Four Red Yang Formation Activated, Root Scouts Get Lost

Golden light burst forth, and the wood grain on the walls cast sharp shadows.

The system panel filled his vision, three lines of text appearing one after another.

[Perfect Sage Body Fragment ×1—After fusion, constitution will rise from "Basic Sage Body" to "Intermediate Sage Body," and total chakra reserves will break through to quasi-Kage level!]

Nawaki's breathing stopped for half a beat.

Quasi-Kage level. Twelve years old.

The second line came crashing down right after.

[Wood Release: Advent of Flowering Trees (Incomplete Version)—Radius: 50 meters. Includes hypnotic spores. Enemies within the range will fall into indiscriminate deep sleep. The full version requires Family Prosperity Level B to unlock.]

One breath and they would collapse, whether they were chunin or jonin.

Nasty enough.

The third line was the real highlight.

[Family-Exclusive Barrier: Four Red Yang Formation Blueprint—Bury four nodes beneath the clan compound to form an invisible defensive barrier. Effect: Blocks all external sensory detection. Intruders without the host's permission will be forcibly repelled and suppressed.]

Nawaki's gaze locked onto those words.

The Four Red Yang Formation. A Five Kage-level defensive barrier, even in a scaled-down form—but more than enough to protect a clan compound.

He was in no hurry.

The "Fuse" button on the panel was glowing. He raised a hand and pressed it.

There were no visual effects, no notification chime.

The transformation began in the gaps between his bones.

Scorching power surged outward from the core of his abdomen. It was not a flood bursting through a dam—it was reforging. His bones trembled, muscle fibers tore apart and reassembled, as though someone had dismantled his entire skeleton and put it back together with tougher materials.

Nawaki clenched his back teeth, fine sweat beading on his forehead.

Thirty seconds.

The pain ebbed away.

He lowered his head to look at his hands—his knuckles were distinct, his fingers noticeably longer. The lines of his arms had changed from a boy's thinness to a lean, balanced strength.

He stood up.

His head nearly struck the ceiling beam.

He had grown three or four centimeters. A twelve-year-old face, a fifteen-year-old frame.

But the real change was within.

Nawaki closed his eyes, and the chakra pathways spread open in his perception.

When he had possessed the Basic Sage Body, his chakra reserves had been a river.

Now, they were a lake.

Still, bottomless, so full it was on the verge of overflowing.

Quasi-Kage level.

The corner of his mouth curved up.

Now this was the body a Senju should have.

Next, the real business.

He unfolded the Four Red Yang Formation blueprint. Blue virtual lines formed a three-dimensional tetrahedron on the panel—the four nodes were located eight meters underground at the four corners of the clan compound, linked by chakra circuits following the earth veins.

Nawaki left the inner room, his bare feet stepping onto the dirt in the courtyard.

It was late at night. Tsunade's snoring came from the master bedroom, strong and steady. There was no sound from Kushina Uzumaki's room, her breathing even.

He crouched down and pressed his right palm to the ground.

Chakra sank into the soil and spread in four directions along the earth veins. Farther, farther still—reaching the base of the walls, then drilling deeper. Eight meters, ten meters, until it touched stable bedrock.

The first wooden node condensed underground, its sealing patterns identical to those on the blueprint.

The second. The third. The fourth.

Every node drained a huge portion of his chakra reserves. Before today, two would have emptied him out.

But now, he possessed a quasi-Kage-level lake.

With all four nodes in place, he still had sixty percent remaining.

He brought his hands together.

"Rise."

There was no sound. The air did not distort, the ground did not shake, and the leaves did not stir.

But his senses told him—a transparent barrier rose from beneath the earth, closing along the line of the walls and forming a complete dome.

From the outside, the Senju Clan Compound looked the same as ever. Run-down, desolate, inconspicuous.

But the instant any external chakra detection touched the barrier—it would be silently absorbed, then reflected straight back.

Nawaki stood and patted the dirt from his hands.

His perception passed through the barrier and locked onto two chakra signatures two hundred and thirty meters to the northwest.

Root's spies. They had been squatting there since last night and had changed shifts once.

Very dedicated.

He had no intention of giving them a commendation banner.

The moment the barrier activated, the two Root shinobi both sensed something wrong.

It was not that they had seen something—it was that they could no longer see anything.

At their usual surveillance post in the treetops, their chakra-enhanced vision was fully activated. Yet the Senju Clan Compound in their field of view looked as though someone had wiped it away with a single palm, leaving behind a uniform mass of gray.

"There's a problem," said Agent A in a low voice.

Agent B formed three hand seals and released a miniature sensory ninjutsu. Chakra ripples spread toward the clan compound—only to strike an invisible wall.

They vanished. They had been swallowed.

"A barrier?" B frowned. "No, there's no sign of anyone setting one up nearby—"

"We're going in." A made the decision.

The two leaped down from the treetops and silently swept over the top of the wall.

A's right foot crossed half an inch past the edge of the wall.

Boom.

A gentle yet irresistible force exploded beneath his foot—it was not an attack, more like a giant hand shoving him out from the chest.

His body flew backward fifteen meters, his back slamming into a thick tree trunk. With a crack, two pieces of his armor shattered. He slid down from the roots, a thin line of blood spilling from the corner of his mouth.

B reacted half a beat faster and pulled back the instant his foot touched the boundary. But the aftershock swept over his left shoulder, tearing open his clothes and peeling back flesh.

The two crouched in the shadows outside the wall and stared at each other.

Three seconds of silence.

"Withdraw." A clutched his broken ribs, forcing the words through his teeth. "Report back."

Inside the Senju Clan Compound.

Nawaki sat on a stone bench in the courtyard and heard the muffled impact beyond the wall.

"So weak."

He withdrew his senses, entered the inner room, and sat before the low table. He rummaged through a drawer and found paper and a pen—office supplies Tsunade had "borrowed" from the Hokage Building during the day.

The pen touched the paper.

He drew a circle in the center—"Third Hokage." One on the right—"Danzō." One in the upper left—"Two Advisors." Three lines connected them into a triangle.

The core power structure of Konoha's upper ranks was that simple—and that troublesome.

Outside the triangle, he drew two separate circles.

In the upper right, "Orochimaru," followed by a question mark. Ambitious, but his trajectory was unclear.

In the lower left, "Jiraiya," also followed by a question mark. Loyal to the Third Hokage, but he barely involved himself in village affairs.

Two wandering Kage-level combatants. He could not touch them for now, and there was no hurry to do so.

The pen moved to the right side of the page and drew a large circle.

"Uchiha Clan."

Nominally the foremost of Konoha's four great clans. In reality, they had been excluded from the core of power since the Second Hokage's era, with the entire clan crammed into the southern district's police force as glorified security guards.

They carried deep resentment, possessed great strength, and lacked only a spark to set them off.

Nawaki circled "Uchiha Clan" with his pen and slowly wrote beneath it.

"Mikoto Uchiha."

Fugaku Uchiha's fiancée. The clan head's daughter. A potential Mangekyō candidate.

She was unwilling to accept a political marriage.

The system had two core paths for raising prosperity—recruiting core members and intercepting people blessed by fate.

Mikoto fulfilled both conditions.

He set down the pen and leaned back in his chair.

Unlocking True Several Thousand Hands required B-rank prosperity. He was currently at C-rank. Kushina and Tsunade had held up the framework, but if he wanted to rise further, he needed a new bloodline variable.

The Uchiha Clan's Sharingan paired with the Senju's Sage Body—tracing that combination back led to the Sage of Six Paths.

His fingers tapped the tabletop twice.

But the Uchiha Clan was no easy target. Reckless contact would only alert them. He needed a natural, open, and legitimate opportunity.

Beside "Mikoto Uchiha," he added another line—

"Jonin Joint Assessment."

Every autumn, Konoha organized a cross-rank combat assessment. All promising young shinobi had to participate. The Uchiha Clan was no exception.

The most suitable setting for contact.

Nawaki folded the relationship chart and stuffed it into the drawer.

Just then, dragging footsteps sounded in the hallway.

Creak.

The door opened a crack, and a red head poked inside.

Kushina wore the clothes she had changed into yesterday, her hair a mess, a wooden bowl in her hands. Inside the bowl was a dark, unidentifiable lump.

"Why are you still awake?"

"Not tired." Nawaki casually gathered up the papers and pen, then turned with a gentle smile. "What is that?"

"Rice balls. I woke up hungry and made them myself." She set the bowl on the table. "I saved one for you."

Nawaki looked down.

The shape was uneven. The seaweed was wrapped crookedly, and one corner was visibly burnt.

He picked it up and took a bite.

Salty.

Very salty.

"Well?" Kushina clasped her hands behind her back and tilted her head, trying hard to look like she was expecting praise.

Nawaki chewed and nodded. "It's good. Use half as much salt next time."

"It's not salty!"

"My tongue is going numb."

"Then there's something wrong with your tongue!"

Her voice rose, then immediately dropped when she remembered Tsunade was still asleep next door. She muttered a few more retorts under her breath, the tips of her ears turning bright red.

Nawaki finished the rice ball. Not a single bite remained.

Kushina picked up the empty bowl and was about to leave, but she turned around at the door.

"Nawaki, what were you writing at your desk just now?"

"Keeping accounts." He did not even blink. "Calculating how much it'll cost to rebuild the clan compound."

Kushina gave an "oh" and believed him.

The door closed, and her footsteps faded away.

The smile vanished from Nawaki's face.

He took out the relationship chart again and added another phrase beside "Mikoto Uchiha."

"Jonin Joint Assessment."

Beneath Konoha. Root headquarters.

In a windowless secret chamber, Danzō sat in the darkness.

Agent A knelt before him, having finished his report. Two of his ribs were broken, and every sentence came with a wheeze.

Danzō did not look at him. His single eye stared at the map of the Senju Clan Compound on the desk.

"A barrier," he said softly. "He set up a barrier beneath the clan compound."

After a long silence, he pushed the map aside.

"Pass the order—suspend all surveillance operations on the Senju Clan Compound."

A slightly raised his head, unsure whether he had heard correctly.

"Also." Danzō picked up a list from the table. "Review this month's Jonin Joint Assessment participants again."

His finger slid across several names before stopping.

"Notify Fugaku Uchiha—"

His single eye narrowed slightly.

"Have him come see me tomorrow."