Abandoned Watchtower

The night was as thick as ink.

At the top of the third floor of the abandoned watchtower, wind poured through the broken stone windows, carrying the distinctive scent of rotting leaves and blood from Root's outer perimeter.

Lin Feng stared at the fragment in his palm.

His left Sharingan glimmered faintly in the darkness, its Three-Tomoe slowly turning. He gathered chakra at his fingertips and fed it into the dark-red sealing patterns on the fragment.

The patterns lit up.

Like dried blood being set aflame, strands of illusory chakra lines rose from the fragment's surface, weaving into a directional band of light in midair. One end connected to the fragment itself, while the other flickered like a serpent's tongue, pointing northwest of the watchtower.

Lin Feng muttered to himself, the faint glow of his Sharingan reflecting off his face.

"Found it. The signal source is on Root's third underground level, in the direction of Danzo's Laboratory."

The chakra lines began to contract, as though some force were dragging them through layer upon layer of sealing barriers. Lin Feng closed his right eye and pushed his left Sharingan's perception to its limit.

Through the first layer. The second. The third.

Root's outer sealing barrier became clear in his perception, its chakra-woven restrictions resembling layers upon layers of barbed wire. The tracking signal emitted by the fragment pierced through those restrictions and finally locked onto the coordinates of an underground space wrapped in multiple seals.

Danzo's Laboratory.

Just as Lin Feng was about to withdraw the tracking, an unusual chakra resonance came from the other end of the Contract Seal.

It bore the characteristics of a direct Uchiha bloodline.

It was exactly the same chakra nature he had sensed from Mikoto, but younger and sharper. Mixed into the chakra resonance were suppressed pain and an almost numb exhaustion.

Lin Feng's Sharingan widened abruptly.

"There's another chakra entanglement signal—it's a response from a direct bloodline."

He tried to trace it further and identify the owner of that chakra. The sealing patterns on the fragment suddenly blazed, and the chakra lines stretched deeper, piercing through the final layer of shielding around the laboratory—

A crashing sound.

Heavy and dull, the blunt thud of flesh and bone striking stone walls came from the watchtower's ground floor.

Lin Feng's fingers froze in midair.

The smell of blood.

Fresh, the intense rusty scent that came only with massive blood loss spread upward from the lower entrance and seeped into his nostrils.

Lin Feng cut off the tracking, and the chakra lines went dark instantly. He flipped over the edge and leaped down from the third floor. During the fall, his left Sharingan had already switched to enhanced vision. Everything on the watchtower's ground floor was clearly visible in the darkness.

Fresh blood was splattered across the stone walls.

At the entrance, someone lay collapsed amid a pile of rubble.

Uchiha Shisui.

He was covered in blood. The right shoulder of his Anbu vest had been completely torn apart, exposing a penetrating wound. Blood poured from it, soaking through the lower half of his shinobi pants. His chest rose and fell rapidly and irregularly; from his breathing alone, Lin Feng could tell that at least three ribs were broken.

Lin Feng rushed over and caught him.

"Don't talk yet."

His left Sharingan swiftly scanned Shisui's injuries. A penetrating wound in the right shoulder caused by a large kunai, with chakra burn marks along the edges. Three broken ribs—the seventh, eighth, and ninth ribs on the left side. Blood loss—his pupils were already slightly unfocused. Any later, and he would cross the threshold into unconsciousness.

Lin Feng tore open the clothing around Shisui's right shoulder, formed hand seals, and pressed a hemostatic seal onto the wound.

Shisui's fingers suddenly clamped around Lin Feng's wrist.

His grip was astonishingly strong, his nails nearly digging into Lin Feng's skin.

"Lin Feng... the Genocide Contingency Plan."

His voice was weak but urgent, every word carrying the wet sound of blood rising in his throat.

"Root has already issued the order. Three days from now. The people who ambushed me... their codename was 'Crow.'"

Lin Feng's movements paused for an instant.

"Crow?"

"Three members set the ambush... the leader was 'Crow.'" Shisui's fingers began to tremble. With his other hand, he pulled a scroll soaked in blood from his clothes. "This is... what I intercepted from a Root perimeter communication point."

Lin Feng took the scroll.

The paper had been stuck together by blood, and he carefully unfolded it. It used Root Anbu's specialized encryption format, but Shisui had clearly deciphered it already. Beneath the densely packed cipher text was a line of emergency operation orders.

Genocide Contingency Plan.

Execution time: May be initiated immediately after the Third Hokage's retirement. Currently set for the Hour of the Boar, three days from now.

Execution scope: The entire Uchiha clan, except—

Lin Feng's gaze stopped on that name.

Sasuke.

Executor codename: "Crow."

The approval seal was Danzo's personal insignia.

Lin Feng remained silent for a long time.

"The one being spared is Sasuke. And the executor—"

He paused.

"Is Itachi."

Shisui did not answer. His trembling fingers reached into his clothes again, and this time he took out a kunai.

The Crow Mark.

It was the sealed kunai he had given Lin Feng at Ichiraku Ramen. Lin Feng took it, formed hand seals, and undid the sealing formula at the kunai's end. A layer of chakra lock opened, revealing a piece of paper rolled into a tube inside the kunai.

Shisui tried to stop him, but his injuries made him half a beat too slow.

"...Read it. That's my final explanation to you."

There was a bitter smile in his voice.

Lin Feng unfolded the paper.

It was Shisui's own handwriting. Every character was written with remarkable steadiness, nothing like a final letter written before death.

The first line.

"Lin Feng, if you are reading this letter, it means I have failed."

The second line.

"I sealed Kotoamatsukami's spare eye inside this kunai. You have seen the method of use once in the Forbidden Technique Archive, so I won't repeat it."

The third line.

"If the genocide cannot be stopped, use it. The target can be Danzo, Clan Head Fugaku, or even the entire Konoha leadership. But don't use it on Itachi—that child already bears too much."

The fourth line.

"One final thing. I'm sorry for pushing this choice onto you. But you are the only one among us who still has room to choose."

Lin Feng finished reading.

His hand clenched around the letter, his knuckles turning white.

"You left Kotoamatsukami to me, then planned to use your death to stop the coup?"

His voice was low, every word seeming to squeeze through clenched teeth.

"Shisui, the way you and Itachi chose to do this is equally foolish."

Shisui gave a bitter smile.

Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth and dripped along his jaw onto the gravel-covered ground.

"Because neither of us had any other choice."

He paused, his breathing heavy and wet.

"But now you do—you still have three days, Lin Feng."

Lin Feng put the letter back into the kunai's seal and slipped it into his ninja tool pouch. He lowered his head to inspect Shisui's injuries. The hemostatic seal had taken effect, and the wound was no longer bleeding heavily. But the broken bones needed time to heal, and the blood loss needed time to recover.

Three days.

Shisui would need at least three days before he could act again.

Lin Feng leaned against the stone wall beside the campfire and laid the fragment, the Genocide Contingency Plan fragment, and the intelligence coordinates Itachi had given him in a row before him.

His Sharingan examined them for a moment.

The Contract Seal tracking result: Danzo's Laboratory was located on the third underground level, directly connected to the Contract Seal, while the direct-bloodline chakra resonance pointed to—

Someone connected to a technique within the laboratory.

The Genocide Contingency Plan fragment: Executor codename "Crow," execution time at the Hour of the Boar three days from now, scope covering the entire clan except Sasuke, approved by Danzo.

Itachi's intelligence: Root would act on the third day, the seal on District Seven's northern side, and the cooperation signal might be a trap.

Danzo's complete arrangement.

Lin Feng closed his eyes and cross-checked the information in his mind.

Danzo used Sasuke's safety to threaten Itachi into joining Root, while also appointing Itachi as the executor of the genocide—making the Uchiha clan's most exceptional genius slaughter his own people, then bear the name of "traitor" and become Konoha's public enemy, cutting off every path of retreat.

At the same time, Clan Head Fugaku had used the Uchiha radicals as bait to reach an agreement with Danzo, hoping to exchange it for the clan's safety—but the true nature of that Contract Seal was a two-way tool for Danzo to control Fugaku and threaten Itachi. Fugaku was a conspirator, but also a hostage held in check.

Meanwhile, the radicals within the Uchiha clan knew nothing of the Genocide Contingency Plan and were still preparing for the coup according to plan.

The day the Third Hokage retired would be the point when every trap detonated.

The radicals would launch the coup, Danzo would activate the Genocide Contingency Plan under the name of "suppressing the rebellion," and Itachi would be forced to carry it out himself.

The three forces would all move on the same day.

Lin Feng opened his eyes.

"Infiltrating Root and stopping the coup will happen on the same day, three days from now."

Shisui's voice came from beside the campfire, weak but clear.

"You have to choose one. If you go to Root, the clan radicals will act early that day and trigger a civil war. If you go stop the coup, Danzo's Genocide Contingency Plan will be carried out by 'Crow.'"

Lin Feng was silent for a long time.

He looked out at the night beyond the watchtower. Konoha's lights were sparse in the distance, while the area of the Uchiha Clan Grounds was completely dark.

Those clansmen who did not yet know their lives hung by a thread were still arguing endlessly in secret rooms over the coup. Itachi alone bore the order to exterminate the clan, while Shisui lay in a pool of blood after handing over his final trump card.

Everyone was forcing him to choose between two options.

Lin Feng withdrew his gaze.

"I don't need to choose."

He rose and walked to the watchtower window, then took a map of Konoha from his ninja tool pouch and spread it open.

"I can do both."

Shisui wanted to say something, but his injuries and blood loss finally overwhelmed his consciousness. His eyes slowly closed, and his breathing gradually steadied—he had entered a forced healing sleep.

Lin Feng did not look back.

He marked an infiltration route through Root's outer perimeter on the map, then began marking the radicals' gathering points within the Uchiha Clan Grounds. The two lines traced completely opposite directions across the Konoha map, yet both endpoints pointed to the same moment.

Three days from now, the Hour of the Boar.

The campfire crackled, its light illuminating Lin Feng's face.

He did not put down his pen.