Humanoid Flame

Within the void-like darkness, five Humanoid Flames stood vividly, as lifelike as real people.

One of the Humanoid Flames was moving away. Both its brightness and temperature far surpassed those of the other four.

"That should be the Third Hokage!"

"Only he could possess such vast and condensed Chakra!"

Li Yao's whisper echoed through the void-like darkness.

At that moment, Li Yao was in a very peculiar state of existence.

Formless, able to disperse and gather—he could sense that he was alive, yet he had no body.

The torture of the past half year had truly made him wish he were dead.

He had thought that as the torture continued, his physical body would develop greater endurance, or gradually lose its sense of pain and other external sensations, becoming numb and no longer suffering from torment such as pain.

But perhaps because his consciousness had mutated after transmigrating and fused tightly with his body, his body never became numb. No matter how the Third Hokage tortured him, his senses remained keen.

His tolerance for pain had indeed improved considerably.

But that slight improvement was nowhere near enough to make him immune to all kinds of pain.

In the end, Li Yao's mental will gradually collapsed and fell dormant under the prolonged torture. Then, in a development even Li Yao had not expected, he completely abandoned his body and entered his Chakra.

His soul and Chakra fused into a special Chakra energy lifeform.

Now, he could no longer sense the existence of his physical body at all.

No sight, no pain, no smell—none of the sensations granted by a physical body.

In a sense, Li Yao had been freed. He no longer had to endure endless torment.

At first, Li Yao thought his soul, consciousness, and will would remain dormant and senseless until death.

But this Chakra energy lifeform granted him a sensory ability distinct from physical sensation.

"Chakra perception!"

Li Yao could precisely sense the Chakra within a twenty-meter radius around his physical body.

If the target was a ninja, they would appear in the form of a Humanoid Flame.

Those Humanoid Flames were the Chakra states of the people he sensed.

The brightness and density of the flames represented the amount of Chakra a person possessed.

Their heat, meanwhile, represented the strength—or rather, the quality—of that person's Chakra.

All ninja Chakra appeared similar, but in truth, its quality and strength differed.

Given the same Fire Release ninjutsu, the flames unleashed by a ninja with higher-quality, stronger Chakra would be far hotter and more violent.

Conversely, a ninja with lower-quality, weaker Chakra would produce flames of a much lower temperature when using Fire Release ninjutsu.

That was the difference in Chakra quality and strength.

Through comparison, Li Yao could roughly determine that the Humanoid Flame moving away from him belonged to the Third Hokage.

That was because the Chakra on the Third Hokage, both in quality and quantity, far surpassed that of the four Anbu ninja who had been guarding Li Yao.

Not long after the Third Hokage left, Ran came in to examine Li Yao's physical condition and treat the wounds left behind when the Third Hokage had tested his body earlier.

Afterward, Ran hooked Li Yao up to an IV drip of nutrients, ensuring that his physical body remained alive.

Throughout the entire process, Li Yao "watched" from within the void-like darkness of his Chakra perception. He could not see the IV drip or his own body, but he could determine what Ran was doing to him from the movements of Ran's Chakra Humanoid Flame.

"Oh, they're not planning to kill me!"

"Heh heh."

Li Yao instantly reached that conclusion, then his consciousness rippled with a laugh—a cold, merciless laugh.

Li Yao's thoughts remained active. In his current state, he feared no torment inflicted upon his body, and any attempt to act against his soul or consciousness would be useless as well.

All genjutsu targeting Chakra had no effect on him.

So long as they could not break through the defenses of his Chakra, they had no way to harm his soul.

Unless the Third Hokage was willing to use a Sealing Technique like the Reaper Death Seal against him, only then could he injure Li Yao's soul and kill him.

But if he wanted to kill Li Yao, there was no need to use the life-for-life Reaper Death Seal.

After all, a sealing ninjutsu on the level of the Reaper Death Seal could only be learned by a ninja at least at the jonin level.

The Third Hokage would never be willing to trade a jonin's life for Li Yao's.

Because killing Li Yao was very simple—he only needed to kill his current physical body.

Although Li Yao's soul and consciousness had now completely fused with his Chakra, turning him into a special Chakra energy lifeform, his Chakra originated from this physical body.

His current Chakra energy lifeform state was still connected to his physical body.

It was somewhat like the symbiotic relationship between a Jinchuriki and a tailed beast.

If his physical body died and the source feeding him Chakra was cut off, his Chakra energy form, exposed to the environment, would not survive for long either.

As for whether he could possess someone else's body like the body-snatching ability the Third Hokage had always wanted to learn from him, Li Yao wasn't sure.

But if this body eventually died, he would try.

Because he wanted to live—not merely for the sake of living. He simply wanted to get back at the Third Hokage.

He would not allow himself to die like this, only for the Third Hokage to live as long as he had in the original story, surrounded by children and grandchildren, practically building the Sarutobi Clan into an army of shinobi.

Li Yao would not allow such a beautiful scene to come to pass. He wanted to ruin it completely.

So if he could live, he absolutely would.

Now, from Ran's actions, Li Yao could tell that he would not die for the time being.

What remained was figuring out how to keep living.

And how to escape alive.

As Li Yao pondered, he also explored the abilities he possessed in his current state as a Chakra energy body.

He could no longer sense his physical body.

But he could still sense the bodily energy naturally emitted by the cells of that body.

The same applied to Spiritual Energy. The soul consciousness fused into Chakra also naturally emitted Spiritual Energy.

That meant he could still refine Chakra.

For the past half year, he had been tortured by the Third Hokage nonstop, leaving Li Yao with no mental energy to condense new Chakra.

Now that he was in a vegetative state, he could calmly condense Chakra instead.

As always, no matter what he intended to do, in this world of shinobi, without a sufficient amount of Chakra, he could do nothing. He would only be a lamb waiting for slaughter.

"Mm!"

The moment he condensed Chakra, a shadow fell over Li Yao's heart.

The Chakra Sealing Jutsu Formula on his body was still there. Any newly condensed Chakra would likewise be sealed, like hardened cement, utterly beyond Li Yao's control.

If he could not use Chakra, then he was just an ordinary person. No amount of Chakra would be of any use.

"I need to find a way to remove the sealing jutsu on me."

"And I need to do it without letting the Third Hokage or the Anbu shinobi notice while the seal is being removed."

"How can I do that?"

Li Yao thought it over. Kimura Yao's memories clearly held no answer, so he could only search through memories from his previous life for whatever knowledge and speculative ideas he had about sealing jutsu, hoping to find something useful.

At the same time, Li Yao used his current unique Chakra-sensing ability to perceive the Chakra within the Sealing Jutsu Formula.

That was right.

Li Yao could sense the Chakra in the Sealing Jutsu Formula.

The Chakra within the formula differed from his own Chakra, and it also differed from the Chakra of the four Anbu shinobi surrounding him.

That gave Li Yao a few more ideas.