Boom--!
The crimson chakra erupting from Xuan Chu's body is no longer as fragile as a baby, but has turned into a substantial angry flame, instantly evaporating the surrounding life-sustaining fluid!
Under the double impact of high temperature and violent energy, the glazed wall of the training cabin groaned under the weight, and the cracks spread rapidly like ferocious bloodshot threads.
Uchiha Xuan's Rinne Sharingan locked tightly on the changes in the cabin.
What he saw was far more terrifying than physical phenomena.
The source of that red light is not Xuan Chu's physical body, but the depths of her forcibly twisted and coded soul!
An ancient and malicious will was roaring silently at him through the baby's body.
"A person named Xuan will eventually kill his father."
The line of curses composed of cracks seemed to come alive at this moment, with every stroke shining with an ominous red light.
"Interesting." Uchiha Xuan's mouth curved in an extremely cold arc, "Does even a tampered dream want to avenge me for the dead souls?"
He did not give in at all, but instead took a step forward. His huge mental power was like an invisible giant hand, pressing towards the training cabin.
He wanted to see whether this so-called curse was an illusory resentment or some kind of power law that he had not yet understood!
However, just when his mental power was about to touch Xuan Chu, another completely different force quietly intervened from the other end of Xuan Tower.
"Buzz..."
An undetectable low-frequency resonance sounded.
That sound does not come from the physical world, but vibrates directly at the soul level.
It is soft and strange, like a lullaby hummed in a cemetery, soothing and chilling to the bone.
Under the influence of this resonant sound, the violent red chakra in Xuan Chu's body miraculously calmed down, and slowly retracted into her body like a tamed beast.
The cracks on the bulkhead stopped spreading, and the curse text also dimmed.
Everything returns to deathly silence.
Uchiha Xuan suddenly turned his head, his gaze penetrated the layers of barriers and shot towards the source of the resonant sound - Scarlet Eye Academy, Ling's exclusive monitoring room.
In his divine eyes, he could clearly see the five-year-old girl curled up on the bed, her eyes closed and her face calm, as if she was immersed in a sweet dream.
But her mental power was fluctuating at a mysterious frequency, completely synchronized with the resonant sound that calmed the rampage just now.
"Have you even started to have your own ideas about my 'weapons'?" Uchiha Xuan looked away, but there was no emotion or anger in his voice.
He did not immediately explore the abnormality of the bell, but turned his attention back to the quiet workshop.
Although this sudden backlash was unexpectedly stopped, it exposed a fatal hidden danger.
The empire he built was not only physical rule, but also absolute control on the spiritual level.
Any uncontrollable variables, even just a baby's unconscious dream, must be completely erased.
He pressed the main console's communicator.
"Chiyo Saori."
"Your Majesty, your subordinates are here." A cold and respectful voice sounded almost instantly.
"The signal tower out-of-control incident on the eastern border is now under your control." Uchiha Xuan spoke slowly, but with an unquestionable order, "Recover all out-of-control 'Nightingale' puppet core chips, immediately."
"As you command!"
After a while, Chiyo Saori, dressed in smart clothes, appeared at the door of the workshop.
Her silver hair glowed with a metallic luster under the light, and her eyes that were once red with enthusiasm have now settled into absolute loyalty.
"Your Majesty." She knelt down on one knee.
Uchiha Xuan didn't look at her, but casually threw a diamond-shaped controller as smooth as obsidian.
"You don't need to use your old habits passed down from your family for this mission." He said lightly, with a hint of warning in his voice, "It's better to listen to him than to mine."
Chiyo Saori felt a chill in her heart, and respectfully caught the controller with both hands. The cold touch seemed to be transmitted directly to the bottom of her heart.
She knew that this was Emperor Xuan beating her.
As the top puppet master of Sunagakure, her manipulation of puppets has long been integrated into her flesh and blood, forming countless instinctive "habits".
And these, in the eyes of Emperor Xuan, who pursues absolute control, are precisely the biggest "variables".
"My subordinate understands."
Land of Wind Eastern border, the rocky Gobi Desert.
Three "Nightingale" puppets that look like giant bats are floating in the air with strange postures.
They were originally communication amplifiers used to broadcast <Xuan's First Tone>, but at this moment they deviated from the preset route. The loudspeakers on the wings no longer played the majestic voice of the empire, but instead continued to emit low and whimpering music, as if they were mourning for this desolate land.
The figure of Chiyo Saori appeared behind a huge rock like a ghost. With a slight movement of his fingers, five Chakra Threads flashing with cold light popped out instantly, silently stabbing the joints of one of the puppets.
"Secret Technique·Spider Silk Binding!"
This is her best attack method, fast, accurate and ruthless.
Chakra Threads hit accurately. However, the expected scene of the joints being locked did not happen.
The puppet just shook its wings, causing a reverse chakra wave to flow upstream along the silk thread, and it broke free instantly.
The other two puppets turned around at the same time, their scarlet electronic eyes locked on Chiyo Saori.
"Has it been discovered?" Chiyo Saori frowned and retreated violently.
The three rebellious puppets formed a siege and launched attacks from different angles.
Their movements are no longer programmed and rigid, but are full of cunning tactical coordination, as if there is an experienced ninja controlling them behind the scenes.
The battle breaks out instantly!
Chiyo Saori One against three, not losing at all.
Countless Chakra Threads flew at her fingertips, sometimes turning into sharp blades that cut all things, sometimes weaving into an indestructible giant web.
This is Puppet Technique that she has been immersed in for more than ten years, and it is her proud capital.
After a thrilling dodge, she seized a fleeting opportunity.
"Mysterious meaning: Cut off the thread!"
Her body rotated at high speed, and her ten fingers moved at a frequency that was difficult to detect with the naked eye. The ten Chakra Threadss instantly straightened up, like ten invisible naginata, drawing deadly intersecting trajectories in the air.
"Click--!"
The two "Nightingale" puppets were instantly dismembered and turned into parts falling all over the sky.
However, at the moment when he stopped his move, Chiyo Saori's body stiffened suddenly.
She clearly felt that the little finger of her right hand bent uncontrollably an extra fifteen degrees after completing the last movement of "Thread-cutting"!
This action...
Huge waves set off in her heart!
That was a redundant gesture that she had long abandoned!
It was a mistake she made out of nervousness and lack of skill when she controlled her own natal puppet "Scarlet Scorpion" for the first time when she was eight years old!
This habit was completely corrected under her master's strict teachings as early as ten years ago!
Why... why is it happening again here?
Before she could think about it, the last puppet rushed forward, its sharp alloy claws tore through the air and went straight to her throat.
Chiyo Saori's eyes were focused, and he suppressed the fear in his heart. He waved his left hand violently, and a thicker Chakra Threads was drawn out like a long whip, wrapped around the puppet's neck, and twisted it hard!
With the harsh sound of metal twisting, the last rebel puppet lost power and fell heavily to the ground.
Chiyo Saori gasped for air, cold sweat soaked her back.
She didn't bother to check the results, but stared at her slightly trembling little finger.
The feeling of the body not obeying the control is more terrifying than death for a puppet master who controls his body to the extreme precision.
She took a deep breath, walked to the dismembered remains of the puppet, and took out the core chip.
In the core of one of them, she discovered an abnormal data stream that had been overwritten repeatedly.
That's not a program error or a virus invasion.
After removing the superficial disguise, an encrypted memory fragment appeared before her eyes.
That's an audio clip.
A... a staccato lullaby hummed by an old female voice.
Buzz--!
Chiyo Saori's head seemed to have been hit by a heavy hammer, and his whole body felt as if he had been struck by lightning.
This lullaby... she knew it all too well!
That was the last song her mother sang to her while lying on the hospital bed before she died!
She thought this memory only existed in the depths of her mind, and even in countless midnight dreams, she silently recited this melody in her heart.
How could it appear in the Empire's standard puppet?!
What made her even more chilled was that when she analyzed the underlying encoding of this audio, she found that its encryption and transmission method actually came from the same source as <Xuan's First Tone>, which the empire used to control thoughts!
An unspeakable fear seized her heart.
She immediately reported this discovery to the being at the top of Xuan Tower through the new controller.
After a while, a cold reply came, just one sentence.
"Destroy the data and continue the mission. Don't ask why you can hear it."
Chiyo Saori holds the controller, his palms are cold.
Emperor Xuan's reaction confirmed that this was not an accident.
He knows!
He knows everything!
On the way back, she was worried, and an unprecedented confusion enveloped her.
The skills that I am proud of and the memories that I have buried deep in my heart seem to be in an invisible network, being read and used at will.
At this moment, the backup controller she carried automatically turned on without warning, projecting a holographic image.
In the image, it is the empty square in front of the Scarlet Eye Academy.
Hundreds of puppets of different models were densely packed on the ground, bowing their heads uniformly in the direction of Scarlet Eye Tower.
From their loudspeakers, they were singing in unison that song... her mother's lullaby!
And at the front of all the puppets, the one singing the lead is herself!
No, that's not her.
"Chiyo Saori" in the image has no facial features, only a smooth skin, which looks extremely weird.
Chiyo Saori's pupils suddenly shrank to the extreme.
She suddenly realized that her left hand, at some point, had made an extremely complicated Hand Seals gesture that she had never learned before!
That gesture... she had seen it on the wall of Ling's custody room!
That is the pattern that appears most frequently among the countless scratches that Ling made on the metal wall with her nails - "Gate-Opening Rite"!
"No!"
With a low roar, Chiyo Saori, without any hesitation, she pointed her right hand like a knife and slashed hard on the middle finger of her left hand!
Poof!
The chakra meridians were cut off instantly, and the feeling of being connected to the invisible network came to an abrupt end.
The severe pain came, but she seemed not to feel it. With her other hand, she picked up the Kunai at her waist and mercilessly pierced the backup controller that was still playing the video!
Sparks flew and the image disappeared.
After landing, she didn't even have time to treat her wounds, so she ran towards Xuan Tower as fast as she could, towards the ninth floor.
"Your Majesty, please forgive me!"
Chiyo Saori knelt down in front of Uchiha Xuan, blood dripping from her broken fingers, and a small red flower bloomed on the cold metal floor.
Uchiha Xuan stood with her hands behind her hands, looking down at her bloody left hand with no expression on her face.
The entire workshop was eerily silent, with only the faint sound of bubbles in the nutrition cabin.
After a long time, he finally spoke, his voice calm and without any ripples.
"Do you think you are using the puppet, or the puppet is using you?"
Without waiting for Chiyo Saori to reply, he slowly walked up to her, and a slender silver needle appeared in his hand.
On the tip of the needle, there is a small crystal clear fragment, which was taken from the bell nail.
"Now, let your body remember the answer."
Before he finished speaking, the silver needle pierced the acupuncture point on the back of Chiyo Saori's neck like lightning.
"Uh-huh--!"
Chiyo Saori's whole body trembled violently, and an indescribable huge flow of information poured into her nerve center along the silver needle.
In the past twenty years, every memory she had of controlling a puppet, from the first time she clumsily pulled the thread, to her subsequent masterful "cutting", everything was forcibly dismantled, analyzed, and reorganized under the power of the system!
Those "habits" that she regarded as instinctive and the "skills" that she was proud of were stripped of all emotion and experience at this moment, and were finally compressed into cold, pure chains of combat instructions.
I don't know how long it took, but when the torrent receded, Chiyo Saori slowly raised his head.
When she opened her eyes, the pupils that once glowed with a feverish red light had now turned into an almost transparent gray-white color, like two pieces of pure crystal.
Through these eyes, she could even directly "see" the chakra floating in the air, and she could "see" the vast energy flow track in Uchiha Xuan's body, which was as vast as the sea of stars.
She lowered her head and looked at her severed finger, which was still bleeding.
Under her gaze, the flesh and blood at the wound was squirming and healing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The shape of the bones and muscles of the new knuckles have undergone subtle changes compared to before - they are longer and more sensitive, as if they were born to hold a new type of weapon that is more precise and deadly.
Uchiha Xuan stared at her transformation and said lightly:
"From now on, you will not be 'accustomed' to any action again."
"Every move you make will be my will at this moment."
The moment he finished speaking, he was in a secret base on the Iron Country border thousands of miles away.
The first adult ninja experimental subject to receive a complete soul code quietly opened its eyes in the deathly silence.
There was no light or sparkle in his pupils.
There is only one black sun, which represents absolute obedience and ultimate power, slowly rotating.
Seven days later, Xuan Tower supreme command room.
Uchiha Xuan was reading a battle record that had just been uploaded alone.
The title of the record is: <Eastern Border Line, Target S-001 Clearance Mission Report>.
Submitted by: Chiyo Saori.
In the record, she faced three Kage Level defectors alone, and the whole process took eleven seconds.
The weapon used was a model she had never come across before.
The tactics used were the theoretical model that Uchiha Xuan conceived in his mind just three days ago.
He flipped through the pages, expressionless, until he reached the appendix on the last page.
It was a scan of the wreckage of a post-war target, with a tiny detail highlighted in red circles.
The bodies of the three defectors all had identical, extremely hidden wounds.
The shape of the wound is an ancient cuneiform.
--"Father".