The scarlet "D7" code name flashed past in the deep night, like a drop of blood that cut through the darkness and quickly merged into the steel torrent.
The convoy did not emit any roar of engines, only the dull friction sound of tires on the ground, like a group of silent giant beasts, sneaking towards the depths of the sleeping continent.
On the control throne, Uchiha Xuan did not pay attention to the "purge" force that was about to cause a bloody storm.
His eyes were locked on another set of data on the light screen in front of him that interested him even more.
"Z0 takes us home."
This dream log, submitted simultaneously by 372 X Sequence ninjas, was like a pebble thrown into a calm lake, but the aftermath turned into a strange tsunami that swept through the entire Scarlet Eye Tower.
In the first hour after the incident, new anomaly reports began to pour in.
In the cafeteria, a logistics ninja code-named X-9103 was eating. He suddenly stopped and slowly pushed the goggles on the bridge of his nose at an extremely precise and elegant angle.
This action, whether it is the curvature of the wrist or the slight tilt of the little finger, is exactly the same as the habitual action of Chiyo Saori--Z0.
In the patrol corridor on the 17th floor underground, the guard code-named X-774 was patrolling with a standard gait, but his stride suddenly shortened by three centimeters at a certain moment. The sound of his heels colliding with the metal ground when each step fell was completely synchronized with the beat of Z0 during patrol.
Even in the medical center, the eyelid blinking frequency of a member of X Sequence who was undergoing treatment, in a semi-conscious state after being injected with sedatives, actually began to approach the average blinking frequency of Z0.
These imitations are not active learning, but more like an invisible virus that silently resonates through the nervous system.
The system tracking report pointed out coldly: The infection rate of all individuals who had visual contact with Z0's holographic projection soared to 63% within twenty-four hours.
She is no longer a person, but a walking source of infection. Every unconscious habit of hers is copied and spread crazily in the empire's neural network.
"Interesting." Uchiha Xuan's fingertips tapped lightly on the armrest of the throne. Countless beating data streams were reflected in Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan. There was no trace of panic, but a kind of excitement of a hunter when he discovers a novel prey.
"Turning the virus itself into a sample on the dissecting table."
An order was issued, and "Motion Decomposition Laboratory" was quickly established in the deepest isolation zone of Scarlet Eye Tower.
Pure white walls, shadowless lamps illuminate everything clearly, and the air has been filtered through seventeen filters, so that not even a particle of dust can exist.
Chiyo Saori, or Z0, wears a special sensor suit and stands in the center of the laboratory, like a robot waiting for program instructions.
Hundreds of high frame rate cameras and neural sensors were aimed at her from 360 angles.
"Start." Uchiha Xuan's cold voice sounded over the radio.
Z0 starts executing instructions.
Walk, turn around, raise your hands, straighten your collar.
Each action is broken down into movement units measured in milliseconds, and compared with the real-time electroencephalogram data of hundreds of X Sequence ninjas selected as samples on the other side of the screen.
The results are shocking.
When Z0's right hand unconsciously brushed the hair beside his ear, more than 70% of the people in the sample group had a strong excitement signal instantly erupting in the temporal lobe area of their brains, as if they had heard some kind of call.
When she turned around with her left foot, she habitually tapped the ground lightly, and the amygdala of the sample group simultaneously triggered a weak panic response, which was a fear deeply rooted in the subconscious.
Every habit of hers becomes an invisible key, accurately opening a lock deep in other people's souls.
She is a walking transmitter of subconscious commands.
"The next action," Uchiha Xuan's voice was calm, "Sequence 73, kneel down on one knee."
This command made Z0's body stiffen for a moment.
This action originated from her posture when she was knocked down by high-voltage current in "Cleansing Ritual". It was the painful mark of her completely abandoning the identity of "Chiyo Saori".
She was silent for a moment, and finally slowly and mechanically bent her right leg, touching one knee to the cold ground.
The moment her knees hit the ground, a piercing alarm sounded throughout the control room!
On one surveillance screen, the screen suddenly switched to a mining area three hundred kilometers away.
A X Sequence ninja who was supervising the hard work suddenly lost his legs without warning and fell to his knees in exactly the same posture!
His body was shaking violently, his face showed a look of extreme pain and confusion, and he unconsciously murmured two words: "Teacher..."
"Stop!" Uchiha Xuan's voice was like an ice knife, instantly cutting off the experiment.
He looked at the kneeling figure on the screen, and then at Z0, who remained motionless in the laboratory, and the curve of his mouth became colder.
The propagation distance exceeds 300 kilometers, ignoring physical obstacles and directly replicating behaviors at the conscious level.
This is no longer simple neural resonance.
"The order," he spoke again, this time was an iron law issued to the entire empire system, "From now on, implement 'posture control' on all public actions of Z0. It is prohibited to use any body language that has appeared in the records of 'Cleansing Ritual' on any occasion. Violators will be treated as the highest level pollution incident."
In order to completely cut off this weird transmission chain, Uchiha Xuan even used part of the Divine Tree chakra to develop a brand new weapon-"Behavioral Interference Wave".
It is a subsonic wave superimposed on the imperial spell signal. It is silent but can accurately interfere with people's neural reflex arcs.
Once the recipient attempts to imitate the "contaminated action" calibrated in the database, this wave will immediately trigger involuntary spasms of the target muscles, forcibly interrupting the imitation.
The first tests were conducted in a closed observation room.
A X Sequence ninja who was deeply "infected" subconsciously raised his hand when he saw the video data of Z0, trying to copy the action of brushing his forehead.
Just when his fingers were about to touch his forehead, his body suddenly stiffened, and then he began to twitch violently as if he had been struck by an electric shock!
He let out a suppressed scream, his whole arm twisted at a weird angle, and his five fingers curled up and stretched out uncontrollably, and finally they were firmly fixed into a complex and ancient handprint!
The console system immediately compared the data of this fingerprint.
The results showed that the fingerprint matched the most iconic puppet control secret seal of the burned elder Sunagakure, "Ghost Cleaver" during his lifetime, with a consistency of 99.9%.
That night, Z0 returned to his dormitory without any extra decoration.
She stood in front of the huge floor-to-ceiling mirror and practiced the "safe posture list" just issued by the system over and over again.
When walking, the stride length cannot be less than 70 centimeters, when turning around, the angle must be greater than 90 degrees, when raising her hands, the elbow cannot be higher than the shoulder... Every movement is like a precise mathematical formula, aiming to completely transform her from a "person" into a machine that does not produce any unnecessary signals.
Just when she completed the turning movement, her pupils suddenly shrank.
The reflection in the mirror actually caught up with her actual movements by a full half a second!
It was a mind-numbing delay, as if what she saw in the mirror was not herself, but another being clumsily imitating her.
She turned around like lightning, but there was no one behind her, and there was nothing unusual in the cold air.
But when her eyes fell to the ground, her heart seemed to be clenched by an invisible hand.
The smooth, mirror-like floor was covered with a layer of vague dust.
The dust was clearly marked with the footprints she left when she just stood.
Next to her footprints, there was another pair of footprints.
The size and texture of the footprints were exactly the same as the pair of special combat boots that her teacher Ghost Cleaver wore most often in her memory.
A person who didn't exist was standing next to her just now, looking at the mirror with her.
Z0's breathing stopped for a second.
But she didn't scream, let alone report it.
Her face returned to that dead silence that had remained unchanged for thousands of years.
She walked to the wall and expressionlessly removed the neural interface from the back of her neck that was used to connect to the empire's network.
Under the light, an almost imperceptible layer of soot-like black deposits adhered to the metal surface of the interface.
She used a sharp scalpel blade to carefully scrape off the black substance and put it into the small "High-Entropy Purification Furnace" in the corner of the room.
A cluster of faint blue flames rose up and swallowed up the black powder.
The moment the flames ignited, a strange voice came clearly from the furnace!
It was not the voice of one person, but seventeen different voices, mixed together, men, women, old and young, reciting an ancient scripture in unison in a smooth, choir-like tone:
"... soul Return to Silence sea, bones turned into dust, Soul-Calming Variation, hopeless return..."
Z0's body trembled slightly, but she just listened silently.
When the last syllable fell, she turned off all the lights in the room and allowed herself to be completely engulfed in darkness.
She whispered to herself in the darkness, as if she was talking to those invisible "things", or as if she was admonishing herself.
"You shouldn't follow me."
At the same time, in the deepest part of Scarlet Eye Tower, the huge vine that was cut off by Uchiha Xuan and spawned by Divine Tree cells has quietly regenerated.
It winds through the cracks in the rock formations underground, and its top is gently wrapped around a human femur buried deep in the soil.
The vine, carrying the white bones, began to sway gently, once and for all, very regularly, like a precise and patient metronome.
On the control throne, Uchiha Xuan integrates all abnormal data - from collective dreams to behavioral imitation, from cross-space consciousness copying to the reappearance of the secret seal of "Ghost Cleaver", to the violent rejection reaction caused by Behavioral Interference Wave.
All clues point to one conclusion: the souls of those who were erased by him are trying to make a comeback through Z0, the "new totem".
A revenge from another dimension against the Empire.
However, Uchiha Xuan and Eternal Mangekyō, which have insight into all things, saw a completely different and colder logic from this chaotic "supernatural" data.
Resurrection?
Too inefficient and too confusing.
Distributing power to hundreds of weak individuals to imitate some meaningless actions is not an efficient resurrection ceremony at all.
This is not a summons, more like a... grand broadcast.
A thought broke through the fog of data in his mind like lightning.
"They're not trying to survive."
Uchiha Xuan leaned on the throne, a cruel and insightful smile appeared on the corner of his mouth, and his eyes flashed with the light of creation and destruction.
"They want to complete a grand 'funeral' before they completely disappear. And the purpose of this funeral is to convey to the entire world a copy of their... last words."