On the third day after Tribute Festival ended, the air of the New Hall was still filled with the rusty smell of blood and dust.
Xuan stood in front of the huge tactical sand table, running his cold fingertips across the marks representing the seven large border villages, his voice without any warmth. "Start 'Scarlet Eye Project'."
Chiyo, standing behind him, frowned.
She already knows the content of the plan: to select twelve Academy teenagers who performed the most ruthlessly and decisively in the cruel loyalty test not long ago to form a team named "Pilgrimage Delegation".
Baba personally led the team for half a month to carry out the so-called "order propaganda" in the seven villages that are still on the sidelines, or even in violation of the rules.
"Let a group of children perform political tasks?" Chiyo finally couldn't help but speak, with unconcealable confusion in her voice, "Xuan, this is not like your style. Deterrence and persuasion require strength and wisdom, not the innocence of children."
Xuan didn't look back, his eyes were still staring at the huge crystal wall beside him. Countless tampered and implanted memory fragments were beating silently on the wall, which was the cornerstone of his new order.
"I'm not asking them to persuade." He said slowly, with an almost imperceptible arc at the corner of his mouth, "I want those stubborn parents to see with their own eyes that their children no longer belong to them. How vulnerable the chains of blood are in the face of new beliefs."
Chiyo felt a chill in his heart, and instantly understood the chilling real purpose behind this plan.
This is not a preaching, this is a public execution targeting the bottom line of human ethics.
The night before departure, the moonlight was like frost.
Xuan did not wear the royal robe that symbolized power, only a cloak that completely blended him into the darkness, and quietly appeared in the dormitory of the Academy.
Twelve teenagers who are about to embark on a journey are sleeping here. They are breathing evenly and still have a childlike look on their faces.
Like a ghost, he walked through each bed one by one.
Every time he came to someone's bed, he stretched out his pale and slender fingers, with a residual Divine Seed wave from [Myriad Phenomena Devouring System] lingering on his fingertips that no one else could detect, and gently tapped the boy's eyebrows.
This is not an earth-shattering display of ability, but a silent spiritual reinforcement.
He is activating and strengthening the "obedience anchor" that has been buried deep in the subconscious of these children, ensuring that no matter what kind of family impact or moral torture they face in the next half month, their logical thinking can suppress the instinctive rebound of emotions.
When he walked to a bed, the young man codenamed Lingjiu suddenly squirmed uneasily in his sleep and uttered an indistinct murmur, "... Mom..."
Xuan's footsteps paused.
He stood quietly for a moment, the shadow of the cloak completely swallowing up the expression on his face.
The dormitory was so quiet that I could only hear the steady breathing of the children and the rustling of the leaves outside the window.
After a long time, he leaned down and whispered in a voice that only he could hear, "When you wake up, you won't remember her."
An undetectable mental fluctuation, like water entering the sea, quietly erased the last trace of attachment to his mother in the boy's dream.
The first stop of the mission was the most stubborn Stone Fang Village on the Land of Wind border.
The folk customs here are fierce, and they have violently resisted the payment of Scarlet Eye Tax three times in a row. Two defected ninjas who were listed as S-class wanted criminals by the New Hall are hiding in the village.
When Baba led twelve teenagers wearing uniform black clothes to the entrance of the village, they were greeted by the cold, contemptuous and even hostile eyes of hundreds of villagers.
The sarcasm came and went, like invisible stones thrown at this strange team.
Suddenly, a gray-haired old woman separated from the crowd, rushed to the front of the team, pointed at a girl with a delicate face, and asked sternly, "Lingqi! You white-eyed wolf! Your father died at the hands of the New Hall's beastly grain collection team, and his bones were not cold. You actually have the nerve to wear this skin and come here to show off your power?"
Everyone's eyes instantly focused on the girl known as Zero Seven.
She looked to be only thirteen or fourteen years old, but her expression was as calm as a bottomless ancient well, without any ripples.
Faced with the old woman's bloody accusation, she just slowly took out a crystal card as thin as a cicada's wings from her arms, bent down and inserted it into a small device on the ground that she brought with her.
Buzz--
A beam of light shot into the sky, projecting a horrifyingly clear holographic image in mid-air.
In the picture, a middle-aged man is secretly hiding a bag of grain into the cellar, and beneath his feet is the miniature minefield deployed by the New Hall grain collection team to prevent private hiding.
The next second, a violent explosion sounded. The man's legs were blown off, and he screamed miserably in a pool of blood. He did not call for his relatives, but wailed for mercy to his companions around him.
However, his companions just looked at each other indifferently, and one of them quickly stepped forward, raised a knife in his hand, and ended his life to prevent him from revealing more of his food hiding place after being captured alive.
The desperate and painful cry before death echoed clearly in the ears of everyone in Stone Fang Village through the loudspeaker device.
The image ends and the light curtain dissipates.
Lingqi raised her head and glanced at the silent crowd. Her voice was clear and cold. "My father, because he secretly hid the strategic grain that New Hall relied on for survival, triggered the legal mechanism, and was silenced by his accomplices to cover up the crime. He was not a hero who resisted tyranny, he was a sinner who betrayed the collective. And I," she paused, and her small body exuded a majesty that was extremely inappropriate for her age at this moment, "Is the new law that came here after the verdict."
The whole Stone Fang Village was deathly silent.
Chiyo, who is far away in the secret room of the New Hall, is monitoring all of this through remote data streams.
On the light screen in front of her, the graph representing the emotional fluctuations of the Stone Fang Village villagers suddenly soared to an unprecedented peak at the moment Zero Seven's father screamed - it was a mixture of fear, shock and the collapse of faith.
"Xuan's judgment is correct..." Chiyo muttered to himself, and then followed the plan and issued instructions to the units lurking near Stone Fang Village.
That night, dozens of black mechanical crows were hovering at low altitude over Stone Fang Village like ghosts.
They don't attack or scout, they just play the wailing sound that has been purified and amplified several times over and over again with the highest fidelity.
The sound penetrated the doors and windows, penetrated into the ears of every villager, lingered in their dreams, and became a lingering torture.
In the early morning of the third day, before dawn, two young men in the village who had actively participated in the anti-tax riot took the initiative to come outside the mission's tent with ashen faces, knelt down and asked to register their allegiance.
Not only did they hand over all their weapons, they also revealed the hiding places of the two wanted traitor nins.
Baba didn't even conduct any interrogation, he just looked at them calmly, then took two brand-new "Scarlet Eye Coordinator" armbands from his subordinates and threw them in front of them.
"Very good." He spoke concisely and to the point, "You are smarter now than you were yesterday."
At the fifth stop, the mission was attacked while crossing a narrow valley pass.
Dozens of assassins disguised as wandering ninjas burst out from the mountain walls on both sides and attacked fiercely, targeting the children in the team.
There are no marks on their Forehead Protector, but their actions are coordinated and they are obviously well-trained elites.
The battle broke out unexpectedly.
However, the reaction speed of the three teenagers at the front of the team was unnaturally fast for humans.
They didn't panic at all, and instantly formed a perfect triangle formation. At the same time, they pulled out three specially-made Kunai from their leg bags, and pierced the preset crystal piles on the ground with amazing synchronized movements.
In an instant, an invisible chakra fluctuation suddenly spread around the three people, forming a huge interference field!
All the enemies who rushed into the field were horrified to find that the chakra flow in their bodies instantly became extremely stagnant, and the Hand Seals gesture was as slow as a turtle crawling, and its power was greatly reduced.
At the same time, the other nine teenagers used their hands Hand Seals to simultaneously release dozens of lifelike smoke puppets, instantly disrupting the enemy's sight and attack targets.
At the moment when the enemy's formation was in chaos, a black shadow passed by like lightning, and Baba took action.
The flash of his sword disappeared, and the head of the mastermind rose into the sky.
After the war, the enemy was counted and the enemy was Fire Country Anbu.
After receiving the secret report, Xuan only issued one order: pack up the bodies of all the deceased and send them intact to the border post of Konoha.
There was only one postscript, written in blood on the package, "He who protects children dies, regardless of where they come from."
On the night when the half-moon period ended, Xuan stood alone on the highest terrace of the New Hall, overlooking the iron-blooded city that was gradually taking shape beneath his feet.
Baba's final report has been transmitted through encrypted channels: five of the seven large border villages have voluntarily submitted applications for voluntary tribute, and the other two have also expressed their willingness to accept "order reorganization."
More importantly, the attachment to this report also contains a list of 327 local children who were evaluated as "strong-willed and ready to be recruited" as the next batch of the Academy reserves.
He raised his head and looked at the sky above Naka River in the distance.
There, the Eternal Mangekyō cloud shadow, formed by the convergence of the resentment and eye power of countless tribesmen, seemed to be richer and scarleter than before.
He looked at it quietly for a long time, then suddenly spoke, not loudly, but with unquestionable determination.
"Chiyo."
"Here." Chiyo's figure walked out of the shadows.
"Tear down that memory crystal wall..."
Chiyo was suddenly startled, his face full of astonishment.
That wall is their core tool for controlling thoughts and tampering with history, and is the nerve center of the entire new order!
Dismantled it?
Xuan seemed to see through her thoughts, and a rare cold smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
"The old cornerstone has completed its mission." He turned around, his scarlet pupils flashing with a crazy and charming light in the night, "Now, it's time for them to see with their own eyes how they have been rewritten."
As his voice fell, a new instruction was conveyed.
Deep in the secret room, the crystal wall that recorded countless lies and truths was carefully cut, polished, and reorganized one by one by three hundred of the most loyal craftsmen.
They are no longer secrets hanging in the dark, they are about to be embedded piece by piece into the foundation of the "Scarlet Eye Cathedral" that is about to be completed to worship the new god - becoming a floor for thousands of people to step on and worship.
This news, together with the legend of the twelve young messengers, was like a silent storm, sweeping through all the gray areas between Fire Country and Land of Wind overnight.
Fear, for the first time, was so concrete, so real, with a name and a face.
In those villages that have not yet been "toured", ancient loyalty and new fear began a cruel battle day and night.