The Cane Knocks at the Door

The instant the archive room's iron door was pushed open, the sound of the cane striking the floor stopped abruptly.

Lin Feng spun around.

Under the dim yellow light, Danzo's half-lidded eyes held no surprise, only scrutiny.

Less than five meters separated them.

Lin Feng tightened his grip on the file folder. The blacked-out passages still rested beneath his fingertips. The Sharingan slowly turned in his eyes, catching the rhythm of every one of his opponent's breaths.

Danzo did not attack immediately.

He merely stood there, cane touching the floor, his bandage-wrapped right arm hanging at his side.

"Your chakra fluctuations are unfamiliar." Danzo spoke, his voice as flat as if he were commenting on the weather. "Root has received no order permitting any field personnel to enter the archive room."

Lin Feng remained silent.

He flipped the kunai in his hand and gripped it tightly.

"Who sent you?"

Danzo took a step forward. His cane struck the ground, its dull knock echoing through the cramped archive room.

At that instant, Lin Feng's Sharingan caught even more—the depths of the corridor outside held more than a dozen chakra signatures rapidly closing in from the perimeter. This was not the fixed route of a patrol. It was a targeted encirclement.

Danzo was stalling for time.

"Shisui..."

Danzo suddenly spoke that name.

His half-lidded eyes lifted slightly, revealing those dark, deep-set eyes beneath.

"So that's it. Did you intend to take him away, or avenge him?"

Lin Feng's pupils contracted sharply.

"Shut up."

He cut him off in a low voice.

"You have no right to say that name."

Danzo showed not the slightest trace of anger. He even tilted his head a little, as though observing a trapped beast that still bared its fangs.

"Revenge is foolish," he said. "Tell me, is Shisui's eye with you?"

Lin Feng did not answer.

"If you hand it over, I can let you leave alive."

The moment those words fell, Lin Feng moved.

He hurled the file folder forward, straight at Danzo's face.

Danzo did not even blink.

The instant he raised a hand to block, three flashes of cold light shot out from behind the folder—three shuriken in a triangular formation, sealing every evasive route to either side.

Lin Feng himself lowered his center of gravity, gripping his kunai in a reverse hold as he lunged low and forward.

The first exchange.

Danzo formed a seal with one hand.

"Wind Release: Wind Cutter Blade."

A wind blade compressed to the extreme shot from his fingertips, precisely cutting off the trajectories of the two shuriken on the left. At the same time, a dark blade sprang from the base of his cane in his right hand. With a clang, it met Lin Feng's thrusting kunai head-on.

The shockwave overturned the low tables on both sides.

Documents scattered across the floor.

Lin Feng used the force to flip backward, landing on one knee and dispersing the impact.

But he did not stop.

Through the Sharingan's vision, the afterimages of Danzo's hand seals had already appeared in advance—Tiger, Rabbit, Snake—

Lin Feng shifted aside before him.

A wind blade skimmed past his ear, shearing off the corner of the bronze archive rack behind him. Before the piercing screech of tearing metal faded, Lin Feng had already spun and thrown two more kunai.

They flew straight for Danzo's eyes.

Danzo tilted his head aside.

His cane swept toward him.

Lin Feng bent backward to evade it. The hidden blade at the cane's tip grazed his jaw, leaving a bloody cut.

The second exchange ended.

Lin Feng's back struck the edge of the bronze archive rack.

Amid the high-speed rotation of his Sharingan, he caught a detail—all of Danzo's Wind Release trajectories just now, even the first Wind Cutter Blade that had severed the shuriken, had deliberately avoided the rack behind him.

It was no coincidence.

It was an instinctive protective reaction.

Whatever was displayed on that bronze archive rack mattered more than blocking the attack.

Lin Feng pulled out the last kunai tied with an Explosive Tag.

For the first time, Danzo's pupils changed.

Without hesitation, Lin Feng threw it directly at the archive rack.

"You—"

Danzo finally lost his composure. He formed seals with both hands, and a wall of wind instantly rose before the rack, intercepting the Explosive Tag kunai in midair.

The Explosive Tag detonated outside the wind wall.

Flames burst outward.

The indoor blast shattered the light tubes, sending shards of glass raining in every direction.

At that instant, Lin Feng completed the seals for the Body Flicker Technique.

The scene of Shisui teaching him at dusk surfaced in his mind—"Don't watch movements with your eyes. See through intent."

See through Danzo's intent at this moment.

Protect the archive rack.

So all of his attention would be focused on maintaining the wind wall, while any thought of pursuit would be judged a secondary threat.

Lin Feng vanished from where he stood.

He did not attack Danzo.

Instead, he rushed straight for the ventilation duct at the back of the room.

His elbow smashed through the iron grille, the sound of breaking metal swallowed by the lingering echoes of the explosion. Lin Feng crawled into the duct, while the fragments falling behind him sounded as dense as a torrential downpour.

Danzo stood where he was.

He did not form seals.

He did not pursue.

Between the flickering remnants of the broken lights, shifting brightness and darkness washed over his face.

He slowly raised his cane and spoke to the darkness behind him.

"Release the Curse-Mark Hound."

A low bark came from the depths of the darkness.

The sound of metal chains dragging spread from farther within.

"He took something he should not have taken."

Lin Feng crawled rapidly through the ventilation duct.

A stabbing pain came from his right forearm—the graze from that wind blade was still bleeding. His chakra consumption was greater than expected. After consecutive uses of the Body Flicker Technique and the constant operation of the Sharingan, nearly half the chakra in his body had been spent.

But he held something more important in his palm.

When he had smashed through the iron grille and entered the duct, his fingertips had touched something—a yellowed scrap of paper stuck in place.

He must have accidentally torn it from the file folder while intercepting it.

The paper had become brittle with age, and its ink was somewhat blurred, but several lines could still be made out:

"...Curse Seal activation experiment: Soul-Seizing Hound, Phase Three..."

"...the caster's blood must serve as the medium..."

"...tracking properties consist of chakra locking and..."

The writing after that was torn away.

Lin Feng tucked the sheet into his ninja tool pouch.

A low growl sounded behind him.

It was not human.

It was a heavier, more oppressive threat. The scraping of claws against the metal duct walls came closer from afar, steady as the programmed rhythm of a hunt.

Lin Feng crawled faster.

The smell of blood on his fingers mixed with the stale rust within the duct.

In the darkness, his Sharingan continued to turn.

The contents of that page replayed in his mind—"the caster's blood must serve as the medium."

The thing chasing him had been activated with someone's blood.

And in all of Root, the only person capable of using such a technique was the one standing deep inside the archive room, giving orders to the darkness.

Danzo would rather release such a thing to hunt him than leave the archive room himself.

What was hidden there

was more important than Kotoamatsukami.