Scarlet Eye Tower, Empire Data Center, Thirty-three Floors Underground.
The air here is as cold as solid metal, and the only sound is the low hum of the server array running.
Uchiha Xuan sits on the throne of the data torrent, and his Eternal Mangekyō reflects countless rapidly scrolling codes and characters.
These are the final archives of all the "die-hards" who have been thrown into the furnace since the founding of the empire - their interrogation records, last words, and even every emotion captured by the system.
"System, establish a correlation model." His voice echoed in the empty secret room, "Take all individuals who have the resonance phenomenon of 'Gate-Opening Rite' as target samples, and search for high-frequency words, related characters, and commonly mentioned events in their archives."
"The command is being executed... data screening... cross comparison... model construction completed."
A huge star map-like network of connections instantly unfolded in the air in front of Uchiha Xuan.
The countless light points represent the burned souls, and the light connecting them represents the inextricable connections.
At first, these connections were messy, but with the in-depth calculation of the system, an invisible giant network gradually emerged.
In the end, all the rays of light, no matter how far and tortuous, point to the same dazzling core node.
The cold electronic sound of the system gave this node a unique label:
"Ghost Cleaver."
In all cases where the "Gate-Opening Rite" resonance phenomenon occurs, without exception, this name is mentioned in various forms in the last records of his lifetime.
Or a curse before death, or a call in a trance, or a secret message passed to a companion.
Uchiha Xuan The playfulness in his eyes turned into a bone-chilling chill.
He always thought that the name was just a code name, a label for easy management.
But now it seems that he was wrong.
In this world penetrated by "doors", names, especially names remembered by many consciousnesses, are no longer simple symbols.
It is a kind of coordinate, a spiritual anchor point, and a string of keys that can unlock the resonance of a specific consciousness!
When enough people die thinking about "Ghost Cleaver", the name itself becomes the carrier of the concept "Ghost Cleaver" and can even become the "resurrection point" of his remaining consciousness.
"I see..." Uchiha Xuan whispered to himself, with a cruel arc at the corner of his mouth, "You want to use your name to pass on the firewood? Then I will burn your firewood, along with your name, into nothingness without even ashes left!"
He stood up suddenly, and the cold instructions were instantly transmitted throughout Scarlet Eye Tower through neural connections.
"Establish 'Name Purification Division' immediately! Directly managed by the A-7 level intelligent core!"
"Within the empire, all historical documents, oral records, personal tokens, and even tombstone inscriptions involving people on the list of those who have been purged will be confiscated! Those who resist will be regarded as believers of the 'Gate' and will be purified on the spot!"
"All confiscated objects will be concentrated in the No. 3 furnace for high-entropy incineration. The ashes produced after the incineration will be named 'Nameless Matrix' and put into the production line of the new generation 'Silencing Seal'!"
He wants to use these ashes carrying names and memories to create a dam that blocks all sounds and information.
Use the enemy's weapons to choke the enemy's throat!
A special command was separately transmitted to the terminal of Chiyo Saori.
"Appointed: Chiyo Saori, as the special inspector of Name Purification Division, immediately set off for Land of Wind to supervise the recovery of all leftover data of S-level cleaning targets such as Sunagakure, 'Ghost Cleaver', 'Ebizo', 'Bunpuku', etc."
Three days later, the old site of Land of Wind was covered with yellow sand.
Chiyo Saori was dressed in black and covered with a metal mask, standing silently in front of a huge mobile incinerator.
Behind her is a team of Imperial Executors in the same attire.
They had just seized all the traces left by her three teachers - Ghost Cleaver, Ebizo, and Bunpuku - from the ruined archives of Sunagakure.
Piles of Puppet Technique notes record their lifelong efforts; rusty Hidden Sand Village Forehead Protector bear witness to their glory and struggle; there are also dozens of precious scrolls recording their teaching images.
"Invest." Chiyo Saori's voice was without a trace of ripples.
Executors people began to throw these "historical relics" one by one into the bloody mouth of the incinerator.
When the last roll of video film recording Ghost Cleaver's personal teaching of how to control "Chikamatsu Collection of Ten Puppets" was thrown in, the blazing flames suddenly stopped.
Immediately, the orange-red flames twisted and rose, outlining the outline of an old and angry face at the mouth of the furnace!
That face is none other than Ghost Cleaver!
The lips made of flames opened and closed silently, as if they were saying something to her.
Chiyo Saori's body stiffened slightly, but the next second, she expressionlessly pressed a red button on the wrist controller.
"Overload mode, start."
The inside of the incinerator exploded instantly, and a dazzling bright light swallowed up everything, including the flaming face, which also turned into nothingness.
The violent heat wave melted the gravel on the ground into crystals.
In the report returned to Scarlet Eye Tower, she only wrote two words in the "Task Process" column. "No exception."
She did not mention that at the moment of detonation, a piece of confetti as tiny as dust that had not yet burned out was accurately ejected by the shock wave and silently stuck to the inside of the cuff of her uniform.
However, what she thought was a flawless move revealed the tip of the iceberg three days later in a way that she could never have predicted.
Scarlet Eye Tower Something strange happened in the dedicated kitchen on the top floor.
Several special chefs responsible for preparing high-energy nutrient solution for Uchiha Xuan jointly submitted an emergency report.
They claimed that when the latest batch of nutrient solution was boiled, there would always be a strange smell coming out of the pot, like "scorched pages of an old book".
What's even more frightening is that at the moment when the soup is completely boiling, some fleeting and distorted words will appear on the surface!
"System, analyze the ingredients of the nutrient solution." Uchiha Xuan looked at the report with cold eyes.
Soon, the analysis results appeared in front of him.
In the raw materials, "Nameless Matrix" particles were detected at a content of 0.3 parts per million.
These particles are exactly from the batch brought back by Chiyo Saori from Land of Wind.
As raw materials for new spells, they inevitably leaked in small amounts during transportation and production, and were mixed into the empire's circulation system.
In a dry environment, these ash remains content.
However, in a high-temperature liquid environment, some residual brainwave frequencies that have not been completely erased actually resonate with specific concepts, forming a physical phenomenon similar to "voice crystallization."
Uchiha Xuan personally took a soup sample and placed it under a high-precision microscopic analyzer.
He slowly raised the temperature to boiling point.
In the test tube, those tiny precipitates really began to aggregate, and in the tumbling of the liquid, two Chinese characters were pieced together with difficulty:
"Disciple".
Uchiha Xuan's eyes flashed with murderous intent.
He immediately ordered the entire food supply chain to be blocked. At the same time, an order was conveyed directly to Chiyo Saori's ears:
"Come to me. Bring all the personal items you have touched since you came back from Land of Wind."
Chiyo Saori soon appeared in front of him, still looking calm and calm.
She presented her backpack, change of clothes, and the puppet weapon box she carried with her one by one.
Precision scanning equipment scanned each one one by one, and the results were all normal.
Uchiha Xuan's eyes finally landed on the back of her neck.
There is the standard nerve conduction interface for the empire's senior personnel, which is used to directly receive instructions and upload data.
"Turn around."
Chiyo Saori turned around as he was told.
When the special probe scanner approached the port on the back of her neck, a sharp alarm suddenly sounded.
The instrument captured a hidden signal that was disguised as background noise and encrypted to the extreme.
The system cracked the code at a rate of billions of times per second, and finally, a piece of sound was restored.
It was an extremely old childhood recording. A hoarse male voice, with sternness and a hint of imperceptible care, was calling a name:
"Saori."
It's the voice of Ghost Cleaver.
She actually compressed this original sound into nanoscale audio fragments, and used special biological glue to embed it into the outer coating of the neural interface!
In front of her, Uchiha Xuan used an energy scalpel to accurately peel off the thin coating, and threw it into the small personal incinerator next to him.
The moment the flames rose, sudden changes occurred!
The entire internal broadcasting system of Scarlet Eye Tower seemed to be hijacked by an invisible force, and a voice was emitted at the same time:
"The path you are taking... is too hard..."
That was exactly the voice of Ghost Cleaver, old and hoarse, full of complicated sighs.
The sound only lasted for 0.3 seconds before it was forcibly cut off by the system, but everyone in the tower who heard it felt horrified.
Uchiha Xuan stared at Chiyo Saori, as if he wanted to see through her soul:
"You keep this because you want it to cry for you someday?"
Chiyo Saori slowly lowered his head, his long eyelashes covering the expression in his eyes.
"I'm just... afraid of forgetting how I was tamed."
This sentence sounds like it is expressing absolute loyalty and reminding oneself not to forget the majesty of the master.
But it seemed to be saying that she should always remember this humiliation and pain, and remember how she was shaped into what she is now.
It's hard to distinguish between true and false.
Uchiha Xuan stared at her for a full ten seconds, and rarely pursued her further.
"Go down."
"As commanded."
That night, Uchiha Xuan issued a new order: All "Nameless Matrix" would be processed using ultra-low temperature quantum extraction methods, and their physical and information structures would be completely stripped and crushed in an environment close to absolute zero.
The first batch of finished products has just been freshly baked in the underground factory.
Thousands of miles away, in an unknown underground altar, a girl wearing an ancient miko costume, Ling, suddenly bent over violently and vomited violently.
What she spit out was not food, but a pool of thick black liquid.
In the liquid, there were countless pale bone fragments the size of fingernails floating.
Each bone fragment had a name engraved on it, but at this moment, those names were scratched out by a ferocious streak of blood and became blurry.
Ling raised her head, her pale face without a trace of blood. She looked at the scarlet moon in the sky through the gap in the cave, and whispered in a voice that only she could hear:
"The name... cannot be burned cleanly."
"It lives in the food it eats, in the water it drinks, and in the dreams it sleeps..."
And in the distant Scarlet Eye Tower underground, on the exhaust pipe of the No. 3 furnace that had just completed low-temperature extraction, a new, pitch-black vine was winding up silently.
It seemed to be alive, greedily absorbing the crushed "nameless" ash particles that escaped from the pipe, and began to grow slowly at a speed that was imperceptible to the naked eye.
Scarlet Eye Tower stood at the top, Uchiha Xuan looked down at his steel empire, with a cold light flashing in his eyes.
Name, this seemingly most basic social symbol, has now become the strangest and most difficult weapon in the hands of the enemy.
It is like a virus that cannot be killed, hiding in memories, objects, and even materials made by his own hands.
Since it cannot be eradicated, it can only be completely abolished.
A crazy and absolute idea took shape in his mind.
He wants to establish a brand new order, an order without a "past" and without a "name".
In this order, everyone is just a code name serving the empire, and their identity will be personally awarded and defined by him, Uchiha Xuan.