Who Is Signing Orders for the Dead?

The shriek of alarms tore through the tranquility of the Hidden Leaf Village.

Countless figures darted through the forest like phantoms, murderous intent and tension weaving into an invisible net that tightened toward the Naka River.

Yet at the center of that inescapable net, the tightly sealed shrine ruins had fallen into an eerie silence.

Pale blue mist, like a sigh seeping up from deep underground, silently shrouded the broken walls and rubble.

Beneath layers upon layers of defensive barriers laid down by the Allied Forces' elite, this should have been an absolute forbidden zone where not even a fly could enter.

But in the gap of less than a second when two guard squads crossed paths during their shift change, the ground before the ruined Uchiha Clan statue at the shrine's center rippled faintly like water. A figure slowly rose from the earth and stone, as if he had always been a part of the land itself.

Xuan's form fully solidified as the wooden camouflage covering his body peeled away layer by layer, crumbling into powder and vanishing into the mist.

Two black tomoe slowly revolved within his crimson eyes as he coldly watched the weathered statue before him, as though staring into the eyes of an ancient existence.

He could clearly sense that the chakra fluctuations outside had reached a boiling point. Countless sensory ninjas were searching for him like rabid dogs.

Yet this ruin, shielded by both an ancient barrier and the mist, was the eye of the storm—the only safe haven.

The only place where I can safely merge Tailed Beast Transformation: Basic Tolerance, Xuan silently thought.

Naka-gawa Mamoru's whispers, which seemed to come from another time and space, had once mentioned the secret of the "forbidden seed."

The Progenitor bloodline within him resonated most intensely here with the mysterious power known as the Myriad Phenomena Devouring System.

That resonance might be the key to unlocking the deepest secrets of the Uchiha Clan.

Without the slightest hesitation, Xuan sat cross-legged before the statue. His consciousness sank into the system interface, and he selected "Begin Fusion."

In an instant, dense black mist, dark as ink, burst from his body and tightly enveloped him.

Within the mist, the chakra in his body seemed to have been thrown into burning coals. It instantly boiled and roared!

Veins bulged beneath his skin as dark-red patterns rapidly spread across his body. They were ominous markings filled with an aura of destruction, identical to the legendary form of a Tailed Beast cloak.

Agonizing pain crashed through his nerves like a tide. Every inch of flesh and every cell was torn apart and reforged beneath that violent power.

[System Notification: Fusion in progress... Severe bloodline rejection detected. Fusion progress obstructed.

Additional high-purity energy must be injected as a buffer. Otherwise, the host's body will collapse.]

The cold system prompt rang in his mind, but Xuan's expression did not change in the slightest. He seemed to have anticipated this already.

Forming a hand seal with one hand, he pulled a palm-sized sealing scroll from his robes and slammed it onto the ground before him.

"Release!"

The spell markings lit up, and a grayish-white energy mass, twisted and struggling, was forcibly drawn out of the scroll.

They were the spoils he had seized from the Kento Squad earlier—the soul fragments of several Hidden Mist Village ninjas reanimated through Impure World Reincarnation.

Those souls had long been contaminated by the forbidden technique, filled with resentment and unwillingness. They were excellent fuel for energy.

"Trash should at least have some use."

Xuan's silent, piercing scream echoed on the spiritual plane. The instant the souls burned, a torrent of pure and immense energy flooded into Xuan's body.

The violent feeling of bloodline rejection was abruptly weakened, as though a basin of cold water had been poured over it.

On the system interface, the fusion progress bar that had been stuck began steadily rising once more.

Seventy percent... eighty percent... ninety percent...

Just as the fusion was about to reach its end, a sudden change occurred!

Within the hollow eye sockets of the Uchiha Clan statue before him, that faint blue glow lit up again.

Naka-gawa Mamoru's ancient, fragmented voice seemed to cross the ages and resound directly from the depths of his soul:

"...Devourer... not the hope of our clan... but its end as well... Only by drinking the blood of your kin dry... may you see the Gate of Reincarnation... Listen, outsider... you... have not returned... you are... reborn..."

Xuan's pupils suddenly contracted!

Reborn?

Could this system be more than a mere cheat? Could it be the ultimate weapon created by some Uchiha Clan ancestor to face an apocalyptic war capable of destroying everything?

What it had chosen was not a clansman returning home, but an entirely new "vessel" capable of bearing everything?

Countless thoughts flashed through his mind in an instant, and he hesitated no longer.

The progress bar slowed again at ninety-five percent. Clearly, those few soul fragments alone were not enough to complete this metamorphosis.

"Then..." Xuan's gaze became even more resolute. "I'll devour the obsession along with them!"

With another thought, he cast into the boiling furnace the memory fragments he had devoured yesterday from that Hidden Mist Village jonin—the intense emotional obsessions concerning comrades, the village, and missions.

Using the purest "emotion" as the catalyst, he accelerated this forbidden evolution!

Boom—!

A deafening blast, like the birth of the universe, erupted inside him. An unprecedented torrent of chakra broke through the final bottleneck!

Xuan abruptly threw back his head and let out a silent roar. His crimson Sharingan underwent a heaven-shaking transformation.

The original two tomoe spun at high speed, so fast that they became afterimages. Then, a third tomoe violently took shape!

But that was not the end. The boundaries between the black tomoe and his pupils began to blur, expand, and evolve into layers of incomparably complex black gear-like patterns. The Three-Tomoe Sharingan had formed!

More than that, deep within his left eye, a faint phantom of a ripple pattern flashed by, as though it might dissipate at any moment.

Though it had not fully manifested, the oppressive aura it released in that instant—like a creator deity looking down upon all living things—caused the pale blue mist around him to freeze!

[System Notification: Bloodline Evolution unlocked. New path acquired: [Bloodline Evolution]. Energy points may be consumed to force-mature ocular techniques, bypassing restrictions such as emotional stimulation and forcibly awakening the Mangekyō Sharingan.]

Xuan slowly rose to his feet. The boiling chakra around him spread outward like a tide before being perfectly drawn back into his body.

The shattered stones beneath his feet defied gravity, floating into the air and slowly circling around him.

He had never felt so powerful.

He did not linger here.

The search net outside was constantly tightening. Every additional second meant greater danger.

Before leaving, he walked to the statue, gently placed a blank scroll in its broken palm, and infused it with a wisp of black mist bearing his spiritual mark.

The scroll would soon be discovered by the searching ninjas.

And the moment someone attempted to use chakra to decipher its contents, that wisp of black mist would silently seep backward into their nervous system, becoming his "eyes and ears" planted within the Hidden Leaf Village without their knowledge.

After finishing everything, he deliberately left a blurry but traceable footprint in the mud at the edge of the ruins. It pointed straight toward the northern mountains, perfectly fabricating the illusion that the Earth Eater had already fled the area.

His true escape route, however, was to turn and leap into the icy waters of the Naka River, then silently return to the edge of the front-line battlefield through its complex underground waterways.

Three days later, at a Hidden Leaf Village logistics camp.

Oda Kaori was sorting through a batch of urgently requisitioned medical supplies when she suddenly discovered an unsigned letter in a hidden compartment of one crate.

There was no letter inside the envelope, only a forehead protector fragment scorched black by fire and a line of tiny words written in blood: "Raiga did not die in the flames."

She held the fragment and stared at those words for a long time without moving.

In the end, she calmly hid both the letter and fragment at the very bottom of her medicine case.

That evening, she submitted a routine report to her immediate superior concerning "a spreading trend of psychological panic in the rear camps."

At the end of the report, she added in an offhand tone, "...Additionally, some wounded soldiers responsible for outer perimeter watch claim that they often hear strange voices coming from underground at night. They suspect it may be war trauma. Sir, perhaps we should send physicians from the psychological treatment unit to take a look."

A thousand miles away, at the edge of the Fourth Shinobi World War's main battlefield, Xuan stood like a ghost atop a cliff.

He gazed at the blood-red moon in the sky, warped and twisted by the branches of the Divine Tree. He could feel the terrifying chakra fluctuations across the land, powerful enough to make even Kage-level experts tremble.

He slowly raised a hand. His Three-Tomoe Sharingan reflected that apocalyptic scene as a cold curve formed at the corner of his lips. He murmured, "Madara, your script... is time to rewrite it."

As his voice fell, tiny cracks began to appear in the ground beneath his feet. Whether from the distant battlefield's tremors or the aura he could no longer restrain, they silently spread toward the blood-red horizon.