Infiltrating Root

Beneath Naka Shrine.

Lin Feng pressed his fingers against the last stone slab.

The sensory marker recorded in the Cipher Scroll flickered, and a muffled click of a chakra lock releasing came from between the slabs.

The passage opened.

Shisui stood behind him, the Sharingan in his left eye slowly turning as its ocular power sensed information in a certain direction through the earth.

"The clan meeting has begun."

Shisui kept his voice low.

"My clone has already taken a seat before Lord Fugaku. Danzo has arrived—he is wearing the formal robes of the Hokage aide and has brought two Root guards."

Lin Feng checked the sensory markers on the Cipher Scroll and confirmed that the entire infiltration route had not been tampered with.

"The archive room's defenses should now be at their lowest alert level."

Shisui nodded.

"The gap in the patrol rotation cycle only lasts forty minutes."

"After forty minutes, whether we succeed or not, we must withdraw."

Lin Feng put away the scroll and stepped into the secret passage first.

The inner walls were roughly cut stone. Every ten meters, route markers Shisui had left with crows three days earlier retained faint traces of ocular power, guiding them through the darkness like signposts.

The two moved silently through the narrow passage.

Three hundred meters later, a sealing barrier embedded in the rock wall appeared at the end of the passage.

The first outer entrance to the underground stronghold beneath the Root Archive Room.

Lin Feng stopped.

The entrance's sealing formula was inscribed across the rock wall, its patterns emitting an extremely faint blue glow in the darkness.

His gaze swept across the formula's core nodes and its outer containment rings.

It was not a standard anti-theft formula for an archive room.

A standard archive-room seal had only three anti-theft barriers, but this seal's core nodes extended into a fourth layer—a containment ring he had never seen before. Its patterns were not oriented outward for defense, but inward for confinement.

"Shisui."

Lin Feng's voice was so low it was almost breath.

"This seal's structure is wrong—it is not meant to prevent theft. It is more like it is restraining some kind of living thing."

Shisui stepped forward, focusing the Sharingan in his left eye on the sealing patterns.

His ocular power seeped through the surface of the formula and deeper inside.

His expression darkened a few seconds later.

"The density of the sensory traps exceeds the intelligence report—there are seven independent sensory barriers within the seal, overlapping across the entire outer area."

Lin Feng rapidly updated the intelligence in his mind.

"The Root Archive Room's standard defensive layout only has three layers."

"So this stronghold is not standard."

Shisui withdrew his ocular power and began remotely analyzing the seal's composition through crow surveillance points scattered around the stronghold's perimeter.

Fragments of chakra perception sent back by the crows assembled into a complete diagram of the formula in his Sharingan.

"It will take two minutes to break."

Shisui opened his eyes.

"But during that time, the seal will develop a sensory vacuum—the seven sensory barriers will fail at once, and Root patrol members will notice the anomaly during that gap."

Lin Feng had already calculated the engagement distance and the timing for eliminating them.

"How many targets will appear during the gap?"

"Three chakra signatures are approaching—around the right-hand corridor corner, thirty meters away. Their speed matches a standard patrol pace."

Lin Feng rolled his wrist.

The pale green glow of a Chakra Scalpel flashed between his fingers, then vanished.

"Start the clock."

Shisui looked at him.

There were no unnecessary reminders, no "be careful" or "do not push yourself."

The high-pressure three-day preparation period had built absolute trust between them in each other's combat abilities.

Shisui closed his eyes, focusing his mind on the seal formula's core structure.

The breach began.

Lin Feng turned and slipped into the shadows of the corridor on the right.

His footsteps made no sound.

His chakra was precisely suppressed to the smallest output at the acupuncture points in the soles of his feet. The instant his shoes touched the rock, they generated adhesion, completely eliminating the sound of friction.

Thirty meters away, ninja lamps at the corridor corner cast the shadows of three patrol guards.

The three advanced in a triangular formation, with two abreast in front and one bringing up the rear—a standard Root patrol unit.

Lin Feng pressed himself into the shadow of a recess in the corridor wall.

The instant the first guard passed the recess, Lin Feng struck from his blind spot—his left hand pressed down the back of the man's head while his right arm looped around his throat and exerted force in the opposite direction.

The third cervical vertebra gave a faint dislocating crack.

The guard's body had not even begun to fall.

Lin Feng had already released him, slipped out beneath the first guard's arm, and crashed into the second guard's turning reaction range.

The man had just heard the noise behind him and was turning around.

The last thing he saw was the arc of a kunai slicing open his throat.

No blood sprayed out.

The instant the kunai cut into the windpipe, Lin Feng used chakra to seal the blood vessels around the wound. Blood only ran down the kunai's edge, and Lin Feng caught it on the back of his hand before it hit the ground.

The third guard reacted the fastest.

His fingers were already on the scroll that activated the alarm formula.

Lin Feng raised his hand from two steps away.

The Chakra Scalpel carved a millimeter-precise arc through the air, its tip cutting into the center of the guard's right wrist—the instant the deep branch of the radial nerve was severed, his fingers lost the ability to flex.

The alarm scroll slipped from his gripless hand.

A second strike.

The recurrent laryngeal nerve and vocal cords were severed at the same time.

The third guard opened his mouth, but made no sound as his body pitched forward.

Lin Feng caught him and gently lowered him onto the ground.

The entire process took fourteen seconds.

The corridor fell silent once more.

Lin Feng bent down and picked up the alarm scroll.

When his gaze passed over the equipment pouch at the guard's waist, he stopped.

Attached to the outside of the third guard's pouch was a sensor absent from standard patrol equipment—a spherical device etched with a chakra leakage detection formula, its sensory core flashing faintly.

Lin Feng's pupils contracted.

It detected chakra leakage.

There was more than paperwork inside this stronghold.

He swiftly formed two conclusions in his mind: first, Root was monitoring some kind of unstable energy source; second, anything that made Danzo specifically equip leakage sensors was certainly not a collection of archive documents.

A crisp crack of a formula collapsing came from the direction of the rock wall.

Shisui had successfully breached the final sensory barrier of the seal.

Holding the sensor, Lin Feng quickly returned.

Shisui was half-kneeling before the seal, his left hand pressed against the formula's core. The breach had reached its final stage, but at the side of his neck—

The Curse Seal was glowing.

It was not the faint red gleam of its dormant state that Lin Feng had seen before.

It was an intense crimson pulse, beating like a heartbeat.

The markings along the edge of the Curse Seal were spreading outward, extending from his neck toward his collarbone.

Shisui's breathing was twice as heavy as usual.

"It is resonating."

Shisui opened his eyes. Blood vessels filled the Sharingan in his left eye.

"It is stronger than I expected—Danzo must be using reverse detection to track my current location."

Lin Feng glanced at the spread of the Curse Seal on Shisui's neck.

It was spreading thirty percent faster than estimated three days ago.

"Can he pinpoint you?"

"Not yet. He can only sense the general direction." Shisui's voice was taut. "But if the Curse Seal resonance continues to intensify, precise positioning is only a matter of time."

The final containment ring of the seal formula shattered in Shisui's hands.

A crack split across the rock wall, and deep blue chakra light surged from within.

Shisui rose to his feet, sweat already beading on his forehead.

"The first seal is open."

At that moment, Lin Feng felt a ripple.

It was not chakra.

It was something more primal, an oppressive sensation like a living creature's instinct, seeping out from deep within the crack in the seal.

Even the density of the air was changing.

Lin Feng looked at Shisui. The latter's Sharingan had automatically shifted into the initial stage of the Mangekyo.

"Do you feel it?" Lin Feng asked.

Shisui nodded, his expression more solemn than ever.

"Behind the seal is an abnormal chakra presence of extremely high density. I cannot identify its source—it is not human, not a Tailed Beast, and beyond anything I know."

Lin Feng raised the Chakra Leakage Sensor in his hand.

Its sensory core was flashing madly at a rate of three times per second.

"The patrol guards around this stronghold were equipped with these—Root is using them to monitor an unstable energy source inside."

Shisui stared at the sensor for two seconds.

Then he raised his head and looked at the crack leaking deep blue chakra light.

"Danzo is using seals to cover up some kind of chakra leakage."

There was a nearly imperceptible tremor in Shisui's voice.

"What is locked inside this stronghold—"

Lin Feng finished the rest for him.

"Is not documents."

Deep within the crack.

That highly compressed abnormal chakra fluctuation pulsed once, like a heart.