This Body Was Meant to Feed Dogs?

Deep within the cave, the flickering firelight stretched the shadows of the three people into ghostly shapes.

Baba Tesshin's words echoed through the stifling air, every syllable steeped in fear of the unknown future and a desire to preserve the established order.

"Are we taking him back to the village? Lady Tsunade won't let this accountability hearing go."

Saori did not answer. She merely used the last clean bandage to gently wipe the blood from Old Ape's brow.

Her movements were exceedingly gentle, yet carried the detachment of someone handling a precious artifact.

More than anyone, she understood that the life flame of this former Hidden Stone Village hero lying on the stone platform was already like a candle guttering in the wind.

Her silence was an answer in itself.

Baba Tesshin paced anxiously, the gravel beneath his feet crunching softly.

He could neither understand nor accept this.

Jinchuriki were a village's strategic weapons, bargaining chips at Kage-level conferences, and the cornerstone maintaining the fragile balance among the great shinobi villages.

What exactly did this mysterious man named Xuan intend to do?

The wind at the cave entrance abruptly fell still. Xuan appeared soundlessly at the entrance, blocking the only source of light.

The dark aura around him was deeper than the cave itself, as though it could swallow everything.

Ignoring Baba Tesshin's questioning, he slowly walked to the stone platform. His strange right eye turned slightly, as deep as a vortex of stars.

[Myriad Phenomena Return to the Eye] activated.

In Xuan's vision, Old Ape's body became a semi-transparent energy diagram.

His ruptured organs, chaotic chakra flow, and the sealing formula on the verge of collapse were all displayed clearly as data.

At the very core was a mass of violent yet weakening dark-red energy—the residual chakra of Four-Tails Son Goku. Like a ferocious beast trapped in a broken cage, it futilely battered against its prison, which was about to collapse.

"His vessel is about to break down." Xuan's voice was utterly flat, without a trace of emotion, as if he were stating a fact unrelated to himself. "But tailed beasts have never been parasites. They are symbiotes. Just as the Divine Tree originated from me, these so-called jinchuriki... are merely misplaced branches produced by the clumsy imitation of later generations."

Those words struck Baba Tesshin's mind like thunder.

The Divine Tree originated from him?

What outrageous madness!

Yet before he could refute him, Xuan's next decision chilled him to the bone.

"I will turn him into a 'mobile chakra node.'" Specks of black iron sand appeared at Xuan's fingertips, gathering and flowing as if alive. "Using the [Basic Cell Regeneration Template] analyzed by the system, combined with the [Pseudo-Dead Bone Pulse Template] I just obtained, I'll implant iron-sand conduits throughout every bone in his body. He will no longer be a jinchuriki, but a biological battery capable of storing, purifying, and slowly releasing chakra."

"You're insane!" Baba Tesshin roared, instinctively reaching for his sword. "This is desecration of a jinchuriki! It is also an open provocation against the Five Kage system jointly established by the five great shinobi villages!"

"The system?" Xuan finally turned his gaze toward him, his lips curving into an utterly mocking smile. "Who established it? The Sage of Six Paths, who created the shinobi world? Or Hidden Leaf Village, cowering in the Fire Country and barely clinging to life on the legacy of the First Hokage?"

Before his words had even faded, an invisible and terrifying pressure enveloped the entire cave!

Bzzzz—

Ten iron needles, thinner than hairs, emerged from Xuan's palm and hovered in midair.

At the tip of each needle was a dark-red droplet radiating scorching heat and a corrosive aura. It was dissolving chakra, which he had just improved from the Lava Release Template by analyzing Four-Tails' chakra.

Baba Tesshin felt as if an invisible hand had gripped his heart. Even breathing became difficult.

He had no doubt that with a single thought from Xuan, those ten iron needles could effortlessly pierce straight through him.

Xuan no longer looked at him. He lightly waved his right hand.

Hiss! Hiss! Hiss!

The ten iron needles shot forward at a speed impossible to catch with the naked eye, piercing with absolute precision into seven major acupoints along Old Ape's spine.

No blood flowed out. Instead, streams of denser dark-red energy were forcibly extracted from Old Ape's body by the needles, then injected along invisible magnetic lines into a palm-sized sealed crystal vial Xuan had prepared beforehand.

The energy inside the vial churned and roared, as though it had sealed away a miniature sun.

At the same time, a line of icy text flashed across Xuan's retina.

"Successfully captured Four-Tails chakra fragments ×3. System analyzing... Template generating... [Lesser Thermal Radiation Template] generated."

The agonizing pain briefly restored consciousness to the dying Old Ape. He suddenly opened his clouded eyes, and a beastlike howl rose from his throat. "You... you didn't come to save me..."

His voice was hoarse and despairing, filled with the pain of betrayal.

Xuan bent down, his deep right eye staring directly into Old Ape's pupils. His low, magnetic voice was like a demon's whisper. "No one can save you. Death is your only destination. But you can choose to become something more important than a 'jinchuriki'—a sacrifice for a new era."

The instant he finished speaking, an even more complex rune slowly began turning in the depths of Xuan's pupil.

[Bone Mirror: Life Severance]!

In an instant, countless future visions of Old Ape's death flashed through Xuan's mind: cardiac arrest, cerebral hypoxia, total nervous-system collapse, his body bursting apart after the seal completely failed and tailed-beast chakra swelled within him... Every possibility transformed into data streams accurate to the millisecond.

Based on those "death simulations," Xuan swiftly worked backward to determine the optimal sequence for the procedure—a perfect path that would prolong Old Ape's vital signs as much as possible and ensure the transformation was successfully completed.

Like the greatest chess player, he saw every losing move on the board and thus found the one and only path to victory.

The last trace of hesitation in Saori's eyes, after she had silently watched from the side, finally died out.

She understood Xuan's plan. It was a grand blueprint that was mad, cold-blooded, yet incomparably precise.

She slowly rose to her feet and took a scalpel gleaming with an eerie blue light from her medical ninja tool pouch.

"If he is to survive long enough to complete his mission, all of his pain nerves must be severed first." She held the scalpel out before Xuan, her voice terrifyingly calm. "Otherwise, no living creature can withstand a transformation of this level."

That cut would not merely sever Old Ape's nerves. It would also sever, by her own hand, her connection to every belief she had held in the past.

From this moment onward, the Hidden Sand Village medical jonin who obeyed the village's orders and viewed healing the wounded and saving lives as her sacred duty was dead.

Xuan took the scalpel and gave her an approving glance.

His hand rose, and the blade fell.

A precise streak of cold light passed across Old Ape's neck, perfectly severing the nerve bundle without harming a single artery.

The agony instantly vanished. Old Ape's howling stopped abruptly, and his eyes turned vacant.

Immediately afterward, Xuan activated the [Basic Cell Regeneration Template]. A gentle life energy entered Old Ape's body, forcibly stabilizing his failing physiological functions.

The transformation had officially begun.

Xuan's hands became afterimages. Countless grains of iron sand glinting with metallic luster danced at his fingertips, becoming sharper than scalpels and finer than probes.

They pierced through skin, bypassed organs, and adhered precisely to every inch of Old Ape's skeleton, beginning the construction of an entirely new chakra circulation network based on iron sand.

This process was the ultimate application of human anatomy and chakra theory.

Baba Tesshin watched from the side with his scalp tingling. He had never imagined ninjutsu could be used on such a microscopic and precise level.

This was no longer ninjutsu. This was a method only gods could possess!

When the final iron-sand conduit connected to Old Ape's heart chamber and began pulsing in sync with his heart, a miracle occurred.

Old Ape's body began to glow faintly. Beneath his skin, crimson patterns lit up like a network of earth veins spreading beneath the land.

At his chest, a core compressed from high-density iron sand slowly pulsed with a steady rhythm, radiating a gentle yet vast crimson glow like an alternative heart.

The transformation was complete.

Xuan tucked the crystal vial containing the Four-Tails chakra fragments into his clothes, then turned toward Saori. His gaze was as calm as water. "Now, do you think he is a victim or a tool?"

Saori tightened her grip around the puppet threads hidden in her sleeve, her fingertips turning slightly white from the force.

She lifted her head to meet Xuan's gaze. Her voice was equally calm, but carried the resolve of a new birth. "Neither. He is a stepping stone to the new world."

At that moment, a faint but steady vibration came from the earth outside the cave.

It was Hidden Leaf Village's rescue team. They were rapidly approaching.

A nearly imperceptible curve formed at Xuan's lips. He did not even turn around. He merely raised a hand casually toward the canyon entrance and snapped his fingers.

"[Iron Sand Blast]."

Rumble—!!!

At the canyon entrance, an enormous quantity of pre-buried iron sand detonated at once, sweeping up tens of millions of tons of sand and rock and pouring down as if heaven and earth were collapsing. Amid deafening thunder, it completely sealed the only passage.

Silence returned to the cave. Only the iron-sand core in the chest of that transformed "man" on the stone platform continued to pulse slowly. With every beat, it radiated a crimson glow deeper than magma, foretelling the quiet awakening of a power capable of overturning the entire world.

The wind and sand gradually settled, burying every trace.

Xuan's gaze pierced through the cave walls and fell upon a more distant unknown.

The game had begun, and he had placed the first crucial piece.

Next, he only needed to wait for that piece to ferment and trigger a chain reaction across the entire board.