Moonlight was swallowed by thick, scale-like clouds, and the ANBU single dormitories at Konoha's edge fell into dead silence.
The temperature in the air suddenly plummeted to freezing.
Baishi stood before a mirror streaked with water stains. He had just issued the command "Extract" in his mind when, before the system's heaven-defying power could descend, an intensely icy sensation crawled up from his ankle without warning.
Like a venomous snake freshly pulled from an ice cave, it coiled tightly around his calf.
Baishi lowered his head.
By the faint reflection filtering in from outside the window, he saw that his shadow cast across the floor was twisting violently like a living thing. It had completely defied the laws of optics, splitting into several pitch-black tentacles that climbed up his legs, instantly locking down his knees, spine, and throat!
"Crack, crack..."
Baishi's bones gave a series of pressured creaks. He tried to form hand seals, only to find that even moving a finger had become an impossible wish.
From the corridor outside came the faint scrape of wooden sandals.
"As expected of the man favored by the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki. Your senses are fairly sharp."
A hoarse, cruel voice slipped through the gap beneath the door.
"What a pity. Lord Danzo said that any uncontrollable factor capable of affecting the Nine-Tails' emotions must be buried deep underground."
Root!
Baishi's gaze turned cold. That old dog Danzo had put on a righteous act in the Hokage Building's interrogation room, but behind the scenes, he had not even been willing to wait one night before sending an assassin skilled in Yin Release secret arts to silence him.
"I'll send you on your way with this Black Curse Binding."
The assassin outside maintained a hand seal with one hand while drawing a poisoned short blade with the other, ready to push the door open.
At that critical moment.
[Reward extraction beginning.]
The system notification exploded in Baishi's mind.
There were no hand seals, no warning.
A violent surge of Lightning Release Chakra, suffocating in its intensity, erupted from every limb and bone in Baishi's body like the celestial river bursting through a collapsed dam!
"Boom—!"
Blinding deep-blue arcs of electricity instantly lit up the cramped dormitory. The cobwebs on the walls vaporized beneath the terrifying heat.
Lightning Release was supremely hard and supremely yang, the natural bane of all dark and evil things!
"Crackle!"
The raging current raced backward along the black shadow binding Baishi, traveling at the speed of light through the door crack and slamming viciously into the Root assassin outside.
"Argh—!"
An utterly miserable scream rang out, then abruptly cut off.
The assassin outside did not even have time to use the Substitution Technique before the max-level Lightning Release conducted through the shadow instantly pierced his heart and brain. His body convulsed twice before crashing stiffly into the corridor, releasing a pungent stench of scorched flesh.
The restraint was gone.
But Baishi did not even have a chance to catch his breath.
"Bang!"
His knees buckled, and he slammed heavily onto the floor. Both hands clawed desperately into the floorboards, gouging ten deep, bloody marks.
The system's infusion of power was not some gentle enlightenment. It was an inhuman physical reconstruction!
A vast quantity of Lightning Release Chakra was brutally forcing open the narrow, fragile Chakra pathways within his body.
Pain!
Pain that reached his very bones!
Baishi felt his muscle fibers being violently torn apart one by one, then forcibly reconnected by powerful vitality. His blood boiled in his veins, as if what flowed through them was no longer liquid but scorching magma. His bones ground against each other, producing muffled sounds that made his scalp tingle.
"Huff... huff..."
His breathing was heavy, like a broken bellows.
Baishi grabbed the bloodstained filthy bandage beside him and stuffed it into his mouth, biting down hard.
He could not make a sound.
Even if the pain made his soul tremble, he had to swallow every scream.
The ANBU patrols were nearby. If he leaked even a trace of his presence, not only would tonight's disguise have been for nothing, but he would also invite endless pursuit.
Cold sweat mixed with beads of blood seeping from his pores and dripped from his pale jaw, pooling into a dark-red puddle on the floor.
Baishi stared fixedly at the blood on the ground, his eyes bloodshot and filled with a chilling madness.
This was the price of changing fate.
In this Shinobi World, where bloodlines ruled and geniuses were everywhere, a cannon fodder from the bottom who wanted to cross the class divide and trample those lofty figures beneath his feet had to be ruthless toward himself! More ruthless than his enemies!
"Minato... Danzo... Third Hokage..."
He chewed over those names again and again in his heart, turning the agonizing pain of his body into bone-deep hatred and absolute clarity.
He would never again be bait that could be discarded at will!
He endured for a full half hour.
Only when the last blue arc completely vanished into his skin did the tearing agony finally recede like the tide.
"Plop."
Baishi spat out the bandage, now chewed into scraps, and collapsed limply onto the floor as if he had been dragged from a pool of blood.
The room was filled with the heavy stench of blood and sweat.
He greedily gulped down the cold air, then slowly pushed himself up from the floor.
His body felt lighter than ever before.
Baishi closed his eyes and sensed the changes within his body.
The Chakra channels that had once been as thin as threads were now as broad as rivers. That vast, surging Chakra flowed steadily through his pathways, as though a single thought from him could raise towering waves.
Even more terrifying was his control over Lightning Release Chakra.
Baishi did not form hand seals.
He merely raised his right hand, pressed his index and middle fingers together, and shifted his thoughts slightly.
"Whss—"
An incomparably condensed streak of deep-blue Lightning shot from his fingertips, extending into a half-meter-long Chakra blade.
Chidori Sharp Spear!
There was none of the original's ear-piercing chorus of Chidori, nor any wild, leaking electric arcs.
The Lightning was so quiet it was almost eerie, yet it radiated a terrifying heat capable of melting steel.
This was the true manifestation of developing Lightning Release nature transformation to the maximum level—absolute restraint and absolute penetrating power!
Baishi casually swung his hand.
"Slash."
A specially forged steel kunai on the corner of the desk, along with half of the solid wooden tabletop, was silently sliced in two by the Lightning. The cut was smooth as a mirror, without even the faintest scorch mark.
A cold curve lifted the corner of Baishi's mouth beneath his Mask.
With Chakra control at this level, combined with the tactical thinking from his previous life, he could even form hand seals one-handed from a blind spot or silently incorporate Lightning Release into any taijutsu technique.
From this moment onward, he was no longer a lowly cannon fodder at the mercy of others.
Baishi withdrew the Lightning, opened the door, and stepped into the corridor.
The Root assassin's corpse was still sprawled on the ground, charred black all over and giving off a revolting stench.
Baishi crouched down, intending to use Explosive Tags to stage an accidental fire and erase every trace.
But the instant he turned over the body, his movements abruptly froze.
Inside the Ninja Tool Pouch on the corpse's inner side, he felt a top-secret Scroll half-scorched by lightning.
Baishi flicked open the Scroll's seal and scanned the surviving words beneath the moonlight.
The next second, his pupils constricted sharply, and icy killing intent surged into his heart.
Written on the Scroll was the detailed deployment List for tomorrow's ANBU purge mission.
His codename, "Owl," was not only circled in conspicuous vermilion ink, but followed by a hair-raising tactical note—
[Advance bait, elimination confirmed. Mission objective: cover Namikaze Minato's squad and seize Iwagakure frontline intelligence.]
Baishi clenched the Scroll tightly, veins bulging across the back of his hand like coiling dragons.
Namikaze Minato's squad?
He suddenly raised his head and looked toward the Hokage Building.
So that was it.
This was the real reason Namikaze Minato had so easily backed down in the interrogation room!
That flawless blond genius, radiant as the sun, had no need to dirty his own hands. Because he had known all along that by tomorrow morning, this low-ranking ANBU who threatened him would die, openly and justifiably, inside Iwagakure's encirclement in the name of the Will of Fire!