Neji clung tightly to the cold, damp ceiling like a gecko. The power of the Shadow Release Talisman perfectly merged him with the stone wall's shadow. Every breath was compressed to the limit, sustained only by pure chakra circulating within his body.
His eyes were like the most precise radar, piercing through the churning steam and chaotic light below, coldly recording every detail of Root's crimes as it destroyed the evidence.
The two Root shinobi worked like tireless cleaners. One of them roughly opened the drain valve of a cultivation tank. Amid a piercing hiss and a gush of murky fluid, he grabbed the remains of an experimental subject with mutated muscles and twisted limbs in one hand—its body had not fully carbonized in the flames, leaving it in a horrifying state of charred black intertwined with dark red—and dragged it out with force.
The corpse's joints cracked with a teeth-grating sound as it was mercilessly dragged toward a massive pool in the corner of the room, forged from some kind of corrosion-resistant metal.
The pool was filled with viscous dark-green liquid that bubbled with fine foam. The intense, pungent stench of corrosive chemicals came from it. Expressionless, the Root shinobi tossed the remains into the pool as if throwing away trash.
Sizzle—!
A violent chemical reaction erupted in an instant! The twisted remains, upon touching the green liquid, softened and dissolved like a wax figure dropped into concentrated acid! Thick yellow-green smoke rose from the charred skin and muscle tissue as they visibly melted away, stripping off to reveal bones beneath that were dissolving just as quickly.
The bones gave a mournful sizzle in the liquid, rapidly blackening and becoming brittle before finally turning into a pool of murky, foul-smelling sediment. A half-burned face, still recognizable for its expression