Night of the Radicals

The stabbing pain of the Curse Seal spread from his right arm to his shoulder.

Lin Feng leaned against the wooden wall of the safehouse, cold sweat beading on his forehead. He could feel that cold, sinister chakra inching its way up through his meridians. His right shoulder joint had already grown noticeably stiff, and when he clenched his fist, it took half a second to respond.

Shisui had only been gone for a few minutes, and the lingering traces of his chakra had yet to fully dissipate from the room.

The coded message left behind by his Body Flicker Technique still echoed in Lin Feng's ears—"There are hemostatic drugs in the cabinet. Wait for me to bring Itachi back."

Gritting his teeth, Lin Feng braced himself against the floor with his left hand and forced himself to stand.

The movement tugged at the Curse Seal on his right shoulder, and searing pain stabbed from his shoulder blade into his chest like needles.

He grunted, drawing several ragged breaths as his gaze swept toward the room's only old wooden cabinet.

The cabinet door hung half-open. Inside were several bottles of basic medicine and bandages.

Lin Feng walked over and crouched down to search through them, his stiff right hand pushing aside the bottles and jars. The labels on the hemostatic drugs had yellowed. They looked like they had been stored there for over a month—wait.

His fingers stopped.

There was an extremely faint remnant of chakra behind the cabinet panel.

It was not something Shisui had left behind moments ago, but an older, more concealed sealing trace. With Lin Feng's current sensory ability, he could only catch that barely perceptible fluctuation from within ten centimeters.

He cautiously released a thread of chakra from his fingertips.

The air inside the cabinet warped for an instant.

The wooden panel silently slid to the right, revealing a hidden compartment the size of a palm.

Three items were neatly arranged inside: a roll of Curse-Sealing Bandages, two black antidote pills, and a miniature scroll no bigger than a fingernail.

The hemostatic drugs had merely been a cover.

These were what Shisui had truly wanted him to find.

Lin Feng fell silent for several seconds.

He picked up the roll of bandages and felt the sealing patterns woven into the fabric. These were Curse-Sealing Bandages specifically designed to counter Curse Seal backlash, a special product of the Medical Corps that would never circulate on the market.

When had Shisui prepared these?

Lin Feng unrolled the miniature scroll.

There were no words on it, only an extremely streamlined set of coded symbols. He had seen similar encryption methods during Intelligence Division training. Their decoding logic corresponded to the coordinate positioning and activation frequency of visual signals.

The code marked three locations.

The first was the eastern drainage outlet on the outskirts of Root, with an activation frequency of once every four hours.

The second was an abandoned watchtower north of Danzo's private testing ground, with an activation frequency of every day after sunset.

The third was an observation point for guard changes at the side entrance of the Hokage Building, with an activation frequency of twice daily.

Beside each set of coordinates was a tiny crow's claw mark.

Lin Feng stared at the three locations, his breathing gradually growing heavier.

This was not intelligence gathering improvised on a whim.

Those three points covered Root's routes in and out, Danzo's range of covert operations, and the security patterns of the Hokage system. Setting up those observation posts would have required at least a week of scouting and testing.

Before Danzo attacked him, Shisui had already built a completely independent Crow Intelligence Network without alerting anyone.

And he had never mentioned it to anyone.

Lin Feng clenched the scroll.

Suddenly, shouts rose and fell outside the window.

He immediately lowered his body and moved closer to the window, peering out through the gaps in the wooden boards.

In the direction of the Uchiha Clan Grounds, dozens of torches burned in the dead of night.

The firelight merged into a blazing mass, illuminating the crowd gathered in the central square of the clan grounds. There were at least thirty Uchiha clan members, most of them young and middle-aged men already wearing shinobi armor.

At the front, someone raised a kunai high, his voice cutting through the night.

"We cannot let Konoha keep watching us like prisoners!"

"Lord Fugaku! Danzo has already sent people to attack the outskirts of our clan grounds. Are we supposed to wait until they kill their way in before we fight back?"

Someone beside him immediately echoed the call.

"Gather tonight! At dawn, we'll stage a sit-in before the Hokage Building and show them how many Uchiha there are!"

Torchlight swayed in the wind as more figures emerged from every alley and joined the gathering.

Lin Feng's gaze passed over the restless crowd and settled on Uchiha Fugaku at its outer edge.

The Uchiha clan head stood in the shadows at the edge of the square, his arms folded as he watched the scene before him without expression.

Someone tried to pull him into the center of the crowd.

Fugaku raised a hand and stopped him.

He said nothing.

He took no stance.

Nor did he leave.

He simply stood there, like someone unable to intervene yet unable to turn away.

"Fugaku is standing at the edge of the crowd without saying a word..."

Lin Feng murmured softly, his eyes fixed on that silent figure.

"It isn't that he doesn't want to control them."

"He already can't."

More torches joined the scene outside, and the cries grew louder. Someone began shouting a clear deadline—"A decision must be made before dawn"—in a tone that no longer sounded like a request, but an ultimatum.

Lin Feng stepped back beside the hidden compartment and examined the three items Shisui had left behind once more.

Curse-Sealing Bandages.

Antidote pills.

Encoded intelligence.

His fingers brushed over the fine sealing patterns on the bandages, and suddenly he understood.

These were not spare supplies for "just in case."

The hemostatic drugs, antidote pills, and Curse-Sealing Bandages—every one of them was medical shinobi equipment specifically meant to deal with Curse Seal backlash. When Shisui prepared these things, he had already foreseen that Lin Feng would need to treat his injuries alone after being infected by the Curse Seal.

Before Danzo attacked him, he had already been preparing for the worst.

Yet he had not told anyone.

Not the Third Hokage, not Itachi, not even Lin Feng himself.

He had simply scouted locations in silence, built a network, stockpiled supplies, then continued looking gently at everyone with those eyes as he said things like, "I will use Kotoamatsukami to stop the coup."

Lin Feng set the scroll on his knee and bit open the seal on the Curse-Sealing Bandages.

"You were never some idealist, Shisui."

Using his teeth and left hand together, he began wrapping the bandages around his right shoulder. When the sealing patterns touched his flesh, they brought a burning pain—but the spread immediately slowed.

"You just never let anyone see your backup plans."

The bandages crossed his shoulder blade and held firm.

The stabbing pain became numbness, and the stiffness in his right arm eased somewhat.

Lin Feng tried clenching his fist. His fingers responded 0.3 seconds faster than before. His mobility had recovered to around sixty percent of normal. It was enough.

Outside, an even greater wave of voices joined the clamor.

The number of torches had risen beyond fifty, and their glow even lit the wall across from the safehouse. Lin Feng could see people in the crowd beginning to distribute Explosive Tags, their movements practiced and silent.

This was not a demonstration.

This was preparation for war.

The coup might erupt before dawn.

Lin Feng memorized the core activation frequency in the miniature scroll's code three times, then hid the scroll in the concealed pocket of his sleeve. With his left hand, he formed a simple seal and tried to trigger the Crow Intelligence Network's reception response using the smallest possible chakra fluctuation.

An almost imperceptible ripple passed through the air.

A black feather drifted soundlessly down from the direction of the roof.

The connection was established.

Shisui's intelligence network could now be accessed.

Lin Feng leaned in the shadow by the window, Curse-Sealing Bandages wrapped around his right shoulder, chakra hovering at the fingertips of his left hand, ready to receive the next wave of coded signals at any moment.

Outside, more torches continued to appear.

His breathing gradually steadied.

"First, use Shisui's network to see exactly how many people inside the clan grounds support making a move tonight."

Lin Feng's gaze moved between the firelight and the hidden compartment.

Shisui had gone to find Itachi.

And now, in his hands, Lin Feng held the trump card Shisui had never shown anyone.

When Shisui returned, Lin Feng needed to make that guy understand—

He did not have to bear the burden of preparing backup plans alone.