Scarlet Eye Tower The nine underground floors are like the beating heart of the empire.
The huge alchemy furnace is emitting a low roar, and the furnace walls are densely engraved with the Sealing Jutsu formula, which firmly locks in the high temperature inside that is enough to melt mountains and rivers.
A faint blue flame erupted from the furnace mouth, reflecting the emotionless face of Uchiha Xuan.
The ashes of three hundred strong men, mixed with the Hashirama Cells active liquid extracted from Divine Tree Root, and the "Tear Crystal" powder collected from the "Mother Goddess" Bell Eyes, turned into a pot of boiling scarlet molten iron at this moment.
In the viscous liquid, there seemed to be countless twisted faces floating and wailing silently.
"System, start imprinting 'Silencing Seal Substrate', the first batch of three hundred." Xuan's voice echoed in the empty furnace hall, so cold that it had no trace of popularity.
[Instruction confirmation. Start the 'Residual-Frequency Imprint' program.]
[The remaining brainwave frequencies are being extracted from the ash melt...]
[Brain wave frequency analysis... successfully captured 300 independent memory reverberations...]
[Start to mix the memory reverberation with the Tear Crystal fluctuations of the bell to generate subconscious permeability runes...]
A series of mechanical arms hang down from the dome, and the fine needle at the end probes into the scarlet liquid, sucking out the hot essence.
Then, they move quickly on the assembly line and accurately inject these liquids into palm-sized black substrate molds.
Accompanied by the cooling sound of "chichi", pieces of spell substrates as thin as cicada wings and with strange lines flowing on the surface were quickly formed.
Every line is the result of a ninja's deepest obsession during his lifetime.
Uchiha Xuan's Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan reflects all this. In his eyes, this is not a simple production, but an ultimate blasphemy and reuse of the soul.
He stared at the continuously rolling flow of ashes in the furnace, and the three Tomoe in his pupils slowly rotated.
Suddenly, he raised his eyebrows imperceptibly.
In his field of vision, a red warning jumped out of the system's data flow waterfall.
[Warning: An unusually high-energy memory encoding fragment has been detected.
The frequency activity of this segment exceeds the threshold of 78%, and it has the tendency of autonomous aggregation.]
[Tracing the source... Source lock: Master-Burning Ceremony ash main pile, the core component is suspected to be highly related to the 'Ghost Cleaver' puppet residue.]
[This abnormal band is resonating weakly with the incomplete secret talisman 'Gate-Opening Rite' in the database...]
Uchiha Xuan's mouth curved with interest.
He remembered the incomplete symbol that formed naturally in the ashes.
Now it seems that it is no coincidence.
"Interesting." He whispered, and with a thought, he issued a new command to the system: "Mark this abnormal band individually as 'Ashen Echo'. Don't suppress it. After reverse amplification, inject it into the B-7 experimental puppet to start the simulation test."
[Instruction executing...]
That night, on the thirteenth floor of Scarlet Eye Tower, there was an absolutely silent monitoring room made of all metal.
The experimental puppet code-named B-7, a blank body without any preset program, was standing quietly in the center of the room.
At midnight, its electronic eyes suddenly lit up with an extremely unstable scarlet light.
"Kaka... kaka..."
The metal knuckles made a tooth-piercing friction sound. It stiffly raised its right arm and began to carve on the mirror-smooth metal wall with its cold alloy fingertips.
There was no sound, just a sharp scraping sound.
In front of the monitoring screen, Uchiha Xuan looked expressionlessly.
What he saw carved by the puppet was the ancient secret talisman that he had seen in the subconscious of "Mother Goddess" Ling and had seen fragments in the ashes.
But this time, it's the full version.
The last stroke of that symbol is closed.
The moment the totem was completed, the puppet's movements stopped abruptly.
It slowly raised its head, its empty eye sockets seemed to have penetrated layers of barriers, and looked at Uchiha Xuan behind the surveillance camera.
Then, it made an action that made all the monitoring personnel stand on end - it gently held its forehead with its left hand, like a tired teacher, sighing silently after reviewing the last answer sheet.
That was the most classic gesture of Ghost Cleaver during his lifetime.
The next second.
Without any warning, the entire puppet exploded from the inside and turned into a cloud of flying metal dust, which scattered on top of the complete totem that had just been carved.
"The dead want to talk?" Uchiha Xuan looked at the last scene frozen on the screen, with a cold light flashing in his eyes, "Then let them say enough."
The next day, Imperial Executive Officer Chiyo Saori received a personal summons from King Xuan.
The task has been advanced.
"'Shadow-Level Purge' first batch, edge target test." Uchiha Xuan pushed a scroll in front of her, "Land of Wind, three retired advisers. They were once the decision-makers of Sunagakure, and they hold a lot of secrets about the old era Kazekage and high-level defense."
"I understand." Chiyo Saori took the scroll without any fluctuation in his expression.
"This operation uses the new batch of 'Silencing Seal' as the starting medium." Xuan said, taking out a unique charm from a special metal box on the side.
Its number is "001", the color is deeper than the others, and the texture on the surface seems to be breathing slightly.
Xuan walked up behind Chiyo Saori in person, and pushed back the black hair on the back of her neck with his cold fingertips, revealing the neural interface hidden under the collar of her uniform.
"This is a key smelted from the part with the highest content of your teacher's ashes." He inserted the charm into the interface and whispered in her ear, his voice soft but cruel as a knife, "When you use it to open other people's brains, don't forget how it was burned red."
There was a soft "buzz" sound, and the spell was perfectly connected.
Chiyo Saori's body stiffened suddenly, and a strange feeling of coldness mixed with heat spread instantly throughout her body along her spine.
But she just gritted her teeth and didn't show even a hint of trembling.
"Prince Xuan... please don't worry." She knelt down on one knee, her voice as steady as a stone, "Saori will never disgrace your orders."
Three days later, good news came from the Land of Wind border.
The mission was a perfect success.
The three veteran advisors, who had long since retired to their fields and were heavily protected, all took the initiative to reveal all confidential information to the imperial agents who had penetrated into the dream world, like a flood bursting in their sleep on the same night.
What is even more incredible is that after they woke up, they seemed to be inspired by the gods. They wrote documents of allegiance to the empire with high spirits and requested to join the construction of the new world.
When Chiyo Saori returned to Scarlet Eye Tower to submit the report, he still looked as calm as an iceberg.
But Uchiha Xuan's eyes fell on the fingertips of her left hand where she submitted the report.
There, there was a small burn mark that was not very obvious, as if it had been burned by high-temperature metal.
[Biological sign monitoring: Target Chiyo Saori, during the mission, the skin tissue of the left index finger suffered third-degree electrical burns.
Cause analysis: When touching the talisman No. 001, he unconsciously exerted finger pressure that exceeded the safety threshold, causing the neural interface to overload and generate local high temperature.]
Uchiha Xuan took the report calmly, and then read the dream records intercepted from the minds of the three consultants during the mission.
Deep in the dream of one of the consultants, the background picture was no longer the "glory of the empire" preset by the spell, but instead turned into a dim Sunagakure classroom.
A little girl with scorpion braids was kneeling respectfully in front of a middle-aged man, handing over her puppet work.
And the background sound of the entire dream, in addition to the weird song "Soul-Calming Variation", was also mixed with a vague sigh, full of exhaustion and relief.
Uchiha Xuan's eyes flashed with a cold light.
He immediately recalled all the teams that were out on infiltration missions, and at the highest command meeting, in front of everyone, he personally destroyed all the 299 "Silencing Seal Substrate" remaining in the warehouse.
"The 'Shadow-Level Purge' plan is suspended indefinitely."
His decision puzzled all the executives, but no one dared to question it.
However, that night, Chiyo Saori was summoned alone to the private laboratory on the top floor of Scarlet Eye Tower.
She thought she was being punished, but Uchiha Xuan just calmly let her watch a video.
In the picture, it is the scene on "Master-Burning Ceremony" where the puppet codenamed "Ghost Cleaver" slowly turns its head in the raging fire.
However, through the system's high frame rate analysis and lip language simulation, the puppet's lips opened and closed and silently uttered three words.
--"You win."
Chiyo Saori's pupils suddenly contracted.
"They think ashes are the end, but for us, it's just new ink." Uchiha Xuan turned off the image, turned around, and said with a playful coldness in his voice, "This ink still retains their own will. If it is used to write directly, it will stain the paper."
He walked up to Chiyo Saori, his deep eyes seemed to be able to see through her soul.
"But what if... we use this will to become the pen itself?"
"Saori, do you want to see with your own eyes what new words your teacher can write using his own ashes?"
Chiyo Saori remained silent, the burned fingertips tightly clenched under the cuffs.
That night, the furnace on the ninth floor underground was secretly restarted.
Uchiha Xuan personally modified the imprinting program. He did not eliminate the abnormal band named "Ashen Echo". Instead, he reverse-encrypted and amplified it and used it as the core driver of the new generation of spells.
He named it--"Soul-Burning Protocol".
"Go." Uchiha Xuan stood on the top of the tower, overlooking the brightly lit imperial city, and said silently in his heart, "Let their memory become the sharpest knife to stab their own people."
Deep underground, on the surface of a newly cooled and formed "Soul-Burning Seal" substrate, due to the extreme energy infusion and complex internal stress, a crack that was thinner than a hair quietly appeared.
The cracks were winding and twisted, and in the dim light, they were vaguely spelled out into two tiny Chinese characters.
Pay off debt.