An uncontrollable cold current ran down Chiyo Saori's back, and the chill spread along her bone marrow, almost freezing her soul.
She looked at the back of the man on the throne, and for the first time she deeply understood what kind of existence she was loyal to that transcended the concept of "person".
This is not a command, it is an oracle.
A piece of supreme implementation order <Soul Coding Project> signed by Uchiha Xuan himself was delivered as quickly as possible to the "Scarlet Eye Academy" core laboratory located deepest underground in the empire.
There, it's already ready.
Three hundred orphans under the age of six who had been strictly screened and had excellent chakra affinity lay quietly in three hundred life-support capsules arranged side by side.
They are the "seeds" of the empire and the first batch of sacrifices to be "formatted".
The core of the plan is cold and efficient: "Emotional formatting and command overwriting".
Through a special chakra catheter connected to the back of the neck, a faint blue "coding solution" will be accurately injected into their cerebral cortex and chakra circulation system.
It will be like the most precise scalpel, removing and dissolving all brain modules related to personal emotions and chaotic memories, and then implanting an absolute and irresistible bottom-level instruction - to produce a physiological and instinctive reaction of awe and loyalty to the towering "Scarlet Eye Tower" and the name "Xuan".
As the general supervisor of the project, Chiyo Saori wore a white sterile suit and watched all of this with an expressionless face through the huge tempered glass.
Her Puppet Technique attainments gave her an extraordinary understanding of this kind of "control", but when she saw the detailed formula of the faint blue solution, her pupils still shrank slightly uncontrollably.
Among hundreds of rare materials and highly purified chakra compounds, there is a substance labeled "S-01 Stable Primer".
Its source is several complete DNA fragments extracted from the hair of Suzu, the five-year-old girl imprisoned in Echo Cage.
Master Xuan... what exactly does he want to create?
"The first batch, thirty people, start injecting." She gave cold instructions through the built-in communicator.
The robotic arm moved accurately and inserted the cold needles into the backs of the children's necks.
The faint blue solution began to slowly advance.
At first, everything went well.
The data on the vital signs monitor was stable and normal.
However, the moment the injection volume reached 70%, a sudden change occurred!
A boy in the life-support module A-07 suddenly twitched violently!
His thin body was struggling crazily in the life-sustaining liquid, as if he was suffering the most extreme pain in the world.
His eyes suddenly opened. The clear pupils that were supposed to be those of a child were now dilated to the limit. The whites of his eyes were covered with cobweb-like bloodshot threads, as if they were about to burst from the sockets!
"Warning! The brain wave activity of subject A-07 exceeded the limit! The mental index instantly exceeded the critical value!" The piercing alarm sounded throughout the laboratory.
Under the horrified gazes of all the researchers, the child was staring at the monitoring probe across the life-support cabin, as if he was looking into the eyes of some invisible being.
He opened his mouth, but what came out was not a cry or a scream, but an ancient saying with ancient syllables and full of endless resentment and pathos:
"Izanami... should not have given birth to Izanagi!"
Before he finished speaking, his body stiffened suddenly, and all vital signs instantly returned to zero.
The entire main control room was deathly silent.
Chiyo Saori felt his scalp numb.
This is not the language of Shinobi World, nor does it even belong to any known ancient text.
That voice seemed to be squeezed out directly from the source of blood and from the cracks in the creation myth!
Just when she was about to order the scene to be sealed, the alloy door behind her slid open silently.
Uchiha Xuan, actually came in person.
He didn't even put on sterile clothes, just wore his black robe, which symbolized supreme power, and walked down the steps step by step.
Wherever he passed, all the researchers felt as if their throats were being strangled, and they lowered their heads one after another, even holding their breath subconsciously.
This was the first time that they had felt the aura of this empire master so closely. It was an absolute presence that seemed to collapse the space.
Xuan ignored anyone and walked straight to the A-07 survival module. The silver Rinnegan stared indifferently at the small, lifeless body.
"Report." His voice was calm.
Chiyo Saori immediately stepped forward, reported everything that had just happened very quickly, and repeated the strange old saying.
"Izanami shouldn't have given birth to Izanagi..." Uchiha Xuan repeated in a low voice, with a playful curve at the corner of his mouth, "Interesting."
The next second, in the pupils of his eyes, three Tomoe slowly rotated, instantly turning into the pair of Mangekyō Sharingan patterns that symbolized eternity and ominousness.
He did not make any seals, but just "set" his gaze on the dead child.
Buzz--
The invisible pupil power instantly penetrated the material barrier and directly invaded the depths of the already cold brain tissue. Like the most precise probe, it began to read the remaining fragments of consciousness that had not completely dissipated!
Chiyo Saori only felt an indescribable terrifying coercion disappear in a flash, making her almost fall to her knees.
She was shocked to realize what Master Xuan was doing - reading the mind of a dead person!
In Uchiha Xuan's field of vision, everything around him has disappeared.
He suddenly "saw" an ancient painting soaked in blood:
On the ruins of a majestic shrine, a woman whose face could not be seen clearly and dressed in ancient sacrificial clothes was kneeling on her knees, piously and decisively inserting her hands into her chest.
She tore it apart with all her strength, and actually took out a heart that was still beating violently and exuding the divine glory of creation. She held it up high, as if she was offering a sacrifice to the whole world!
And right in front of her, who stretched out a hand and took the heart... was a man with black hair and a shawl, whose face was similar to her own body when she was young, but his eyes were colder and hollow.
The scene ends abruptly.
At this moment, the cold system prompt sounded loudly in Xuan's mind:
[Warning!
High-dimensional causal perturbation detected!
The target individual's consciousness fragment touches the memory imprint of "Primordial Sacrifice"!
This brand involves the root laws of the world, and there are uncontrollable risks!
It is recommended to start "Zeroing Protocol" immediately to completely clear the experimental subject and all related data!]
The Mangekyō Sharingan in Uchiha Xuan's eyes slowly disappeared, returning to the dead silver color.
He was silent for a full ten seconds.
To everyone in the main control room, these ten seconds seemed as long as a century.
They could feel that a pressure that was a hundred times more terrifying than when the child died just now was brewing in the heart of the man on the throne.
Finally, he moved.
He ignored the system's warning, but walked to the main console in person, stretched out a finger, and pressed another scarlet button on the virtual screen - "No. III Dissolution Program".
"Saori."
"My subordinate is here!"
"Send the A-07 life-support capsule, together with the corpse, into the 'dust' decomposition furnace." Xuan's voice was terrifyingly calm, "Start the highest power."
Chiyo Saori was shocked, but he immediately executed the order.
A huge robotic arm picked up the entire survival capsule and threw it into a huge decomposition furnace at the end of the laboratory that looked like the mouth of a giant beast.
The furnace door was closed, and the interior was instantly covered with ultra-high temperature plasma that could melt everything.
However, something strange happened again.
The temperature monitoring module of the main console suddenly issued a sharp alarm - the temperature of the core of the decomposition furnace, instead of rising, was plummeting at a speed that violated the law of conservation of energy!
From the high temperature of tens of thousands of degrees, all the way to below freezing point!
"Master Xuan... inside the furnace wall..." A technician in charge of monitoring pointed at the screen with a trembling voice.
In the picture returned by the high-definition camera, a thick layer of white frost had condensed on the high-temperature-resistant inner wall of the decomposition furnace, which was originally as smooth as a mirror.
And above the white frost, one after another, densely packed, child-sized palm prints suddenly appeared!
It was as if countless invisible children were beating outwards from inside the furnace wall!
This eerie scene made everyone's hair stand on end.
Uchiha Xuan just watched quietly, without any wavering in his eyes.
He seemed to be enjoying an interesting drama and said calmly:
"Record the video of this decomposition process in its entirety. Edit it to make a new version of the 'bedtime video', and play it in a loop for the next batch of experimental subjects before they receive coding."
As soon as the words fell, the air in the entire main control room seemed to freeze.
Use a horrifying video of a companion being uncannily decomposed as a... bedtime story?
What a twisted and cold logic this is!
At this moment, the personal terminal on Uchiha Xuan's wrist suddenly sounded.
After the connection was connected, the emotionless synthesized voice of Scarlet Eye Tower central AI came from inside. "Reporting to Master Xuan, there is an abnormality in 'Echo Cage'. The S-class experimental subject 'Ling' has begun to speak."
"Echo Cage" is a spherical cell made entirely of sound-absorbing materials and spiritual shielding runes. It can isolate all sound, light and chakra.
However, at this moment, a strange voice was clearly heard from inside the cell.
Sometimes the voice sounded like an immature child's voice, sometimes it turned into an old woman's voice, sometimes it turned into a rough and strong man's voice... It was as if there were at least seventeen or eight different people speaking with the same mouth.
"You swallowed the power of Kaguya, but you didn't dare to see her cry."
Uchiha Xuan's figure appeared in front of the observation window of the cage. Through the thick armored glass, he looked into the darkness with a pair of frighteningly bright red pupils.
"I don't need to understand God's sorrow," he responded calmly, "I just need her permission."
In the darkness, the face of a five-year-old girl showed an extremely exaggerated smile, with the corners of her mouth torn to the base of her ears.
However, what flowed out from the wound was no longer blood, but chakra crystals that were as bright as rubies and concentrated to the extreme!
"Then... are you ready to hear the last words she said?"
The sound of the bell, or rather, the collection of those sounds, had a hint of playful shriek.
The moment the words fell, the energy core of the entire Scarlet Eye Tower - the miniature "Heart of the Divine Tree" transformed from the fragments of Ten-Tails's body - suddenly stagnated!
It was as if I had been grabbed hard by an invisible big hand!
Almost at the same moment, Chiyo Saori's emergency communication was connected again.
There was a hint of incredible shock in her voice:
"Master Xuan! It's successful! All... all the children who have completed the coding have simultaneously completed the final test of the 'awe response' at that moment!"
"They..." Chiyo Saori took a deep breath, as if trying to calm down his mind, "They all sat up from the life-support cabin, faced the direction of the top of the tower, and knelt down in unison. But... what they recited was not our preset loyalty slogan, but... a brand-new prayer."
On the terminal of Uchiha Xuan, a piece of audio was transmitted.
He clicked play.
The uniform and emotionless chorus of nearly three hundred children came out from it, echoing clearly in the dead passage:
"May my king never see the light of day."
"For light comes from sacrifice."
After listening to this recording, Uchiha Xuan, who had always been expressionless, finally showed a real and satisfied smile for the first time.
"Very good." He whispered to himself, "What even the system cannot predict is called... true loyalty."
That night.
Uchiha Xuan, alone, climbed to the topmost open-air altar of Scarlet Eye Tower, which was not open to anyone.
He opened his palm, and in his palm lay a diamond-shaped crystal core extracted from Ling's spinal cord, as deep as obsidian.
He walked slowly to the center of the altar and gently placed the crystal core into the groove that fit it perfectly.
In an instant, the situation changed!
A terrifying pulse that cannot be described in words swept out with Scarlet Eye Tower as the center!
The whole land is shaking violently!
Within a radius of a hundred miles, whether it was the remnants of Allied Shinobi Forces, the White Zetsu lurking in various places, or the surviving civilians... all living beings with chakra, at this moment, whether they were asleep or not, saw the same scene in their minds:
A dark sun is rising slowly from the horizon, swallowing up all the light in the world!
Under the dark sun, there are endless silent figures standing like terracotta warriors and horses.
Their faces are blurry, but they are turning into bells bit by bit at a speed visible to the naked eye!
And on the highest peak of the world, a lonely figure turned his back to everyone and slowly raised his right hand.
In his palm, an eye that had never appeared in the world suddenly opened!
There is no white of the eye in the pupil, no Tomoe, only a spinning, pure swallowing Uzumaki Clan that seems to suck the entire universe in!
In reality, on top of the altar, Uchiha Xuan slowly opened his eyes and looked indifferently at the bright starry sky above his head.
He declared in a low voice in a voice that only he could hear:
"From now on, I am not ruling you."
"It's you who live in the world that I... allow you to dream about."
In the distant sky, the first ray of morning light struggled to penetrate the clouds. As soon as it poked its head out, it was completely crushed and turned into nothing by the huge shadow cast by Scarlet Eye Tower that seemed to connect the sky and the earth.