Physical Principles Break the Seal, Frozen Ice Cracks the Chakra

Inside the ventilation duct, the cold scent of rust mingled with the faint, ethereal glow of chakra drifting from afar, creating a stifling and oppressive atmosphere. Mizuki Han clung to the back of the grate like a dormant lizard, his pitch-black pupils reflecting the massive corridor, which was illuminated as brightly as day by moonstones.

And at the end of that corridor stood the steel gate, a structure that looked like a miracle of the gods.

Twenty meters high, the gate was cast entirely from an unknown black metal. Pale blue chakra light flowed across its surface, and dense, intricate sealing formulas, resembling a complex circuit board, formed an insurmountable barrier for any mortal. In front of the gate, two elite Chunin wearing ghastly white masks stood like silent stone statues, motionless. The condensed, tangible fluctuations of chakra radiating from their bodies formed an invisible barrier with the surrounding air.

Any living creature that dared to approach would be instantly torn apart by the pure killing intent emanating from them.

"Han-gege..." Haku's small hand gripped the corner of Mizuki Han's clothes tightly, her body trembling slightly from fear. She didn't even dare to peek out; the sheer pressure radiating from the other side of the wall was enough to make her feel as if she were suffocating.

Mizuki Han did not look back, his gaze sweeping inch by inch over the impregnable sealed gate.

Forcefully break the seal? Impossible. A composite sealing technique of this level would require a specialized decryption squad to spend days working on it, or an elite Kage-level powerhouse to destroy it with absolute brute force. He could not do it.

Create a diversion to lure the guards away? That was even more of a fantasy. These two elite Chunin had a presence as steady as mountains and wills as firm as iron; they would never abandon their posts for some minor disturbance. They were members of the Sharp Tooth unit, the sharpest blades in Elder Gen's hands, trained only to execute orders, not to improvise.

The ninja's way of thinking was, at this moment, completely locked.

However, Mizuki Han's mind was quietly expanding into another dimension.

In his mind, he recalled a fundamental concept from his physics textbooks in his previous life: when water freezes, its volume expands by about nine percent. This process generates a physical force powerful enough to crack rock and steel.

Ninjutsu was an extraordinary power based on chakra. But since it ultimately existed within this material world, it had to follow the most fundamental laws of physics.

No matter how strong a chakra seal was, it required a physical "substrate" to support it. The metal engraved with the formulas, the energy nodes buried in the walls—these were all physical entities.

If he could infiltrate water into the crevices of the sealing substrate...

And then use Ice Release to freeze it...

An incredibly insane, yet theoretically feasible plan rapidly took shape in Mizuki Han's mind. He didn't need to crack the complex, star-like chakra codes; what he needed to do was pull the firewood from under the cauldron—using the purest physical force to directly crush the "hard drive" that carried the code!

Knowledge was power.

In this extraordinary world, scientific knowledge from another dimension was the sharpest, most incomprehensible "dimensional reduction" weapon in his hands.

"Haku." Mizuki Han's voice broke the silence in the duct, cold and brief.

"I'm here," Haku replied immediately.

"From now on, no matter what you hear or see, stay here. Do not move, and do not make a sound." Mizuki Han's command carried not a hint of emotion.

With that, he ignored Haku, his body sliding like a slick serpent from the other end of the ventilation duct, vanishing into the shadows of a darker drainage ditch at the edge of the corridor.

He was nearly fifty meters away from the gate, safely within the absolute blind spot of the guards' perception.

The cold, foul-smelling sewage submerged his ankles. He crouched down and gently pressed his uninjured right hand into the murky liquid.

Chakra, like the most precise probe, extended from his fingertips and merged into the turbid fluid. He didn't alert anyone; he simply controlled a small stream of water with extreme caution, like an invisible snake, slowly "crawling" along the shadows of the wall toward the massive steel gate.

This was a task that required an extremely high degree of precision in chakra control.

The water flow could not be too fast, or it would make a sound.

The water flow could not be too large, or the light from the moonstones would reveal its trail.

Over the fifty-meter distance, that tiny stream of water "crawled" for a full ten minutes. Beads of sweat seeped from Mizuki Han's forehead—not from exhaustion, but from intense mental focus. His perception was entirely attached to that stream of water, carefully avoiding every obsidian floor tile that might reflect light under the guards' feet.

Finally, the water reached the base of the massive steel gate.

Mizuki Han's "vision," following the water, saw the full extent of the sealing substrate. It was a solid block of heavy granite, forcibly embedded between the obsidian floor and the steel gate, with countless tiny energy rune conduits running through the rock, connecting to the main formula on the gate.

Years of dampness had caused tiny, hair-thin cracks—almost invisible to the naked eye—to appear at the junction of the granite and the metal.

This was it!

A cold glint flashed in Mizuki Han's eyes as he controlled the water, which seemed to possess a life of its own, to seep bit by bit into those microscopic fissures.

The process was so slow, so silent.

In front of the gate, the two elite Chunin remained standing like statues, completely unaware of the event unfolding in the shadows fifty meters away—an event that would have shattered their understanding of reality. One of them seemed to find it boring and even stretched his neck, causing a slight cracking sound of bones.

The water continued to seep in.

One minute.

Five minutes.

Ten minutes.

When Mizuki Han felt that the internal crevices of the entire sealing substrate were filled with water molecules, he slowly exhaled a breath of stale air.

The preparation was complete.

Next was the moment to witness a miracle—or rather, to witness "science."

He closed his eyes, sinking all his focus into the control of his chakra. He didn't weave any hand signs; he simply injected the nature transformation of his Ice Release into the water that had already permeated the rock crevices in an extremely gentle and covert manner.

The cold began to spread in the microscopic world.

Under the influence of his chakra, the violent motion of the water molecules began to decelerate rapidly. They stopped colliding in a disordered fashion and began to follow a specific rule, slowly arranging themselves into the most stable hexagonal crystal structure.

Time seemed to slow down at this moment.

Click... crack...

A faint sound, like the internal structure of an ice cube fracturing, drifted from the direction of the gate.

The sound was weaker than the buzzing of a mosquito's wings, yet it struck the nerves of the two elite Chunin like a heavy hammer.

The two of them cast their gazes toward the foundation of the sealed gate at almost the exact same moment!

Their eyes were sharp as blades, sweeping across the area, yet they discovered nothing. There were no chakra fluctuations, no signs of enemy infiltration; everything was exactly as it had been a second before.

"An illusion?" one of the Chunin asked in a low voice.

"...Perhaps," the other replied, though his hand had already instinctively moved to the hilt of the blade at his waist.

However, they were unaware that deep within the rock, invisible to their eyes, a force born of the most unreasonable physical laws was accumulating frantically.

Countless ice crystals formed within the narrow crevices, expanding!

They pressed against one another and against the hard granite walls, releasing a terrifying tension outward.

A cold arc curled at the corner of Mizuki Han's mouth.

He increased his chakra output!

"Crack... crack-crack..."

This time, the sound was no illusion!

Crisp, continuous cracking sounds emanated clearly from within the sealing foundation!

The pupils of the two elite Chunin constricted to the limit in an instant! They watched in horror as the surface of the indestructible granite foundation suddenly sprouted spiderweb-like cracks, much like a dried-up riverbed!

"What is happening?!"

"Enemy attack!!!"

Before the shrill alarm could even be shouted, an even more terrifying scene unfolded.

The cracks covering the foundation widened in an instant! Pale blue chakra radiance, like an electric snake with its neck snapped, surged frantically from the fissures, flickered madly a few times, and then faded into total darkness!

The physical foundation supporting the entire sealing technique had been destroyed!

"BOOM--!!!"

Accompanied by a dull, thunderous roar, the thick granite foundation could no longer withstand the terrifying pressure from within and exploded!

Countless shards of rock of varying sizes, mixed with broken metal rune pipes, shot out in all directions!

And on that twenty-meter-tall steel gate, all the flowing chakra light extinguished in that very instant. The awe-inspiring, supernatural aura that had shrouded the gate vanished completely.

The deadbolt had been forcibly broken!

The two elite Chunin were completely stunned; even the pale masks on their faces could not hide the extreme shock and disbelief in their eyes.

They had not felt any powerful ninjutsu attack, nor had they seen the shadow of any enemy, yet the S-rank seal that the Mist Anbu took the most pride in had been... burst open, right under their noses, in a way they could not comprehend at all?

"Wum--"

A piercing alarm sounded, echoing throughout the entire underground space the very next second!

The two Chunin snapped out of their shock instantly, and a violent killing intent erupted from them like a volcanic eruption, locking onto the entire wide corridor in a heartbeat!

Mizuki Han remained hidden in the shadows, but his heart was pounding wildly.

He had succeeded.

However, at the very moment the sealing foundation exploded, the heavy steel gate, now devoid of all energy support, let out a teeth-grinding screech of metal friction and actually began to slowly creak open, revealing a gap.

Behind the door was not the warehouse filled with weapons they had imagined, but a bottomless, pure darkness.

And from that darkness, a pair of eyes, not belonging to any human and glowing with a scarlet light, slowly lit up.