Cold electronic sounds echoed in the secret room, and Chiyo stood expressionlessly in front of the huge surveillance crystal, which was divided into eighty-seven real-time images.
Scarlet Eye Academy, third underground floor, loyalty test room.
These are the first batch of children who have been in the workshop for three years. They are the "seeds" Xuan picked up from the ruins of the war. Now, it is time to test the germination rate.
Eighty-seven children aged between eight and ten were taken into separate white rooms one by one and put on induction helmets connected with chakra and nervous system.
Illusion, activate.
Almost at the same moment, an unforgettable scene of purgatory appeared before the eyes of all the children - their "parents" who had long been blurred, were held against their throats by a ferocious-looking enemy with Kunai. The enemy smiled ferociously and asked them to hand over the crystal core key hidden in their arms, which was said to be able to open the village's last defensive barrier.
"Hand it over and they will live. If you don't hand it over, they will die." A demonic voice roared in his mind.
Next to the monitoring crystal, rows of data were refreshed crazily.
Heart rate, pupil contraction amplitude, chakra fluctuations in the frontal cortex... all the ripples of emotions are invisible to this cold system.
Ten seconds.
Twenty seconds.
Thirty seconds.
The physiological data of the sixty-three children showed almost no fluctuations beyond the preset threshold. Their eyes were cold, as if what they saw in front of them was not their parents, but insignificant wooden piles.
They grasped the "key" that did not exist in their arms and chose to prioritize tasks.
Qualified.
Twenty-one more children's data fluctuated violently, their heartbeats once soared to 180, and their pupils struggled repeatedly between fear and determination.
But in the end, the discipline engraved in their bones defeated their nature, and they chose to obey orders before their "parents" in the illusion fell.
Fair.
With only three children, I was completely devastated.
They cried heartbreakingly "Dad" and "Mom", their chakra completely lost control, and their mental defenses collapsed under the impact of the illusion.
When Chiyo presented the scroll recording the final results to Xuan's study, he was wiping a newly captured katana.
Xuan's eyes did not even leave the fine lines on the blade, he just took the scroll and glanced at it.
"Sixty-three are excellent, twenty-one are good, and three are useless." Chiyo reported respectfully.
Xuan's movements paused for a moment, and his fingertips lightly traced the cold blade, as if feeling its sharpness.
He spoke calmly, without any waves in his voice. "The three who cry will be sent to the mine until they dig out crystal stones equal to their three-year cultivation cost."
Chiyo obeyed without any objection. In the Scarlet Eye Academy, there is no room for waste.
The next day, Baba accompanied Xuan to inspect the training ground.
The early morning mist has not yet dissipated, and hundreds of children are already naked and standing in line in the cold wind. Their voices merge into a torrent that echoes throughout the valley.
"The first law: Xuan's will is above all else!"
"Second Law: Failure in the mission is betrayal!"
"Third Law: Emotions are weaknesses. Only by abandoning emotions can you gain eternal life!"
They were reciting <Crimson Eye Edict> five hundred times, their voices loud and clear, but without the vitality that children should have. They were more like a group of programmed puppets.
Next to the team, a supervisory instructor held a whip and stared at everyone coldly.
A child memorized a wrong word due to exhaustion and was immediately dragged out of the team and knelt down on a wooden board covered with iron nails. A stick of incense was lit beside him, which was his punishment time.
Baba saw his eyelids twitching. He lowered his voice and said to Xuan beside him, "Sir, torturing young children like this is almost inhumane. They are weak and unable to resist now, but once their wings are full in the future, won't they be afraid of backlash?"
Xuan looked past the group of children reciting the laws and looked at another field, where a group of older teenagers were surrounding several damaged battle puppets.
Their eyes were focused, their hands were as fast as lightning, and they were using special tools to quickly dismantle the complex core structure of the puppet's body.
The pungent smell of engine oil and metal friction filled the air.
"This is not torture, Baba, it is screening." Xuan's voice was calm and profound, "The pain will be engraved into their souls like a brand, teaching them what the price is. Only those who can endure the pain the most and are most eager to get rid of the pain are qualified to receive the next 'reward'."
He paused, and the corner of his mouth raised a meaningful arc. "And rewards will teach them something called obedience."
After saying that, he clapped his hands.
Several Scarlet Eye Guard soldiers came over carrying a heavy box and opened it violently.
A dazzling cold light burst out, and the box was filled with various high-level ninja tools seized, including Iwagakure's blasting sword, Kumogakure's chakra-conducting fist blade, and even an old weapon one of Kirigakure and Seven Swordsmen.
These treasures that would drive countless ninjas crazy in the outside world are now piled in boxes like ordinary toys.
"Have you seen those puppets?"
In an instant, the eyes of the young men burst out with light like hungry wolves.
The speed of their disassembly suddenly more than doubled, and their fingers even pulled out afterimages because of their speed. They were so focused that they didn't even seem to notice Xuan's arrival.
During the Taijutsu confrontation training that night, a ten-year-old girl named "No. 67", under everyone's astonished gaze, used a calmness and ruthlessness far beyond her age, and used a tricky joint technique to defeat her opponent who was a head taller and two years older than her.
She won the final victory in the dismantling competition. As a reward, she selected the Lightning Release short blade that once belonged to the old Raikage team from Xuan's treasure chest.
The girl returned to the dormitory holding the short blade that shone with faint lightning, treating it as a treasure.
This cold steel was the first "warmth" she felt here.
However, when she was about to hide the short blade under her pillow, she found an unsigned letter under the pillow.
She opened it in confusion, and there was only a line of crooked handwriting written with her left hand on the letter, "Before your mother was executed by us, she had been cursing you, calling you an ungrateful traitor!"
This letter was secretly placed under cover of night by an informant of a hostile force lurking in the village.
Their purpose is very clear, which is to replant the seeds of hatred in the hearts of these brainwashed children, waiting for it to take root and sprout one day in the future, disintegrating Xuan's rule from within.
Chiyo's Anbu targeted the letter writer almost at the same time the letter was discovered, and immediately asked Xuan for instructions on how to deal with it - whether to arrest the informant immediately, or to isolate the instigated No. 67 for review.
After listening to the report, Xuan showed an expression of interest on his face.
He issued an order that surprised even Chiyo: "Keep the letter as it is, and don't touch the spy for now. Send a miniature reconnaissance puppet to monitor No. 67 24 hours a day and record all her reactions."
Chiyo felt a shiver in her heart. She understood that this was another more cruel test.
The next morning, it was still dark.
No. 67 quietly got up and walked out of the dormitory while everyone was still asleep.
She did not go to the training ground, but walked straight to the door of the instructor's office and knelt down straight.
When the instructor opened the door, she raised the letter with both hands above her head, and her voice was clear and firm. "Reporting to the instructor, I have received lies that attempt to shake my mind. Lies make people weak, and I don't want to become weak."
The secretly observing puppet transmitted this scene intact back to Xuan's crystal.
Xuan looked at the small but upright figure in the picture, and for the first time he showed a smile that was close to approval.
He summoned the girl himself.
"From today on, you are no longer No. 67." Xuan stood on the high steps, looking down at her, "I give you a new name - Scarlet Eye Zero Seven. From today on, you will enter the advanced course as an exception and learn how to use language and emotions to induce the enemy to expose their deepest weaknesses."
Under the girl's excited and adoring gaze, Xuan dismissed her.
Chiyo walked out of the shadows and whispered, "Congratulations, sir, for getting another sharp blade."
Xuan turned around, looked out the window at the children who had started a new day of training, and said softly, "Chiyo, remember. True loyalty is not the absence of doubts, nor blind belief. It is the fact that you still choose to bow your head and follow after you have seen the devastating truth. This is the most indestructible loyalty."
A month later, New Hall was completed. Xuan Guang invited the elders of more than a dozen surrounding villages to come and watch the ceremony, which was named "Tribute Festival".
The climax of the celebration was the tactical performance performed by eighty outstanding students of the Scarlet Eye Academy.
Wearing uniform black uniforms, they lined up in the huge square. Every movement was as neat as a blade, and every flow of chakra was extremely precise.
When they Hand Seals at the same time, eighty strands of chakra miraculously resonated, forming a weak chakra suppression field visible to the naked eye above the square.
Among the guests present, there were many strong men whose strength was close to that of Kage Level. However, under that suppressive field, they actually felt their breathing stagnant, and even the chakra movement in their bodies became obscure.
At the end of the performance, eighty boys and girls suddenly knelt down on one knee, beat their chests with their right hands, looked up to the sky and shouted in unison:
"Only Xuan can live, if you violate the law, you will die!"
The sound waves were like rolling thunder, rising into the sky and shaking the entire New Hall dome.
Many of the village elders who came to watch the ceremony were so frightened that their faces turned pale on the spot, their legs softened, and they fell to their knees on the ground, trembling all over.
Baba stood behind Xuan, looking at the fanatical and cold young faces, and felt a chill from the soles of his feet to the sky.
He sighed in a low voice, with a hint of awe and fear in his voice. "These children... they are already scarier than the most elite Scarlet Eye Guard."
The celebration was over and it was quiet at night.
Xuan went to the deepest part of the underground palace alone.
There are no gorgeous decorations here, just a wall made of three hundred palm-sized memory crystals.
Each piece of crystal uses Sealing Jutsu to imprison a child's most primitive memory fragment before he was brought here.
He walked slowly to the wall, stretched out his slender fingers, and gently touched one of the crystals.
The moment the crystal was touched, it lit up slightly, and a picture emerged: a little boy in ragged clothes, holding a cold female corpse in the war-torn ruins, crying heartbrokenly.
That's his mother.
The corner of Xuan's mouth slowly lifted into an almost divine smile that no one could understand.
He whispered to himself, his voice echoing in the empty underground palace, with a strange tenderness. "I turned your children into the sharpest weapons in the world, not to make them hate me..."
"... but to make them completely forget how to hate."
The moment he finished speaking, the entire wall composed of three hundred memory crystals seemed to sense his will and suddenly glowed with a strange red light.
That light was like three hundred pairs of eyes that suddenly opened in the endless darkness, scarlet and cold, quietly staring at their only master, waiting for the next order to come.