39: Tang Yan: You made a mistake in the seal

“The chains are for feeding?”

At these words, the ancestral hall fell into a dead silence, so quiet that a pin drop could be heard.

Elder Iwamatsu reacted like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, abruptly springing halfway from his seat, his whiskers bristling with anger.

“Nonsense! Impudent brat!” He pointed at Tang Yan, his hand trembling, “Those chains were empowered by generations of ancestors with secret techniques to suppress the ferocity of Scarlet Scorpion and prevent it from completely losing control! What do you mean by ‘feeding’?!”

The other Elders also turned their heads, their gazes filled with confusion and scrutiny as they looked at Tang Yan.

Could this boy have been overwhelmed by Scarlet Scorpion’s evil aura?

Tang Yan paid no heed to Iwamatsu’s angry rebuke; he extended a finger and lightly tapped one of the thick chains, producing a dull clanging sound.

“Elder Iwamatsu, you might want to sense it carefully.” Tang Yan’s voice was calm, yet carried a penetrating quality, “The material of these chains is not ordinary refined iron, but rare ‘Chakra-Conducting Metal’. The sealing Ninjutsu on them, while seemingly complex and profound, is not merely for suppression.”

He paused, his gaze sweeping over the points where the chains connected to the ground, where the flagstones were darker than elsewhere.

“Their true purpose is to slowly and continuously draw energy from the earth veins, and then, through these metal chains, inject it endlessly into Scarlet Scorpion’s core. Nominally, it’s a seal, but in reality, it maintains it in a ‘half-dead, half-awake’ critical state.”

At these words, even the Fourth Kazekage Rasa, who had been silent, showed a slight change in expression.

“This… how is this possible?” one Elder muttered to himself, clearly having his understanding overturned by Tang Yan’s explanation.

Tang Yan continued to explain, his voice cold and clear: “Years of continuous energy infusion have not only failed to wear down the residual violent consciousness in the puppet’s core, but have instead constantly stimulated and tormented it. This twisted energy has caused Scarlet Scorpion’s ferocity to increase rather than decrease; it’s merely being forcibly suppressed and unable to vent.”

“True repair must first ‘cut off its supplies’.” Tang Yan’s finger moved from the chain, pointing to the puppet’s ferocious head, “Only by dismantling these seemingly indestructible chains can it be freed from this endless torment.”

“Absurd!” Elder Iwamatsu roared, “Dismantle the chains? That’s no different from releasing an imprisoned ‘ferocious beast’! Once Scarlet Scorpion completely loses control, can you bear the responsibility? Who in the entire Hidden Sand Village can bear it?!”

Another white-haired Elder also echoed in a deep voice: “How can the wisdom of our ancestors be arbitrarily speculated upon by an outsider like you? This seal has protected the Village for decades without a single error, that is proof!”

Upon hearing this, Tang Yan actually chuckled lightly. He turned his head, looking at Elder Iwamatsu, whose face was flushed with anger.

“Elder, with all due respect. You call this a seal, but it’s more like prolonging a life. However, while you are prolonging Scarlet Scorpion’s life, you are also burying a bomb in the Village that could explode at any time. Or do you all believe that as long as it doesn’t explode during your tenure, it counts as a great success?”

“You—!” Elder Iwamatsu nearly choked, his hand pointing at Tang Yan trembling even more violently.

“Enough.”

A low voice sounded, not loud, but it suppressed all the noise.

Rasa stood up, his golden hair still conspicuous in the dim light of the ancestral hall.

He did not look at the arguing parties, but slowly walked to Scarlet Scorpion, standing side by side with Tang Yan.

He extended his hand, but did not touch the chain; his palm hovered in mid-air, and golden sand slowly swirled in his palm.

A moment later, he withdrew his hand, turned his head to look at Tang Yan, his eyes sharp as knives.

“Your theory is very bold, but it’s all talk.”

“Does Kazekage-sama want proof?” Tang Yan asked.

“Yes.” Rasa was concise.

“It’s simple.” Tang Yan walked to the base where one of the chains connected to the ground, where a core Ninjutsu was inscribed. “There’s no need to dismantle all the chains; only an idiot would do that. I just need to fine-tune this node and reverse the energy flow of the sealing Ninjutsu for an instant.”

He raised his eyes, sweeping over the Elders who looked astonished and doubtful.

“If I am wrong, the Ninjutsu will temporarily fail at this node, but the sealing power of the other chains will be sufficient to maintain stability, and there will be no danger. But if I am right…”

Tang Yan’s lips curved into an arc, with a hint of mischievous amusement.

“…then, this forcibly infused earth vein energy will be forced back the way it came. At that time, you all will be able to personally experience how unwilling this ‘ferocious beast’ is when it’s forcibly fed.”

He added: “I suggest keeping your distance; the sensation of energy backflow might not be pleasant.”

Inside the ancestral hall, silence fell once more.

Only this time, the Elders’ gazes were no longer those of scrutiny and incomprehension, but rather of astonishment and wavering doubt.

They looked at Tang Yan, then at the expressionless Fourth Kazekage, who seemed to be weighing the pros and cons, and for a moment, they didn’t know what to say.

This proposal was like a precise surgical knife, cutting through their long-held “common sense.”

Tang Yan, however, seemed oblivious. He turned to Kazekage Rasa, who was seated high above, and bowed slightly: “Kazekage-sama, please give me three days.”

Rasa’s gaze was profound, showing no emotion.

“I need some materials.” Tang Yan’s voice echoed in the silent ancestral hall. He calmly listed a series of items, “Half a catty of ‘Black Scorpion Tail Needle’ mineral powder, three pairs of complete ‘Ghost-Faced Spider’ venom glands, one bottle of ‘Withered Bone Grass’ juice, and also…” He paused, then changed the subject, “One liter of the best quality ‘Sand Lizard’ blood, extracted from a living specimen.”

At these words, several Elders’ brows furrowed even deeper.

The first few items were highly poisonous, but the Sand Lizard blood was a common auxiliary material in Hidden Sand Village, often used in making healing salves. The two placed together seemed incongruous.

Tang Yan continued: “And, a perfectly quiet, undisturbed secret room, right here within this ancestral hall.”

What he requested were all highly toxic substances and seemingly unrelated materials, combined in an extremely peculiar way.

“Hmph!” Elder Iwamatsu finally found an excuse to lash out. He stepped forward, sternly questioning: “What do you want these things for? Black Scorpion Tail Needle, Ghost-Faced Spider venom glands, these are all controlled poisons in the Village! Sand Lizard blood and crystals are even strategic materials! Could it be that you intend to line your own pockets under the guise of repairing the puppet?!”

This accusation was loud and severe, and several Elders who were already suspicious immediately cast unfriendly glances.

Rasa gazed deeply at Tang Yan, a strange light flickering in his golden eyes.

He seemed to be evaluating the young man’s courage and worth. After a long moment, he slowly spoke, his voice not loud, but carrying an undeniable decisiveness:

“Granted.”

One word, and Elder Iwamatsu’s face flushed, all his remaining words caught in his throat.

Rasa stood up, adding from his elevated position: “But, for these three days, you are not to leave the ancestral hall by even half a step.”

This was both a test and a form of soft imprisonment.

If Tang Yan failed, or had ill intentions, the Sunagakure high command could immediately apprehend him.

“Thank you, Kazekage-sama.” Tang Yan bowed slightly, his face showing no emotion.

Deep within the ancestral hall’s secret chamber, a single lamp, like a flickering bean, barely dispelled the surrounding darkness. The stone door slammed shut behind him, cutting off everything from the outside.

Tang Yan did not immediately touch the Scarlet Scorpion, which emanated an ominous aura, nor did he even glance at it.

He took out a small scroll from his Pregnant and spread it on the stone table.

On the scroll, there was no profound Ninjutsu or puppet diagram, but rather rows upon rows of tiny, densely packed characters, recording the characteristics and preparation methods of various poisons.

The Myriad Celestial Crafts Box, with a slight thought from him, had already begun to operate at high speed. Countless data streams flashed through his mind, deducing every step.

He first processed the mineral powder from the “Black Scorpion Tail Needle.” This mineral itself carried a faint Fire Release, and Tang Yan placed it in a stone mortar. A faint glow lit up on his fingertip, and a pure internal force flowed into it.

Instead of grinding it with brute force, he used the high-frequency vibrations of Xuantian Skill’s internal energy to disintegrate the mineral from within.

The powder gradually heated up during the vibrations, eventually taking on an eerie dark red color.

Next were the venom glands of the “Ghost-Faced Spider.” The venom of this spider was known for paralyzing nerves, but Tang Yan did the opposite.

He precisely cut open the venom glands with a small knife, squeezing the greenish venom into a vessel containing Sand Lizard blood, then added the juice of Seven-Star Grass.

The moment the three liquids touched, there was a soft “sizzling” sound. The originally mild lizard blood churned violently, forcibly reversing the paralyzing properties of the venom, transforming it into a potent stimulant capable of instantly activating a living organism’s latent energy.

Of course, the price was excruciating pain and irreversible damage.

Finally, there was the juice of “Withered Bone Grass.” Tang Yan mixed it with “Wind Rolling Stone” powder, which contained wind-attribute Chakra, and slowly simmered it over a low flame. He did not use Fire Release, but instead pressed one hand against the bottom of the crucible, continuously injecting his pure Xuantian Skill internal energy, controlling the heat with the utmost precision.

The auxiliary soul-sense of the Myriad Celestial Crafts Box continuously corrected the subtle differences in the ratio and energy output in his mind.

“Wind Poison, done.” Tang Yan looked at the pale green liquid in the crucible, which emitted a faint fishy smell, and a slight curve appeared at the corner of his mouth. This poison was colorless and odorless; once it invaded, it would cling like a maggot to the bone, slowly eroding the Chakra pathways, leaving a Ninja with Chakra but unable to effectively manipulate it.

But this was far from enough. His goal was the ultimate evolved version of Qi Poison—the “Corrosive Heart and Bone Poison.” This required the perfect fusion of several highly distinct virulent poisons in an almost impossible manner.

This would allow it to not only corrode the flesh but also penetrate energy, and even… touch the elusive “soul.”

The Myriad Forms Ingenuity Box frantically deduced, eliminating countless failed paths, finally pointing to an extremely perilous route: utilizing the brutal, tormented residual soul within Scarlet Scorpion’s core, which had suffered for decades, as a crucible and catalyst. At the precise moment he reversed the seal and the energies clashed, he would accurately inject several newly refined potent poisons directly into the core!

Poison to attack the soul, violence to curb violence! To use the most extreme pain to destroy that already twisted soul, and then, from the ruins, rebuild the core! This was a plan of ultimate madness.

The next day, as dawn faintly broke.

Outside the stone door of the ancestral hall, two Sunagakure Jonin stood like statues, their ears constantly picking up sounds from within the door.

It was terrifyingly quiet inside; not even a sound of grinding parts could be heard.

“Creak—”

The stone door was pushed open from the inside, revealing a narrow gap, and a bony hand extended a rolled-up paper scroll.

“Send it to the Council of Elders’ office,” Tang Yan’s voice emerged from the gap, flat and unruffled.

One of the guards hesitantly took it, feeling the scroll had some weight. He exchanged a look with his companion, seeing the confusion in each other’s eyes. Just one night, and it was done?

Inside the Council of Elders’ office, the atmosphere was heavy.

Elder Iwamatsu was holding a cup of hot tea, complaining to another elder, “Hmph, I think that kid has run out of tricks. Repairing ‘Scarlet Scorpion’? A fool’s dream! When the time is up, I’ll certainly let him know the consequences of deceiving Sunagakure.”

“Elder Iwamatsu is absolutely right,” Elder Ebina, who was beside him, echoed, “Kazekage-sama was too… this time.”

Before he finished speaking, a Ninja knocked and entered, respectfully presenting the paper scroll.

“Oh? Has the plea for mercy arrived?” Elder Iwamatsu raised an eyebrow, taking the scroll with a mocking smile, and casually unrolled it.

The eyes of the other few people in the office also converged, with expressions of anticipation for a good show.

However, the expected words of plea or defense did not appear.

The smile on Elder Iwamatsu’s face instantly froze, as if an invisible hand had gripped his throat.

He leaned closer, his cloudy eyes suddenly widened, and his breathing stopped for a moment.

On the paper, tiny characters were densely packed, yet not disorganized. Each line was like a precise surgical knife, dissecting Scarlet Scorpion’s mechanism.

“The third joint bearing of the left arm is worn, with a deviation of 0.02 millimeters, causing a 0.1-second delay when the ‘Iron Sand Shield’ expands…”

“The inner wall of the back poison needle launcher, due to years of corrosive poison liquid, has material fatigue, with a 3% chance of backfire at maximum firing speed…”

“In the core energy circuit, between the seventeenth and eighteenth nodes, there is an extremely faint Chakra leakage, losing 0.006 units of Chakra per hour, which is one of the root causes of the core’s residual soul becoming increasingly violent…”

One, two… a full thirty-seven! Each one was precise to an exasperating degree; some were even hidden ailments that Iwamatsu himself had never noticed, or had only suspected but couldn’t confirm.

What shocked him even more was that after each malfunction, there was an accompanying, incredibly ingenious yet logically rigorous repair solution. Some methods even overturned his decades of understanding of puppet mastery.

“This… this is impossible…” Elder Iwamatsu’s hand, holding the report, began to tremble uncontrollably, the paper rustling softly.

He had studied puppet mastery his entire life, believing his understanding of Scarlet Scorpion was unmatched, but this report… it was like someone standing in a higher dimension, delivering a cold and comprehensive judgment on his life’s work.

“Elder Iwamatsu, what’s wrong?” Ebina leaned over for a look, then also gasped, his expression utterly priceless.

Inside the entire office, there was a deathly silence.

The elders who had just been mocking now exchanged glances, their throats dry. They knew better than anyone the weight of this report.

This was not just a diagnosis, but a display of skill capable of making any puppet master break out in a cold sweat.

Elder Iwamatsu slammed the report onto the table, his chest heaving violently. What he felt was not humiliation, but a tremendous shock from his professional field, and even a hint of… fear.

What kind of monster was this young man?

After a long while, he looked up, the original disdain and suspicion in his eyes completely gone, replaced by an indescribable complex emotion.

He spoke to the guards outside the door, his voice hoarse, issuing new orders: “Pass down the command: the area within a hundred meters around the ancestral hall is designated as a restricted zone. No one is to approach, and no sound is to interfere. Any needs of the person inside are to be fully met, without fail!”

“Yes!”

Iwamatsu sat back down, staring blankly at the report. After a long time, he finally squeezed out a sentence from between his teeth: “Perhaps… we all underestimated him.”

And because of this, no one paid attention to what Tang Yan was actually doing in the secret chamber. They all assumed he was performing an astonishing puppet repair.

..........

On the third day, at dusk, the stone door of the ancestral hall finally opened wide.

The elders waiting outside brightened, and Iwamatsu even pushed through the crowd, being the first to step forward. For three days, he had been restless, repeatedly re-evaluating the thirty-seven diagnoses in that report in his mind, growing more alarmed and more expectant with each thought.

However, Tang Yan, who emerged from the door, showed neither fatigue nor joy.

His expression was calm, holding a palm-sized crystal bottle in his hand. The bottle contained more than half a bottle of dark green viscous liquid. The liquid seemed to swallow light, emitting an unsettling and eerie aura.

He walked directly to Scarlet Scorpion, ignoring the gazes of the surrounding elders, which had shifted from expectation to astonishment and vigilance.

“The three-day deadline has arrived,” Elder Iwamatsu spoke in a deep voice, his throat dry from prolonged silence, mixed with a nervousness he himself hadn’t noticed, “You…”

Tang Yan raised the crystal bottle in his hand. The dark green liquid inside, under the ancestral hall’s firelight, reflected nothing but a deep, eerie darkness.

“What I intend to do is not ‘repair’.”

His voice was not loud, yet it clearly reached everyone’s ears, carrying an undeniable authority.

“It is ‘purification’.”

At these words, Elder Ebina frowned deeply, and the other elders beside him looked even more confused.

Tang Yan’s gaze swept over them, finally resting on Iwamatsu’s face, and he announced the name of the substance in the bottle, enunciating each word: “With this bottle of Corrosive Heart and Bone Poison, I will cleanse the resentment and filth attached to Scarlet Scorpion’s core, and… these chains.”

“What?!”

“Poison?!”

The ancestral hall instantly erupted in an uproar.

“Madman! You’re going to completely destroy it!” Elder Iwamatsu’s eyes were bloodshot, his entire Chakra uncontrollably surging, almost rushing forward to stop him.

All the admiration and expectation brought by that report instantly turned into the fury of being played for a fool.

Tang Yan, however, ignored his roar. He unscrewed the stopper of the crystal bottle, and an indescribably chilling scent instantly diffused, as if it could burrow into one’s bones.

He did not directly splash the poison onto Scarlet Scorpion. Instead, he took out an extremely thin silver needle from his sleeve, dipped it into the bottle, and carefully picked up a single drop of the dark green poison.

Then, under the almost breathless gaze of everyone, he precisely dabbed that drop of poison onto the tightest chain Entanglement “ Scarlet scorpion” The tightest chain.

“Sizzle—”

A soft sound, as if only hot oil had fallen into ice water.

But the next scene made everyone freeze in place.

That indestructible metal chain, which had sealed the puppet for decades, trembled violently the moment it touched the poison, as if it were alive!

Wisps of visible black smoke furiously billowed from the point of contact, followed by a shrill, ear-piercing wail that echoed throughout the entire ancestral hall!

This sound belonged to no known creature or metal; it directly assaulted the minds of everyone present, making several elders’ faces turn pale and their throats dry.

“Do you see?” Tang Yan turned his head, a cold curve on his lips, his gaze passing through the stunned crowd, finally resting on Iwamatsu’s face, contorted with shock.

“The ‘soul’ of this puppet, or rather, the fragments of its core consciousness, have long since merged with these greedy, energy-absorbing chains.”

His voice calmly stated a revolutionary fact.

“What you have sealed has never been the Scorpion puppet itself.”

He tapped the still wailing chain with the silver needle.

“But this, or rather these, ‘greedy chains’ that have developed self-awareness and are constantly drawing energy from the earth veins to strengthen themselves!”

“To repair Scarlet Scorpion, one must first sever this chain-soul! Only then is there hope of controlling Scarlet Scorpion.”