Fortress No. 14 of the Land of Rain, guarding the southern gateway to the country.

Less than 20 kilometers south of the fort is the location of Kawanokuni, which is separated by two great powers: fire and wind, so it is of great strategic importance.

Sanshoyu Hanzo can't rest assured that others, so he specially entrusted it to his youngest son, and Sanshoyu Jiahe personally guarded it.

But he didn't know what his little son was doing here. It wouldn't be surprising if he had a little idea—

Why are there always outsiders coming in and out here?

The first wave to come here were the two spies of Uchiha Itachi and Root.

Disguised as Rain Shinobi, they came here to steal an important experiment report, and they were about to succeed. For the two spies, there is only one "self-sacrificing" mission left to solve.

The second wave came here to find Uchiha Flame and the corpses of many bloody ninjas in a laboratory in Rain Hidden Village.

He had come here following the trail of the Itachi, and at the same time to answer some doubts.

And the third wave, carrying someone in a black-pitched oilcloth wagon, had just reached the gates of the fortress.

"Stop."

Rain Shinobi, who was armed with a hat and a spear, stretched out his hand and stopped the carriage with only one coachman.

Just looking at the style of the carriage, it is definitely from here.

"Sending the child?"

Yunin, who was guarding the door, came to the coachman's side, looked at him and asked, "Why are you the only one?" ”

His companion walked to the back of the carriage, intending to inspect the "cargo" inside.

"It's been a bad day."

The coachman raised his head, revealing a bloodstained, bruised and purple face, and said in a muffled voice: "I met a rebel, they left behind, let me bring people back first." ”

If you look closely, you will find that this is the leader of the settlement that Yiyong saved before.

He used to be a member of the rain ninja, so it was quite natural to say these words, and it was even more natural when he was injured, with a bit of a sense of anger and nowhere to complain. Anyway, with such an unrecognizable face, it is possible for the other party to recognize him as anyone.

The key is still something pulled behind.

The rain shinobi who walked to the back of the car lifted the tarpaulin, and four pairs of lifeless eyes looked at him in unison, startling him so much that he almost jumped on the spot.

But if you look closely, it's just four children ranging from six to ten years old, and the reason why they have similar eyes may be because they are all scared.

Considering what they are about to face, they should indeed be afraid.

"It's really unlucky......

Yuren put back the tarpaulin angrily and shouted at the front, "There are only four imps." ”

"It's a bit small, but it's pretty good considering what happened to you."

Yunin, who was in front of him, did not forget to comfort the coachman, and then walked to the door, and said something to the doorway, and the huge iron door creaked open.

"Take them to the little gate to the south."

"Got it."

The coachman answered, and continued to drive the car slowly.

There was some rain in the courtyard of the fortress, but they had no interest in the carriage, and after one look at it, they went on to their business.

"You're familiar with this place?"

There was an inquiry from the carriage, it was Yiyong, one of the "four" children.

Fort 14 is the destination brought by the previous group of rain ninjas, who wanted to kidnap the homeless children.

This information was not asked by Yi Yong, he did not have any torture technology, and his social methods were even more barren and outrageous. The ones who pried the mouth open were the angry vagrants who had almost lost their lives and their children, and who had been bullied by the rain ninja.

What did those people do to Yunin, Yiyong only listened to a short paragraph and didn't want to continue. Anyway, he got the information he wanted, and the help of the leader of the wanderers.

According to Najo Shinobi, they kidnapped the child in order to create a second ninja demigod through experimentation. As for what kind of experiment, he is not a professional, so he doesn't know the inside story, only that there are many children kidnapped by Yu Ren from the surrounding small countries and countries, but as long as he enters this building, few of them come out.

Don't say it first, just the word "experiment" has successfully poked the sensitive vocabulary of Yiyong.

He hadn't forgotten how Zhishui explained to him "why Wen's body disappeared".

At the very least, Yi Yong felt that the odds of finding the Uchiha Flame in this place were much more reliable than relying on finding the so-called "angel", so he had this plan to go deep into the tiger's den and go straight to the Yellow Dragon.

"I used to work at Fort Seven, near the Fire Nation."

The leader of the wanderers inhaled and touched the wound on his face and replied, "The layout of these castles is similar, and I am familiar with it. ”

"It's dangerous."

"I know."

"But you have helped us, and we have nothing to thank you for doing a little more for you." I can tell that someone very important is missing, right? ”

Yi Yong didn't speak again, quietly extracting the chakra.

The other three "children" are all the results of his shadow clone + transformation technique.

Two minutes later, the carriage stopped south of the pitch-black fortress.

The leader of the nomads helped Yuyin on his forehead and knocked on the door. And the three transformed shadow clones all got out of the car with Yiyong in a daze, and stood behind the leader of the homeless people without saying a word, with exactly the same expression.

[Is this transformation technique really useful?] 】

The latter complained secretly in his heart.

"Is it here today?"

The door was opened by a balding man, his eyes as if they had been squeezed through the crack in the door, only a little smaller.

Seeing that there were only four children, his loose face simply collapsed, "That's it." ”

The leader of the nomads was just about to explain, but the man looked at his face and waved his hand, "Needless to say, it must have been attacked, I'm used to it." Four is four, better than nothing......"

Then, his eyes swept over the faces of the four volunteers.

"What, these four children are a family?"

Otherwise, what a look.

All the volunteers nodded at the same time.

The bald man suddenly turned his worries into joy, "That's great, you can do a more detailed control group experiment......"

The leader of the nomads was speechless.

[Don't you doubt such an obvious loophole?] 】

The bald man bowed down, smiled at the volunteers, and said, "Come with me, I'm going to do some check-ups for you." Those who are qualified can become ninjas and enter the life of Rain Hidden Village. Sounds great, right? ”

"What about the unqualified ones?"

The body of the righteous and brave tilted his head.

"Those who are not qualified will stay here as servants and prepare food for Koga-sama's sanshoyu."

The bald man still smiled gently, but Yiyong understood the true meaning of "preparing food".

As for the leader of the wanderers, he suddenly felt a cold current rushing up from his spine to the top of his head. His vague anger had been overshadowed by fear, and he just wanted to get out of this place quickly.

"Alright, you can go, I'll take them there."

As he spoke, the bald man was about to close the door, but was held up by the leader of the wanderers with the soles of his feet.

"The ......"

He waved his hand at Yi Yong, who showed a warning look at him, despite the suspicious gaze of the bald man.

"If you succeed in becoming a ninja, you're going to see us."

Yiyong struggled for a second or two, but still nodded.

The door closed, and the bald man regained his smile, "Don't worry, just follow me." If you're lucky, there's still a chance you'll see each other again. ”

All the volunteers exchanged glances with each other, but did not speak, just followed behind the man, looking very obedient.

The two walked through the corridor inside the fortress, went up to the second floor, and went all the way to the deepest room. When he opened the door, he was greeted by two rows of hospital beds with pulleys and four doctors in white coats.

There were seven children of different ages lying in the hospital bed, each on a ventilator. On the cabinet next to the bed was a monitor that showed the children's vital signs, but Yi Yong couldn't understand it.

The men, dressed as doctors, were wearing gas masks and were walking from bed to bed, transcribing the data on them.

In addition, there were fifteen empty beds in this room, but most of them had traces of lying down and looked like they had just been removed.

While the bald man was talking to the "doctor", Yiyong's eyes stopped on one of the children, saw through his skin and bones, and observed his respiratory tract.

Immediately, he discovered that what the other party absorbed from the ventilator was not pure oxygen, but also mixed with some thin lilac gas, which had a strong paralyzing effect, making the inhaler completely paralyzed, and would continue to invade his body and internal organs, but within a few seconds, some of these toxins would disappear.

Yi Yong continued to scan down, and found that above the opponent's left kidney, there was a sac that was beating like a heart, which was full of dangerous toxins. The toxins that disappear from the patient's body are eventually absorbed by this sac.

It wasn't an organ that a human being should have, it was implanted by cutting open the flank.

What exactly is this doing? 】

Yi Yong's eyes swept over the other children, and found that the concentration of toxins injected into each child, as well as the absorption efficiency of the poison sac, were different, but they were all in a different stage of poisoning, and one of them was already very dangerous.

The sac in his body was overworked, beating rapidly, as if it was going to explode inside the child at any moment.

"Do it!"

Yiyong couldn't wait any longer, he didn't plan to think about it himself, but asked directly.

He lifted his foot and directly stepped on the calf of the bald man in front of him, and when he fell to the ground, he covered his mouth to prevent him from screaming. The rest of the clones also put down those dressed as doctors.

None of these people were combative ninjas, and they did little to bother Yoshiyu.

"Water Whip."

This is the ninjutsu that Yi Yong learned from Yu Ren today, five water whips, tying five people tightly and unable to move. At this time, all the doppelgangers returned to their original appearance, and adjusted all the respirators on the children's mouths to normal oxygen, eliminating the input of poisonous gas.

He glanced around to make sure that the toxins in the body of the most dangerous child had also stopped growing, and then he came to the "doctors" with a straight face.

"There's a ventilator here, and I guess it's all something like that."

Yi Yong suppressed his emotions, carefully recalling the words used by the wanderers to torture those rain ninjas, thinking about how to get the answers he wanted from these mouths.

"If you don't say anything, I'll open those things to the maximum and put them in your mouths."

All five of them nodded in fear, all of them looking bad at poisoning.

With a wave of his hand, he removed a portion of the whip from the mouth of one of the "doctors".

The man took a deep breath and said spinelessly, "I'll say anything, just ask." ”

"What did you do to them? What's in their bodies and in that ventilator? ”

"We implanted the poison sacs of the pepperfish in these subjects. Those ventilators were mixed with the toxins of diluted ordinary pepperfish......"

"We are testing the adaptability of these subjects and the poison sacs, and the better the adaptability of the people, the better the resistance to the toxins, and the more efficient the poison sacs are at absorbing the toxins that enter their bodies," the experimenter explained to Yiyong. The more successful they are as test subjects. ”

“……”

Yiyong frowned, "What's the point of doing this?" ”

"This, of course, is to replicate the miracle of Sanshoyu Hanzo-sama."

The experimenter showed an expression of "you are so powerful, why don't you understand anything".

"If these test subjects can successfully adapt to the poison sacs and toxins of ordinary sansho fish, then they can try to implant them with the same black pepperfish toxin sacs as Hanzo adults. In this way, if the test subject survives, there will be a second Hanzo-sama in the Land of Rain. ”

His expression gradually changed from fear to pride.

"So you see, we're not doing anything boring and bad, if the Land of Rain has two ninja demigods at the same time, won't we have to look at the faces of those big countries anymore?"

Yiyong was not in the mood to discuss with him the question of how to make the Land of Rain strong, but asked:

"Only these kids?"

"That's all there is to it. The poison sac of the sanjiao fish is not something that everyone can adapt to. ”

An ominous premonition flashed in Yi Yong's heart, "How many have died?" ”

"If you're willing to take a chance, it's Experiment Sample 113."

The experimenter's eyes were shining, and the professional discussion made the fear farther and farther away from him, but instead ignored the strange looks of the others and discussed with Yi Yong.

"You're so powerful at such a young age, maybe you can adapt to the toxin better than these ordinary kids."

Yi Yong closed his eyes sadly.

Since leaving Konoha Village, everything he saw and heard with his eyes and ears had made him more and more uncomfortable.

For example, the person in front of him, saying such distorted words, does not feel that there is anything wrong with him at all, but is proud of his work results. But as long as he is not a person, but a ghost, Yi Yong can be at ease and dismiss his words as "ghost words".

But he wasn't.

This means that in the huge world, there will be many people who are exactly like him, who take their immature lives for granted as bargaining chips in exchange for knowledge and power.

"Are any of your experimenters from other countries?"

He thought of Uchiha Yanhuo and Wen.

Although their age and the hospital bed obviously did not match, Yiyong had to try.

"There are all in the country of wind, the country of rivers, and the country of grass, and the country of rain is the most. Most of them are orphans, and sooner or later they will be killed anyway, wasting their lives worthlessly. At least the diluted Sansho fish toxin we have here can allow them to die without pain in paralysis, and at the same time contribute to the country. ”

The experimenter stated with increasing excitement, "And once the experiment is successful, they have a chance to become the strongest ninja in the world......

"Are there people from the Land of Fire?"

Righteous Courage interrupted him.

"Nope." The experimenters were quite sure.

They don't dare to risk being discovered by the great ninjas of the Great Power (Wind Country:?) ）。

[It seems that I can't find ...... here]

Yiyong pondered for a while, a little disappointed and a little happy. At least their carcasses were not used to feed the sansho fish.

At this moment, his mood was far more complicated than the vocabulary he mastered.

At this time, a girl on the hospital bed suddenly coughed, and Yiyong hurriedly walked over, and after scanning her eyes, she found that the residual sansho fish toxin in her body had been completely absorbed! And the poison sac in her body did not show any abnormal excessive beating.

"She's got rid of the paralyzing effects of the toxin?"

The experimenter exclaimed in surprise, unaware that he was the girl's family.

"It's only been a few hours, she, she's the one we're looking for, the perfect test sample!"

Yi Yong felt a little disgusted in his heart, the shadow clone manipulated the water whip to seal his mouth, and the main body carefully removed the girl's oxygen mask, and then, his dull eyes shrank slightly, and he was stunned in place.

[This is the one the day before yesterday, at the gate of Yuyin Village, with the old woman who sells tea? 】

"Hydrangeas."

He called out the girl's name.

But the latter only frowned with a feeling, and had no tendency to wake up.

[So, that old woman has ......]

Thinking of the old man who loves to laugh, the lazy donkey and the granddaughter together, although poor but still warm, Yiyong only felt that his blood vessels hurt as if they were flowing through strong acid.

But just when he was in a trance in front of Hydrangeas's hospital bed, an accident happened.

Of the four experimenters, the one who had been the least mobile had secretly untied the whip and slammed towards the alarm button on the wall in the center of the ward.

Without raising his head, the water blade immediately formed on his fingertips, and it was launched cleanly, directly penetrating the experimenter's vest.

Unlike the previous manslaughter, this is the first time that Yi Yong has taken the initiative to extinguish the fire of human life.

Hands-on even before his brain gives the order.

But strange things happened.

The man was still one step away from the alarm button, but the shrill siren still sounded, making people extremely anxious.

"What's going on?"

Yiyong looked up vigilantly, not understanding what was happening.

But immediately, there was a terrifying rumbling sound above his head, as if something heavy had fallen on the ceiling, and the dust fell like snow, and even the electric lights were half extinguished.

"It's the next level! It's an alert from the next level! ”

The guy who talked the most twisted and twisted, and the shadow clone removed the whip from his mouth, "There's an invasion from above!" ”

"What's going on here?"

Yi Yong asked.

"It's Sansho Ukaga-sama's office, and all our experimental data is there!"

The experimenter looked even more sorry than if his child was lost, "Let go of me, I'm going to go up and have a look!" If the experimental data is lost, all our efforts during this time will be in vain! ”

After hearing this, Yiyong was slightly surprised in his heart, although he didn't know who the intruders were, he seemed to be able to take this opportunity to take these children out unharmed.

[Whoever it is, thank you in advance......]

"Remove their oxygen masks!"

Yi Yong picked up the hydrangea and called to the three shadow clones: "One of you takes two, let's rush out from here!" ”

With that, he walked towards the door of the ward first, intending to leave the place.

If you're lucky, you might even catch up with the nomad leader who has already left the fortress.

But the sky did not fulfill people's wishes, and the change was steep.

Suddenly there was a loud popping sound from the ceiling, as clear as if it was exploding in the ears of Yi Yong!

He raised his head, his face was no longer paralyzed, but his eyes widened to the limit, and the side of the ceiling near the exit was actually breaking little by little!

Then, the moment the second explosion sounded in the same position, he turned back and shouted to the shadow clone: "Retreat!" ”

"Click-"

The smoke and dust went first, and one end of the ceiling, as if it couldn't bear some kind of pressure, smashed down directly!

Yi Yong's dynamic vision can be seen clearly, the end of the door is first, and the end of the inside is behind.

Running inside, there is still hope.

At this time, Yi Yong didn't care that he would drop those poisoned children.

He and the shadow clone retreated to the edge of the wall directly opposite the exit, and while placing all the children on the ground roughly, he shouted, "Ready! ”

Finally, the ceiling in the back was also unsupportable, and it collapsed with a bang, and the three clones just bought time for Yiyong, and then exploded and disappeared because of the excessive pressure.

Desperate, Yi Yong almost violently switched the breath of water to the breath of fire, which specialized in power, and used his shoulder to resist this unwarranted disaster, but he was still weighed down by the weight of a mountain and knelt on the spot.

His eyes were about to pop out of their sockets.

This is a fortress of war, and what separates the layers from each other is a complete and thick stone.

At this moment, the floor, the ceiling, and the righteous courage form a lying triangle with extremely acute angles.

If the ceiling is compared to a man doing push-ups, then Yi Yong is now the man's arm, and with the terrifying weight of it, all the thoughts in his head have become meaningless puzzles and paints, which cannot be formed at all.

For a whole minute, Yi Yong couldn't hear anything because of the ringing in his ears, and he couldn't feel anything other than pain except the weight on his shoulders, only the constant repetition of breathing, the constant production of chakras to his shoulders and the thighs that supported the weight.

After a long time, the black cloud in front of him gradually dissipated, and he could still see the undulating bodies of the seven children in front of him. As for the experimenters in the middle of the room, they must have been stoned to death.

[If no one else removes this thing, we all have to die here.] 】

Yiyong was held down by the dead, and he couldn't move for half a minute.

He can separate shadow clones or water bodies to exert a little force, but his chakra is currently the only guarantee to maintain this narrow and safe space. Unless he can determine the power of the doppelganger and be able to lift this ceiling, he is only hastening the death of everyone.

If the shadow clone uses ninjutsu or sword magic to shatter the ceiling that is pressing on him, it must be ensured that no pieces fall on these children and crush them to death. Otherwise, if Yiyong survives alone, he will only be more painful than death.

[Do you want to wait for the rain to come?] 】

Yiyong's vision blurred, and he felt his shoulders sink a millimeter away.

Suddenly, a terrible thought emerged from despair.

[Since the unbalanced operation of the water breath will turn me into an ice sculpture jellyfish, then if I run the flame breath unbalanced......]

Can you completely turn yourself into a strong lava stone statue? 】

[This way you can keep going.] 】

[At least these children, for Yunin, are important "test subjects", and they will be saved......]

But this thought also fell into darkness as Yiyong's eyes gradually closed.

But even then, what fate awaits them. 】

[It turns out that my thoughts are out of control......]

This small space, which should have been the last hope, suddenly fell into a terrifying still, and Yi Yong's breathing gradually weakened, because more and more blood was quietly draining from his body, and it had flowed into a stream.

It wasn't until I don't know how long it took that a voice suddenly sounded in the bottom of his heart, as if it was gently shaking on his shoulder.

This voice reminds people of the sun, which makes people feel uplifted and warm, just like the bowl of mushroom tea that Yiyong did not drink, gradually filling his heart and stomach.

[What one person can't accomplish, two people together, but there is a point where it can be done incredible.] 】

Yi Yong opened his eyes violently, and the rhythm of his breathing gradually returned to normal.

[Now is the time for me to come out, Lord Shuizhu!] 】

[Let me join you in giving these children a bright future!] So that one day, they too can become a pillar for others. 】

"Speak so loudly in the hearts of others......"

The corners of Yiyong's mouth curled slightly, but tears flowed down his cheeks along with the blood on the top of his head, staining his clothes red.

Chakra flowed on its own under his control, replacing the seal, and a shadow clone appeared. He half-knelt and pulled a tuft of Naruto Uzumaki's hair from the lining of his clothes.

The shadow clone dipped the blood that flowed from Yiyong's knees, and his hands glowed brilliantly red at the same time, slamming into the narrow ground, calling out the name of the flame of hope for the first time.

"Spiritism!"

"Yanzhu Purgatory Kyojuro!"