Those words were like a cold wind from Jiuyou, instantly penetrating the backbones of Chiyo Saori and Baba Tesshin.
People of God?
Mortals from the old days?
These two words were like two heavy mountains, crashing down and completely shattering their newly established understanding of the new order.
They originally thought that Uchiha Xuan was creating an absolutely loyal army or cultivating a group of privileged classes, but they were all wrong.
The army and the class are still a game between mortals.
And the goal of Uchiha Xuan, from the very beginning, is to divide the boundaries between gods and humans!
Chiyo Saori's fingertips trembled imperceptibly. Puppet Technique, which she was so proud of, seemed so rough and... insignificant in front of the concept of "God's people".
She looked at the baby named "Xuan Mo" in the cradle. In her eyes, that peaceful sleeping face seemed to contain the prototype of some kind of law that made the world tremble.
Baba Tesshin subconsciously clenched Ninja Blade around his waist, his palms soaked with cold sweat.
He is a pure samurai and ninja who believes in strength and loyalty.
But when the person he was loyal to proclaimed himself a god and classified him and others into the category of "mortal", a kind of awe and fear originating from the depths of his soul began to grow uncontrollably.
"Go and execute the order." Uchiha Xuan's voice sounded in their minds again, plain, but unquestionable.
"Yes, Master Xuan!" The two men suddenly came to their senses and bowed respectfully to accept the order, not daring to have any more distracting thoughts.
They understand that there is no point in thinking about Xuan's purpose. They only need to become the most obedient part that drives the gears of the new world to rotate.
With the promulgation of the edict, a carefully planned ideological storm centered on the Naka River Holy Land and radiated to the entire Fire Country tax area.
On one side is the enviable privilege and glory obtained by the "Chosen Children" family, and on the other side is the horrific story about "Kazama Kaito" who disobeyed God's grace and suffered a mental breakdown.
The sweetness of the carrot and the coolness of the stick are vividly performed by Xuan.
However, the roots of the old order are far more intricate than imagined.
They are buried deep in the soil of blood and memory. Even if the branches and leaves are pruned, they can always find new gaps and stick their heads out tenaciously.
Three days later, a piece of encrypted information was sent to Chiyo Saori.
Her face instantly became solemn.
"Lord Xuan," she quickly walked into the central meeting hall of the church and presented the scroll, "On the eastern border of Fire Country, there is a settlement called 'Paulownia Shadow Village', which is the remnant party of distant relatives of the Uchiha Clan. Intelligence showed that they held a secret 'Soul-Chasing Festival' last night."
Uchiha Xuan is sitting on a high platform with his eyes closed, surrounded by chakra visible to the naked eye, flowing like a nebula.
He is analyzing and digesting the "Dust Release" genetic template belonging to Second Tsuchikage Mu that was devoured from the battlefield by Fourth Shinobi World War.
Hearing the words "Soul-Chasing Festival", he slowly opened his eyes.
Those pair of Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan seem to be able to penetrate time and space and look directly at the stubborn dead souls kneeling in front of their ancestors' graves.
"When they were children, they burned incense, kowtowed to their ancestral graves, and the elders of the clan recited the fragments of <Ancient Clan Genealogy>." Chiyo Saori's voice was cold, "The core oath is 'bloodline is immortal, orthodoxy remains'. This is blatantly against your 'name-giving' System', trying to spiritually maintain their ridiculous clan inheritance. Sir, I suggest that you immediately dispatch the second puppet guard, cooperate with the ninja army of Captain Baba, to raid throughout the night, and completely wipe out Paulownia Shadow Village! To serve as a warning to others!"
This is the most direct and efficient method. The physical body is eliminated and future troubles are forever eliminated.
However, Uchi... and Gen Zhiha let out a very light sneer. The laughter echoed in the empty hall, with a hint of amusement and disdain.
"Erase? Saori, you still don't understand." He stood up and walked slowly down the platform. Every step seemed to be stepping on the pulse of the old world. "Graves can be leveled, ashes can be blown away, and ninjas can kill them all. But the emotion of 'mourning' is the toughest and hardest thing to kill in the world. As long as there is still one person who remembers their ancestors and their surnames, then the so-called 'orthodoxy' will always have the ground to resurrect."
Chiyo Saori was stunned, she had never thought about the problem from this perspective.
"Then what do you mean..."
"I want to go there myself." Xuan's lips curved into a cruel arc, "But, I'm not going to kill people. I'm going to... kill their 'sorrow'."
Chiyo Saori felt a bone-chilling chill.
Kill sadness?
What a ridiculous and terrible declaration!
Sadness is an emotion, a memory, and a link to the past. How to kill it?
Xuan seemed to see through her doubts, but did not explain.
He just turned around and ordered to Anbu behind him, "Send the order and pay close attention to Paulownia Shadow Village. I need an opportunity, an opportunity that allows me to legitimately intervene in their 'death'."
The opportunity came quickly.
Three days later, Paulownia Shadow Village, the eldest clan elder who presided over "Soul-Chasing Festival", finally passed away due to old age and mental and physical exhaustion.
When the news came, the whole village was prepared to hold a grand funeral according to the ancient rituals inherited from the Uchiha Clan for the elder who protected the last dignity of the family.
This is the moment Uchiha Xuan has been waiting for.
"In the name of Sacred Court, an announcement is made to Paulownia Shadow Village." Xuan's voice was devoid of any emotion. "In order to show the majestic grace of the Holy Spirit, we cannot bear to see the souls of our former compatriots lost in the turmoil of reincarnation. We authorize their families to send representatives to the Naka River Holy Land to receive a 'Soul-Calming Talisman'."
As soon as this order came out, Chiyo Saori was completely confused.
She couldn't help but ask, "Sir, are you... recognizing their sacrificial rituals? We were just cracking down on this kind of behavior, but now we are actively giving them 'sacred objects'. Isn't this contradictory?"
"Admit it?" Xuan's eyes were as deep as a prison, as if reflecting the sinking of countless dead souls, "No, I just want to tell them in the way they value most - from now on, even the whereabouts of the dead must be approved by me."
The villagers of Paulownia Shadow Village received this announcement and had mixed reactions.
Some people think it is blasphemy and the hypocrisy of the new overlord; but more people, especially the immediate family members of the deceased elders, see a strange glimmer of hope amidst their fear and despair.
They were afraid of disobeying the new master, and they were even more afraid that the clan elder's soul would really have no peace as the announcement said.
Finally, after a fierce debate, they sent the eldest grandson of the clan elder to the Naka River to collect the so-called "Soul-Calming Talisman" with humiliation and uneasiness.
On the day of the funeral, Paulownia Shadow Village felt gloomy and gloomy.
The funeral procession stretched for hundreds of meters. Everyone was dressed in white and looked sad.
They carried the heavy coffin and walked step by step towards the ancestral graveyard outside the village.
This is their way of fighting the new world, and it is also their last stand to hold on to their old traditions.
However, just when the team reached an open area halfway up the mountain, a sudden change occurred!
"Gah--gah--"
The harsh cries of crows pierced the sky, and twelve mechanical crows, all pitch black and with eyes flashing ominously red, swooped down from the clouds like messengers of death.
They hovered over the funeral procession and dropped twelve talismans as black as ink.
The talisman paper fell lightly, and the villagers dispersed in horror, but some people still dared to pick up one.
There is no text on the talisman, only an extremely complex circular eye pattern carefully drawn with blood-red lines, which is exactly the pattern of Uchiha Xuan and Eternal Mangekyō!
While everyone was wondering whether this was a blessing or a curse, the twelve talismans seemed to be ignited by invisible flames and instantly turned into a handful of black ashes. Drawn by the wind, they accurately penetrated into the gaps in the coffin.
Time seemed to have stopped at this moment.
Everyone held their breath and stared at the coffin.
One second, two seconds, three seconds...
Suddenly, a young woman standing next to the coffin let out a heart-rending scream!
I saw a glimmer of light coming from under the tightly closed coffin lid.
Then, under the horrified gazes of hundreds of people, an extremely slight "creak" sound came from the coffin, as if wood was being squeezed.
After a while, everything returned to calm.
A few bold young people stepped forward tremblingly and worked together to push open the heavy coffin lid.
In the coffin, the clan elder who should have passed away peacefully had an extremely strange... smile on his face at this moment!
It was an expression that seemed like sadness, joy, relief and satisfaction.
What's even more terrifying is that his eyes, which have long lost their luster of life, opened slightly, and the cloudy eyes seemed to move.
The corners of the dry lips wriggled slightly, as if they were telling something silently.
"Ah--!!"
"The spirit has appeared! The old patriarch has appeared!"
"This is... this is a holy sign!"
The whole place exploded instantly.
Fear and ecstasy intertwined to form an absurd storm of faith.
All the villagers, men, women, old and young, knelt down on the ground, kowtowing crazily in the direction of the coffin and the twelve circling mechanical crows in the sky.
Baba Tesshin, who was mixed in the crowd, was currently disguised as a passing ninja.
At the right time, he whispered to the people around him in a shocking and pious tone, "The poor monks travel everywhere and have never heard of it... Such a scene must be 'Spirit Communion Reversion'! Only the sincere and pure hearts of future generations can inspire the way of heaven, allow the remaining obsessions of the deceased to manifest, and give back the last comfort to their loved ones!"
His words were like a spark thrown into boiling oil, instantly igniting everyone's emotions.
"Spirit Communion Reversion! It turns out to be Spirit Communion Reversion!"
"Our filial piety has been heard!"
No one knows, this is not some bullshit miracle at all.
What was contained in the talisman was nothing more than the "pseudo-obsession program" that Uchiha Xuan extracted from the system database and remained in the soul of a Impure World Reincarnation person who was devoured by him. Combined with a trace of Divine Tree's chakra fluctuations, it created the illusion of temporary bioelectrical activation in the nerve endings of the long-dead corpse.
And this scene, from the appearance of the mechanical crow to the "corpse smile", to the villagers kneeling down and Baba Tesshin's "authoritative interpretation", was all captured by a high-definition puppet eagle hidden on the cliff in the distance.
That night, the newly established "Sacred Court" propaganda department released the latest announcement at an unprecedented speed.
The carefully edited video of the "Smiling Corpse", paired with magnificent and mysterious music, spread throughout all tax districts.
At the end of the image, there is a line of cold and sacred words:
"Any funeral ceremony that is not certified by Scarlet Eye is a blasphemy to the deceased. Only those who regard 'Xuan' as the guide to the end can obtain the blessing of obeying fate and rest in peace."
Panic spread rapidly like a plague.
The weird smile in the image became the straw that broke the camel's back.
It is more effective than any massacre or threat, because it directly attacks the softest and most awe-inspiring areas in people's hearts - the knowledge of death and ancestors.
The villages that had originally planned to secretly carry out traditional sacrifices with a sense of luck canceled their plans overnight.
Instead, an application for "Sacred Court proxy service" flew towards the Naka River like flakes.
A few days later, Paulownia Shadow Village.
The village chief who had sent his grandson to retrieve "Soul-Calming Talisman" was also the son of the deceased clan elder. After experiencing that "holy miracle", his spirit was already on the verge of collapse.
In the middle of the night, he sneaked into his ancestral hall alone and looked at the rows of ancestral tablets that symbolized the family's glory and inheritance. Finally, he tremblingly lit the fire seal, preparing to burn it all.
In this way, he wanted to make a break with the past and offer his loyalty to the new god.
However, as soon as he lit a tablet, the door of the ancestral hall was violently pushed open.
His little grandson, the child who had just been "named" a few months ago, was standing at the door, looking at him with a pair of pure eyes that contained no emotion.
The child couldn't speak, but he stretched out his immature fingers and pointed at him, and then pointed at the door.
Outside the door, Baba Tesshin stood quietly with a team of black-armored warriors.
The tablet in the village chief's hand fell to the ground with a "pop" sound.
He understood that it was his grandson who... reported on him.
The child who was given the name "Xuan", the biological grandson with his blood flowing through him, became the eyes monitoring his thoughts.
Naka River Square, on the towering judgment platform, the village chief was tied to the central stone pillar, his face ashen.
Uchiha Xuan stood on the edge of the high platform, overlooking the tens of thousands of people below who were forced to come to watch the ceremony, and also overlooked the desperate soul at his feet.
"You want your ancestors to disappear completely from this world, right?" Xuan's voice clearly reached everyone's ears through chakra amplification, "You want to burn their tablets and erase their existence to show your loyalty to me?"
The village chief was shaking all over and was speechless.
"Okay." Xuan nodded lightly, with a cruel curve at the corner of his mouth, "Since you miss them so much, I will let you see them again. Let you hear with your own ears what they want to say to you."
As he finished speaking, the ground beneath his feet lit up with a complicated formation.
Deep in the underground palace, the soul reverberation database stored in "Myriad Phenomena Devouring System" and extracted from the Paulownia Shadow Village leyline was activated.
Three illusory figures slowly condensed into shape in the air in front of the village chief.
It was the father, grandfather, and great-grandfather whom he thought about day and night!
"Father! Grandfather!" the village chief cried bitterly, thinking that his filial piety had moved the gods.
However, the three illusory "ancestor" projections shouted angrily in a tone he had never heard before, full of hatred and contempt:
"Treason! I don't have descendants like you!"
"You have soiled the bloodline of the Uchiha Clan! You are not worthy of mentioning our name again!"
"Get out! Get out of our bloodline! You despicable traitor!"
This is the real killer move of Uchiha Xuan.
He has already used the system to tamper with the emotional templates of these soul reverberations, replacing the original love and hope for future generations with the most vicious hatred and contempt.
The ecstasy on the village chief's face froze for an instant, and was immediately replaced by endless fear and consternation.
He couldn't believe his ears.
He shook his head desperately, tears streaming down his face.
"No... no... Father! Why... why do you say that..."
"Stop talking! Stop talking ahhhhh--!"
Amidst the most vicious curses from his ancestors, the village chief's spiritual defense completely collapsed.
He let out a shrill roar that didn't sound like a human voice, suddenly inserted his hands into his ears, and dug hard!
Blood spurted out from between his fingers!
There was deathly silence in the square. Everyone was frightened out of their wits by this hellish scene.
Uchiha Xuan looked down indifferently at the figure rolling and wailing in a pool of blood at his feet, and whispered softly in a voice that only those in the front row could hear:
"Now, you don't even have the right to cry."
The moment the words fell, the originally clear sky above the square was suddenly shrouded by a huge group of dark clouds.
In the center of the surging ink clouds, the Eternal Mangekyō pattern of Uchiha Xuan is looming.
And in the center of the pupil technique pattern, like a mirage, an ancient ancestral temple was burning.
Countless tablets were reduced to ashes in the raging fire, and from the ashes, countless withered and desperate arms stretched out, grabbing in vain towards the sky, asking for help.
But there was no response from heaven or earth.
There is only dead silence.
And in that dead silence, the complete abandonment of the old name and bloodline quietly sprouted.