Dead silence.
A dead silence more suffocating than the gasps between battles enveloped the entire core hall of Naka River Shrine.
Chiyo Saori knelt down on one knee, and for the first time, unconcealable horror appeared on that pretty face that always wore a mask of calmness and resourcefulness.
Her eyes were fixed on the last frame of the surveillance camera, and all the blood in her body seemed to freeze in an instant.
That's not a simple imitation.
The puppet's movements are precise and smooth, and even have a "charm" that transcends mechanical logic.
It was a... tribute.
A body made of dead things paid a tribute of absolute obedience and reverence to one of its creators.
Then, self-destruct.
It seems to declare in the most extreme way: this kind of imitation is itself a kind of blasphemy, a taboo that must be erased.
Uchiha Xuan didn't look back, didn't even look at her.
His eyes still stayed on the water mirror. The scarlet Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan was as deep as an abyss. There was no emotion in it, only pure and extreme analysis and deduction.
"Interesting."
He uttered these two words again, but this time, even he could hear the cold shock that was forcibly suppressed.
The pollution of the "gate" has gone beyond the spiritual level and begun to interfere with the physical laws of reality.
It is no longer satisfied with implanting memories and distorting cognition, it begins... to learn, imitate, and even "assimilate" everything it observes.
Chiyo Saori's salute is a symbol that contains complex emotions such as "loyalty", "obedience", and "awe".
The puppet accurately reproduced this symbol and used self-destruction to interpret its inner "ultimate loyalty".
What does this mean?
This means that from the perspective of the "door", there is no essential difference between Chiyo Saori and the puppet in the behavior pattern of "saluting".
The boundaries between life and dead things, will and program are blurring.
"Master Xuan..." Chiyo Saori's voice was dry. She wanted to say something, but she found that any comfort or analysis seemed feeble at this moment.
Uchiha Xuan slowly raised his hand, a gesture that could not be ignored.
"Give me an order," his voice echoed in the hall, cold and clear, as if every word has been tempered by absolute rationality, "From now on, all ritual activities related to 'Final Lesson Plan' will be suspended."
Chiyo Saori suddenly raised his head, Final Lesson Plan is the core project to accelerate the spiritual transformation of students and completely get rid of the shackles of old emotions. It is also a key step in building the spiritual foundation of the New Uchiha Empire.
Pausing at this time is tantamount to breaking your arm.
However, Uchiha Xuan's next order sent chills all over her body.
"Start a new command--'Shadow Training Replay·Execute in reverse order'."
"Starting from tomorrow, you will personally lead the twelve surviving 'seeds' on the third underground floor to assemble at the martial arts arena every day from Chen time to You time."
He paused, turned around, and looked directly at Chiyo Saori with his emotionless eyes.
"There is only one training content: imitate me."
Chiyo Saori's heart suddenly shrank.
"No commands are required, no explanation is given. They just need to observe all my daily behaviors - the pace of my walking, the angle of raising my hands, the rhythm of my fingers, and even the frequency of each breath... and then reproduce it and turn it into a standardized action process."
"Master Xuan, what do you mean..." Chiyo Saori's voice trembled slightly, and she instantly understood the chilling intention behind this order.
"That's right." The corner of Uchiha Xuan's mouth raised an extremely dangerous arc, "This is a test. I want to see if my behavior and habits can be quantified, copied, and mass-produced, whether the so-called 'I' is still the only one."
This is no longer simple loyalty training.
This is a crazy provocation against the unknown high-dimensional existence using human beings as pawns and self as bait!
If even Uchiha Xuan's habits can be easily imitated, then his "existence" itself will lose its meaning as an independent individual and become a "template" that can be replaced at any time.
And he wanted to put this most terrifying possibility nakedly in front of everyone.
On the third day, there was a martial arts performance.
Twelve students in black uniforms were like twelve statues, silently distributed around.
Their eyes were empty and focused, and all their minds were focused on the figure walking slowly in the center of the field.
Uchiha Xuan is adjusting the sleeves of his black robe, a very common action.
He raised his right hand and gently smoothed the folds of his cuffs with his fingertips, his movements elegant and calm.
Twelve students made exactly the same movements almost at the same moment.
However, a sudden change occurred!
A young student standing on the far left side of the queue had his mouth twitching violently uncontrollably the moment he completed the imitation.
Immediately afterwards, his right hand that had just smoothed his sleeve automatically turned over at a strange angle, and his five fingers bent, instantly forming an ancient and complicated sacrificial mudra!
"Tsk!"
A silver thread pierced the sky, as fast as lightning!
The figure of Chiyo Saori appeared behind the student like a ghost, and the puppet thread accurately penetrated the sleeping point on the back of his neck.
The student's body softened and he fell to the ground with a groan.
The whole process took less than half a second, and the remaining eleven people didn't even have a flicker in their eyes. They were still imitating Uchiha Xuan's next actions attentively.
Chiyo Saori quickly dragged the student aside, pressed his slender fingers on his forehead, and Heart-Web Threads instantly penetrated his brain.
After a moment, she walked up to Uchiha Xuan and reported in a low voice with a solemn face, "Master Xuan, his brain has not detected any traces of invasion of external consciousness. The mental fluctuations are also completely within control."
"System." Uchiha Xuan said silently in his heart.
[Comparing behavior patterns... tracing the source of abnormal actions...]
[Warning: This sacrificial mudra is not contaminated by external information.]
[Analysis results: This action template originates from a small habit that the host himself has repeated seventeen times in his recent unconscious state - a gesture used to rub the temples to relieve mental stress after the end of deep meditation.]
The cold reality, like a heavy hammer, hit Uchiha Xuan deep in his consciousness.
The problem is not with the outside world.
He himself has become a new source of pollution!
That "door" no longer needs external stimulation to influence him.
It begins to draw "nutrients" directly from his subconscious, his habits, and his instincts, amplifies and distorts them, and then feeds them back to the real world through imitators!
Uchiha Xuan slowly closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the last trace of "human" fluctuations in his eyes disappeared.
"All training continues." He gave a cold command, then turned and walked towards the depths of the shrine, "Chiyo Saori, activate the backup plan. From now on, all my daily behaviors in the next seventy-two hours will be triple-encrypted and recorded using a seal scroll to create 'Anti-Template Database'. If any student has abnormal copying behavior that cannot match the database, you know what to do."
"Yes." Chiyo Saori lowered his head, but his heart was filled with turmoil.
She understood that Uchiha Xuan was going to do something crazier than before.
He wants to completely separate himself from the category of "human" and become a chaotic machine that never repeats, is unpredictable, and completely breaks all behavioral laws!
He wants to use absolute "disorder" to fight against the higher-dimensional consciousness that tries to parasitize on "laws"!
He wanted to kill the "habitual" self with his own hands.
The fifth day, noon.
Sunlight passes through the courtyard of the shrine and shines on the martial arts field.
Uchiha Xuan suddenly stopped under the gaze of twelve students.
He slowly pulled out a pale bone blade polished from Tailed Beast bones from his waist. Under everyone's astonished gaze, he slashed the tip of the blade across his right palm without hesitation.
A strange scene happened.
The bone blade was extremely sharp, enough to cut through steel, but it left only a white mark on his palm, without a drop of blood flowing out.
The next second, under the white mark, a translucent crystal layer as bright as a diamond quickly covered the wound, and disappeared without a trace in an instant, leaving the skin intact as before.
This is the latest result after he used Myriad Phenomena Devouring System last night to forcibly fuse his own White Zetsu Cells with the obsidian sealing layer that was ground into powder.
Uchiha Xuan put away the bone blade, looked around at the twelve faces that were momentarily sluggish due to shock, and announced in a voice without any warmth:
"From today on, I will continue to change. Every time you see me, I will be brand new."
"Whoever can't keep up with my changes will still imitate the me of yesterday..."
He paused and said the sentence that froze everyone's souls.
"... It proves that he is dead."
That night, it was quiet.
Chiyo Saori came to the underground data room alone.
She called up the latest student behavior comparison chart with "Anti-Template Database".
On the huge light screen, twelve curves representing the imitative behavior of the students are frantically chasing a strange, changeable and irregular red main curve.
That red line is Uchiha Xuan.
Sometimes it is as smooth as a straight line, sometimes it suddenly rises to the top, and the next second it may fall vertically, without any logic or warning.
Chiyo Saori stared at the red curve on the screen that could never be completely matched no matter how hard he chased it, and whispered to himself, with a hint of exhaustion and bitterness in his voice that no one could understand:
"You're not guarding them... you're guarding yourself."
She slowly raised her hand and took out a special hairpin from her bun that looked ordinary but actually contained a secret.
The hairpin tail was gently rotated, and a microchip smaller than a grain of rice popped out.
She took a deep breath and gently inserted the chip into the spare port of the console.
A top-secret video that has never been reported and must never be reported was quietly retrieved.
The picture shows the scene when Uchiha Xuan fell into a deep coma in the meditation room.
He lay on the cold stone platform, his brows furrowed, his lips moving unconsciously, and he murmured indistinctly.
After tens of thousands of noise reduction and analysis by the system, that sentence was restored.
It was a language she had never heard before, ancient and vicissitudes of life.
Those were the last words spoken by the demon sword "Ghost Cleaver" to its last owner before it was completely sealed seventy years ago.
She was about to stretch out her finger to completely delete this record that could shake everything, but there was a sound of footsteps behind her without any warning.
Chiyo Saori's body froze instantly.
She turned around suddenly and saw Uchiha Xuan standing at the door of the secret room at some point, looking at her quietly.
His eyes have turned into a pair of purple Rinne Sharingan with nine Tomoe, but no power is released in the pupils, but they are as deep as a prison, as if they can swallow all light.
He didn't question or get angry, he just asked a question in an almost calm tone.
"Do you know why I always win in countless seemingly desperate situations?"
Without waiting for Chiyo Saori to answer, he turned around and his back disappeared into the darkness again, leaving only a few words that were as light as hallucinations, floating in the cold air.
"Because I'm never afraid to admit that I'm becoming a monster too."
Chiyo Saori leaned against the console as if helpless, breathing heavily.
And in the deepest part of Naka River Shrine that neither she nor Uchiha Xuan noticed, the bottom layer of Flame Master Ruins that had been used in the "Final Lesson Plan" ceremony and has now been completely cleaned, was among a pile of baby skull fragments crushed into powder by the shock wave of the puppet's self-destruction -
The largest fragment among them was trembling slightly.
Traces of bone meal, invisible to the naked eye and finer than dust, are slowly and unswervingly gathering towards it, as if being pulled by some invisible force.
In the absolute darkness and dead silence, those fragments are being put back together in a way that goes against common sense.
Its final form is a tightly closed baby's... eye.