Konoha: Superman template, the spoiled brat becomes strong.

"Baijun!"

A clear, melodious voice called out from afar.

Byakuya turned his head and saw Onodera Ren running from the direction of the village entrance, her moon-white shrine maiden clothes fluttering in the wind.

The blood-ink vine hairpin in her hair gleamed with an eerie light; it was a magical artifact that she had nurtured with her own blood for three years.

“The vine sap has turned black.” She ran up to him, her forehead glistening with sweat. “I set up a triple sealing array at the village entrance, but…” She paused, then pulled out half a blood-stained jade piece from her bosom. “I intercepted a recording; it’s related to the purifiers.”

Bai Ye noticed fresh bloodstains on the side of her neck, drawn with a hairpin. "You used a bloodline limit?"

“I had no choice.” Onodera Ren’s fingertips traced the jade piece. “A phantom rushed at me, shouting that it was looking for Aoba Hachi.” She suddenly grabbed Byakuya’s wrist and pressed the jade piece into his palm. “Look at this.”

Dynamic fragments of memory emerge on the jade tablet: In a sealed laboratory, a person in a white coat holds down a crying child, and a mechanical voice repeats, "Erase unnecessary memories."

The clearest image is of a figure wearing a black eye patch, his back to the camera, but the eight-petaled blue leaf pattern embroidered on his cuffs is exactly the same as the clothing of Aoba Hachi.

“These are early images of the underground water dungeon.” Ren Onodera’s voice trembled. “I recognize the one in the white robe; he was Chiyo’s assistant when she was young.” Her gaze swept over the illusory figures floating on the wasteland. “They didn’t wake up on their own; they were pulled back by some force.”

Byakuya's Wood Release Seed suddenly became intensely hot.

He looked down and saw that green sprouts had emerged from his palm, weaving into vines at their feet and extending westward toward Sunagakure.

"We have news from Tanaka's side." A hoarse male voice came from afar.

As Bi emerged from behind the sand dunes, Yunyin's lightning-patterned headband gleamed coldly in the moonlight. "He infiltrated the West City Archives, saying he found the Purifier's Log." He tossed over an oil paper package. "He just sent a message via crow, warning us to be careful of the olfactory puppets."

Bai Ye tore open the oiled paper, revealing half a bloodstained page inside, the ink still wet: "Number Eight will enter a dormant period and needs to transfer its memory load to a backup container... Three failures, seven volunteers died suddenly."

Qingye Bafeiren is a living sealing stake.

"A living sealing target?" Ren Onodera frowned. "Like a tailed beast sealing technique?"

Bi took out a kunai from his waist and drew a circle on the sand: "When the old ninja died, his body was like a dried-out sack."

If Aoba Hachi is a vessel, then what's inside him...?

“It’s the erased memories,” Bai Ye interjected. “The purifiers don’t erase memories; they stuff memories into Qingye Ba’s body.”

So they won't live more than three years—their memories are too many, they'll burst.

A sudden gust of wind swept across the wasteland, carrying the smell of burning. Bi abruptly looked up: "There's firelight to the east."

Following his gaze, Bai Ye saw black smoke rising from the west of the city, and could vaguely hear shouts of "Fire!" "It's Tanaka Hisashi." He gripped his short blade tightly. "He deliberately burned the bookshelf to distract the inspector."

“That guy…” Bi tugged at his headband, “is bolder than I imagined.”

“But he brought out the key information.” Onodera Ren held up the blood jade tablet. “Now there are three clues: the name is moving, Aoba Hachi is a sealing stake, and…” She pointed to the phantom on the jade tablet, “They are looking for Aoba Hachi.”

Byakuya's Wood Release vines suddenly wrapped around his ankle.

He bent down and saw a new name appear on the vine: "Shin Kazama".

The handwriting was very faint, as if it had been soaked in water, but the direction... was towards the neighboring village to the north.

"Kazama-sensei?" he murmured the name, recalling the gentle teacher in Yukihara Village who always hid the "List of Unknowns" in his lesson plans.

The book that Kazama sent the other day had the words "Remember for Chiho, Grandpa hasn't forgotten" written at the bottom. Now that name is appearing on the vines, could it be...?

“What might he be doing?” Onodera Ren looked in the direction of the vines and saw a blurry figure on the mountain road to the north, carrying a cloth bag and walking towards the neighboring village in the moonlight.

The Wood Release Seed of Byakuya suddenly fell silent.

As he gazed at the figure, he suddenly recalled what Nobuo Kazama often said: "Names are not carved in stone, but in the memories of the living." Now, those names engraved in the "List of Lost Names" are "walking" among the living in another way.

The sound of a rooster crowing could be heard in the distance.

Bai Ye took out the "List of Lost Names" from his pocket, turned to the latest page, and carved with the tip of his short blade: "Inuzuka Shinichi, Guardian of Guiyuan Shrine, Place of Memory: Broken Stele." The ink was not yet dry, but the characters were slightly shiny, as if they had a warmth to them.

"It's time to go." Bi patted him on the shoulder. "Go to Sunagakure and find Chiyo. She knows more than we do."

Onodera Ren tucked the blood jade piece into his clothes, and a small red flower suddenly bloomed from the vine hairpin in his hair—a sign that the blood ink vine was bringing good news.

She looked at Bai Ye, a smile in her eyes: "This time, we won't let the name disappear again."

Bai Ye stood up, and wood-style vines spread out like a green carpet under his feet, extending towards Sunagakure.

He glanced back at the ethereal figures floating across the wasteland. The blurry outlines were gradually becoming clearer, and someone raised their hand, as if to greet him.

"I will remember you," he said to the wind.

On the mountain road to the north, the figure carrying a cloth bag paused for a moment.

Kazama Shin pulled out the "List of Lost Names" from his pocket and found a new line on the last page: "Inuzuka Shinichi, Guardian of Guiyuan Shrine." He smiled, pressed the book closer to his pocket, and quickened his pace toward the next village—where an old hunter said he remembered a ninja wearing a dog-ear headband who had saved his life forty years ago.

As Kazama Shin's cloth shoes stepped over the rotten wooden threshold of the post station, the musty smell mixed with the stench of rust assaulted his nostrils.

Chapter 132 The Memory Fitter

He tucked the "List of Unknowns" closer to his chest, the cloth bag clattering against his waist—this was the third day of his visit to the seventh neighboring village, and besides the cold rice balls, the cloth bag also contained three charcoal pencils, half a block of pine soot ink, and half a copper whistle that the old hunter had given him the night before.

Do you want some water?

A hoarse female voice came from behind the counter.

Kazama Shin looked up and saw an old woman with white hair wiping a rough pottery bowl with a rag. Her hands were covered with dark brown spots, like tree bark eaten by insects.

When he unfolded the "List of Lost Names" and laid it on the counter, the old woman's fingers suddenly stopped. Water seeping from the corner of the cloth soaked into a small puddle on the wood, just covering the two characters "千穗".

“Chiho.” The old woman’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and her cloudy eyes suddenly cleared. “She was one of the first ‘memory adaptors’ of Sunagakure.”

Kazama Shin's fingertips hovered over the blank space next to "Chiho," the charcoal pencil gripping him until it was burning hot: "The Fittest?"

“Remove emotions, adjust the cleaner system.” The old woman’s voice became stiff, as if she were reciting some kind of mantra engraved in her bones. “They say emotions are impurities that will pollute the purity of the memory container.”

Chiho cried for three days while tied to the iron frame, and finally… “She suddenly covered her mouth, her eyes glazing over again,” she said, “this old man of mine is talking nonsense again.”

Kazama Shin grabbed her wrist, the skin he touched as thin as paper: "How do you know all this?"

The old woman's pupils slowly contracted, like a candle wick extinguished by the wind: "I...I'm waiting for the postman." She withdrew her hand and began mechanically wiping the ceramic bowl. "He said he would bring me a letter, with my granddaughter's name on it..."

As the night wind blew through the broken windows of the post office, Kazama Shin squatted outside the farmhouse where he was staying.

He borrowed the landlord's oil lamp, and the flame flickered inside the glass shade, illuminating the footprints by the well clearly—wet mud prints, shoes pointing towards the well with heels backward, as if someone had walked backward into it.

"Click."

He turned on the oil lamp and brought it close to the well wall; the traces of vines coiled around it suddenly stung his eyes.

The vines did not grow naturally, but were precisely wound into rings. Each node of the vine had tiny bumps that, upon closer inspection, were actually small characters carved from the vascular bundles of the vines: "I was once the caretaker of Chiho."

"boom!"

When a muffled thud came from the direction of Guiyuan Shrine, Bi was holding half of a broken inscription.

His trusted aide, Ayan, still held his digging hand, the tip of his shovel stained with red soil. The family totem on the monument gleamed coldly in the moonlight. He brushed away the loose soil from the words "Fujiwara bloodline, locked generation after generation," and the ink turned a dark red, like congealed blood.

"Lord Shadow!" A communication crow fluttered down onto his shoulder, clutching an urgent document in its claws. "The Cloud Village high command has ordered the suppression of rumors on the border, claiming that the 'reappearance of the ghost' is disturbing public order."

Bi tucked the inscription into his robes, his brows furrowing sharply beneath his thunder-patterned forehead guard. "Tell them I'm investigating the truth about the Purifiers." As he turned to walk toward the dungeon, the hem of his robe brushed against Ayan's shovel. "You stay here and keep digging. Send word immediately if you find anything."

The dungeon smelled even worse than the post office.

The old doctor was chained to the wall, the burns on his left cheek spreading from his forehead to his jaw. When he saw Bi Shi, he suddenly laughed: "The proxy shadow of Yunyin?"

"You think you're investigating the truth?" His nails dug deeply into his palms. "You're nothing but an 'echo' of Aoba Hachi's overflowing memories—those sealed memories were too full, and the leaking fragments became you 'investigators.'"

Bi's fingers gripped the hilt of the kunai.

The old doctor's laughter suddenly changed, his eyes began to roll back, and tiny cracks appeared in his skin, from which green vines emerged and wrapped around his neck like living creatures.

"Look...look behind you..." The old doctor's voice was shattered by the vines, and as the last word faded away, the scroll in his arms suddenly unfurled with a "whoosh".

Moonlight shone through the iron bars onto the scroll, depicting eight purifiers seated in a circle. The person in the center, draped in a black robe and faceless, had eight vines piercing the spines of the group behind him.

The title was written in blood: "The Ritual of Bearing Pain - The First Cycle".

Chiyo dug her fingernails into the baby tooth amulet.

The ivy outside the window tapped on the glass three more times, the rhythm exactly the same as the lullaby she used to lull Chiho to sleep back then.

As she stood up, her wooden clogs rolled over the dust on the ground, leaving two trails in the secret room—this was the first time in twenty years that she had approached the dusty puppet control panel. The copper lock was rusted shut. She drew a short knife from her sleeve, and as soon as the tip of the knife touched the lock cylinder, the lock snapped into pieces with a "crack".

When the "Memory Reversal Device" is activated, the machine emits a beep.

Chiyo bit her fingertip, and a drop of blood dripped onto the core. Fragments flashed in the red mist: her younger self knelt before the council, crying, "Use me to replace Chiho"; the councilor shook his head, his white hair swaying in the candlelight; then, someone removed a black mask, revealing a face almost identical to Byakuya's.

"Aoba Hachi..." Chiyo's tears fell onto the control panel, splashing up tiny droplets. "So it was you guys..."

An earthquake suddenly struck.

She gripped the edge of the table and heard a deafening roar coming from afar, as if some enormous thing was being pulled up from the ground.

She walked to the window. In the moonlight, a blue shadow pierced the night sky in the direction of Guiyuan Shrine. A person stood at the top, their clothes fluttering in the wind.

As Kazama Shin straightened up by the well, the "List of Lost Names" suddenly became hot.

He turned to the last page, where a new line of text had appeared next to the characters "Chiho": "Caregiver, name unknown, place of memory: abandoned well." The ink was still wet, and the veins of vines could be vaguely seen flowing within the words.

He gripped the scroll tightly, and the Lightning Release chakra crackled in his palm.

He gazed at the remains of the old doctor, devoured by vines, in the dungeon, and suddenly remembered the Wood Release seed in Bai Ye's palm—those green sprouts were perhaps never ordinary chakra.

Chiyo pressed her hand against the windowpane, and the vines crept in through her fingers and wrapped around her wrist.

Gazing at the distant, colossal blue shadow, she finally whispered, "So, it turns out that more than one has been swallowed up by history."

Beneath the ruins of Guiyuan Shrine, the Wood Release Seed exploded into green light in Byakuya's palm.

He could feel countless names flowing into his body along the vines, like a tide washing over parched land.

When the first vine broke through the ground, he heard the entire wasteland tremble, and he heard those forgotten names singing in his veins.

He climbed up the vines, the wind lifting the hem of his clothes.

When the vines grew to a hundred meters tall, he stopped and looked down at the ground—the phantoms were no longer blurry; they stood on the green carpet of vines, looking up at him with smiles on their faces.

Chapter 133 Memory Reversal

The vines writhed like living things at Bai Ye's feet, each branch enveloped in tiny fluorescent lights—the glow of erased names.

He could clearly feel these names drilling into his heart like countless tiny needles, making his eyes sting.

“This isn’t Wood Release,” he murmured, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

The moment the Wood Release chakra surged from his fingertips, the vines suddenly trembled violently, their tips twisting into a ring-shaped chain that wrapped around his waist with a "whoosh."

He staggered half a step, his back slamming heavily against the vine wall, but the chains tightened as if they were alive, making his ribs ache.

"You're back... It's time to put the container back in its place."

Overlapping whispers came from all directions, like countless people speaking close to his ear.

Bai Ye's pupils contracted sharply, and his temples throbbed—he recognized the sound; he had heard it before, in the cellar of Guiyuan Shrine.

He was only seven years old then, hiding behind a wine jar, watching his father raise a torch and smash it against the iron gate covered with runes.

A sweet, metallic scent of blood seeped out from behind the door. He glimpsed a body submerged in a pool of blood on the stone platform, and that face... was exactly the same as his own.

"Cough!" The tightening force of the chains suddenly increased, and Byakuya bent his knee and slammed it into the vine wall, his Wood Release chakra exploding like a tidal wave.

But the vines only swayed slightly, instead wrapping around the plant even tighter.

Veins bulged on his forehead as he suddenly noticed dark red patterns appearing on the chains—the cursed seal of the Otsutsuki clan.

"So..." he gritted his teeth, a trickle of blood escaping his throat, "This vine belonged to them..."

Before he could finish speaking, a muffled sound came from underground.

He looked down along the vine, and his pupils widened suddenly—the body in the blood pool was slowly opening its eyes, the whites of its eyes tinged with an eerie bluish-gray, exactly like Aoba's eyes.

At the same time, on the mountain road outside Xueyuan Village, Onodera Ren suddenly stopped in his tracks.

She pressed her hand to her left breast, where the blood-ink vine tattoo was cracking with tiny fissures, as if the thread had been forcibly torn off.

"My memories have reversed," she murmured, pulling a blood-stained jade piece from her sleeve—it was the spirit medium she had nurtured for ten years with the blood from the tip of her tongue.

The jade piece burned her hand as soon as it touched her palm, causing her to pull it away.

She gritted her teeth and gripped it again, blood seeping through her fingers. A blurry image appeared on her jade face: beneath the bronze mask, a woman's hand was bleeding as she smeared blood onto eight names on the wall.

As soon as the last name, "Fujiwara Yoake," was written, the woman looked up—it was the face of Fujiwara Shizuka when she was young.

"As expected." Onodera Ren gripped the jade piece tightly, his nails almost digging into his flesh.