Cross-Referencing Breaks the Secret Scroll, with a Three-Day Death Sentence Hanging Overhead

Time stretched endlessly in that moment.

The deathly pale mask hidden behind the ventilation grate collided with Mizuki Han's icy gaze in midair, sparking a silent flash.

The other man's shock, greed, and smug delight all shone clearly through his single eye.

He'd seen it.

He'd seen the entire process of Han using the system to extract chakra.

That secret was ten thousand times more deadly than the Ice Release Kekkei Genkai itself.

Mizuki Han's mind held not a trace of panic. Instead, a cold-blooded order to kill formed in an instant.

—He had to silence him!

—Before the man could tell anyone else!

"Click."

The instant he noticed the enemy, Han's intact right hand had already pulled an Explosive Tag from his ninja tool pouch. His movement was as smooth as if he'd practiced it a thousand times.

Haku, still in the crevice, hadn't even realized what was happening. She only saw Han's back tense in an instant, like a bow drawn to its limit.

"Stay here. Cover your ears."

His cold command came without a word of explanation.

The Anbu ninja behind the ventilation duct's heart was pounding.

He was only a Genin assigned to perimeter watch. He'd sneaked into this abandoned area because he needed to relieve himself, never expecting to stumble upon such a shocking scene.

A boy from the Yuki Clan had actually wiped out Wildcat's elite squad!

What chilled him even more was the boy's bizarre technique at the end, pressing a hand to a corpse as if he could "absorb" its chakra!

What kind of Kekkei Genkai was this? Or was it some sort of forbidden jutsu?

Whatever it was, this was a huge achievement! If he brought this information back, he'd rise through the ranks in no time!

Greed overpowered fear. The boy seemed badly wounded too, especially with his left arm encased in ice crystals. It was clearly useless.

He was just a badly injured man at the end of his rope!

The Anbu ninja quietly backed away, ready to leave and report to his superior.

But he was fast. Mizuki Han was faster!

The instant the Anbu ninja retreated, Han moved. He didn't charge, nor did he perform any jutsu.

Instead, he hurled the Explosive Tag with pinpoint precision at the rock wall about three meters above the Anbu ninja's head!

"Whoosh—"

The tag cut through the air with a faint whistle and stuck neatly to the slick rock wall.

The Anbu ninja in the duct froze for a moment, unable to understand why Han had done that.

Had he missed?

The thought had barely formed when an overwhelming sense of danger engulfed him.

Han's hands had already formed three seals in a flash.

Rat—Boar—Dog!

"Ice Release: Ice Spike Jutsu!"

This time, he didn't aim the ice spike at the Anbu ninja. He aimed it at a pool of water beneath his feet.

"Pfft!"

A razor-sharp ice spike shot out of the water, but it wasn't aimed at anyone. It flew straight toward the Explosive Tag on the rock wall!

No!

The Anbu ninja instantly understood Han's plan!

It was a combination attack! He'd use the ice spike to set off the Explosive Tag, then use the blast's shock wave to strike the entire fragile area where the ninja was hiding!

He tried to escape, but there was nowhere to hide in the narrow ventilation duct!

"BOOM—!!!"

A deafening explosion thundered through the area!

Flames and a wave of hot air swallowed it whole. The blast shattered the fragile ventilation duct, sending countless shards of metal and scorching rock fragments raining down.

"Ah—!"

A short, piercing scream came from the center of the explosion, then cut off abruptly.

A charred corpse, pierced by countless metal fragments, fell through the blasted opening and hit the ground hard, splattering mud mixed with blood.

Mizuki Han stood where he was. The blast's shock wave stirred his black hair, and the blood on his face looked especially eerie in the firelight.

He stared coldly at the body and only slowly lowered his hands after confirming the man was dead.

From spotting the enemy to making a plan to killing him, the entire process had taken less than ten seconds.

That was how he fought: before his opponent could react, he'd already prepared a dozen ways for him to die.

Only after finishing did he feel a wave of dizziness. Forcing his chakra just now had made the sharp pain in his crystallizing meridians even worse.

Without changing expression, he took another painkiller from the medical kit and drove it into his thigh, using the drug's numbing effect to fight his body's collapse.

"Come here," he said to Haku.

Haku hurried over. She looked at the new corpse, her small face pale, but she forced herself to stay silent.

"Search him for anything useful," Mizuki Han ordered coldly, pointing at the body that had just fallen.

Haku hesitated, but when she saw the unwavering look in Han's eyes, she gritted her teeth and went over.

It was the first rule of survival he'd taught her: every enemy became a resource after death.

Han paid no further attention to the body. He walked to a relatively clean corner, sat with his back against the rock wall, and finally took out the black leather scroll he'd found on Wildcat.

The scroll was cold to the touch. The metal wire binding it had no gap, and the tiny seal at the junction was made up of three different interlocking runes. It gave off an ominous pulse of energy.

This was a deadlock.

Mizuki Han stared at the seal.

His mind began to race like a precision supercomputer.

He summoned the original owner's memories. As a member of the Mist Anbu, he'd received basic cryptography training. He recognized one of the runes as the Mist Village's standard Triple Wave Seal, commonly used to encrypt intelligence above B-rank.

But the other two runes were completely beyond his knowledge. They looked more like ancient ritual symbols, full of chaos and ill omen.

If he tried to break the seal with chakra, it would only trigger a countermeasure trap.

Mizuki Han closed his eyes.

He began searching through another set of memories—those from his previous life on Blue Star, in an age of information overload.

Logic, algorithms, data structures...

Countless ideas utterly foreign to the ninja world flowed through his mind.

He broke the three runes down into their parts, then rearranged them in his head.

The Mist Village's Triple Wave Seal used a ternary encryption system. But what about the other two runes?

Han's thoughts broke free of the usual ninja mindset. He stopped seeing them as symbols containing energy and instead treated them as pure logic gates.

One represented "AND," the other "NOT."

One positive variable, one negative variable, combined with a ternary algorithm.

This... was a hybrid encryption model!

Two of the most basic logical operations, used to scramble a complex ternary ninjutsu code.

To ninja accustomed to thinking in terms of chakra and energy, this kind of encryption was utterly inconceivable. They would never guess that the simplest logic was the true key to breaking the lock.

The corner of Mizuki Han's mouth lifted in a cold smile.

He opened his eyes and raised the index finger of his intact right hand, gathering a wisp of chakra so faint it was almost invisible.

He didn't touch the seal. Instead, following the sequence he'd worked out, he quickly tapped the air in front of it several times.

Each tap represented a logical input.

"AND," "NOT," "one of the three waves," "NOT," "AND," "two of the three waves"...

His movements blurred, and the faint chakra left streaks in the air that vanished almost immediately.

When he made the final tap—

"Click."

A faint snap, almost too soft to hear, came from the scroll.

The tough metal wire sprang open by itself.

The complex seal made of three runes dimmed and ceased to function.

He'd done it.

Mizuki Han drew a deep breath and slowly unrolled the black scroll, which radiated a deathly aura.

The leather interior was completely blank.

But the instant his chakra touched the leather's surface, lines of blood-red text seeped out of its grain like living things. They writhed and formed a series of horrifying intelligence reports.

[Final Purification Protocol: Phase Three]

[Target Area: Entire underground sewage system, Sections A–G.]

[Execution Plan: Release a high-concentration neurocorrosive gas, "Blood Banyan Mist."]

[Executing Unit: Genji's direct force, the Sharp Tooth Unit.]

[Security Level: Maximum. All surface exits have been physically sealed and protected by barriers. No living beings may enter or leave.]

Mizuki Han's gaze locked on the countdown in the final line, highlighted in the most glaring shade of red.

[Protocol Activation Countdown: 72 hours.]

Three days.

In three days, the entire underground world would be swallowed by a poison gas called Blood Banyan Mist.

This wasn't a purge. It was extermination.

They intended to erase everything in this festering underground place, along with all the "trash" inside it—rebels, fugitives, and "remnants" like him, barely clinging to life—wiping them from existence entirely.

Mizuki Han slowly raised his head. His left hand, encased in ice crystals, clenched unconsciously.

His crystal fingers cracked under the strain.

He finally understood why Kisame had appeared at the drainage outlet, and why Wildcat's squad had fought to protect the scroll.

There had never been any such thing as a "way out."

From the moment they'd been thrown underground, every one of them had already been sentenced to death.

The only difference was when the sentence would be carried out.

And now, the Sword of Damocles hanging over his head had only seventy-two hours left on its countdown.

Just then, Haku, who was searching the body nearby, let out a muffled gasp.

"Han... look at this..."

Mizuki Han turned toward her voice. Haku had found a tattered sheepskin map, soaked in blood, inside the Genin's clothes. In one corner, a huge skull marked in vermilion glowed with an ominous red light. Three crooked characters were written beside it.

—Armory.