Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

He had carefully touched those broken steles when he sat cross-legged yesterday; the stone surface was rough and hurt his hands. But now it felt like Xuan paper that had been soaked in warm water.

When the three characters "Fujiwara Akira" appeared on the first monument, his Adam's apple bobbed.

The second one is "Matsumoto Inkstone", and the third one is "Asano Shin" - both are names that were crossed out in the history books of the Land of Fire. He had seen traces of these ink marks in the musty smell at the bottom of the dark archives.

"So you were hiding here." He reached out and touched the name "Fujiwara Akira," his fingertip burning from the heat of the stone surface.

The temperature didn't feel like it was from the sun; it felt more like someone had burned incense behind the monument, warming people's hearts.

The core of the Wood Release technique in his heart no longer hurt terribly; instead, it felt like he was being soaked in warm wine, and even the seal in his bloodline softened a bit.

The vines suddenly brushed lightly against the back of his hand, like a kitten patting someone with its paws.

He looked down and saw the tendrils of the vine running along the lines of his palm, tying a knot at the "lifeline".

“I know.” He smiled at the air, his voice as soft as morning dew falling on vine leaves. “I’m no longer the one who starts the fire… I just make sure the fire has a place to burn.”

As soon as he finished speaking, a mountain wind from the northeast swept in, carrying waves of chakra.

The ripples carried the unique, bitter medicinal scent of Konoha. Bai Ye looked up and saw several strands of blood-ink floating in mid-air—the mark of Onodera Ren.

In front of the former site of the Konoha Archives, blood was dripping from Onodera Ren's fingertips.

She squatted in front of the newly built stone altar, the center of which was covered with a layer of fine pottery shards, relics brought by the people yesterday: a bloodstained headband, a wooden puppet missing an ear, and a washi paper letter with burnt edges.

As she buried the last piece of wood, engraved with the word "father," into the ground, the stone altar suddenly made a soft "click" sound.

The moment the ground cracked open, she instinctively took a half step back.

A transparent vine emerged from the crack, and floating within its stem were about a hundred faces, some old and some young, some dressed in ninja outfits and others wrapped in coarse cloth shirts.

In the front row was a woman holding a baby. The little one was clutching her clothes, and the woman's mouth was moving—Ren didn't need chakra perception to hear the faint "Amo" in her voice.

“It’s a name.” She held her breath and reached out to touch the vine.

Fragments of memory flooded in like a burst dam: by the warm stove on a snowy night, an old craftsman carved his grandson's nickname on the inside of a knife handle; in front of a tombstone in a downpour, a young girl buried her mother's hairpin in the ground; and a ninja covered in blood, biting his tongue and spitting the name of his teammate into his palm before he died.

"So memories aren't passed down..." Her fingertips trembled slightly on the vines, "They're lived out."

The transparent vines suddenly swelled up, and the faces inside the stems began to touch each other.

Lian saw the old craftsman with the carving knife handle lead the girl out of the downpour, and the girl had an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes in her arms—it was "Atao" whom she had just seen in the fragments.

At the same time, a muffled sound came from beneath the bluestone slabs of the Fire Country's underground water dungeon.

Fujiwara Shizuka leaned against the damp, cold stone wall, watching the blood-red ink on the wall grow wildly.

The words were no longer scattered fragments, but formed a complete picture: a ten-year-old boy was pressed onto the altar, a blue seed was implanted in his chest, his fingernails scratched five bloody marks on the stone bricks, and he roared in his throat: "I don't want to be a vessel!"

I want to be myself!

“Ye Ming…” Jing’s fingertips traced the boy’s contorted face, tears falling onto the stone bricks and splashing up tiny droplets.

She then realized that the blood-ink vines on her wrist had somehow become entangled in the iron bars of the water prison, and their roots were drilling into the ground through the gaps—forming a net underground with the green vines of Guiyuan Shrine and the transparent vines of Konoha.

“You did it.” She smiled at the boy in the picture, but tears kept flowing. “You are no longer just a vessel.”

Suddenly, a guard outside the water dungeon cried out in alarm: "The stone walls are bleeding!"

"Go and report to the adults!" Jing watched as the image on the wall gradually faded, finally settling on the boy's raised eyes—those eyes were exactly the same as Bai Ye's now, shining like a knife tempered with starlight.

The ivy at Guiyuan Shrine is still growing.

Bai Ye stood up and saw that the name on the ninth broken stele was finally fully revealed: "Fujiwara Yomei"—his real name, a name that had been erased from the clan history for thirty-seven years.

The vines wrapped around his wrist, this time not as a test, but as if a long-lost friend gently tugged him toward the northeast.

He looked in the direction of the vines and vaguely sensed the thunderous aura unique to Yunyin in the mountain mist.

A faint, indistinct drumbeat carried on the wind, as if summoning something.

"It's coming," he said softly, a very faint smile playing on his lips.

Chapter 1020: The True Shadow Returns to the Heart!

In the morning light, nine green vines simultaneously bloomed with small white flowers.

Within the stamen of each flower floats a pen tip that is writing—not someone holding the pen, but the memory itself, determined to continue writing the story.

Just as the vines on the broken pillars of Guiyuan Shrine suddenly emitted a blinding white light, Baiye was looking down at the vines on her wrist.

That glimmer of light, "My name is not recorded, but I remember it," seemed to be infused with life, flickering in the leaf veins. It reminded him of the burning pain of the clan elder branding his nameplate with a hot iron when he knelt in the ancestral hall thirty years ago. But now, the light was not burning; instead, it carried a warm tremor, like countless heartbeats suppressed under the history books, finally finding a resonant frequency.

The scent of thunderstorms from the northeast swept in faster than the mountain winds.

When Byakuya looked up, the unique ozone of Kumogakure had already permeated the eaves of the shrine. He could clearly sense the chakra fluctuations in the open space outside Kumogakure—it was Bee's Lightning Release chakra, carrying its usual violence, yet with a touch more composure than usual.

At the "True Shadow Festival" outside Kumogakure, Bee's Thunder Blade was reflecting the morning dew.

He stood before the newly erected nameless monument, a corner of his dark cloak lifted by the mountain wind, revealing the dark pattern of the cloud-covered forehead guard on his left chest.

Twenty-seven representatives of the bereaved families knelt below the stage. The old woman in the front row clutched her faded headband, her knuckles turning white from the force—it was left by her late husband when he performed a shadow double mission thirty years ago, and the scorch marks on the edge of the headband still carried the scorching aura of lightning.

“Let’s begin.” Bee’s voice cut through the wind.

The old woman trembled as she threw her headband into the brazier. The moment the sparks crackled and exploded, everyone held their breath.

The flames suddenly shot up more than ten feet, and ink-colored characters condensed within the orange-red flames! The four characters "Yamada Goro" floated in mid-air, with the strokes carrying the fine arcs of lightning unique to lightning release—that was the old woman's deceased husband's real name, a name that had been erased from the history of the Hidden Cloud Village for twenty-nine years.

Bi's pupils suddenly contracted.

He could hear the sobs rising and falling from the audience, and he could see the old woman kneeling on the ground, covering her mouth with her hands, large tears falling onto her coarse cloth skirt.

He reached for the Thunder Blade "Plowing Cloud" at his waist; the talisman on the hilt turned blue as chakra surged.

The moment the blade sliced ​​through his palm, blood dripped into the brazier, and sparks flew as he roared, "From this day forward, Yunyin will not use substitutes, but only our true names!"

A muffled thud came from the ground.

Everyone took a half step back, only to see a green vine sprouting from the ground beneath the base of the monument, with densely packed names appearing on the vine: "Inuzuka Taku", "Kazama Hayato", "Kamishiro Rin"... all real names that had been erased during the previous stand-in missions.

The Cloud Village Shadow Guards knelt on the ground. The eldest Jonin trembled as he raised his right hand, the lightning seal on his palm touching the lightning on the vines: "True Shadow Returns to the Heart!"

When he reached out to touch the vines, beads of blood seeped into the veins of his palm.

He heard his deceased brother's voice in his ear—the first substitute who died in the Rock Hidden Trap in his place was now standing side by side with "Kamishiro Rin" on the vine.

He suddenly laughed, his eyes reddening as he laughed: "Brother, look, we finally have names."

Meanwhile, in a snow-covered village a thousand miles away, Kazama Shin's breath frosted off his eyelashes.

He stood by the frozen well, wrapped in a faded teacher's robe, with villagers sitting around him.

They had been chanting names since midnight last night, their throats already hoarse, yet they continued chanting: "Grandma Kawakami's husband, Tanaka Jiro; the youngest daughter of the Haruno family, who died before she could be named..."

Suddenly, the ice surface made a soft "crack" sound.

Kazama Shin crouched down, pressing his palm against the ice—it was Wood Release chakra, carrying the unique bitter medicinal scent of Byakuya.

The ice cracked, revealing a spiderweb-like pattern of tiny characters—a fragment of Luo Sha's birth mother's diary!

The most striking line made his pupils shrink: "The first envoy once said: The beginning of the stand-in is to protect the true shadow; the end of the stand-in is to seize the true power."

"It's the truth!" Kazama Shin pulled out the short sword from his waist, cut his fingertip, and copied the words onto the washi paper he carried with him.

Before the blood ink had dried, he trudged through knee-deep snow to stick the paper to the old pine tree at the village entrance.

The night wind blew, making the pages of the paper rustle, and the "blood name talismans" at the three post stations in the Land of Wind spontaneously combusted almost simultaneously—the flames did not spread, but instead condensed into words, flickering in the night sky: "The system devours people, not the fault of ninjutsu."

Bai Ye, atop the Guiyuan Shrine, closed his eyes.

He could sense the locations of thirty-seven burning "Blood Name Talismans" within the five kingdoms, and the chakra fluctuations were connected like stars.

The core of the Wood Release technique in his heart was no longer a burning pain, but a warm resonance, as if countless hands were holding it up and carrying it to a wider world.

The vines around his wrist were slowly climbing upwards, wrapping around his forearm and reaching his shoulder.

This time it wasn't a test, but rather a symbiotic relationship with him, like blood ties.

He heard countless whispers in his ears: Aoba Mori complaining about the musty smell of the archives, Fujiwara Shuichi humming childhood songs, the sighs and laughter of the nameless... They no longer called out "Lord Byakuya," but said to each other, "Look, I found you," "So you were here too."

“You don’t need me as your root anymore…” he said softly to the wind, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “You’ve grown your own roots.”

Before the words were even finished, a deafening roar like an earthquake came from the ground.

He looked down and saw a blue crack in the foundation of the shrine, from which the light of the Wood Release core surged forth.

The light did not point at him, but scattered into countless sparks, following the direction of the vines, and sprinkling across the mountains, villages, and old battlefields of the five kingdoms.

In the water dungeon of the Fire City, Fujiwara Shizuka looked up at the wall.

Blood Ink had somehow climbed to the top of the stone, and the last line of words slowly appeared before her eyes: "The next name will be written by himself." She reached out and touched the words, and the warmth from her fingertips reminded her of the morning dew at Guiyuan Shrine—the warmth of life, the warmth that would never be altered, the warmth that belonged to each individual.

The vines of Guiyuan Shrine suddenly trembled slightly.

Bai Ye looked down and saw the roots of the vines drilling deep into the foundation, where the core he had sealed with Wood Release for thirty years lay dormant.

He suddenly laughed, a laugh like that of a traveler finally relieved of a heavy burden.

The wind ruffled his clothes. He gazed in the direction where the sparks had faded and murmured, "It's time to let it return to where it belongs..."

The wind from Guiyuan Shrine carried the crisp aura of the Wood Release core, brushing past Baiye's hair and lifting a few strands.

He looked down at the blue light surging from the cracks in the foundation. The light was no longer a burning pain, but rather like the coolness of a spring stream breaking through the ice and flowing over his fingertips, carrying a kind of joyful anticipation of finally heading to a distant place.

Chapter 121 A stone can suppress grass, but it can't suppress grass seeds.

"Here it comes." He murmured, tapping the short sword at his waist that had accompanied him on his travels.

The blade is made of red iron, a specialty of the Land of Fire, and the hilt is wrapped with faded blue hemp—it was given to him three years ago in Amegakure by an old blacksmith who said, "A good sword should have warmth."

As the back of the knife pressed against the calluses on his palm, he suddenly remembered the old blacksmith's cracked hands, and the night he squatted in front of the blacksmith's shop, watching the sparks splatter on the old man's apron, burning small round holes in them.

The moment the blade sliced ​​across his palm, beads of blood rushed out, dripping into the cracks between his fingers.

The green vine suddenly trembled, eagerly sucking on the drops of blood like an infant suckling at a nipple.

Bai Ye looked at his increasingly pale palms, a sweet, metallic taste rising in his throat, but he smiled—this pain was different from before. Before, it was a shackle etched into his bones, but now it felt like the light marks left by the chains brushing against his skin when the shackles were being removed.

“I am no longer a root…” He bent down, his fingertips gently tracing the raised veins on the vine. “You are.”

Before the words were finished, the green vines rustled.

The tendrils that had been wrapped around his wrists and shoulders suddenly flowed backward, disappearing into the ground like receding tide.

The earth tremors began beneath our feet and spread in all directions like the beating of drums—the mountain people in the western part of the Land of Fire heard muffled sounds from underground and thought it was spring thunder; the caravans on the edge of the desert in the Land of Wind saw sand grains strangely suspended, forming tiny vortices in mid-air; the waterfall outside the Hidden Cloud Village in the Land of Lightning suddenly stopped flowing, and water droplets froze in mid-air, refracting rainbow-like halos.

Bai Ye looked up and saw star-like points of light twinkling in the sky—those were the locations of the seventeen "Blood Name Talismans".

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, his gaze pierced through thousands of miles, landing on a forgotten little village in the land of rivers.

Under the old locust tree at the village entrance, the originally blank stone tablet suddenly gleamed with golden light, and the three characters "Chen Aniu" slowly appeared.

The middle-aged man chopping wood trembled, the axe crashing to his feet. He stumbled forward, his calloused hands tracing the surface of the tombstone: "My father... my father said that my grandfather's name was Chen Aniu, and he was mistakenly killed by Iwagakure ninja on the edge of a field..." He suddenly knelt down, his forehead pressed against the stone tablet, his shoulders trembling violently, "So you haven't been forgotten, so you..."

At the training ground at the eastern end of Konoha Village, Onodera Ren stood in front of the newly erected "Record of the Martial Arts Tournament".

She wasn't wearing her ANBU uniform today, only a faded blue shirt with vine patterns embroidered on the cuffs—patterns she had stained with her own blood, each line concealing a forgotten memory. "Those who wish to remember, step forward." Her voice wasn't loud, but it was like a pebble thrown into a deep pool, creating ripples in the crowd.

The first to step forward was a girl with pigtails, her hair streaked with grass clippings, clearly having just returned from the fields.

When she reached out to touch the vines on the "Memories Altar," her pupils suddenly contracted, and her fingertips turned a bluish-purple hue characteristic of blood ink. "I...I saw a man in a gray robe writing something under an oil lamp, the pages of which were covered in blood..." The girl suddenly covered her mouth, tears streaming down her face. "He wrote: 'Today I erased the names of three more families, the pen felt as heavy as if it were pressing down on a mountain.'"

Then he bit his finger and wrote on the back of the paper: "Li Chengyan, twenty-six years old, historian, with a guilty conscience."

' "

Onodera Ren took out a roll of yellowed paper, which was the original copy of Li Chengyan's will that he had stolen from the Shige's vault.

The girl trembled as she pulled out half a piece of charcoal from her bosom and wrote crookedly on the mud wall: "Li Chengyan, twenty-six years old, historian, feeling ashamed." The moment the handwriting overlapped with the original, the cherry blossoms in the training ground suddenly flew upward against the wind, as if supported by some force, forming the character "记" in mid-air.

“You are not the successors.” Onodera Ren reached out and caught a cherry blossom petal, still stained with the girl’s tears. “You are the new historians.”

In the Fire Country's underground water dungeon, Fujiwara Shizuka's fingertips were so transparent that the patterns on the stone walls could be seen.

She looked at her gradually disappearing arms and suddenly smiled—this body that had imprisoned her for three years was finally going to become a part of her memories.

She bit her tongue, and blood splattered on the wall. The blood-red ink that had covered the stone ceiling suddenly came to life, swimming towards her palm like a school of red fish.

"Fujiwara no Tadashi died of an epidemic in the third year of the Zhenguan era; Fujiwara no Kiyoshi died in battle on the border in the fifth year of the Yongshou era; Fujiwara no Yasushi was falsely accused of treason in the second year of the Keiwa era..." she read softly, and blood ink outlined densely packed names on the wall, with tiny symbols drawn next to each name: medicine pot, short sword, bamboo slip.

The last line was blank. She dipped her brush in her own blood and wrote, stroke by stroke: "Quiet, nameless, the guardian of history, ultimately becoming history."

When her palm touched the wall, the blood ink on the entire wall suddenly turned into a torrent, rushing straight to the surface along the earth's veins.