Brand of Lava, the Tyrant's Purification

The stench of blood hit them head-on, carrying a cloying sweetness of decay.

The out-of-control Red Bean was like a beast driven into a corner, all four limbs braced against the ground, muscles knotted. Black curse-mark patterns writhed beneath her skin like living venomous snakes. There was no humanity left in her eyes, only pure madness twisted by pain and bloodlust.

"Roar—!"

With a roar that no human could make, she became a black afterimage and lunged straight at Yan.

Her target was his throat.

The hearts of the three cat-masked men lurched, their bodies instinctively about to rush forward. As elites of the Shadow Guard, combat instinct was carved into their bones. Faced with an out-of-control threat like this, the best option was instant restraint; the next best was to kill without mercy.

However, Yan's voice was faster than their movements.

"Don't move."

Two words, devoid of the slightest emotional fluctuation, yet like two invisible steel spikes that nailed the three ANBU to the spot. His voice carried an absolute, unquestionable command, as if the moment they disobeyed, that invisible pressure would crush them.

The cat mask had already activated his Body Flicker Technique halfway, only to force himself to halt in midair. The sluggish sensation of chakra flowing backward left his chest tight. Watching that motionless black silhouette, he doubted his vaunted judgment for the first time.

Faced with claws and fangs capable of tearing through steel, Yan did not retreat, block, or even assume the faintest defensive posture. He simply stood there like a black mountain unmoved by the storm, allowing that small, crazed figure to pounce on him.

He was not being reckless.

He was showing contempt.

Contempt for this cold, twisted "gift" from Orochimaru.

In the instant between sparks and lightning, Red Bean's claws had already reached Yan's throat.

Then Yan moved.

His left hand rose, so fast it left only an afterimage. He did not block. Instead, he struck after her yet arrived before her, seizing Red Bean by the throat.

It was not a forceful choke, but more like a precise "grasp." His thumb and forefinger pressed exactly against both sides of Red Bean's neck, at the core of the black three-tomoe curse mark.

"Sizzle—!"

A soft sound rang out, like a drop of cold water falling into boiling oil.

The three cat-masked men saw it clearly. The instant Yan's fingers touched the curse mark, the violent chakra within Red Bean stalled abruptly, like a punctured balloon.

Then they witnessed a sight they would never forget for the rest of their lives.

Yan's left hand began to change.

Starting from his fingertips, his skin split apart inch by inch. Dark crimson magma, like the most primordial lava from the depths of the earth, seeped from between the muscle fibers and quickly covered his entire hand. This was not chakra nature transformation, nor was it ninjutsu. It was a more fundamental, more primal transformation of matter.

Scalding, flowing magma reeking of sulfur wrapped around his hand as it gripped the throat of a ten-year-old girl.

The laboratory's metal walls let out strained creaks as the temperature suddenly surged. The air warped from the heat, and the light around Yan's hand formed a hazy halo like a mirage.

"Ah... ahhh..."

Broken, strangled hisses emerged from Red Bean's throat. Her madness seemed to have been interrupted by this sudden, extreme pain. The curse mark brought her torment of both mind and body, but what Yan gave her now was pure physical agony, enough to burn even her soul to ash.

Her body began struggling violently. She clawed and kicked with all her might, frantically striking Yan's body. Yet that black figure did not move in the slightest.

Yan's right hand had somehow already risen and rested lightly atop Red Bean's head. The gesture formed a bizarre contrast with the cruelty of his left hand. Like a veterinarian performing surgery on a pet, one hand held it down while the other wielded a blazing-hot scalpel.

"You're really noisy."

Yan murmured, as though speaking to himself.

The five fingers of his right hand pressed lightly against Red Bean's head. An invisible pressure spread out, completely restraining all her struggling movements.

The embryonic form of Conqueror's Haki—the pressure of will.

Only after doing all that did he focus completely on his left hand.

"Orochimaru... your things are too filthy."

His icy voice echoed through the empty laboratory.

"I'll help you... clean them up."

The instant his words fell, the magma on his left hand flared with blazing light!

"Boom—!"

A visible torrent of heat, condensed into substance, was forcibly injected from his magma-transformed palm into the core of the curse mark on Red Bean's neck!

This was not a clash of chakra. This was the crushing force of physical laws!

The cold, twisted curse-mark chakra, corrosive to life itself, had only one fate when it encountered a temperature extreme enough to melt a planet's core—evaporation!

"Aaaaaaah—!!!"

A scream so agonizing it defied description erupted from the deepest part of Red Bean's throat. It had completely surpassed the range human vocal cords could produce, more like the final wail of some creature being thrown alive into a volcano.

The black curse-mark patterns across her skin boiled and churned violently, like ink splashed with concentrated acid. Black chakra vapor burst frantically from every pore, only to ignite the instant it touched the superheated air around Yan's body, transforming into clusters of silent black flames before vanishing.

Purification.

Using the most violent, most unreasonable physical means to purify the most sinister, most bizarre creation of ninjutsu.

At that moment, Yan's Observation Haki had completely immersed itself within Red Bean's body. He could "see" Orochimaru's cold chakra, coiled together like countless little snakes, collapse instantly beneath the assault of his heat. They screamed, wailed, and fled in every direction, trying to hide, but no matter where they fled, that all-pervading, tyrannical current of heat caught up with them and burned them utterly into nothingness.

It was a one-sided massacre unfolding within her body.

"Not enough."

Yan's brows furrowed almost imperceptibly beneath his mask.

He discovered that Orochimaru's curse mark was tougher than he had imagined. Like a virus parasitizing the deepest layers of one's cells, even after ninety-nine percent of it had been burned away, the remaining trace still had a chance to rise from the ashes.

"What... tenacious garbage."

The five fingers of his left hand suddenly clenched!

Not to crush Red Bean's neck, but to raise the magma's temperature and pressure to an entirely new level.

He was no longer satisfied with "purification."

He wanted to—brand it!

He would use his own power to carve an indelible mark of his own upon this "masterpiece" that belonged to Orochimaru!

The heat was no longer a diffuse assault. With unimaginably fine control, he condensed it into a needle of lava thinner than a strand of hair and precisely pierced the source core of the curse mark.

"Boom!"

A muffled explosion rang out—not in the air, but within Red Bean's body, exploding in the depths of her soul.

Around the edges of the black, three-tomoe curse-mark pattern on her neck, a ring of dark-red, savage branding marks instantly appeared, as though formed by cooled lava.

The black curse mark seemed to have been fitted with a blazing-hot, eternal shackle.

That violent, frenzied chakra receded at a visible speed, like a flood whose source had been severed. The black patterns spreading across Red Bean's body retreated like the tide, scrambling to shrink back into the mark on her neck.

The beastlike eyes that had been stained orange-yellow gradually returned to their original black.

The madness faded, leaving only endless weakness and pain, as though everything had been drained from her.

Red Bean's body suddenly went limp. Her teeth finally released Yan's arm, and she collapsed helplessly like a puppet with all its strings cut.

Yan caught her with his left hand.

The girl's body was as light as a feather and frighteningly hot. Her exposed skin was covered in fine red marks from being scalded by high-temperature steam. She had completely lost consciousness.

The entire laboratory fell into dead silence.

Only the faint crackling of cooling magma remained, along with the groans of the wall metal expanding and contracting under the heat.

Yan lowered his head and glanced at his right arm.

A row of deep bite marks remained there, the flesh mangled so badly that white bone was visible.

Yet within the few seconds he watched, the muscle fibers at the wound rapidly regenerated, reassembled, and healed beneath the high heat, leaving not even the faintest scar. The elemental transformation of the Magma-Magma Fruit gave him not only offense and defense, but also this nearly monstrous regenerative ability.

Then he looked at Red Bean in his arms.

The black three-tomoe curse mark on her neck still remained, but around it was an indelible dark-red scar, as though branded from the deepest depths of her flesh. Its shape vaguely resembled a ring of burning flames, firmly imprisoning the black curse mark in its center.

From this day onward, half of this curse mark belonged to Orochimaru.

The other half belonged to Uchiha En.

Orochimaru had planted the seed, while he had altered the nature of the soil.

The three cat-masked men stood in the laboratory like three petrified statues, having witnessed this "treatment" that could only be called torture from start to finish.

Their minds had completely shut down.

An ANBU melting someone's skull with his palm was terrifying, but they could understand it as a powerful, purely destructive bloodline limit.

But now, this youth codenamed Lava had used power capable of melting everything to precisely "sear" the evil chakra within another person's body, like the greatest, calmest, most insane medical ninja—and while he was at it, gave the other person's curse mark a "secondary modification" and a declaration of ownership?

This had gone beyond everything they understood about the word "ninjutsu."

This was not ninjutsu.

This was a miracle.

Or rather, a tyrannical miracle of demons, something only devils could perform.

A chill from the depths of their hearts climbed up their spines, a thousand times colder than the frigid air of this underground laboratory.

When they looked at the black figure holding the girl, there was no trace of camaraderie left in their eyes.

There was only the most instinctive—reverence—for the unknown, for something beyond all standards, for a calamity walking among humankind.