The Drainage Pipes at Midnight

The stench of decay from the Forest of Death flooded his nostrils.

Lin Feng crouched at the edge of the drainage pipe entrance in District Seven, his fingers rubbing the handle of Shisui's kunai. Midnight had arrived. Moonlight could not penetrate the canopy, and the pipe entrance lay hidden beneath a pile of fallen leaves like the throat of some enormous creature.

He confirmed there were no hidden sentries nearby.

Then he silently flipped inside.

The icy current instantly submerged his ankles. Darkness pressed in from every direction, swallowing every outline.

Lin Feng did not move immediately. Half-crouching within the pipe, he let his eyes adjust to the absolute darkness before slowly activating his Sharingan. Faint chakra perception transformed into visual signals, revealing the damp contours of the pipe walls. The sound of rushing water drowned out every subtle noise.

A faint red glow suddenly appeared in his palm.

Crow Mark.

It reflected a blurred tadpole-like pattern on the wet pipe wall, flickering with the changes in his palm temperature. Shisui's residual chakra was still circulating within the mark, even though its owner was currently unconscious in a corner of the watchtower.

Lin Feng tightened his grip on the kunai and began moving deeper into the pipe.

The water covered his ankles. Every step made a faint sound, but he controlled his rhythm, blending it into the natural fluctuations of water pressure in the drainage system. His Sharingan caught every slight distortion along the walls ahead, the rust marks around bends, and the threads traced in chakra vision by droplets falling from above.

Ten steps.

Twenty steps.

His palm suddenly turned scorching hot without warning.

Lin Feng stopped instantly, pressing his body against the pipe wall. He deactivated his Sharingan and reduced his breathing to the barest whisper. Looking down at his palm, he saw that the Crow Mark was burning—not with heat that scorched the skin, but with a deeper stimulus that acted directly upon chakra perception.

Then he "saw" it.

An invisible wave was sweeping along the pipe wall from left to right.

That was not chakra.

Lin Feng's pupils narrowed slightly. The instant the scanning wave passed through, he sensed it clearly—not through the Sharingan, but through some more primitive sensation transmitted by the Crow Mark. Like a hand passing through dark water, brushing every inch of pipe wall, every drop of water, every possible intruder.

The wave passed over his body.

The Crow Mark's heat peaked, then abruptly dropped back to normal.

The scan had passed.

Lin Feng slowly released the breath he had held and examined the pipe wall through his Sharingan. The wave was completely invisible. Even his current eyes could not detect any lingering chakra traces. He could only rely on the Crow Mark's secondary perception.

Something was wrong.

There was a problem.

He rapidly recalled the intelligence Itachi had provided—the precise quarter-hour shifts of Root patrols, the locations of hidden sentries, the chakra attributes of sensory ninja, the activation mechanisms of explosive traps—but Itachi had never mentioned this method.

When Lin Feng had looked over the map in the watchtower, the Crow Mark's burning sting had conveyed vague sensory information. The lingering will Shisui had left behind before losing consciousness told him that Root possessed surveillance methods that did not belong to chakra.

Lin Feng had thought it was a trap at the time.

Now he understood.

This was a barrier inscribed onto the pipe walls through sealing techniques.

Touching it would trigger it. There was no way around it.

He activated his Sharingan again and adjusted his chakra distribution, focusing his ocular power on the subtle patterns along the walls. On the damp metal surface, densely packed sealing technique nodes could faintly be seen, nearly fused into one. To ordinary ninja, they were merely rust marks, but under the Sharingan's gaze, those nodes formed a complete Sensing Barrier.

Root was not monitoring the flow of chakra.

They were monitoring all physical contact.

Lin Feng suppressed the chill in his heart and began recalculating his route.

The fork was ten meters ahead.

The left passage led deeper into Root's outer perimeter, while the right one curved toward a parallel drainage system. Itachi's map marked the left as the main route, but the vibration frequency in the left pipe was wrong—someone was there.

Faint but regular vibrations.

Footsteps.

Lin Feng pressed close to the wall. The Sensing Barrier was sweeping back, and in fifteen seconds it would cover the straight section where he stood. The footsteps from the left passage almost overlapped with the barrier's scanning cycle—the approaching person knew the barrier's pattern and moved during its gaps.

A Root hidden-sentry sensory ninja.

The calculation surfaced in his mind: if he took the right route, it would take at least thirty seconds to reach the first safe node. But there were only fifteen seconds left before the barrier's next full sweep. Not enough. Moreover, the edge of the map for the right-side pipe bore a question mark left by Itachi. It was an area even he could not confirm.

The possibility of unknown mechanisms was more dangerous than a known enemy.

Lin Feng deactivated his Sharingan and relied only on the Crow Mark's perception.

The footsteps drew closer.

Twelve seconds.

The Sensing Barrier began sweeping back toward its original position after its previous forward scan. The wave would start from the pipe wall ten meters behind him, pass over the fork where he stood, then spread into the left passage and overlap head-on with the approaching sensory ninja.

Ten seconds.

Lin Feng reached into Shisui's ninja tool pouch.

Explosive tags could not be used. Kunai could not harm the barrier. Smoke bombs would only expose his position in this enclosed pipe.

His fingertips touched a paper talisman.

Nine seconds.

He pulled it out. Unlike the rough paper of ordinary explosive tags, this talisman was thin and flexible. Its ink-black symbols revealed a complex layered structure beneath the Crow Mark's faint glow. It was not an offensive sealing technique.

Technique-Sealing Talisman.

Shisui's indistinct voice suddenly surfaced in his mind—"Do not believe that everyone can see the light."

You foresaw even this step?

Lin Feng clenched the talisman, a tremor of gratitude passing through his heart. It was not gratitude for the tool he needed now, but an indescribable sense of certainty toward the man who had still insisted on training him before falling unconscious. Shisui had not merely given him missions and trials. Shisui had given him complete preparation.

Before losing consciousness, he had considered every variable he could think of.

Seven seconds.

Lin Feng slapped the Technique-Sealing Talisman onto the pipe wall at the fork.

The instant the talisman touched the wall, its ink-black symbols erupted with faint light. The three-dimensional structure of the formula unfolded on its own, like a key inserted into the node grid of the Sensing Barrier. Sealing technique against sealing technique. The ink-black patterns and the barrier's patterns gave off a shrill grinding sound across the pipe wall as two differently structured formulas collided by force.

The sealing technique nodes in the pipe wall began to destabilize.

The barrier rippled within the talisman's coverage.

A gap tore open.

Unstable. Barely wide enough for one person to pass. Its edges were visibly healing.

The countdown had begun.

Five seconds.

Lin Feng squeezed into the gap without hesitation.

Passing through the barrier layer felt like forcing his way through a scorching spiderweb. The ink-black patterns left on the pipe wall by the talisman rapidly collapsed behind him, and the gap's edges began to close.

Three seconds.

He slipped sideways through the final barrier layer, his shoulder scraping against rough gravel embedded in the pipe wall. Before him lay a narrower terminal pipe, without the main passage's flow of water, containing only damp air that had settled for years.

Lin Feng forcibly twisted his body, and the last inch of him barely passed through the closing gap.

The gap silently sealed behind him.

The ink-black patterns of the Technique-Sealing Talisman burned away completely from the pipe wall, leaving not even ash behind.

Lin Feng half-crouched inside the pipe and adjusted his breathing.

His Sharingan activated once more. The new pipe environment came into sharper focus—this was inside the Sensing Barrier. There were no more invisible scanning waves, but the pipe's cross-section was only half that of the main passage, and the cramped space made his shoulders nearly brush both sides.

The hidden-sentry sensory ninja's voice came through the pipe wall.

"Hmm?"

Footsteps stopped at the fork.

Lin Feng held his breath, pressing himself against the connection between the pipe wall and another passage.

"That ripple just now... wasn't the water flow."

The voice was very close. Less than five meters away, separated only by the pipe wall.

"But there was no chakra fluctuation."

Silence.

Lin Feng could imagine the other man's expression. The hidden-sentry sensory ninja narrowed his eyes, sensory organs operating at full capacity as he searched the barrier's data flow for anomalous signals.

That data flow would only show the remnants of a burst of scattered chakra.

The residue released when the Technique-Sealing Talisman burned away.

"An illusion?"

The footsteps did not leave immediately. The hidden sentry stood at the fork for a moment, then Lin Feng heard him tap the pipe wall with his fingers.

A specific rhythm.

The Sensing Barrier's sweep frequency changed accordingly. Its coverage cycle, originally once every fifteen seconds, compressed to ten. The increased scanning density caused the sealing technique nodes on the pipe wall to emit a harsher glow, proof that the barrier was operating at full power.

Lin Feng pressed on his palm. The Crow Mark's burning sensation rose another degree before settling down again.

It was warning him.

Though the hidden sentry had not discovered him, he had noticed the anomaly. The increased barrier sweep frequency meant every subsequent step would have to fit within a shorter window.

The words he had spoken before the gap closed echoed in his heart—"Three seconds left... Let me make it!"

He had made it.

But he had also alerted the defenders.

The footsteps finally receded. The sensory ninja did not sound the alarm, merely recorded an abnormal disturbance in the water flow. That record would enter Root's intelligence system and raise the sensory threshold of every hidden sentry tonight by another level.

Lin Feng slowly rose to his feet and began recalibrating his direction within the narrow pipe.

Small engraved markings covered the pipe wall above him. They were not map markers, but identification numbers left by Root's maintenance workers. Comparing them against the intelligence Itachi had provided, he had now passed through the outer line of defense and entered Root's inner perimeter.

The first line of defense had been breached.

But the price was the hidden sentries raising their alert level. The scanning density of every subsequent Sensing Barrier would be compressed to intervals of less than ten seconds. And the faint scent of scorched formula left after the gap closed reminded him that Shisui had prepared only one sealing talisman.

Lin Feng tightened his grip on Shisui's kunai.

The faint glow of the Crow Mark in his palm cast a blurred reflection along the narrow pipe wall.

Shisui-san.

Did you truly foresee everything?

Or did you only give me the possibility of going as far as I could?

He suppressed the urge to ask and continued deeper into the pipe. His Sharingan caught the formula nodes of each new barrier, calculating the start of the next ten-second window.

The sound of flowing water faded behind him.

Ahead lay only deeper darkness.