This heartbeat is not the end, but the prelude to a more obscure plague.
In Throne of Heaven's data center, the red alarm light flow instantly flooded Chiyo Saori's field of vision.
Her data flow, which was always as smooth as a ruler, experienced violent jagged fluctuations for the first time.
"Master, abnormal values exploded."
Chiyo Saori's fingers flew across the void, calling up a set of surveillance images that had just been intercepted, and projecting them directly in front of Uchiha Xuan's eyes.
The picture comes from an inconspicuous remote mountain village on the edge of the empire.
In the darkness, thirty-seven children who had just awakened Fire Seal less than a week ago were standing neatly in the open space at the entrance of the village like puppets held up by some invisible thread.
Their eyes were closed tightly, but their immature faces were filled with ferocity and enthusiasm that was extremely inconsistent with their age.
What's even more weird is that when their lips open and close, what they spit out is not gibbering in their sleep, but obscure, ancient battle formulas with a strong Warring States accent.
"... The breath of fire escape comes from anger, burns all the forest, and sacrifices the eyes with blood..."
Among the five children with strong eyesight, the Fire Seal foreheads were so red that they were almost bleeding. The distorted light and shadow gathered between their immature brows, and they vaguely outlined the face of an adult man with a proud expression and long hair shawl-Madara Uchiha.
"This is the thirty-seventh case. Just now, the chakra circuits in their bodies began to spontaneously reorganize, trying to forcibly construct the 'Majestic Destroyer Flame' technique model." Chiyo Saori's voice revealed a hint of mechanical urgency, "This kind of Once this level of magic is activated, the meridians of these thirty-seven children will be burned out instantly, turning them into useless people. I have ordered all external communications in the village to be cut off, and three purification teams carrying heavy-duty Fire Seal amplifiers are forcibly establishing a barrier around it."
Uchiha Xuan leaned on the throne and tapped the armrest with his fingers, making a crisp sound.
He looked at the "possessed" children in the picture, with no pity in his eyes, only indifference as if he were looking at a piece of code with a bug.
"Bad debt in the bloodline." Uchiha Xuan sneered, grabbing a grape from the fruit plate next to him and throwing it into his mouth. "Simple physical suppression is useless. It is a collective memory engraved deep in the genetic chain, just like a wild dog will drool when it smells meat and bones. It is a physiological instinct. As long as they still have their eyes open and are still refining chakra, the 'glory' garbage left by Madara and Izuna will crawl up the bloodline."
He swallowed the grapes, and a cold light flashed in his eyes, directly awakening Myriad Phenomena Devouring System who was silent in the depths of the sea of consciousness.
Since it is instinct, then use stronger instinct to cover it.
"System, analysis target: Madara Uchiha, Izuna Uchiha residual chakra band."
"Define this band as an 'illegal gene template' and set the trigger threshold: pupil force activation degree 0.3."
Uchiha Xuan's consciousness cut into the underlying logic of the system as accurately as a scalpel, quickly writing new rules. "Once the band is recognized, Fire Seal immediately releases a third-level neural pain pulse and synchronously implants specific audio into the auditory nerve."
"This is called... a negative feedback mechanism."
With a cruel curve at the corner of his mouth, Uchiha Xuan stood up and said, "Bring an experimental subject up. I want to see the effect."
After a while, a man bound with chakra chains was dragged into the hall.
He is a defected Uchiha Clan survivor who was captured a few days ago, and is also a die-hard fan of the old era.
Chiyo Saori untied one of his hands and said coldly, "Use your best technique."
The man's hands were Hand Seals, which was the most classic starting position of the Uchiha Clan. Naturally, the image of his ancestor Madara's heroic appearance on the battlefield emerged in his mind, trying to enhance the power of the technique.
"Fire Escape..."
At this moment, a sudden change occurred!
"Ah--!!!"
A shrill scream instantly tore apart the silence of the hall.
The man's half-formed seal suddenly fell apart, and he hugged his head tightly with both hands, curling up on the floor like a shrimp and twitching wildly.
In his field of vision, the majestic image of Madara Uchiha in his mind was distorted without warning into a blackened, rotten, howling afterimage of an evil ghost at the moment when Fire Seal became hot!
The severe nerve pain was like a red-hot iron stabbing directly into his brain.
At the same time, the mechanical synthesized sound that froze his soul exploded in his skull:
"Illegal worship detected. This is a false ancestor and has been sentenced to death. The true ancestor is only mysterious and cannot be confused."
Snap.
The man was frothing at the mouth, rolled his eyes and passed out.
But in the moment before he fell into coma, Chiyo Saori keenly captured that despite the devastating blow to his spirit, the chakra circuit in his body was still intact, and even due to the stimulation of severe pain, his eye power showed signs of improvement.
"Very good." Uchiha Xuan nodded with satisfaction, "What I want is a dog that can fight, not a thoughtful person. Promote this mechanism."
Early the next morning, an iron law named <Awakened Children Management Regulations> spread throughout the empire along with the cold wind.
All Uchiha Clan members who newly awakened Fire Seal had a black metal collar - "Fire Seal Regulator" - tied around their necks.
The regulations are strict: three times a day in the morning, noon and evening, you must accept the "Memory Calibration" current stimulation released by the collar.
In town centers across the country, the podiums that originally preached the history of Kaguya were demolished and replaced by "Sight and Sound" demonstration areas.
The lecturer in uniform showed parents expressionlessly how to guide their children to avoid the "thinking minefields" that can cause severe pain when using pupil power.
"Remember, don't think about the dead people who don't exist." The lecturer's pointer hit the blackboard, "Pain is the true ancestor's Grace. It is helping you eliminate the cancer in your genes. Anyone who violates this will have all their ration quotas canceled for this month."
Under this high-pressure cleaning, an inconspicuous red warning popped up in the system's monitoring log.
Naka River Shrine.
Beneath the ancient ruins that had been hollowed out, leaving only broken walls, deep in the originally dead underground altar, a weak but extremely stubborn ancient chakra wave was detected rising.
It seems that something is deep underground, trying to answer the calls of those children talking in their dreams.
"Mukade insect, dead but not stiff."
Uchiha Xuan looked at the flashing red dot on the holographic map,
He did not send anyone to investigate, but directly issued the most violent instructions.
"Mobilize the engineering puppet troops and use the melted 'Fire Seal' metal to pour and seal all the entrances and gaps of the underground altar of the shrine. Then on this basis, build a 300-meter-thick sealing wall."
That night, thousands of tons of red metal solution poured into the underground cavity of the Naka River like magma.
As the last sealing stone slab crashed down, the annoying fluctuation finally disappeared completely.
At this moment, in the core secret room of the Sky Fortress hanging high in the clouds, the genetic embryo suspended in the nutrient solution suddenly trembled violently as if it felt the disappearance of some threat from the outside world.
This time, the heartbeat was no longer weak, but strong and powerful, and actually reached a perfect synchronous resonance with the pulse frequency of Uchiha Xuan who had just walked into the secret room.
Uchiha Xuan stretched out his hand and stroked the gestating mass of flesh and blood through the glass, and finally a real smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
This is the prototype of the new order, absolute purity and absolute obedience.
However, just as he was immersed in this sense of control, the projection of Chiyo Saori appeared again. This time, there was a rare hesitation in her tone.
"Master, there is an urgent call from the empire's northwest border outpost."
"They intercepted a caravan claiming to be from Iron Country. The cargo list is perfect, and there are no flaws in the customs clearance documents, but..." Chiyo Saori paused and pulled up a blurry long-distance snapshot., "Our thermal imaging camera found that all the 'porters' in this caravan showed signs of extremely deliberate suppression of the chakra flow in their bodies when they passed the checkpoint. Moreover, that suppression method is very similar to that of a small family sect that we have declared extinct."