"Rasa, why won't these people stay dead?"
Shuang Uchiha remained held firmly in Rasa's arms, her weight supported in a protective princess carry.
Her gaze fell upon the cultists on the floor; their skin and flesh were scorched into blackened husks, yet they clawed at the stone in a desperate, undying struggle.
Seeing these wretches wailing and writhing, not a single trace of pity touched Shuang's face.
In this savage ninja world, she had witnessed far more sickening atrocities than this.
Besides, falling into such a state was the just reward for their own sins.
Her pupils flickered as she spoke in a soft, puzzled whisper.
Rasa maintained his steady pace, moving deeper into the facility while keeping his tone casual.
"When you slaughtered your way in here twenty years ago, were they not like this?"
Shuang's eyes drifted as she dove into her memories.
A moment later, she shook her head slowly.
"Twenty years ago, the cultists I faced were only slightly more resilient than a normal ninja."
"You just had to hack them a few more times to make them stay down."
Rasa nodded slightly.
"It's only natural. Not just the hidden villages progress; these bottom-feeders lurking in the shadows evolve too."
As they spoke, the metallic stench of blood became a suffocating weight.
Minutes later, Rasa went to speak but paused, his brow furrowing as he stared at the path ahead.
Seeing his tension, Shuang followed his gaze with mounting curiosity.
Ahead was a massive, seamless stone wall; there appeared to be no door at all.
But as Shuang focused her gaze on that wall, her stunning face turned deathly pale.
Fires of pure rage ignited in her eyes, threatening to overflow.
Both fell into a heavy silence, standing still before the barrier.
It was as if they were both lost in their own thoughts, or perhaps simply trying to suppress an explosion of internal fury.
As their footsteps died out, faint, ghostly sounds began to seep through the thick rock.
Listening closely, one could clearly distinguish the muffled, rhythmic echoes of human screams.
The wailing was initially faint and airy, sounding almost unreal.
Yet, as the seconds ticked by, the sound transformed into a shrill, bone-chilling screech.
It was the sound of souls enduring a level of torture that defied human imagination.
"Ngh... ahhh... ugh..."
The intermittent, spectral shrieks filled their ears.
Even a man as cold and calculated as Rasa felt his skin crawl, a jolt of primal unease hitting his heart.
The Mangekyō in Shuang's eyes spun slowly, her crimson pupils burning with wrath.
Her lips parted slightly as she fought to keep her voice steady.
"There are about a hundred 'people' behind that wall. Only six cultists are guarding them, all with Chunin-level Chakra."
"The force at the main stone gate earlier must have drained ninety percent of their active manpower."
Rasa nodded, his voice as flat and unbothered as a frozen lake.
"Kill them."
BOOM!
With a thunderous roar, the massive stone wall was pulverized in an instant, struck by an irresistible, titanic force.
The six cultists inside the chamber.
They barely had time to register the noise or turn their heads before their bodies failed to react.
In absolute horror, they saw six clusters of golden sand streak toward them with impossible speed.
In a grotesque display, the sand forced itself directly into their screaming mouths, surging down their throats like a gritty tide.
It filled their stomachs instantly, churning and grinding against their internal organs!
"AGHHH! MMFGH!"
The six cultists collapsed without resistance.
They rolled on the floor in mindless agony.
Their bellies began to swell obscenely, distending until they looked like women in their final month of pregnancy.
But while a woman's belly held new life.
Theirs held only the suffocating, lethal weight of Rasa's sand, crushing the life out of them from the inside out!
Rasa, still cradling Shuang, stepped through the ruins of the stone wall.
In stark contrast to the dim tunnels, this vast secret chamber was flooded with brilliant light.
Surprisingly, the illumination didn't come from torches or braziers, but from fully modern electric lights.
The room was packed with large-scale machinery and experimental equipment.
From this perspective, the Jashin Cult was technically years ahead of the current ninja world's technology.
However, Rasa and Shuang ignored the hardware entirely.
Even though they had sensed the general horror before entering, seeing it with their own eyes was a different kind of trauma.
Their hearts grew heavy with an inexplicable, crushing weight.
The purpose of the cult's human experimentation was to create an undying monster like the future Hidan—a creature that could survive even if its body were ground into dust.
How does one experiment to achieve that?
The scene before them was the answer—a series of inhumane, demonic trials.
Within dozens of massive glass vats, over a hundred blood-soaked "creatures" that no longer looked human writhed in pain.
They let out the wretched, piercing shrieks of damned spirits.
This was what Shuang meant by a hundred "people."
They still possessed the vague shape of humans.
But calling them human felt like an insult to the word.
Rasa's eyes became chillingly calm as he looked at the vats.
Some had bodies that were literally shattered into fragments, yet they clearly maintained a faint, agonizing trace of life.
You could see the subtle rise and fall of their mangled chests, the occasional twitch of a severed finger.
Others had been forcibly dissected and grafted into the bodies of others.
Two heads—one old, one middle-aged—had been crudely stitched onto the torso of a teenage boy.
Both heads stared at Rasa with a vacant, soul-dead expression.
Every cruel scenario a human mind could conceive was displayed right here.
Yet, through some dark miracle, these test subjects refused to die.
By all laws of medicine, injuries this severe and blood loss this extreme should have killed even a powerful ninja.
But the vats were nearly filled with blood, more than any human could possibly possess. It was all so bizarrely surreal.
Beside each vat was a machine recording data points that Rasa couldn't begin to decipher.
Suddenly, the scream of a girl who looked no older than fifteen reached a crescendo.
Her limbs had been hacked away, and she bobbed in a tank half-filled with gore.
She strained her neck upward, her eyes bulging and bloodshot, staring at the ceiling in a silent plea for death.
Shuang Uchiha closed her eyes, unable to bear the sight. Her voice trembled as she spoke.
"Twenty years ago... it wasn't this heartless..."
In the ninja world, killing was a daily routine.
Combat often left bodies mangled beyond recognition.
But normally, once a person was dead, that was the end of it.
Desecration of remains was rare, usually requiring a strategic reason.
Most just took the head for a bounty and left the rest to the earth.
No one did this.
"Destroy it all. At least we can stop them from living this nightmare."
Minutes later, a hundred glass tanks shattered, and the chamber began to groan under the stress of the destruction.
Rasa set Shuang down. They held hands tightly and began to run.
They moved in a heavy silence, occasionally cutting down a dozen lingering cultists who tried to bar their path.
Finally, they reached a truly massive pool of blood.
"That's her!"
Shuang Uchiha suddenly pointed ahead, her face a mask of pure terror.
Rasa followed her finger.
He saw a massive, flickering shadow streak past like a bolt of lightning before vanishing into nothingness.
In that same instant, an indescribable sensation surged deep within Rasa's gut without warning.
Rasa frowned, looking down at his own stomach.
In his perception, his own belly was undergoing a bizarre, miraculous transformation.
Even my invisible magnetic shield can't block this strange ability?
Shuang was pushed to the brink of a breakdown, staring at her own flat stomach.
She wondered why the effect was slower this time, but her voice was frantic:
"Rasa! We have to go! Now!"
Rasa shook his head. He began to flood his body with the divine power he had been accumulating.
The magnetic shield, which previously held only a trace of godhood, was suddenly supercharged by several orders of magnitude.
Shuang, previously paralyzed by fear, marveled as she touched her stomach.
The look of a survivor replaced the horror on her face.
"Strange... why did the feeling just... stop?"
"Curious. You little male rat... you can actually resist my touch?"
An ethereal, melodious female voice drifted through the air.
It was layered with a strange, echoing resonance that made it sound divine.
"Because you resisted, I shall show mercy. Leave this place at once!"
"I can overlook everything you have done until now."
Rasa shook his head, a strange, knowing smile playing on his lips.
"I see. I overestimated you. I actually prepared several different contingency plans for this."
"It turns out that outside of this one trick, your other powers aren't anything special at all."
The ethereal voice remained flat and detached, as if Rasa's insults meant nothing.
"What nonsense are you babbling, little rat?"
"I am merely feeling generous. If you refuse to take this chance, do not blame me for being unkind."
Hearing that cold, flat tone, Rasa's grin only widened.
"Hehe. My decision to hunt you down first was the right one."
"If you were actually as powerful as you claim, you wouldn't have spent decades hiding in a dark, damp hole like a cockroach."
"ARROGANCE!"
With an angry shriek, the blood pool began to churn violently, as if something gargantuan were about to erupt from the depths.
The thick scent of gore became a physical weight, stinging their nostrils.
Faint wisps of blood mist began to materialize in the air.
Seeing this, Rasa tensed and roared:
"Behold, my thousand explosive tags!"
"Shuang!"
Shuang didn't hesitate. Her hands blurred into seals.
Rasa's mind flickered, and a swirling rift of space opened beside them.
From the void, a rain of countless explosive tags poured out like a lethal storm.
"Fire Style: Searing Flame!"
With Shuang's soft command.
Massive plumes of fire erupted over the churning blood pool.
The flames vaporized the gore, turning the chamber into a misty, hellish furnace.
In that window, Rasa grabbed Shuang and pulled her into the Kamui dimension.
As they vanished.
The hundreds of tags floating over the blood pool ignited as one.
A deafening, world-ending roar followed!
BOOM! BOOM!!
This takes a long time to describe.
But in reality, it all happened in less than half a second.
Under the sheer explosive force of hundreds of tags detonating at once.
The underground cavern—built to withstand dozens of A-rank jutsu—shattered.
Without warning, it collapsed entirely!
On the surface, the crowd watching the smoking building suddenly felt a massive tremor.
A few skilled Yugakure ninjas sensed the shift instantly.
Their faces filled with horror as they looked at the ground.
They turned and ran like their lives depended on it, screaming:
"Run! Get back! The ground is giving way!"
Those who were alert or cowardly fled instantly.
The rest stood there, confused, watching the fleeing crowd.
CRASH!
Before they could decide whether to follow, the solid earth began to heave and buckle.
The civilians and ninjas didn't even have time to scream.
In a second, the earth opened its maw and swallowed everything.
Thousands of civilians and dozens of ninjas were dragged into the abyss without mercy!
Gulp.
The few surviving ninjas and civilians who had fled in time stared in shock.
Before them was a crater fifty meters deep, having swallowed the tower and every building for hundreds of meters around.
They stood on the edge, faces pale, unable to stop themselves from swallowing hard.