the living container of the Shadow Imposter as a catalyst to forcibly embed the Blood Name Talisman into the core of the puppet, and then mixed it with yellow sand curse to burn it, trying to create the illusion of fire resonance.

His thumb unconsciously rubbed the vine imprint on his palm, where the warmth of the No. 2 flame he had awakened at the Guiyuan Shrine still lingered. "The stronger the fake fire, the more thoroughly the real fire can burn." He chuckled, and suddenly his wood-based roots pierced through the stone wall, seeping in along the cracks.

At that moment, the bronze lamp in the Sunagakure village council hall rang out.

Chiyo slammed her cane on the ground, causing the sand dunes in the sand table to slide down in a rustling sound: "Ebizo, you used the forbidden 'human puppet' technique?" Her wrinkled face flushed red, and the puppet strings around her eyes trembled slightly with anger—marks left from her youth when she fought against the tailed beasts, now like taut strings.

Chapter 1001 Sasori of the Red Sand

Ebizo, who was sitting at the head of the table, was using silver chopsticks to stir the goji berries in his teacup. When he heard this, he looked up and a cold smile appeared in the fine lines at the corners of his eyes: "Lady Chiyo, are you questioning the decision of the Shadow?"

"I'm just having puppets suffer in place of others; it's cleaner than having those children stripped of their chakra alive under the Shadow Substitute system." His knuckles tapped the yellow sand sealing talisman on the table, the edges of the talisman tinged with dark red. "Didn't you say back then that puppetry should be used where it's most needed?"

"Blade?" Chiyo's Adam's apple bobbed.

She recalled how, thirty years ago on the battlefield, she had convinced herself in the same way when she personally transformed her husband's corpse into a puppet.

But at this moment, the sandalwood incense in the council chamber was mixed with a faint smell of decay, much like the undried blood on the dissection table back then.

She suddenly stood up, her cane knocking over a teacup, scalding tea splashing onto Ebizo's sleeve embroidered with sand patterns: "You'll know whether it's clean or not when you see this knife plunged into your own heart."

Before she finished speaking, she had already turned and walked out of the council chamber.

The moonlight fell on her hunched back, casting a long shadow, like a puppet with its strings torn.

The cracks in the stone walls of the mine were pried open at midnight, revealing a width of half a finger.

Chiyo's breath sprayed onto her palm, carrying the unique medicinal fragrance of a puppeteer.

She took out a poisoned kunai from her bosom and slashed open a crack in the stone. As the sand and gravel fell, the puppet in the center of the altar was finally fully reflected in the image of her followers.

Beneath the bluish-gray puppet skin, the reflection of the metal skeleton could be faintly seen, and at the Adam's apple—her pupils suddenly contracted—the crimson-gold bell was tinkling softly in the night breeze; it was the one she had tied on Scorpion's head when he was twelve.

“Scorpion…” She staggered forward, her age-spotted hand hovering three inches in front of the puppet’s forehead, then withdrew as if burned.

But the moment the fingertip touched the puppet's forehead, something burrowed in along the chakra circuit.

It was a memory, a hazy yet clear memory: a damp basement, the smell of mud mixed with puppet paint; a twelve-year-old boy squatting in front of the dissection table, his eyes shining like stars when he looked up: "Grandma, can I turn myself into a puppet?"

That way you won't die.

No, that's not the case.

Chiyo dug her fingernails into her palm.

She remembered that Sasori did leave Sunagakure later, but his puppetry had long transcended life and death, so how could he... Her hand trembled as she stroked the back of the puppet's neck, where there was a crescent-shaped scar—it was from when Sasori fell from a tree at the age of six, and she had stitched it up with seven stitches using puppet strings.

"grandmother..."

A hoarse whisper with a metallic scraping sound crashed into my mind.

Chiyo's knees buckled, and she almost collapsed into the puppet's arms.

The voice was so similar, so much like the one Scorpion had when she was sixteen, when she questioned him about why he dissected the villagers, and he mumbled from behind the puppet, "I just wanted to see the limits of humanity."

But now, there was no stubbornness in her voice, only an endless emptiness, like a well whose core had been hollowed out: "I'm not a substitute... I was made..."

"No." Chiyo's tears fell onto the puppet's chest, spreading into a bluish-gray hue.

She suddenly remembered the tattered pages of Scorpion's notebook that she had found in the warehouse three days ago, the last sentence of which was soaked in blood: "So the most perfect human puppet was sealed inside while he was still alive."

The candlelight in the Konoha Archives suddenly burst three inches high.

Onodera Ren's fingertips rested on the yellowed silk, the ink on the tattered scroll of the "Blue Leaf Project" gleaming coldly in the firelight: "The spark does not control people's hearts, but awakens their memories."

If one were to forcefully ignite the flames, the one who ignites would inevitably become a sacrifice. "The vine tattoo on the back of her neck suddenly heated up; it was a warning from the chakra that coexisted with the blood ink."

Without time to think, she bit her fingertip and drew a blood array on the tattered scroll. The vine-like chakra surged along the earth's veins towards Sunagakure—she had to let Chiyo and the others know that Ebizo's fake fire would turn everyone into sacrifices.

But as soon as the vines touched the edge of the Sand Village, it was like hitting a wall of sand.

Ren Onodera heard a faint cracking sound. When he looked down, the vine tattoo on his wrist was withering at a visible speed, and drops of blood dripped from his fingertips, spreading into a dark red flower on the tattered scroll.

In the mine, Chiyo's hand was still pressed on the puppet's forehead.

She could clearly feel that faint consciousness dissipating, like grains of sand scattered by the wind.

Suddenly, the puppet's fingers twitched, and the metal at the joints made a soft "click" sound.

At the same time, Byakuya's Wood Release: Roots had pierced through the puppet's core.

The tainted blood name talisman appeared as a purplish-black color like rotting flesh in his perception, while beneath the talisman, a cluster of eerie blue light was writhing—that was the consciousness of the sealed Crimson Sand Scorpion.

He curled the corners of his lips, and the No. 2 flame at his fingertips suddenly became hot. The vines crawled along the roots into the puppet, leaving a blue mark on the blood name talisman.

"Burn it," he said softly.

In the Fire City, a thousand miles away, Tanaka Hisashi, the owner of a bookstore, is repairing ancient books by candlelight.

A gust of wind suddenly blew in through the window, extinguishing the candle wick.

He reached for the tinderbox on the table in the dark, but his fingertips touched a charred vine leaf.

By the moonlight, he could vaguely see some writing in the veins of the leaves, like tattered fragments burned by fire: "Fire... Sacrifice..." The water clock in the western market of the Fire City had just struck the third watch when a faint scraping sound suddenly came from the back window of Tanaka Hisashi's bookstore.

He was using the moonlight to decipher the writing on the vine leaves, his coarse cloth sleeve brushing against the "Unofficial History of the Land of Fire" on the table, the pages rustling with a sigh—it was a collection of oral history materials he had gathered over twenty years, each page stained with grease from the streets and taverns and mud from the fields.

"Who?" He grabbed the paperweight from the desk, his knuckles turning white from the force.

Since the destruction of Guiyuan Shrine, the bookstore has been visited three times at night. The first two times were by the secret police to censor unofficial histories. The third time... He touched the unhealed scar on the back of his neck. The person who came that night didn't say anything, but only branded a vine mark on the back of his hand.

The window lattice creaked open.

A paper package floated in through the moonlight and landed at his feet.

Tanaka Hisashi squatted down. The scorch marks on the oiled paper still carried warmth. After unfolding it, a curled black vine leaf lay on the coarse hemp lining paper. Dark red seeped from the veins of the leaf, like ink stains soaked in blood—clearly a tattered leaf that had been swept by the strange wind when he was repairing the ancient book. Now, however, there was an extra "scorpion" character, its strokes twisted like an insect licked by a tongue of fire.

His Adam's apple bobbed.

Three days ago, he overheard a caravan chatting at a teahouse, mentioning that the mines of Sunagakure always reeked of blood and rust. Five days ago, among the copies of the "Puppet Record" confiscated by the Anbu, there was a yellowed portrait. In the painting, a young man was holding a gray-blue puppet, his brow bone bearing a striking resemblance to Elder Chiyo. "Sasori of the Red Sand..." he murmured, uttering the name erased from official history. His fingertips rubbed against the vine leaves, and the mark on the back of his neck suddenly burned—exactly the same searing pain left by the visitor that night.

Chapter 1002 Recitation of Names!

"What do they want me to do?" He grabbed a vine and rushed into the inner room, knocking over a candlestick that burned a hole in the "List of Shadow Stands of the Last Thirty Years".

In a hidden compartment in the corner, twelve ceramic blanks were neatly stacked, each engraved with a fragmented green leaf totem.

This is a pattern he pieced together from shards of pottery from twelve ancient battlefields over three months by gathering twenty-three craftsmen—it is said to awaken erased memories.

"Afu!"

Ah Zhu! He kicked open the side door, and the dog in the corner of the yard suddenly barked wildly.

Three figures wrapped in indigo coarse cloth emerged from behind the woodpile, their faces still covered in clay.

The leading old craftsman, Afu, wiped his sweat: "Boss, do you think that drumbeat can awaken the sealed name?" He had half a piece of broken pottery hanging from his waist, which he had picked up at the foot of the south gate wall the day before yesterday. The gap fit perfectly with Tanaka Hisashi's pottery blank.

Tanaka Hisashi pressed the vine leaves onto the clay body.

The dark red "scorpion" character seems to come alive, seeping into the clay and solidifying into a single point at the center of the totem.

He picked up the carving knife, drops of blood dripping from between his fingers onto the pottery surface: "Use blood ink to pacify the soul."

Back then, they used the blood of substitutes to seal names, and we used the blood of living people to snatch names back! "When the carving knife fell, the clay body emitted a clear and melodious hum, like the morning bell of an ancient temple breaking through the night."

As the first drumbeat sounded, fine cracks began to seep from the stone walls of the Sand Hidden Mine.

Chiyo pressed the tip of her cane against the crack in the stone, and the chakra in her palm seeped into the wall along the wood grain—she could feel that the consciousness that had been drifting like grains of sand had gathered a little more.

Just now, while arguing with Ebizo in the council hall, she secretly put tracking powder in his teacup, and now the sand grains were pointing towards the mine. "Scorpion..." Her fingers traced the stone wall, and suddenly she heard a muffled sound in the wind, like someone beating the clouds with a leather drum.

The puppets deep in the mine were the first to react.

Its bluish-gray eyes, which were originally a murky, lifeless gray, now glowed with a ghostly blue light. The metal joints made a "click-clack" grinding sound as it slowly turned its head, its empty eye sockets facing the direction of the Land of Fire.

The sealed consciousness surged within the chakra circuits, and fragments of Sasori's memories flooded back like a tide: when he was six, his grandmother used puppet strings to stitch up his wounds; at twelve, he dissected his first corpse in the basement; and at sixteen, when he sealed his own heart into a puppet, he heard his grandmother crying and shouting "monster" outside the door.

“My name…” a hoarse whisper escaped the puppet’s throat, its metallic tongue scraping against its teeth. “They erased my name…with the blood of a shadow clone…with a fake flame…”

The drumbeats grew louder and louder.

The clay drums of the Fire City were pounded by twenty-three craftsmen in turn, each drumbeat carrying the sweet, pungent smell of blood and ink.

Tian Jiuzhong's hands were covered in blood from the carving knife, yet he still managed to carve the final stroke on the pottery surface—on the main stem of the blue leaf totem, the four bloody characters "Red Sand Scorpion" were seeping blood. "Recite the names!" he roared, his voice drowning out the drumbeats, "Shout out the names that were burned, buried, and torn!"

Twenty-three craftsmen spoke at the same time.

They were reading the list of body doubles that Tian Jiuzhong had copied down, the "missing Aju" and "suddenly deceased Atie" that the old people in the teahouses and taverns were talking about, and the nameless tombstone inscriptions that Tian Jiuzhong had copied at the mass grave.

These names, scribbled into ink by official historians, floated into the sky with the sound of drums, like a flock of kites whose shackles had been removed.

The puppet in the mine suddenly trembled violently.

The crimson bell rang shrilly against his Adam's apple, and sparks flew from the joints that were originally wrapped in scarlet ribbons.

The fake flame, tainted by the blood name symbol, screamed in his chest. Scorpion's consciousness cleaved the seal like a sharp blade—he saw how Ebizo stuffed the living vessel of the shadow puppet into the core of the puppet, saw Elder Chiyo's trembling hands by the dissection table, and saw the fear that flashed in her eyes when he looked up at twelve years old and asked, "Grandma, can I turn myself into a puppet?"

"They're using us as substitutes too!" The puppet's metal fingers pierced its chest cavity, tearing out the purplish-black fake flame with a "snap."

The moment he crushed it, the yellow sand barrier on the mine wall shattered like a punctured balloon, turning into a shower of golden dust.

Amidst the earth-shaking tremors, Chiyo burst through the stone wall and rushed in, just in time to see the puppet's remains crashing to the ground. Its bluish-gray "skin" cracked open, revealing a half-rotten human body inside—a boy of fifteen or sixteen, with the Sand Village's shadow mark carved on the back of his neck, but his face overlapped with Sasori's portrait when he was sixteen.

"Scorpion!" Chiyo rushed over and caught the boy's gradually cooling body.

She finally realized that the puppet didn't contain Scorpion's corpse at all, but rather another person whose name had been erased.

The real scorpion may have died in his own puppetry thirty years ago, leaving only a remnant soul trapped in these bodies used as substitutes.

"Grandma..." The boy's lips moved, his voice as soft as the wind, "My name is... Xiaochuan..."

The mine collapsed amidst a deafening roar.