"Crack!"
The hard wooden handle of the kunai splintered between Baishi's teeth.
In the dim underground safehouse, there were no dazzling light effects or any sense of warmth and comfort. The instant that dark red orb representing the "Uzumaki Clan Sage Body (Incomplete Version)" slammed into his chest, all Baishi received was the purest, most violent destruction.
His heart suddenly stopped for a beat.
The next second, his blood temperature skyrocketed, burning through his existing vessel walls like boiling magma. Countless red veins instantly surfaced across his skin, an intricate red web clamping tightly over his entire body.
"Ugh—"
A muffled groan, like that of an injured beast, rumbled from Baishi's throat. He clutched the Stone Slab beneath him with all his strength. His fingernails split on the spot, and blood seeped through the cracks in the Stone Slab into the soil.
Pain.
Pain that surpassed being sliced to pieces.
His muscle fibers were torn apart one by one by an incredibly overbearing force, then forcibly reconnected under the impetus of his surging vitality. The newly formed muscles were extraordinarily dense, squeezing the surrounding bones until crisp pops like beans bursting rang out from between them. Every cell in his body was experiencing a cycle of tearing and reorganization.
Baishi clenched his teeth, refusing to let himself cry out.
He understood the underlying logic of this world all too well. There was no such thing as a free lunch. Every gift bestowed by fate had long since been marked with a hidden price. If he wanted to avoid becoming cannon fodder, if he wanted to trample those lofty Kage Level powerhouses beneath his feet, he first had to strip away a layer of his own skin.
Compared to being sent to his death as a disposable tool by Danzo on the battlefield, compared to having his organs pierced by a kunai and dying like a stray dog, this pain that could be exchanged for power was simply too worthwhile!
"Fuse into me...!"
Baishi's eyes were bloodshot. Relying on his extreme rationality and ruthlessness, he forcibly endured the long half hour.
When the final trace of dark red light completely merged into his marrow, the high temperature on his body finally began to recede. The sweat evaporated into great clouds of white mist the instant it touched the air.
"Ptui."
Baishi spat out the wooden handle he had bitten in two, along with a mouthful of blood, onto the ground.
He staggered to his feet and rolled his shoulders. His bones emitted a series of dull pops. His originally lean body had now grown two inches taller. The muscle lines were not exaggerated, yet they radiated an extremely dangerous power like that of a cheetah. The hidden injuries and scars left behind by years of ANBU missions peeled away like dead tree bark, revealing tough, newly grown skin beneath.
Baishi picked up the sharp ANBU Short Blade from the ground and, without hesitation, sliced open a three-inch gash on his left arm.
His flesh peeled apart, and blood gushed out. Yet he did not even crease his brow, merely staring coldly at the wound.
Visible to the naked eye, granulation tissue began to writhe frenziedly inside the wound. In less than ten seconds, the torn flesh closed back up, the blood scab fell away, and only a faint white mark remained.
"This is the foundation of the Uzumaki Clan's Sage Body." The corner of Baishi's mouth lifted into a satisfied, cold smile.
Only with a thicker health bar would he have more room for error. In this world, where an Explosive Tag stuck to one's face could blow a Jonin to death, abnormal regenerative ability was the greatest capital for staying alive.
After taking a deep breath, Baishi turned his gaze toward the remaining silver-blue orb floating in midair.
"System, extract the second reward."
The silver-blue orb transformed into a streak of light and precisely entered the center of his brow.
A sharp pain came from deep within his brain, but compared to the cellular reorganization from before, this pain was utterly insignificant.
The world changed in Baishi's eyes.
The rigid three-dimensional space now contained faint "strings" that could be sensed and manipulated. He could clearly perceive the weak spatial folding in the corner of the Basement, and could even sense the ripples in space caused by a bird flying past a hundred meters away.
This was Namikaze Minato's vaunted Space-time Talent!
At the same time, the enormous amount of chakra accumulated through countless life-and-death battles within the Simulated Body poured into his meridians like a burst flood, which had been widened by the Sage Body.
His chakra reserves multiplied several times over!
If the Baishi from before had only barely reached the threshold of a Semi-Jonin by relying on Max-Level Lightning Release, then now, with nothing but his bottomless chakra reserves and Sage Body Constitution, he had already firmly reached the pinnacle of Jonin and had even touched the edge of Kage Level.
Baishi suddenly clenched his right fist.
"Bang!"
The air was instantly compressed by the tremendous force and speed, producing a muffled explosion.
"Now, even if I face Namikaze Minato again, even if I can't beat him, he still won't be able to hold me back." As Baishi felt the surging power within him, a trace of ambition flashed through his dark eyes.
The fate of being cannon fodder had been utterly crushed beneath his feet from this moment onward.
He turned around, preparing to use Lightning Release to clean away the blood and traces in the Basement and erase every clue to his transformation.
However, at the instant he formed his hand seals—
A sudden change occurred.
His newly acquired Space-time Perception Ability made him extraordinarily sensitive to fluctuations in the outside world. The Stone Slab beneath his feet suddenly began vibrating at high frequency. It was not an earthquake, but an extremely violent energy resonance.
Baishi abruptly turned his head, his gaze fixed on the direction of Konoha Village Center.
A tremendously violent, evil, and destructive Dark Red Chakra was like an invisible sledgehammer, smashing heavily into his sensory nerves. The chakra's purity was so great that even the natural energy around the Basement was being frenziedly repelled.
The air grew oppressively heavy, and even breathing carried a burning sensation.
"The Nine-Tails..." The corner of Baishi's eye twitched.
No.
The timeline for the Night of the Nine-Tails had not arrived yet, and Obito was still struggling to survive in some gloomy cave. In the entire Shinobi World, there was currently only one person capable of unleashing this level of Nine-Tails Chakra.
Uzumaki Kushina.
An image suddenly flashed through Baishi's mind: Kushina's eyes, torn and bleeding at the corners, filled with despair and madness beyond measure, outside the Barrier of the Four Red Yang Formation before the simulation ended.
"The side effect of that extreme mutual sacrifice came this quickly?"
Baishi's expression shifted slightly. He knew that the Simulator's memories would feed back to bonded targets in reality, but he had severely underestimated how much damage "substitution for death," combined with the final words "live on, together with my share," could inflict on a woman already in an emotionally unstable state.
Kushina could no longer distinguish reality from the simulation.
In her mind, the man called Baishi had just been burned to ash by the light of the Tailed Beast Bomb while saving her!
Baishi did not hesitate for even half a second. He kicked open the Basement's hidden door and raced toward the surface through the passage.
He shoved aside the boulder concealing the entrance, then abruptly drove off with both legs. His entire body shot into the air like a black bolt of lightning, and he flipped onto the crown of the tallest giant tree on the back mountain.
The night wind howled.
Standing atop the tree crown, Baishi gazed toward the distant Konoha Village Center.
After only one glance, the mask of absolute rationality he had always maintained nearly cracked.
The distant night sky had already been dyed a suffocating blood red. A thick pillar of Dark Red Chakra shot straight into the clouds, illuminating most of Konoha as brightly as day.
The highest-level air-raid alarm in the center of the village shrieked across the night sky.
Amid that churning blood-colored storm, a roar could faintly be heard—one filled with endless despair and savage killing intent.
"Baishi—!!!"
The voice pierced through half of Konoha and struck clearly against Baishi's eardrums. Accompanying it were the continuous sounds of buildings collapsing and the frightened shouts of ANBU shinobi.
Kushina, in Partial Tailed Beast Transformation, was carrying the Nine-Tails Chakra with overwhelming force and charging forward in a straight line, crushing every building in her path into ruins.
And the direction she was heading was none other than the main entrance of the Konoha ANBU Base!
Standing atop the tree crown, Baishi felt that willful killing intent capable of destroying heaven and earth, and the corner of his mouth twitched fiercely.
The entire village was hunting him.
This time, he had completely gone too far.