On the seventeenth day of Konoha's post-disaster reconstruction, the casualty tally showed zero for the first time.
Yet the mood inside the Hokage's office building was worse than on the day of the collapse.
When Sakura slapped a stack of printouts onto the desk in front of Shikamaru, the Nara Clan's genius, for once, did not pinch the bridge of his nose and calculate their odds. Instead, he stared at the pages in silence for a full five minutes. They were unofficial medical reports arriving simultaneously from Kumogakure, Sunagakure, and Kirigakure-spontaneous cases of "chakra aversion syndrome" were emerging across the regions. No lesions, no toxins. Just more and more chunin whose hands instinctively trembled and whose hearts raced when they unconsciously tried to mold chakra. Even experienced Anbu had voluntarily released their hand seals midway through missions.
"It's not physical damage. It's psychological suggestion." Sakura pointed at the data curves. "Someone's brainwashing them, telling them that 'using chakra means feeding the monsters.' The spores spread last time rooted that suggestion in their amygdalae. The more they panic, the stronger it gets."
Shikamaru picked up the crumpled sheet at the very bottom-an underground tabloid circulating on the black market, with an outrageously inflammatory headline: "The truth behind Konoha's lockdown: the 'terminal Void disease' the Fifth Hokage concealed, and the deal with that returning rogue ninja."
The accompanying image was a blurry candid shot: Lin Ye stood in the Ark's boarding beam, half his face bathed in golden light, with a dark purple outline Photoshopped around him.
"Cognitive contamination." Shikamaru crumpled the newspaper into a ball. "No weapons. Just killing people's ability to trust."
He took out his communications terminal and called the frequency the Ark had left him, the one that had only ever rung once. The connection came through quickly.