The shrill alarm blared like a death knell, echoing endlessly through the narrow passage.
The fox mask Mizuki Han had pried off was flashing with a frenzied crimson light from the communication formula inside, like a dying heart. Along with the red glow, a cloyingly sweet, strange odor seeped silently through the gaps in the ventilation ducts from every direction, like an invisible serpent.
Nerve gas!
Han's pupils contracted sharply. His knowledge from his previous life let him instantly recognize what the smell meant. This wasn't a simple sedative. It was a vicious toxin that could destroy a ninja's central nervous system, throw their chakra into disarray, and dissolve their muscles within minutes!
"Move!"
Without the slightest hesitation, Han whipped around and hurled the still-buzzing mask deep into the passage. With his other hand, he grabbed Haku's wrist like an iron clamp and sprinted in the opposite direction. His movements were impossibly swift, without a hint of wasted effort.
The force yanked Haku off balance. Before she could ask anything, the cloying smell had already entered her nose, making her head spin.
"Hold your breath! Use chakra to seal your mouth and nose!" Han's growl rang in her ears.
Haku obeyed instinctively, channeling her faint chakra to form a crude filter over her mouth and nose.
The two of them raced through the labyrinthine underground passages. The hissing behind them continued without pause—the sound of poison gas being pumped into the ducts under high pressure, spreading at an astonishing speed.
Han's lungs felt as if they were burning. Every breath brought a tearing pain. But he forced down his body's protests as his mind raced, utterly calm.
Something was wrong!
The gas's concentration and rate of spread far exceeded what would be necessary to clean up one or two bodies. This wasn't a trap targeting just the two of them. It looked more like... a Great Purge without discrimination!
The thought chilled him to the bone.
He led Haku away from all the main routes, twisting and turning until they reached an even more secluded crevice in the rock, one that had almost been abandoned. Only when the complex network of passages behind them had completely blocked the cloying smell did he stop abruptly, lean against the cold rock wall, and gasp for breath.
Sweat slid down his pale cheeks and dripped to the ground, spreading into a small, dark stain.
"Han... big brother..." Haku's little face was drained of color. She watched him struggle, her eyes full of worry and fear.
Han waved a hand to show he was fine. He pulled the last Soldier Pill from his chest and swallowed it without hesitation, then took out the encrypted scroll wrapped in oilcloth that he had confiscated from the Chunin.
He had to find out what was happening outside at once!
In the dim light, he slowly unfurled the scroll. It didn't contain ordinary writing, but a complex code made up of strange symbols, lines, and numbers—the unique cipher system the Mist Anbu used to pass along top-secret information.
Haku couldn't understand it. She could only watch Han anxiously.
Mizuki Han's gaze swept inch by inch over the scroll's contents, like the most precise scanner. At that moment, his mind split into two parts.
One part held the original Mizuki Han's memories. Fragments concerning the basic logic of the code churned in his mind: the spiral symbol meant "area," the trident symbol meant "squad," and the water droplet was related to "time"... But more than seventy percent of the symbols on the scroll were variants absent from his memories. They clearly belonged to a higher-level cipher.
The other part was the pure logical reasoning ability he had brought from his previous life. He ignored the symbols' original meanings and began analyzing them purely from the perspectives of mathematics and information theory.
"Symbol frequency... This symbol that looks like a 'Jing' appears twenty-three times in the text, more than any other. In any language system, the most frequent words are usually prepositions, conjunctions, or basic subject-verb-object words..."
"Combination patterns... The 'Jing' symbol is always followed by a number. But the 'spiral' symbol is followed by directional arrows..."
His finger moved lightly over the scroll as he murmured in a language only he could understand.
The original owner's memories provided him with the "key" to cracking the code. The logic from his previous life gave him the "method" for turning it.
The two collided, mingled, and recombined at lightning speed in his mind!
An astonishing deduction took shape: this wasn't a descriptive document at all. It was... an execution schedule!
"The 'Jing' symbol doesn't mean 'area.' It means 'valve'! The numbers are valve identification codes!"
"And the 'spiral' symbol isn't a squad designation. It's a 'main pipeline'! The arrows point in the direction the poison gas is flowing!"
"Then this symbol I've never seen before, the one that looks like an hourglass... must be a countdown!"
Mizuki Han's breath caught. He looked up sharply and fixed his gaze on the largest hourglass symbol at the top of the scroll, marked in blood-red cinnabar.
Beside the symbol was a number: "seventy-two."
Not seventy-two days, nor seventy-two minutes. In the Anbu's timekeeping system, that unit meant... hours!
Starting from the moment the Great Purge began, within seventy-two hours, every main pipeline and branch valve in the entire underground Anbu base, from Sector A to Sector F, would release increasingly concentrated doses of No. 3 Neurotoxin in three stages, subjecting the entire underground network to a thorough, inescapable "ecological cleansing"!
In other words, this was a death warrant.
Everyone trapped underground, no matter where they hid, had less than three days. After that, this place would become a true tomb of poison gas.
At the end of the scroll, in even messier handwriting, it stated: All surface exits have been physically sealed and placed under the control of forces directly subordinate to Lord Genji. Anyone attempting to break through will be killed without exception!
A dead end.
A death trap sealed shut and steadily shrinking.
"Big brother Han, are we..." Haku watched his expression grow grimmer, her voice trembling. "Are we... out of places to run?"
"Run?" Mizuki Han slowly lifted his head. There was no despair or fear in his dark eyes. Instead, a flame of utmost coldness had ignited within them.
The corner of his mouth curled into a sinister smile.
"Why run?"
He put away the scroll and stood, his gaze piercing the darkness toward the depths of the tangled passages.
"Haku, remember this. When everyone thinks a path is the way out, that path is always a dead end." His voice was quiet but utterly certain. "Right now, every rat in the underground base is probably racing toward the exits like mad. What do you think is waiting for them there?"
A net closing from all sides. A slaughterhouse prepared long in advance.
This was the simplest kind of psychological warfare.
"We're not running." Mizuki Han's voice was like a Siberian cold front, lowering the temperature around them by several degrees. "We're fighting our way back."
Haku was completely stunned. She opened her mouth, unable to understand what he meant.
Fight their way back?
The place was crawling with organized Anbu search squads. There were only two of them—one seriously injured, the other a child. How could they fight? Wouldn't that be suicide?
Mizuki Han seemed to see what she was thinking and explained coldly, "This is when they're most scattered and confused. They're like a pack of headless flies, searching the labyrinth for us 'rats.' Their formations are loose, and their vigilance is steadily dropping. This is our only chance."
"If we wait until the end, when everyone has been driven toward the exits, they'll tighten the encirclement and gain an overwhelming numerical advantage. By then, we won't have the slightest chance."
A predator's gleam flashed in his eyes.
He wasn't going to escape.
He was going to completely reverse the roles of hunter and prey in this vast underground maze!
He would take the initiative, use the complicated terrain to hunt down isolated, smaller search squads, and trade their lives for the resources and time he needed to survive! He would use their blood to pave a path to freedom!
The plan was utterly insane!
"But... there are so many of them..." Haku's voice was choked with tears.
"The more there are, the easier they are to kill." Mizuki Han cut her off. He took the sharp wire he had confiscated from the corpse out of his pocket and wound it twice around his fingertips.
"We don't need to fight them head-on. We just need to... set a trap they won't be able to resist."
His gaze fell on the complex terrain around the abandoned cavern, with its jagged rocks and pools of standing water.
This would be his first hunting ground.
Just then, clear footsteps and conversation came from the corner of a nearby passage.
"Squad Three, search of Area C-7 complete. No target found."
"Roger. Move to Area C-8. Stay alert. Those two who went missing were last seen near C-8."
Mizuki Han's body tensed at once. He gestured to Haku, and they both slipped into the shadows behind a massive stalactite.
He licked his cracked lips. Far from nervous, his eyes gleamed with the excitement of a hunter spotting prey.
The first guests had arrived so soon.
With an organized search squad closing in and very limited resources, how would Han turn the tables against the odds and accomplish what seemed impossible?
Before you continue