A Deep, Affectionate Glance, and Living On for Both of Us

The dark crimson barrier of the Four Red Yang Formation stood like an insurmountable wall of despair.

Kushina's knees slammed heavily into the muddy grass as both hands pressed desperately against the barrier's surface. The scorching heat carried by the light screen instantly burned the skin from her palms. Amid the sizzling sounds, the pungent stench of scorched flesh mixed with the earthy smell of mud and rushed into her nostrils.

She could not feel the pain.

Her eyes were stretched wide, the corners tearing from the strain as crimson blood streaked down her pale cheeks. Those eyes once so full of life now reflected only the black-violet storm in her pupils, and the man at its center who had only half a body left.

Baishi's lower body had completely vanished.

The destructive energy of the Tailed Beast Bomb had shredded his legs and pelvis. Not a single drop of blood flowed from the wounds, because temperatures exceeding a thousand degrees had instantly carbonized the exposed blood vessels and organs. He remained standing only because the remaining Lightning Release chakra in his body clung to his collapsing spine and ribs like a web.

"Crack."

With a faint sound of breaking, the battered ANBU mask on Baishi's face finally exhausted the last of its durability. It crumbled into powder and flaked away, falling into the roiling energy currents below.

The young face hidden beneath the mask, stained with ash and blood, was exposed fully before Kushina's eyes.

There was no fear of death.

No resentment at being abandoned.

Only calm.

A calm so profound it drove one to despair.

Inside the barrier, the Nine-Tails' roars and the thunderous devastation of the Tailed Beast Bomb were enough to shatter an ordinary person's eardrums. Baishi knew that, separated by the Four Red Yang Formation—a barrier even the Hokage could not easily break—no sound could pass through.

But he needed a perfect exit.

Enduring the extreme agony of his nerve endings being burned away inch by inch, Baishi pulled the corners of his lips upward with immense difficulty, forming a smile that was agonizingly tragic yet gentle to the core.

He drew upon the last trace of nearly depleted chakra within him. Following the faint Lightning Release aura left on Kushina's collar when he had thrown her out earlier, he established an incredibly brief chakra resonance.

Across the surging sea of flames and the dark crimson light screen, Baishi's black eyes pierced through every obstruction and locked precisely onto Kushina's collapsing gaze.

His lips moved slightly. No sound came out, but that faint chakra resonance detonated the words he wished to say directly in the depths of Kushina's mind.

"Live well... for both of us."

Boom!

Those words were ten thousand times more terrifying than the Tailed Beast Bomb from before, instantly shattering Kushina's psychological defenses.

"No... Don't!"

A piercing wail unlike any human sound burst from Kushina's throat. She formed hand seals frantically, squeezing the remaining chakra from her body without restraint. Several dark golden chakra chains shot violently from her back, lashing against the Four Red Yang Formation's light screen like maddened venomous snakes.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The Adamantine Sealing Chains struck the barrier and erupted in blinding sparks. The terrifying recoil surged back along the chains, and Kushina's palms instantly split apart. Blood splattered across the dark crimson light screen, leaving streaks of horrifying red.

She could not break it.

She simply could not break it.

She could only watch as the left half of that man's shoulder began to turn into black ash, as the face smiling gently at her gradually flaked away beneath the intense light.

Why?

Why wasn't Namikaze Minato—the man who had promised to protect her for the rest of her life—beside her at a time like this?

Why did this lowly ANBU, who had not even told her his name, use such a cruel and resolute method to force the hope of survival into her hands, only to die himself?

"Come out! Come out here!!!"

Kushina smashed her head against the barrier, her forehead reduced to a bloody mess. Her nails dug into the dirt at the edge of the barrier. Her fingernails bent backward and tore off, but she felt nothing, only futilely trying to dig out a path inside.

The seed of obsession took root amid overwhelming despair and guilt. It sprouted into a towering tree, its roots wrapping tightly around her soul.

Inside the barrier.

Obito stood atop the frenzied Nine-Tails' head, his right Mangekyō Sharingan coldly looking down upon everything below.

"What a touching farce." Obito snorted coldly, his voice piercing the storm. "Is this the Will of Fire? Using the lives of the weak to make up for the mistakes of the strong. A meaningless sacrifice."

He formed hand seals with both hands, preparing to manipulate the Nine-Tails into forcibly tearing open the barrier. Konoha's reinforcements would soon gather. He had no time to watch some melodramatic tragedy here.

And below, at the center of the light that was about to swallow everything completely.

Baishi's retinas had already been burned beyond recognition, leaving only a vast expanse of blank white nothingness before his eyes.

Pain.

Pain beyond description.

Every cell in this Simulated Body was screaming. His soul felt as though it were being ground apart bit by bit beneath a millstone.

Yet deep inside that ruined body, Baishi was laughing madly.

Namkaze Minato, did you see that?

Your perfect fiancée, your fated wife of the Fourth Hokage, is now kneeling in the mud, crying her heart out for a disposable nobody whose codename she does not even know!

Those bonds that belonged to you, that luck that belonged to you, that hero-saves-the-beauty script that belonged to you.

I have taken it all!

Baishi knew very well that once a woman with Kushina's personality decided on something, once she carved someone into her bones, her obsession would never end until death.

Those final words just now were the last coffin nail driven deep into her soul.

From this day onward, so long as she remained alive, whenever she closed her eyes, all she would see would be this ruined body of his and that bloodstained smile.

"Burn... Burn it cleaner..."

Baishi coldly issued his final command in his heart.

Whoosh—

A violent torrent of chakra swept past.

Baishi's remaining chest cavity and head could no longer maintain their form. Amid Kushina's heart-wrenching scream, they collapsed with a roar.

Not even a piece of bone or a drop of blood remained.

His entire body turned completely into black ash that filled the sky, swept into the world-destroying energy vortex of the Tailed Beast Bomb and vanishing without a trace.

"Ahhhhhh—!!!"

Outside the barrier, Kushina's eyes rolled back. Struck by both extreme grief and chakra exhaustion, she suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood. Her body collapsed like a puddle of mud beside the barrier, and she completely lost consciousness.

Yet in the final second before she passed out, her right hand remained stretched desperately forward, as though she wanted to grasp that ash she would never be able to touch.

Her vision fell into absolute darkness.

A sense of weightlessness surged in like a tide, stripping away the agony of the flesh as her consciousness hurtled through the void.

Behind Konoha's Memorial Stone, underground safe house.

"Whew—!"

Baishi suddenly opened his eyes, his upper body springing from the stone bed as if electrocuted.

He gasped for breath, his chest heaving violently as his lungs wheezed like bellows. Cold sweat instantly soaked through the black undershirt beneath his clothes, dripping from his chin onto the icy stone floor.

"Cough, cough..."

Baishi clutched his chest and coughed violently, his fingers instinctively reaching for his left arm and lower body.

They were completely intact.

They had not been shredded by the Tailed Beast Bomb, nor carbonized by the flames.

He was still sitting safely in the real-world safe house.

Yet the excruciating pain from the instant before the Simulated Body's death still lingered in his neural pathways like a phantom, making his muscles twitch uncontrollably.

"What a madman's way to die."

Baishi leaned against the cold rock wall and curled his lips into a frigid smile.

Though the process had been unimaginably brutal, the result was perfect.

Not only had he successfully inserted himself into the top-tier scenario of gods battling gods that was the Night of the Nine-Tails, but before Namikaze Minato arrived, he had also forcibly drawn Obito's hatred to its limit. Most importantly—he had completely altered Kushina's fate.

At that moment, a ghostly blue light lit up the dim safe house.

A cold mechanical notification exploded in Baishi's mind, carrying a faint, almost imperceptible electronic hum from the system:

[Ding! This life script simulation has ended.]

[Detected that the host forcibly interfered with the core event of the 'Night of the Nine-Tails' during the simulation, successfully altering the fate trajectories of 'Namikaze Minato,' 'Uzumaki Kushina,' and 'Uchiha Obito.']

[Fate Interception Rating: SSS-Rank (Unprecedented)!]

[Bond Plunder Rating: SSS-Rank (Soul Imprint)!]

[Simulation rewards are being calculated...]

Baishi's breathing stopped instantly.

SSS-Rank?

The last time he intercepted Cloud Hidden's assassination attempt in the border forest, he had received merely a Grade A rating, yet that alone had granted him max-level Lightning Release talent and chakra reserves at the quasi-jōnin level, completely transforming him from cannon fodder into an elite.

But this time, he had directly struck at the original story's most iconic and central plot, endured a Tailed Beast Bomb, and pushed a one-for-one exchange to the limit—yet he had actually achieved an unprecedented SSS-Rank rating!

What kind of rewards would a rating of this level yield?

Flying Thunder God? The Kamui Sharingan? Or complete Nine-Tails chakra?

The blue system panel flickered wildly before Baishi's eyes as countless streams of data poured down like waterfalls. Then, the blue light abruptly transformed into dazzling dark gold!

Three orbs of light wrapped in dark golden radiance slowly emerged from the system panel and hovered before Baishi. Each orb emitted a terrifying aura powerful enough to drive the entire Shinobi World mad.

[Settlement complete! The host may choose any two of the following three SSS-Rank rewards for extraction:]

Baishi stared fixedly at the first orb. When he clearly saw the description emerging within it, his pupils—always as still as an ancient well—suddenly contracted to the size of needlepoints.