City of the Abyss

A Blank Body spotted her. It had once been a middle-aged woman dressed in a coarse homespun tunic. Now her eyes were vacant, dried blood crusted the corners of her mouth, and she charged up the hillside at an unnatural speed. Sarada's kunai pierced its throat with precision, but it didn't stop. It didn't bleed. It kept lunging mechanically until she had no choice but to sever its head completely.

The body fell, but it didn't go limp as a corpse should. Its muscles still spasmed, its fingers clawing at the dirt as if some program were still running.

"This isn't a failed transformation," Sarada murmured, her Sharingan spinning rapidly as she tried to analyze the anomaly. "This is...the price of refusal."

She remembered Boruto mentioning the "selection" mechanism. The planet was searching for an intelligent life-form with which it could achieve symbiosis, while the "bridge" was looking for suitable candidates. But what about those who refused to participate? Ordinary people who wanted to be neither Nodes nor variables?

The answer burned before her in the village. Refusing to choose was a choice in itself, and the selection mechanism's response was to erase them—not through death, but through a more complete "blanking." It deleted consciousness, Chakra, and every other complex factor that might produce an "accident."

Another Blank Body burst out of a burning house. This time, it was a child. In that instant, Sarada's Sharingan caught something unusual in its eyes—a remnant of something. Not consciousness, but...fear? Pain? Some trace of emotion that hadn't yet been completely erased?

Her kunai stopped in midair.

That hesitation cost her. The Blank Body child was much faster than she expected. Its fingernails—hardened into something like keratin blades—sliced across her left arm, leaving a wound deep enough to expose bone.

Pain was the