Chapter 161
But you can't even recognize your own child.
Chapter 161 But you can't even recognize your own child.
It was dark and viscous, like ink.
Yakushi Nonou floats and sinks in the chaos.
There was no light, no sound, only a deep-seated weariness and an inescapable stench of blood.
She felt like a rotten little boat, drifting aimlessly in the icy, bone-chilling sea.
The scene suddenly changes.
The pungent smell of gunpowder smoke suddenly filled my nostrils, mixed with the metallic scent of blood.
Before me lay an abandoned outpost on the outskirts of Konoha, its crumbling walls casting menacing silhouettes in the dim moonlight.
She wore the Root's signature ninja outfit, her movements were as fast as a ghost, and chakra scalpels gathered at her fingertips, cutting through the air with a faint hum.
The target was right in front of her. A figure dressed in ordinary ninja attire was frantically searching for something in the ruins with his back to her, his movements clumsy and desperate.
The orders from the Root were etched coldly into the depths of his mind: eliminate the defectors and retrieve the secret scrolls they carried.
No hesitation.
Driven by her body's instincts, she was like the most sophisticated killing machine.
Their footsteps trod silently over the gravel, closing in instantly.
The chakra scalpel in his hand stabbed precisely and ruthlessly into the opponent's back!
This blow was enough to sever the heart meridian and kill instantly.
puff!
The sound of a sharp blade piercing flesh was dull yet clear.
The figure froze abruptly, as if its spine had been removed, and slowly, extremely slowly, turned around.
The hood slipped down, revealing a young face covered in dust and blood, yet etched with shock and pain.
Those eyes, peering through a pair of somewhat familiar glasses, stared intently and incredulously at Nono.
“Dean…Dean…” A weak, dry voice, as if squeezed out with the last of its strength, escaped from the other person’s throat, carrying a broken breath and an indescribable despair of being betrayed by a loved one.
Dean?
This name was like a steel needle, piercing into Nonou's chaotic mind without warning!
A sharp, completely unfamiliar pain exploded from the depths of my heart without any reason, instantly sweeping through my limbs and bones!
The hand holding the chakra scalpel began to tremble uncontrollably.
Just then, the blood-stained face of the dying youth twisted, melted, and deformed like ripples on water...
Her facial features changed rapidly; the dust and bloodstains faded, revealing fair and delicate skin. Behind the round glasses, the large eyes that always held a gentle smile and a hint of timidity were now staring at her with fear and sorrow…
It's a pocket!
It's the pocket from when I was a kid!
"Do not--!!!"
A piercing, distorted scream shattered the dream!
Yakushi Nonou suddenly sat up from the cold, hard stone bed! Her heart was pounding wildly in her chest, almost bursting out!
Cold sweat instantly soaked through his thin gray prison uniform, bringing a bone-chilling cold.
She gasped for breath, like a fish out of water, each inhalation accompanied by a stinging and burning sensation in her lungs.
He gripped the front of his shirt tightly with both hands, his knuckles turning white, as if he could stop his heart from pounding out of his throat.
Cold sweat trickled down his forehead and temples, dripping onto the rough linen bedding.
In the darkness, she looked around blankly. Only the dim, flickering light of the oil lamp in the corridor shone through the narrow gap below the iron door of the cell, casting a distorted band of light on the ground.
The familiar musty smell, the dampness of the stone walls, and the atmosphere of despair enveloped her once again.
It was a dream...
It was just a nightmare...
She tried to tell herself this, using the cold reality to dispel the terrifying image.
But that word "Dean," and those eyes that belonged to Dou, filled with sorrow and terror, were like the clearest brand, etched firmly onto her retina, repeatedly burning her nerves.
An indescribable emptiness and panic gripped her, suffocating her more than the confinement in a prison.
However, as her gaze habitually swept over the small stone chamber that had imprisoned her for who knows how long, a strange feeling, like a cold snake, quietly coiled around her heart.
It's too quiet.
There was no suppressed coughing from the neighboring cell, no heavy footsteps of patrolling guards in the distance, and no harsh scraping of iron doors opening and closing.
Even the echoes of her own heavy breathing and heartbeat disappeared.
A chilling silence enveloped everything.
She subconsciously looked down at her hands, the hands that had once saved lives and carried out countless dark missions.
They are resting on a smooth, mirror-like surface of water.
Nono gasped sharply, her body instantly stiffening!
She wasn't sitting on a cold stone bed, but rather...
Suspended in mid-air, sitting on a boundless, deep, ink-black surface of water!
The water reflected the equally vast and boundless starry sky above.
Countless stars burn, rotate, and flow, converging into a dazzling galaxy. The cool, pure starlight falls, illuminating this space as if it were the domain of a deity.
The water beneath her feet was not a physical substance, yet it clearly reflected her terrified and disheveled figure.
Where am I?!
A wave of overwhelming horror instantly overwhelmed the lingering fear from the nightmare. She abruptly looked up and around.
It remained absolutely silent, with only the magnificent sight of the stars silently turning.
She was enveloped by a cold, vast, and inhuman ethereal feeling, making her feel as insignificant as a speck of dust.
What you see is not a dream.
A voice suddenly sounded.
Low and calm, without any emotional fluctuations, as if echoing directly in the depths of the soul.
Like a startled rabbit, Yakushi Nonou suddenly looked in the direction of the sound.
Not far in front of her, also standing on the surface of the starry water, a figure floated silently.
He was shrouded in a wide black robe, as if blending into the deep background.
His face was covered by a blank white three-eyed fox mask, the three empty eye sockets gleaming with a cold, inorganic luster under the starlight.
Two symbolic fox ears extend from the top of the mask, adding a touch of eerie dynamism to this inhuman image.
The wide sleeves of his robe hung down naturally, and he exuded a kind of solemnity and profundity that was unsettling.
He is the ruler of the Star Kingdom, the mysterious "Shura".
"That was a script that Shimura Danzo meticulously designed for you." Shura's voice came through the mask, still calm and unwavering, as if stating a cold fact.
"It is also the way he selects, refines, and ultimately gains complete control over the sharpest and most concealed 'tools' in his hands."
Yakushi Nonou trembled violently all over.
It wasn't because of the cold, but because of the cruel truth contained in those words, which pointed directly to the darkest core of her life.
Danzo... script... tools...
These words, like poisoned daggers, pierced the chaotic walls of her memory.
She shook her head instinctively, her gray hair clinging messily to her sweat-dampened forehead, her voice hoarse and broken: "No...it's impossible...you're talking nonsense! Lord Danzo, he..."
"What he needs is absolute loyalty and absolute obedience." Shura interrupted her futile denial, his voice carrying a chilling sarcasm that seemed to know everything.
“A spy who has the identity of ‘mother’ will always have a soft spot in his heart, which can be pried open and exploited.”
"Therefore, he needs to sever this bond himself. He needs to replace the real child in your memory with a perfect substitute, making him the new 'Achilles' heel'."
"Then... at the most opportune moment, arrange an 'accidental' encounter, a cleanup mission that is 'inevitable' to be carried out..."
"Let the 'mother' kill the 'son' with her own hands, or let the 'son' kill the 'mother' with his own hands. Use the most extreme pain and betrayal to completely crush your or his humanity, erase the last possible 'weakness' in you, and forge you into a truly cold and absolutely obedient 'knife'."
Every word was like a cold hammer, striking Nono's heart hard.
Those worries that were deliberately forgotten and deeply buried began to surge wildly!
She knew better than anyone what kind of person Danzo was and what kind of organization Root was.
And then there's the young man's desperate cry before he died in the dream, and his face that ultimately transformed into Xiao Dou's...
The fragments, like sharp glass, spun and cut rapidly in her mind, trying to piece together a bloody truth that she dared not face!
"No...it's not like that..." she struggled in vain, her voice growing weaker and weaker, her body trembling like a withered leaf in the wind.
Something strong within is cracking under the weight of the burden.
Shura hovered silently, his white fox mask facing her without any emotion.
That silent posture was more oppressive than any words.
He seemed to be waiting, waiting for the moment when her inner defenses would completely collapse.
Finally, that cold voice rang out again, like a final judgment:
"Yakushi Nonou, haven't you noticed yet?"
Yakushi Nono looked up, her bloodshot brown eyes filled with fear and resistance staring through her disheveled hair at the cold fox face.
Shura slowly raised his right hand, which was shrouded in black robes.
It wasn't pointed at her, nor anywhere else; it was just casually raised.
As he moved, the smooth, mirror-like surface of water beneath their feet, reflecting the vast starry sky, suddenly rippled silently.
The water no longer reflects the stars, but instead, like the clearest mirror, instantly reveals a picture.
That was the dimly lit, oppressive corridor of the Seventh Prison Ward.
A boy wearing a dark blue genin uniform from Hoshigakure and round-framed glasses is distributing food to the prisoners in the cell.
The boy's gaze, lowered behind his glasses, held a deliberately maintained calm as he placed a piece of black bread into her broken bowl.
The picture freezes.
The boy's face was clearly reflected.
Gentle, slightly naive, but behind the glasses, his eyes held an undisguised turmoil and pain.
It also reflects her own face.
Wasted, numb, with empty and unfocused eyes, like a shell that has lost all its soul, showing no reaction whatsoever to the face so close to him, a face etched with complex emotions!
"You've seen him." Shura's icy voice, like a heavy hammer, slammed into the frozen image, and also into Nono's completely collapsed mental defenses.
"Right today, right in front of you. Yet you don't even recognize your own child."
boom--! ! !
Yakushi Nonou collapsed onto the water's surface; her world shattered.
(End of this chapter)