Seven days passed in the blink of an eye.
During this period, Hino worked day and night to get used to the new prosthetic body, studying every movement and function repeatedly until he could use it with ease.
On the eve of his departure, he stood in his small home, looking at his sleeping wife and children and his elderly mother, his eyes filled with longing and determination.
His fate was uncertain, but for the sake of his family's well-being, he had no way out and no other choice.
The day of departure.
Uchiha Inabi found Hino with a cold expression and handed him a small device.
"This is a signal jammer. It can help you evade some surveillance in a pinch, but don't expect it to work indefinitely."
"Once you enter the southern mining area, everything will depend on you."
"Remember, you bear not only your own destiny, but also the hopes of the entire village."
Hino gripped the device tightly and nodded heavily.
Inabi's inside man was an old miner Maku, who had worked in the southern mining area for many years and knew every corner of the place like the back of his hand.
Late at night, Maku led Hino to an abandoned mine pit on the edge of the mining area.
Weeds grew rampant around the mine, and dilapidated mine carts and rusty tools were scattered all over the ground.
Maku cautiously surveyed his surroundings, and after confirming that no one was around, he moved aside a pile of seemingly ordinary stones, revealing a hidden cave entrance.
"This escape tunnel was dug a year ago, but it was abandoned later, and not many people know about it."
"Keep following this passage until you reach a ventilation shaft. Go through it to enter the mining area. Patrol teams pass by every so often, so be very careful."
Hino took a deep breath and crawled into the hole.
The passageway was narrow and damp, with water droplets constantly falling from the walls, making a crisp sound in the silent space.
After an unknown amount of time, he saw the ventilation shaft at the end of the passage.
Hino peered out through the gap in the ventilation duct. Outside was a dimly lit corridor, with patrol teams occasionally passing by.
After waiting for the patrol to leave, he gently pushed open the ventilation shaft and jumped down.
The moment he landed, he quickly hid behind a box to the side, his heart pounding in his chest.
Once the patrol's footsteps had completely disappeared, Hino cautiously peeked out and, following the map Inabi had given him, headed deeper into the mining area.
Along the way, he used the advanced functions of his new prosthetic body to evade one surveillance device after another.
The new artificial eye can always accurately detect the range and blind spots of the surveillance, allowing him to move through the mining area like a ghost.
In a corner of the mining area, several miners were being mercilessly beaten and verbally abused by the overseer.
The foreman's face was contorted with rage, his eyes flashing with ferocity and disdain. He lashed out with his whip, each strike landing on the miners with a dull thud.
The miners looked exhausted, their eyes filled with fear and helplessness. Their prosthetic bodies were worn out, some even bleeding, and the bruises and wounds at the joints with the panels were shocking.
Hino seeing this, Hino's anger flared up instantly.
Thinking of the hardships I endured in the mining area, the sight of my family suffering from hunger, and then looking at these fellow countrymen who were also suffering, a sense of mission welled up in my heart.
He quietly took out his live streaming device and, with slightly trembling fingers, pressed the live streaming button.
In an instant, every corner of Sunagakure...
The Spirit Puppet in a villager's house, which had no connection to the Council of Elders, suddenly lit up and automatically connected to a prosthetic eye, switching to Hino's live stream.
In an instant, the once quiet village erupted in excitement.
"Hello everyone, I'm Hino. I'm currently in the Southern Mining Area, and I'll show you the real situation here under the Council of Elders's rule!"
The live stream clearly showed the foreman's ferocious face and the miners' painful expressions; every beating and scolding seemed to strike the hearts of the villagers watching the live stream.
At the headquarters of the Reform Society, the Information Department was bustling with activity.
The staff kept their eyes glued to the screen, typing furiously on their keyboards to ensure the live stream signal was transmitted stably to every villager unrelated to the Council of Elders, while also preventing the signal from being intercepted by the Council of Elders.
Northern mining area.
Several people from the Hino watched the live stream with surprised expressions.
What kind of place is the Southern Mining Area? How dare Hino sneak in and even broadcast it live? He's got some nerve.
As the live stream continued, we thought they were already in a terrible situation.
Unexpectedly, the situation was even worse in the southern mining area; at least the Reform Society didn't resort to beatings and scoldings at the drop of a hat.
"This... this is absolutely inhuman!"
"It's fake!"
" Hino is risking his life to reveal the truth!"
As more and more people focused their attention on the live stream, anger began to spread among them.
In the village square, the crowd grew larger and larger, and angry discussions rose and fell, as if trying to break through the oppressive night sky.
"How could the Council of Elders so cruel? These miners are our brothers and sisters!"
"We can't let this go; we have to find a way to make them pay!"
"Is there no justice in this world? Does the Council of Elders really not treat us ordinary people like human beings?!"
Southern mining area.
Just to be on the safe side, Hino hid and then released a fly puppet to continue the live stream through a shared perspective.
The fly puppet flapped its tiny wings and flew away silently.
Through his Hino nervously and intently observed his surroundings.
The camera first pans across a dimly lit corridor, where the lights on the walls flicker and patrol teams occasionally pass by.
The fly puppet continued flying and arrived at a larger work area.
It was already late at night, but the miners here were still mechanically repeating their work under the dim lights, while the overseers watched them intently.
Hino saw a miner being kicked to the ground by the overseer and verbally abused for being a little slow.
Hino's anger reignited, and he spoke in a low voice to the live streaming device, using the rhetoric of the Inabi Cult.
"Look everyone, this is the norm under the rule of the Council of Elders. Our compatriots have no dignity here, only endless oppression."
"What did they take us for? They took us for slaves, whom they could use and beat at will!"
"What do we get in return for all our hard work every day? An empty stomach, worn-out prosthetics, and the tears and worries of our families!"
"And what about the Council of Elders?"
"They live in luxurious mansions, eat delicacies, and enjoy the wealth we earned with our blood and sweat!"
The noisy atmosphere in the tavern in Sunagakure was completely shattered by Hino's live stream.
The patrons watching the live stream were all filled with righteous indignation.
The fly puppet continued flying through the mining area and arrived at a warehouse where supplies were stored.
The warehouse doors were wide open, and the warehouse was filled with all sorts of boxes.
Hino controlled the fly puppet to fly closer and inspect it, and found that the box was full of valuable supplies, including high-level ninja tools, a large amount of Chakra Crystal, and some rare medicinal herbs.
"Everyone, take another look here!"
"These things, which should have been used to enhance our village's strength and improve our lives, have been hoarded here by the Council of Elders."
"They'd rather let these resources rot in the warehouse than use them to help us villagers struggling in hardship!"
"We toiled away in the mines, risking our lives to extract resources, and it all ended up in their pockets!"
"Use the fruits of our labor to curry favor with other forces and satisfy their own ambitions!"
Are you willing to accept this?
The fly puppet burrowed into the depths of the mine through the ventilation ducts, and the stench of decay gradually intensified.
Not far away, a small mountain of corpses lay piled up, half of their bodies still attached to broken prosthetics, maggots swarming over their festering wounds.
Hino bit his lip so hard he couldn't make a sound, his nails digging deep into his palms.
"These are people who didn't make it out of the mine alive. The Council of Elders say they died 'accidentally,' but look at these horrific wounds!"
"Was it really an accident?"
The live stream footage was transmitted back to Sunagakure, where an old woman who was wiping Spirit Puppet suddenly knocked over her oil lamp.
A loud crash of metal hitting the ground came from the blacksmith's shop next door. The young blacksmith stared at the live stream, his hand gripping the hammer trembling uncontrollably.
The fly puppet continued to fly close to the ground, focusing on several still-warm corpses.
Hino noticed that one of them was clutching half a blackened piece of dough in his clenched fist.
"Look, everyone, this is the miners' rations. We risk our lives to dig out these precious ores, only to receive something even animals wouldn't eat in return."
"And at the Council of Elders's banquet, the value of a single dish could equal ten years' worth of our wages!"
At that moment, in the center of the village, the gathered crowd suddenly burst into cries.
The old woman, who had lost her son, collapsed to the ground, her face streaked with tears.
"Give me back my child's life!"
The young people held up torches, the flames flickering in the night wind like sparks about to ignite a prairie fire.
The fly puppet struggled to flap its wings in the putrid air, and through the shared perspective, Hino saw a building made of black stone in the distance.
Several ninjas wearing the Council of Elders patrolled the area.
Every so often, a blood-soaked, mangled corpse would be roughly dragged out and carelessly thrown into the pile of bodies.
It seems this is the place Master Inabi was talking about!
Before entering this place, Master Inabi said that other places could be live-streamed appropriately, but this place had to be live-streamed in its entirety.
The puppet flew swiftly close to the ground, then disappeared into a pile of corpses, waiting for its chance.
As several more ninjas threw out a few more corpses, the fly puppet, clinging closely to the ninja's tool bag, silently slipped into the eerie black stone building.
Hino's breathing almost stopped; the image transmitted through his prosthetic eye made his blood freeze instantly.
The building's interior turned out to be a huge laboratory!
On the cold metal platform, dozens of miners were chained together, their broken prosthetic bodies roughly dismantled, exposing bloody nerve connections.
The ninjas in white robes were injecting some kind of writhing black substance into their spines.
"Subject No. 47, nerve erosion progress 32%." A cold voice recorded, "Continue to increase Chakra output."
"Ah!!!"
The miner on the experimental table let out inhuman howls, and spiderweb-like black patterns appeared under the panel, his eyes completely eroded by black.
With a 'poof' sound, his chest cavity suddenly exploded, and dozens of black tentacles with barbs burst out of his body!
"Another failure." The white-robed ninja clicked his tongue. "Throw the remains to 'that'."
Through the shared vision of the fly puppets, Hino's stomach churned violently. Now he finally understood where the strange wounds on those corpses came from.
As the ninja dragged the wreckage, the fly puppet took the opportunity to fly deeper into the laboratory.
After passing through three encrypted gates, we stopped in the shadows of the ceiling.
Below was a circular pit over twenty meters in diameter, at the bottom of which lurked an indescribable monster.
It was a colossal creature composed of prosthetics and flesh, its surface writhing with the same black tentacles we had just seen. Even more horrifying was that a human face was embedded in the core of the monster.
She was very familiar to him; she was someone he had longed for day and night.
This is my younger brother!
A suppressed whimper escaped Hino's throat, his nails digging deeply into his palms.
The distorted face at the core of the monster was none other than the younger brother who had suddenly 'disappeared' six months ago.
His pupils had turned into empty black vortexes, and the panel and metal prosthetic limbs were completely integrated, slowly rising and falling with the monster's breathing rhythm.
Is this why he was chosen to Reform Society?
Her younger brother was a ninja who went out on an investigation mission to support the family, but he never returned.
No one expected that he would appear in this place.
Could that mission be related to the Council of Elders?
But her younger brother isn't anything special, so why is he being targeted by the Council of Elders?
"Everyone, look carefully!"
Hino suddenly roared at the live streaming device, his voice hoarse with rage, " The Council of Elders, in their pursuit of forbidden power, have turned living people into... into this kind of thing!"
"Do you want this kind of life?"
Hino's suppressed sobs, carried by the live broadcast signal, pierced the hearts of every viewer like sharp thorns.
The noisy crowd in the square suddenly fell silent.
An old woman trembled as she covered her mouth, and cloudy tears slid down her wrinkled cheeks.
The heart-wrenching pain in her voice was just like when she lost her son.
In the northern mining area, several miners stood frozen in place, their tools clattering to the ground.
At this moment, the fly puppet's perspective suddenly began to shake.
The monster seemed to sense something, and a black tentacle shot suddenly toward the ceiling.
Hino hurriedly manipulated the puppet to dodge, its tentacles grazing the puppet's edge and leaving a scorching mark on the ceiling.
"... Some bugs have sneaked in!"
The white-robed ninjas in the laboratory also realized what was happening and drew their weapons, beginning to search for the uninvited guest.
In an instant, the red alarm lights throughout the entire laboratory began flashing wildly!
"Hurry!" Inabi's message suddenly came through to Hino's earpiece. "The final plan can begin. Remember what I told you!"
Hino's heart nearly burst from his chest. "Do you see this? This is the future the Council of Elders planned for us!"
He roared at the live streaming device, "Our loved ones have been turned into monsters, our blood and sweat have fueled their greed, my fellow villagers of Sunagakure, will you continue to endure this?"
The live stream screen shook violently as the puppet was Kunai to the wall by the ninja's kunai. The live stream then switched to Hino's indescribable face.
Hahahaha!
Hino laughed, a laugh tinged with the madness born of despair.
"Even if I Hino here today, I will tear off your masks!"
"Fellow countrymen, are you really willing to accept such a future? If not..."
"Come and cause some chaos with me!"