Chapter 161: But You Can’t Even Recognize Your Own Child
Darkness thick as ink.
Nono Yakushi floated in the chaos.
No light, no sound, only a bone-deep exhaustion and an unrelenting bloody stench.
She felt like a rotten leaf of a boat, drifting aimlessly in icy, bone-chilling seawater.
The scene suddenly switched.
A pungent gunpowder smoke smell rushed into her nostrils, mixed with rust-like blood.
Before her was an abandoned outpost on the outskirts of Konoha, broken walls and ruins casting grotesque silhouettes under the dim yellow moonlight.
She wore the Root organization’s signature ninja outfit, moving fast as a ghost, her chakra scalpel coalescing at her fingertips, slicing through the air with a faint hum.
The target was right ahead, a figure in ordinary ninja garb with his back to her, frantically searching through the ruins, movements clumsy and desperate.
Root’s command was coldly etched deep in her mind: eliminate the defector, recover the secret scroll he carried.
No hesitation.
Her body’s instinct drove her like the most precise killing machine.
Her footsteps silently crossed the gravel, instantly closing in.
The chakra scalpel in her hand stabbed precisely and ruthlessly toward the target’s back!
This strike was enough to sever the heart meridian, killing instantly.
Pfft!
The sound of blade entering flesh was dull and clear.
That figure suddenly stiffened, as if its spine had been pulled out, slowly, extremely slowly turning around.
The hood slipped off, revealing a face smeared with dust and blood, young yet filled with shock and pain.
Those eyes, through a pair of somewhat familiar glasses, stared at Nono in disbelief, fixedly.
“Di… Director…” A weak, dry voice, as if squeezed out with the last of his strength, overflowed from his throat, carrying a broken breath and an indescribable despair of betrayal by a loved one.
Director?
This title was like a steel needle, stabbing without warning into Nono’s chaotic mind!
A sharp, utterly unfamiliar sharp pain exploded from deep in her heart without reason, instantly sweeping through her limbs!
The hand gripping the chakra scalpel trembled uncontrollably.
At that moment, the dying youth’s blood-soaked face distorted, melted, and deformed like ripples in water…
His features rapidly changed, dust and blood fading, skin becoming fair and tender, behind round glasses, those large eyes always carrying a gentle smile and a hint of timidity, now gazing at her in terror and sorrow…
It was Kabuto!
It was little Kabuto from childhood!
“No——!!!”
A shrill, pitch-altered scream tore through the dream!
Nono Yakushi abruptly sat up from the cold, hard stone bed! Her heart pounded wildly in her chest, nearly bursting out!
Cold sweat instantly soaked her thin gray prisoner uniform, bringing a piercing chill.
She gasped for air in big gulps, like a fish out of water, each breath carrying stinging pain and burning in her lungs.
Her hands clutched her collar tightly, knuckles white from the force, as if that could hold down the heart about to leap from her throat.
Cold sweat slid down her temples and hairline, dripping onto the rough hemp bedding.
In the darkness, she looked around blankly, only a narrow gap under the cell’s iron gate letting in the dim, flickering oil lamp light from the corridor, casting a distorted light band on the floor.
The familiar musty smell, dampness of the stone walls, and aura of despair enveloped her again.
It was a dream…
Just a nightmare…
She tried to tell herself that, using cold reality to dispel that heart-shattering image.
But that “Director,” those eyes belonging to Kabuto, filled with sorrow and terror, were like the clearest brand, etched on her retinas, repeatedly burning her nerves.
An indescribable emptiness and panic seized her, more suffocating than the prison’s confinement.
However, when her gaze habitually swept over this narrow stone room that had imprisoned her for who knows how long, a sense of something off coiled around her heart like an icy snake.
Too quiet.
No suppressed coughs from the neighboring cell, no heavy footsteps of patrolling guards in the distance, no harsh friction of iron gates opening and closing.
Even her own heavy breathing and heartbeat echoes had vanished.
A hair-raising silence enveloped everything.
She instinctively looked down at her hands, those hands that had once saved lives and executed countless dark missions.
They were pressing on a smooth, mirror-like water surface.
Nono sharply drew in a breath, her body instantly stiffening!
She wasn’t sitting on the cold stone bed, but…
Hovering over an endless, deep black jade-like water surface!
The water surface reflected the equally vast starry sky above.
Countless stars burned, rotated, flowed, converging into a brilliant starry river, pure cold starlight sprinkling down, illuminating this space like a god’s domain.
The water underfoot was not solid, yet clearly reflected her current terrified, disheveled figure.
Where… is this?!
Immense shock instantly overwhelmed the lingering terror of the nightmare.
She jerked her head up to look around.
Still absolute silence, only the magnificent sight of stars silently flowing.
Icy, vast, inhuman etherealness enveloped her, making her feel insignificant as a speck of dust.
“What you saw was not a dream.”
A voice suddenly rang out.
Low, calm, without the slightest emotional fluctuation, as if echoing directly in her soul.
Nono Yakushi, like a startled rabbit, whipped her head toward the voice.
Not far ahead, also standing on the starry water surface, a figure quietly hovered.
His entire body was shrouded in a wide black robe, as if merged into the profound background.
His face was covered by an expressionless white three-eyed fox mask, its three hollow eye holes gleaming with cold, inorganic luster under the starlight.
The top of the mask extended two symbolic fox ears, adding a eerie liveliness to this inhuman form.
The wide sleeves hung naturally, his whole body emanating a heart-palpitating heaviness and depth.
It was the ruler of the Land of Stars, the mysterious “Shura”.
“That was the script Shimura Danzō carefully designed for you.” Shura’s voice came through the mask, still steady and emotionless, like stating a cold fact.
“It was also how he selected, honed, and ultimately completely controlled his sharpest and most concealed ‘tool’ in his hand.”
Nono’s body trembled violently.
Not from cold, but from the cruel truth in those words, piercing straight to the darkest core of her life.
Danzō… script… tool…
These words were like poison-quenched daggers, stabbing into the barriers of her chaotic memories.
She shook her head instinctively, gray-white hair strands messily sticking to her sweat-damp forehead, voice hoarse and broken: “No… impossible… you’re lying! Lord Danzō he…”
“He needs absolute loyalty, absolute obedience.” Shura interrupted her futile denial, his voice carrying a cold sarcasm that saw through everything.
“A spy with a ‘mother’ identity will always have a soft spot in her heart, which could be pried open, exploited.”
“So, he needed to sever that bond with his own hands. Use a perfect substitute to replace the real child in your memory, becoming the new ‘weakness’.”
“Then… at the most opportune moment, arrange an ‘accidental’ encounter, a ‘necessary’ cleanup mission…”
“Make the ‘mother’ kill the ‘son’ with her own hands, or the ‘son’ kill the ‘mother’ with his own hands. Use the ultimate pain and betrayal to completely crush your or his humanity, eradicate your last trace of possible ‘weakness’, forging you into a truly cold, absolutely obedient ‘blade’.”
Every word was like an icy hammer, smashing onto Nono’s heart.
Those deliberately forgotten, deeply buried worries began to surge madly!
What kind of person Danzō was, what kind of organization Root was, she knew better than anyone.
And that youth’s desperate call before death in the dream, and his face finally morphing into little Kabuto’s…
Fragments like sharp glass spun and cut rapidly in her mind, trying to piece together a bloody truth she dared not face!
“No… it’s not like that…” She struggled futilely, her voice growing weaker, body shaking like a leaf in the wind.
Something solid in her heart was emitting the cracking sound of unbearable strain.
Shura hovered quietly, the white fox mask impassive toward her.
That silent posture was more oppressive than any words.
He seemed to be waiting, waiting for the moment her inner defenses completely collapsed.
Finally, that cold voice rang out again, like final judgment:
“Nono Yakushi, haven’t you realized yet?”
Nono looked up, her bloodshot brown eyes filled with panic and resistance, peering through disheveled hair at the icy fox mask.
Shura slowly raised his right hand shrouded in the black robe.
Not pointing at her, nor anywhere, just casually lifting it.
With his movement, the mirror-smooth water surface under their feet, reflecting the vast starry sky, suddenly rippled silently.
The water no longer reflected stars, but like the clearest mirror, instantly displayed an image.
It was the dim, oppressive corridor of the Seventh Prison Sector.
A boy in Hoshigakure’s deep blue genin uniform, wearing round glasses, was distributing food to the prisoners in the cells.
The boy’s gaze behind his lenses was downcast, maintaining a deliberate calm, placing a black bread into her broken bowl.
The image froze.
Clearly showing the boy’s face.
Gentle, slightly childish, deep in his eyes behind the lenses hid an undisguisable storm of shock and pain.
It also showed her own face.
Haggard, numb, eyes vacant and scattered, like a shell that had lost all soul, showing no reaction to this face right before her, filled with complex emotions!
“You’ve seen him.” Shura’s cold voice, like a heavy hammer, smashed onto the frozen image, and onto Nono’s completely collapsed mental defenses.
“Just today, right in front of you. But you couldn’t even recognize your own child.”
Boom——!!!
Nono slumped onto the water surface, her world shattered to pieces.
