The dark red curtain of the Four Red Yang Formation stood like an impassable wall of lamentation.
Kushina's knees slammed into the muddy grass, her hands pressed desperately against the barrier. Its searing heat instantly burned her palms open. Amid the sizzling, the acrid smell of scorched flesh mingled with the earthy reek of mud and flooded her nostrils.
She felt no pain.
Her eyes stretched wide, the corners tearing from the strain, crimson threads of blood sliding down her pale cheeks. Those once-vibrant eyes now held nothing but the black-and-purple storm reflected in her pupils—and the man at its center, with only half his body left.
Baishi's lower body had vanished completely.
The Tailed Beast Bomb's destructive energy had shredded his legs and pelvis. Not a single drop of blood flowed from his wounds; temperatures exceeding a thousand degrees had instantly carbonized his exposed blood vessels and organs. He remained upright only because the lightning release chakra left in his body clung like a spiderweb to his spine and ribs, holding them together as they threatened to disintegrate.
Crack.
With a faint cracking sound, the battered ANBU mask on Baishi's face finally gave out. It crumbled into powder and flaked away, falling into the churning energy below.
The young face hidden beneath it, covered in ash and blood, was laid bare before Kushina's eyes.
There was no fear of death, no resentment at being abandoned.
Only calm.
A calm so profound it was crushing.
Inside the barrier, the Nine-Tails' roars and the rampaging Tailed Beast Bomb's thunder were enough to rupture an ordinary person's eardrums. Baishi knew that no sound could pass through this Four Red Yang Formation, which even a Hokage could not easily break.
But he needed a perfect final scene.
Enduring the excruciating pain of his nerve endings burning away inch by inch, Baishi forced the corners of his mouth upward. With immense difficulty, he formed a smile that was utterly devastating, yet tender to its core.
He summoned the last trace of his nearly depleted chakra. Following the faint residue of Lightning Release left on Kushina's clothes when he had thrown her out, he established a fleeting chakra resonance.
Through the rolling sea of fire and the dark red curtain, Baishi's black eyes pierced every obstruction and locked precisely onto Kushina's shattered gaze.
His lips parted slightly. No sound emerged, but that faint chakra resonance detonated his intended words deep inside Kushina's mind.
"Live a good life—for me too."
Boom!
Those words were ten thousand times more terrifying than the Tailed Beast Bomb, instantly smashing Kushina's mental defenses to pieces.
"No... don't!"
An agonized, inhuman wail erupted from Kushina's throat. She frantically formed hand seals, squeezing out her remaining chakra without restraint. Several dark gold chakra chains burst from her back and lashed against the Four Red Yang Formation's curtain like frenzied vipers.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The Adamantine Sealing Chains struck the barrier in blinding showers of sparks. Terrifying recoil surged back along the chains, instantly splitting the skin between Kushina's thumbs and forefingers. Blood splashed across the dark red curtain, leaving horrifying streaks.
She could not break it.
She could not break it at all.
She could only watch as the left side of the man's shoulder began turning into black ash, as the face smiling so tenderly at her peeled away bit by bit in the fierce light.
Why?
Why, at a time like this, wasn't the man beside her Namikaze Minato, the one who had promised to protect her for the rest of her life?
Why did this low-ranking ANBU, who had never even told her his name, have to force the hope of survival into her hands in this cruelest, most irrevocable way, then go to his own death?
"Come out! Come out!!!"
Kushina slammed her head against the barrier, battering her forehead into a bloody mess. Her nails dug into the soil along its edge. The pain pierced straight through her, her nails bending back and tearing off, but she felt none of it. She only tried, futilely, to dig a path inside.
The seed of obsession took root in utter despair and guilt, growing into a towering tree that wound itself tightly around her soul.
Inside the barrier.
Obito stood atop the raging Nine-Tails, the Mangekyō Sharingan in his right eye gazing coldly down at everything below.
"What a touching farce." Obito sneered, his voice piercing the storm. "So this is the Will of Fire? Spending the lives of the weak to cover the mistakes of the strong. A meaningless sacrifice."
He formed hand seals, preparing to make the Nine-Tails tear the barrier open by force. Konoha's reinforcements would gather any moment. He had no time to watch this tragic melodrama.
And below, at the center of the light that was about to engulf him completely.
Baishi's retinas had already burned away. Nothing remained before his eyes but a vast, white void.
Pain.
Agony beyond words.
Every cell in this simulated body screamed. It felt as though his soul were being crushed beneath a millstone, little by little.
Yet deep inside that ruined body, Baishi was laughing wildly.
Namikaze Minato, did you see that?
Your perfect fiancée, the woman destined to become the Fourth Hokage's wife, is kneeling in the mud right now, crying her heart out for cannon fodder whose code name she doesn't even know!
Those bonds of yours, that fortune of yours, that script where you play the hero and save the beauty.
I've taken them all!
Baishi knew very well that once a woman with Kushina's temperament committed to something, once she etched someone into her bones, her obsession would never end until death.
Those last words had been the final coffin nail driven deep into her soul.
From today onward, as long as she lived, whenever she closed her eyes, her mind would be filled with his ruined body and that bloodstained smile.
Burn... burn even cleaner...
Baishi coldly issued his final command in his mind.
Whoosh—
A violent surge of turbulent chakra swept past.
Baishi's remaining chest and head could no longer hold their shape. Amid Kushina's heart-rending screams, they disintegrated.
Not a single bone remained. Not a drop of blood.
His entire body became black ash swirling through the air, swept into the Tailed Beast Bomb's world-destroying vortex of energy, disappearing without a trace.
"Aaaaaah—!!!"
Outside the barrier, Kushina's eyes rolled back. Overwhelmed by grief and chakra exhaustion, she violently coughed up a mouthful of blood. Her body collapsed like a heap of mud beside the barrier, and she lost consciousness completely.
Yet in the final second before she passed out, her right hand remained desperately outstretched, as though trying to catch that drifting ash she could never touch.
His vision sank into absolute darkness.
Weightlessness surged over him like a tide, stripping away the agony of his flesh as his consciousness raced through the void.
The underground safe house in the hills behind Konoha's Memorial Stone.
"Hah—!"
Baishi's eyes snapped open, and his upper body jolted upright from the stone bed as though he had been electrocuted.
He gasped for breath, his chest heaving violently, his lungs wheezing like bellows. Cold sweat instantly soaked the black, close-fitting clothes beneath his outer layers, dripping from his chin onto the cold stone slab.
"Cough, cough..."
Baishi clutched his chest and coughed violently, his fingers instinctively reaching for his left arm and lower body.
Completely intact.
Not shredded by the Tailed Beast Bomb. Not carbonized by fire.
He was still sitting safe and sound in the real world's safe house.
But the unbearable agony of the instant before the simulated body's death still lingered like a phantom in his nerves, making his muscles twitch involuntarily.
"What an insane way to die."
Baishi leaned against the cold rock wall, pulling his lips into an icy smile.
Although the process had been horrific beyond measure, the result was perfect.
Not only had he successfully intervened in a top-tier scenario like the Night of the Nine-Tails, a clash of godlike powers, he had also forced Obito's hostility to its peak before Namikaze Minato arrived. Most importantly—he had completely rewritten Kushina's destiny.
Just then, an eerie blue glow lit up the dim safe house.
A cold, mechanical notification thundered through Baishi's mind, accompanied by a barely perceptible electronic buzz:
[Ding! This Life Script Simulation has ended.] [Detected that the host forcibly intervened in the core event "Night of the Nine-Tails" during the simulation, successfully altering the destinies of "Namikaze Minato," "Uzumaki Kushina," and "Uchiha Obito."] [Fortune interception rating: SSS-Rank (unprecedented)!] [Bond plundering rating: SSS-Rank (soul imprint)!] [Calculating simulation rewards...]
Baishi instantly held his breath.
SSS-Rank?
Last time, intercepting the Cloud Hidden assassination incident in the border forest had earned him only an A-Rank rating, yet it had granted him a max-level Lightning Release talent and semi-jonin-level chakra reserves, transforming him from cannon fodder into an elite.
This time, he had gone straight for the original story's most pivotal, most glorious moment, endured a Tailed Beast Bomb head-on, and pulled off a one-for-one trade at the absolute limit—and somehow earned an unprecedented SSS-Rank!
What could a rating like this drop?
Flying Thunder God? A Kamui Sharingan? Or the complete Nine-Tails chakra?
The blue system panel flickered wildly before Baishi's eyes, countless streams of data cascading down like waterfalls. Then the blue light abruptly turned a dazzling dark gold!
Three orbs wrapped in dark gold light slowly emerged from the system panel and hovered before Baishi. Each emanated a terrifying aura powerful enough to drive the entire Shinobi World mad.
[Calculation complete! The host may select any two of the following three SSS-Rank rewards to claim:]
Baishi stared fixedly at the first orb. As he read the description appearing within it, his perpetually unruffled pupils abruptly shrank to pinpoints.