Hey guys, here is the new chapter hope you will liked and read thru everything.
If we hit 300 PW I post a extra chapter
Today I'll post the chapters I owe you. Sorry for the wait, and enjoy! Just a heads-up: there will be more time skips from now on, so that's why everything might feel a bit faster.
Don't forget to leave your power stones along with your comment if you have any ideas or opinions that could help me, as well as a review to continue showing your support.
Enjoy the chapter!
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The tense calm in the central plaza of Rōran was interrupted not by an explosion, but by the simple footsteps of people. From the shadows of the access tunnel, three figures emerged with firm strides.
At the vanguard walked Daigo, his cloak fluttering slightly with the static of the environment. His mere presence instilled respect.
Right by his side, maintaining a steady pace, advanced Karinna and Sasori. Karinna kept her eyes on the surrounding ruins, marveled by everything she saw.
Sasori, for his part, walked with a calm demeanor, but his brown eyes gleamed with an unusual intensity. His gaze feverishly scanned the silhouettes of the metal puppets hanging from the towers. For an artist of his caliber, entering Rōran was like desecrating a sacred tomb of lost knowledge.
Upon seeing Daigo alongside Sasori and Karinna, Kisame, Kaito, and Baki subtly relaxed their combat stances, though without completely lowering their guard. The army of metal puppets still surrounded them, suspended in a spectral immobility, their purple cores emitting a dull hum that made the metallic ground vibrate.
"You arrived quite fast, Daigo-sama," Kisame greeted with his usual shark-like grin, resting the massive silhouette of Samehada over his shoulder with astonishing ease.
"The mechanical puppets in this place are quite tough and stubborn, but we managed to keep the reception area clean and passable for you. Although I think Sasori is going to love the mess."
Sasori ignored Kisame's comment. He walked right past the group and approached one of the puppets lying semi-destroyed on the ground from Kaito's hammer blow. He knelt down without caring about the dust and extended his perfectly jointed hands over the chassis of reinforced wood and dark bronze.
"Fascinating..." Sasori murmured, and for the first time in a long while, his usually apathetic voice contained a hint of genuine emotion.
"There are no channels for chakra threads. The joints are designed with chakra-connecting gears, and the entire motor system responds to the pulses of the chest gem. This is no ordinary craftsmanship; it is autonomous engineering. A work of art that moves without the will of a puppeteer. Daigo, I will keep all of them to preserve the remains of these puppets for my workshop. It could revolutionize my own designs and those of the village."
"You can keep them all, though first I want to secure the main thing we came here to look for," Daigo replied with a serene voice, turning to look at the other three.
"Good job to the three of you for holding the perimeter. Karinna, step forward. It is your turn to analyze the seal."
The sealing specialist stepped forward, adjusting her glasses with her index finger as she knelt directly on the outer edge of the Ryūmyaku Seal.
The metallic surface was cold, but the energy emanating from the carved lines made the metal vibrate at an almost imperceptible frequency. Karinna took a deep breath to calm her heartbeat.
She took a small wooden case from her tactical vest, revealing a set of special brushes and an inkwell charged with high-purity chakra-infused ink.
With surgical movements, she began to draw concentric lines and diagnostic characters on the ground, attempting to generate a resonance with the original formula of the place.
While Karinna worked on the mysticism of the seal, Sasori continued to examine the metal bodies around him, using thin threads of chakra solely to probe how the internal mechanisms reacted to external stimuli. It was a display of two Suna geniuses tackling the mystery from two completely different fronts.
Several minutes passed in a sepulchral silence, interrupted only by the intermittent snaps of static and the constant hum of the puppets.
Kaito watched every movement of the brushes, finding the fuinjutsu curious though noting how difficult it truly was.
Karinna's forehead began to show cold sweat, even though the temperature was perfect. Her eyes, hidden behind the lenses of her glasses, opened with a mixture of frustration, bewilderment, and pure awe. She dropped the brush, its bristles instantly worn down upon contact with the seal's energy signature.
"This... this is simply absurd," Karinna murmured, standing up slowly while packing away her tools with hands that betrayed her usual firmness.
She looked at Daigo with total honesty, stripped of any pride she held regarding sealing.
"Daigo, the Fūinjutsu placed here is at a level completely superior to my knowledge. Whoever designed this formula was an absolute genius, a true monster of seals. I cannot replicate it, let alone alter it without causing a giant rupture."
"Did you at least get something that could help us?" Daigo asked curiously.
"The only thing I can understand with certainty is its purpose and its current state," Karinna explained, pointing with her foot at the intricate patterns glowing beneath the layers of metallic dust.
"This seal is not designed to block chakra completely by choice. Its real function was to seal everything away, but the brute force of the Ryūmyaku is so devastating that it cracked the original formula. It prevents all the power from exploding in a single massive blast that would destroy the desert crust and probably half of the Land of Wind, but it could not contain it entirely. By letting the energy leak through that fracture in a constant, measured, and forced manner, these puppets have been able to keep functioning autonomously for generations. It is an artificial ecosystem fed by an eternal escape that the original seal could not close."
Hearing Karinna's detailed words, a spark of comprehension flashed in Daigo's eye. A smile formed on his lips.
Minato..., the Kazekage thought, evoking the fragments of history he remembered while mentally searching for when the Yellow Flash could have come to the desert without anyone in Suna noticing.
Now all the pieces of the puzzle fit perfectly. Minato had employed his supreme level in the art of sealing, but the Ryūmyaku proved to be a force that surpassed even the human limits of Konoha.
That small opening was not an intentional design; it was a subtle imperfection caused by the pressure of the vein, a perfect loose end that nature had won over the ninja. It had not been an implicit invitation, but the physical limit of Minato's technique against a wild energy that refused to be buried in oblivion. And precisely that leak that the Fourth Hokage could not close was the weakness that Daigo was going to exploit.
"I see," Daigo said aloud, breaking the silence and taking a firm step toward the exact center of the glowing seal, ignoring the warnings of the ionized air.
"What do you plan to do, Daigo-sama?" Baki asked, taking a step back out of defensive instinct, keeping his Byakugan active to monitor any sudden spike in the plaza's energy readings.
"I am going to listen to the earth," the Kazekage replied with a tranquility that contrasted with the latent energy of the place.
Daigo crossed his legs calmly, sitting directly over the epicenter of Minato's sealing formula, where the characters glowed with the greatest purple intensity. He closed his left eye, took a deep breath expanding his lungs, and unified his thoughts into a single focal point, stripping away any external distraction and the noise of the environment. In that very instant, the process of absorbing the natural energy saturating the atmosphere of Rōran's underground pit began.
Soon, within Daigo's mind, ears, and concentration, he began to hear the melody coming from the earth itself.
Within a few seconds, the physical change in his body was evident and striking to those present. The iconic Sage Mode marks began to manifest around his eyes, adopting a perfect and sharp pigmentation that denoted absolute control and purity over Senjutsu, free from any imperfect animal mutations.
The air around his figure began to swirl, lifting a whirlwind of gray dust that orbited his body like a mystical shield. Sasori paused his observations for a moment, narrowing his eyes as he perceived the overwhelming pressure coming from Daigo.
When Daigo opened his eyes, the giant pit of Rōran trembled subtly from north to south.
Being immersed in Sage Mode, Daigo's sensory perception skyrocketed to superior levels. Sitting directly over the "valve" of Minato's seal, he did not experience the Ryūmyaku's chakra as a simple stagnant pond or an underground river. He felt it as a massive circulatory system, a network of arteries throbbing with the accumulated force of years.
His conscious mind expanded through the earth's crust of the Land of Wind, stretching for kilometers beneath the sand dunes, and it was at that precise moment of communion that he understood everything.
There was no need to exhaust themselves physically or compromise the village's resources by building complex, expensive, and time-consuming pipelines or crystal channels from the ruins of Rōran to Sunagakure.
Developing an engineering work of that magnitude in the deep west would have taken years of uninterrupted labor, exposure to storms, and a constant danger of external sabotage. That approach was unnecessary.
Through Sage Mode, Daigo tracked the journey of the energy escaping through the opening of the Fourth Hokage's seal.
He discovered that this filtered purple energy did not accumulate barrenly in the ruins nor dissipate into nothingness; it traveled organically and fluidly, taking advantage of a gigantic vein or mystical geological fault running through the depths of the entire desert.
This natural rift in the earth's crust extended in a straight and perfect line through the subsoil until reaching, precisely, beneath the foundations of Sunagakure itself. The distribution path had already been mapped out by the desert's own nature long ago; the energy was already flowing toward their home by its own weight.
Daigo flashed a smile of pure determination amidst his meditative trance. The definitive solution for the modernization of his people did not consist of transporting the energy by force, but of returning to the village and connecting to the natural network that already existed directly beneath their feet.
"Karinna was absolutely right, the flow is already established in the design of the earth," Daigo announced, without breaking his lotus posture, while his voice resonated with the echo of the surroundings.
"The Ryūmyaku current travels directly through the subsoil to the borders of our village, utilizing the great western fault. The only thing we need to do now is return to Suna, locate the exact point of the opening from the lower levels of our own underground map, and, using my Shōton combined with Sage Mode chakra, create the direct connection into our own foundations. We will feed Sunagakure from within, in an infinite and self-sustaining way—I wonder why I never felt this energy the other time I used Sage Mode to stop the Seven-Tails."
The three Shadows, Karinna, and Sasori looked at their leader with a mixture of absolute respect and admiration. What initially looked like something dangerous and costly in money and time was simplified to right near the village. And the one who made it possible was Daigo, because even with Baki observing the energy, it would be impossible for him to track it perfectly all the way to Sunagakure.
Daigo rose slowly, undoing his meditation posture with a feline elegance. The Sage Mode marks would continue to glow brightly on his face for a few moments, giving him a unique aura.
He looked toward the puppets that continued to watch them from the heights, mute and still, as if waiting for the new lord of the place to dictate their fate. The purple gems on their chests seemed to pulse in synchrony with Daigo's chakra, which was injected into their cores.
"Sasori," the Kazekage called, gaining the immediate attention of the master puppeteer.
"Collect the damaged specimens you need for your research. Once we connect the central flow in Suna, it is very likely these puppets will enter a state of permanent hibernation or respond directly to our new network. I want you to understand their programming before that happens."
"Consider it done, Daigo," Sasori replied, summoning a large-scale storage scroll with a fluid movement of his fingers.
"Dismantling these pieces will take me little time. The design of their cores is a marvel of ancient engineering. I will make sure to extract every last secret of their automation."
"Kaito, seal this perimeter with standard barrier jutsus to prevent any curious scouts from noticing our recent activity," Daigo continued ordering, imperceptibly brushing the dust off his cloak.
"Karinna, take note of the oscillation frequencies you recorded from Minato's seal. They will serve as a frequency blueprint to calibrate our own crystal receptor in the basements of Suna. Kisame, Baki, help secure the surroundings while Sasori finishes his collection. We have no time to lose in these ruins. The real work begins in the foundations of our own home."
"Understood, Daigo-sama," the group replied, executing a brief bow before dispersing to fulfill their respective technical assignments.
Kaito began to form hand signs as he started raising walls of earth and stone to cover what they had broken.
Meanwhile, Kisame sheathed Samehada once more, which emitted one last dull growl of discontent for not being able to gorge itself on the heavy mystical energy of the area, settling instead for watching Sasori carefully seal the torsos and limbs of the Rōran puppets inside his storage scrolls.
Daigo walked toward the exit tunnel, pausing for a moment to look one last time at the towering spires of Rōran. The dead city would keep sleeping in oblivion, sheltered by Kaito's walls and the myth of the western desert.
However, its blood, the untamable Ryūmyaku, would soon run through the veins of the new Sunagakure, transforming a village of survivors into the most advanced technological and military empire the ninja world had ever seen.
With firm steps and the sage marks gradually fading from his skin, the Kazekage led the way back through the storm of purple static, followed by his elite retinue.
The fate of the Leaf and the sand no longer depended on the mercy of nature, but on the implacable will of its leader, ready to ignite the engines of tomorrow.
End of Chapter