Causality Reversal Surgery

The secret chamber beneath the Naka River Shrine was stifling.

The air felt thick enough to touch. Everyone's gaze was fixed on the dying man and the young boy crouching beside him.

Tieshan Uchiha's convulsions had weakened; it was a sign that his life force was nearly spent.

Xuan Shi kept his hand pressed against Tieshan's forehead, the system interface on his retina flickering with a cold, red light.

[High-level technique detected: A-rank Sealing Jutsu - Cursed Seal of Tongue Eradication (Active)]

[Prosperity required for Causality Reversal: 20 points]

[Current Clan Prosperity balance: 15 points]

[Warning: Insufficient balance. Operation cannot be executed.]

Xuan Shi frowned.

He was five points short.

In the short day since the timeline had been reverted, the clan had not yet engaged in any substantive "prosperity-building" activities. These 15 points were merely the initial capital gifted by the system.

If he didn't save Tieshan, the trail would go cold, and the deterrent effect would be severely diminished. But if he forced the save...

Just then, a new pop-up appeared on the interface, the font glowing with a seductive gold.

[Host detected at a critical plot juncture.]

[Temporary authorization granted: "Causality Loan" mode.]

[Advance of 5 Prosperity points permitted.]

[Cost: Must repay 10 Prosperity points within 24 hours. If overdue, one of the host's skills (including Sharingan ocular techniques) will be randomly stripped.]

[Execute?]

Loan sharking.

Xuan Shi sneered inwardly. This system was certainly no charity.

But he did not hesitate.

Execute, he thought to himself.

[Transaction complete. Prosperity points received. Causality Reversal program initiated.]

Hum—

An invisible ripple surged outward, centered on Xuan Shi's palm.

The torches in the secret chamber flickered violently, as if a ghostly wind had swept through.

Fugaku and the Great Elder widened their eyes in unison.

They saw a strange, eerie blue light bloom on Xuan Shi's palm. This light did not belong to any known chakra nature; it carried a heart-stopping power that seemed capable of warping reality itself.

"Bear with it," Xuan Shi said in a low voice. "It might feel like your soul is being torn."

The next second, the blue light flared, pouring directly into the center of Tieshan's brow.

Tieshan, who had already fallen into a coma, snapped his eyes open.

His eyeballs bulged, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks, and a shrill, inhuman scream tore from his throat: "AAAAAAHHH—!!!"

The scream was so harrowing that even the battle-hardened Uchiha jonin nearby couldn't help but frown.

But amidst the screaming, a miracle occurred.

Everyone clearly saw that the tongue Tieshan had stuck out—which had turned a deep, bruised purple—was covered in hideous black curse marks that began to dissolve rapidly, as if they had encountered a raging fire.

No, it wasn't dissolving.

It was retreating.

Those centipede-like black lines seemed to be caught in a rewind, frantically pulling back from the tip of his tongue to the root, down his throat, and finally dissipating into a wisp of black smoke that drifted out from his seven orifices.

"Cough! Cough, cough, cough!"

Tieshan sat up abruptly, coughing violently.

"Blegh—"

He opened his mouth and spat out a large mouthful of black, stagnant blood. As the blood hit the stone floor, it hissed with a corrosive sound, sending up a plume of foul-smelling white smoke.

It was the toxic residue of the curse seal's chakra.

The secret chamber fell into a deathly silence.

Only Tieshan's heavy, ragged breathing echoed in the room.

He touched his throat with trembling hands, then felt his tongue, his face a mask of disbelief and the terror of having survived the impossible.

The numbness that had burrowed deep into his marrow was gone.

The mark that had gripped his soul like a shackle, the one that made him afraid to even speak in his dreams, had vanished.

"Dan... Danzo..."

Tieshan tested his voice.

No numbness, no searing pain.

"Root... Danzo Shimura... you old dog..."

He grew more fluent with every word, eventually laughing through tears: "Hahaha... I can speak! I'm not dead! That damned curse is gone!"

"Quiet."

Xuan Shi stood up and pulled a handkerchief from his robe to wipe his fingers, his movements as elegant as if he were cleaning dust off a piece of porcelain.

He tossed the used handkerchief onto Tieshan's face, covering the man's tear-streaked, distorted expression.

"I saved you, not so you could go mad in here."

Xuan Shi's voice was soft, yet it acted like a basin of ice water, instantly extinguishing Tieshan's hysteria.

Tieshan stiffened, peering through a gap in the handkerchief to see those eyes looking down at him.

They weren't Sharingan; they were just ordinary black eyes.

Yet, in Tieshan's view, these eyes were ten thousand times more terrifying than Danzo's single eye.

A forbidden technique developed by the Second Hokage, a death-knot used by Danzo to control countless ninja—it had been erased by this boy in less than a minute.

What kind of power was this? Was it a miracle, or sorcery?

Tieshan ripped the handkerchief away and scrambled to his knees at Xuan Shi's feet, slamming his forehead hard against the stone floor.

"Young Master Xuan Shi! No, Lord Xuan Shi!"

His psychological defenses had completely collapsed. If his previous fear of Danzo was great, his current awe of Xuan Shi was absolute—a total submission to an unknown power.

"I'll tell you everything! I'll tell you!" Tieshan spoke rapidly, terrified that a second's hesitation would lead to him being discarded again. "The contact code is 'Night Owl'! The meeting spot is the top floor of the abandoned water tower on the west side of the village! We meet on the fifteenth of every month!"

"Who else?" Fugaku walked over, his face dark.

"Besides me, there's Inagaki! And..." Tieshan swallowed hard, dropping a name that made Fugaku's pupils quake. "And the deputy captain of the Police Force's Third Division, Shinichi Uchiha!"

Crack.

The teacup in Fugaku's hand was crushed to pieces, shards piercing his palm as blood dripped down.

"Shinichi..." Fugaku gritted his teeth, his voice laced with frigid killing intent. "I watched him grow up. I even paid for his wedding dowry!"

"Danzo got hold of evidence regarding his massive gambling debts," Tieshan dared not hide anything. "If he didn't obey, Danzo threatened to hand him over to the casino thugs to have his limbs cut off, and to expose his gambling debts to the entire Uchiha clan, ruining his reputation forever."

"Scoundrel!" The Great Elder's beard trembled with rage. "He betrayed the clan for a bit of money?"

"That is the way of Root," Xuan Shi said indifferently. "They either find your weakness or your leverage. As long as a person has flaws, they can be controlled."

At that moment, the system interface popped up again.

[Mission complete: Subjugated/Turned a key spy.]

[Reward: 10 Clan Prosperity points.]

[Detected "Causality Loan" debt. Automatically deducted 10 points.]

[Current balance: 15 points. Loan cleared.]

Xuan Shi breathed a sigh of relief. He had won the gamble.

Not only had he filled the hole, but he had also gained a loyal double agent for free.

"Lord Xuan Shi." Tieshan knelt on the ground, looking up with eyes burning with the fire of revenge. "Please give me a chance! I want to take revenge on Danzo! That old bastard almost killed me and threatened me with my son! Just give the word, and I'll go to that water tower right now and slaughter the contact!"

"Slaughter him?" Xuan Shi sneered. "What good would that do? Kill one contact, and Danzo will just replace him with someone more discreet. Besides, that would expose us."

He turned and looked toward the entrance of the secret chamber.

"Father, since the names are out, let's not keep the others waiting."

Fugaku took a deep breath, steadying his emotions, his eyes turning cold as iron once more.

"Yashiro, take some men and bring Shinichi and Inagaki here. Keep it quiet; don't alert the neighbors."

"Understood!" Yashiro Uchiha acknowledged the order and vanished with several trusted subordinates.

Xuan Shi watched them go, a playful curve touching his lips.

"Once they are brought here, I will perform the same surgery on them."

He looked back at the kneeling Tieshan.

"From today on, you are all dead men. But in Danzo's eyes, you must continue to live perfectly well."

"We are going to turn these people into a 'boomerang' aimed at Danzo's heart," Xuan Shi's eyes grew profound. "Danzo likes to play with conspiracies, likes to hide in the shadows and manipulate everything. Then we shall play along with him."

"I want every piece of intelligence he receives to be a script we have carefully written. I want him to believe he has the entire situation under control, right up until the final step when he walks off the cliff."

Tieshan looked at the boy's back and couldn't help but shudder.

He suddenly felt that compared to that gloomy Root leader, this fifteen-year-old boy was the true walker in the darkness.

Under the leadership of this madman, the Uchiha clan might truly be able to carve out a different path.

Half an hour later.

Two more figures were thrown into the secret chamber.

Shinichi Uchiha and Inagaki Uchiha were bound tightly, their faces filled with terror.

When they saw Tieshan kneeling to the side, unharmed and with his tongue perfectly functional, the expressions on their faces were priceless.

Xuan Shi flexed his wrists, blue light gathering in his palms once more.

"Welcome to the Uchiha 'rebirth' operating room."

He walked toward the two trembling clansmen, wearing the professional, fake smile of a doctor facing his patients.

"Don't be afraid, it will be over soon. It might hurt a little, but compared to being used like a dog by Danzo, what is a little pain?"

The door to the secret chamber slowly closed, sealing all the screams and pleas beneath the earth.

That night, beneath the Naka River Shrine, the Uchiha clan was undergoing a cleansing as painful as scraping bone to remove poison.

Above ground, the heavy rain finally stopped.

The dark clouds dispersed, revealing a bright, clear moon.

Moonlight spilled over the streets of the Uchiha compound, and everything appeared peaceful and serene. No one knew that beneath this calm facade, a massive net aimed at the dark roots of Konoha had already been quietly cast.