bookbashuk Chapter 361 It will stop when it flares up.
Chapter 361 It will stop when it flares up.
Chapter 361 It will stop when it flares up.
Shikamaru reached his hand toward the back of Ikezumi's neck.
Chi Quan turned his head away to avoid it.
"Don't touch it."
"I want to see branding."
"No need to look."
Shikamaru's hand froze in mid-air. He looked into Izumi's eyes, eyes devoid of weakness, restraint, or even pain. There was only something he had seen many times before—the expression Izumi wore during missions, on the edge of a blade, when surrounded. Not ruthlessness, not coldness, but a complete, utterly focused concentration, devoid of any superfluous emotion.
Shikamaru withdrew his hand.
"Chiquan."
"Um."
"What are you hiding?"
Chi Quan looked at him without saying a word.
Shikamaru took a step back, leaned against the railing at the foot of the bed, and crossed his arms.
"When you came back last night, you were almost completely drained of blood. Shizune stitched you up for nearly three hours, and Lady Tsunade herself came to apply pressure. The penetrating wound in your left shoulder almost reached your lung, and the tear in your abdomen almost damaged your mesentery. Kagura said your chakra was less than 20%. Kiba said you were barely tougher than paper." He finished in one breath, paused, "But now you're sitting here, breathing as steadily as if you've never been injured. Tell me, can a normal person recover to this extent in less than 24 hours after losing so much blood, being poisoned, and having several cuts?"
Chi Quan looked down at the bandage on his abdomen.
"I recovered quickly."
"No matter how fast you recover, you can't outpace the limits of the human body."
Chi Quan offered no further explanation. He took the knife off his lap, rested it tip-down on the windowsill, and placed his hands on the hilt as if using a cane. The morning light shifted slightly across his face, making his eyes appear even clearer.
"Shikamaru".
"you say."
"Have you always thought I'm very good at tolerant of pain?"
Shikamaru frowned.
"yes.
"Then didn't you ever consider," Chi Quan's voice was flat, "that maybe I'm not just good at enduring pain, but that I don't actually feel that much pain?"
Someone passed by in the corridor, their footsteps fading into the distance. In the distance, the changing of the guard command came from the direction of the Hokage Building, muffled by the morning breeze.
Shikamaru's expression changed from confusion to alertness.
"What do you mean?"
Chi Quan lifted his right hand from the hilt of the knife and slowly extended it to the back of his neck, his fingertips touching the area to be branded. He didn't apply any force, just kept it there. After a few breaths, he lowered his hand.
"This brand, from day one, has not been entirely under Helian's control."
Shikamaru's breath caught in his throat for a moment.
Chi Quan continued speaking at a moderate pace, as if he were reading a task report.
"Hamura Jaku said this is the tracking mark of the Ensui bloodline limit, where the caster uses their life as a catalyst, nailing their blood and chakra into the target's meridians before dying. That's correct. But he didn't know—or he knew but didn't say—that this mark requires two conditions to take effect. First, the caster's blood. Second, the target's blood. With only the caster's blood, the mark will simply fall into a dormant state. With only the target's blood, the mark won't react at all. Only when both are present will the mark be activated."
Shikamaru's voice was very low: "So your blood was used too."
"Yes. Helian has my blood on his hands."
Shikamaru's mind raced. Izumi's blood—when was it taken? Who took it? On the battlefield? In the village?
Medical team? He put aside these questions and asked the most crucial one first.
How did you know?
Chi Quan lowered his eyes and looked at the knife on his knee.
"Hamura said something at the bend, but the wind carried it away, and you didn't hear it. He said—'Your blood, without your knowledge, has already been surnamed Helian for a long time.'"
""
Shikamaru clenched his back molars.
Chi Quan raised his eyes.
"From that moment on, I knew one thing—this brand was on me, and it was on Helian as well. He used my blood to nail me, and I could use his blood to remove it. It wasn't a one-sided lock; it was a double lock. He locked me in, and he also nailed himself to me."
Shikamaru slowly sat on the edge of the bed, supporting himself on his knees with his hands and lowering his head.
After a while, he raised his head.
"So you didn't actually have an attack on the wet slope."
Chi Quan remained silent for a second.
"Partly yes."
What does "partially" mean?
"It's true that my neck feels cold," Chi Quan said. "But I made it cold myself. When Yu Cunji's fine line array closed in, I needed him to think I was frozen. He thought that branding was a weakness Helian gave me, and I wanted him to go back with that judgment."
Shikamaru stared at him.
"You deliberately let him stab you?"
"I made him think he'd stabbed me," Chi Quan corrected. "The knife to his left shoulder, I was off by half an inch. The tip of his knife grazed the upper edge of his collarbone, went through the trapezius muscle, but didn't enter his chest cavity. It looked serious, with a lot of blood, but it didn't hit any vital organs."
Shikamaru closed his eyes.
"You got stabbed, there was blood everywhere, and then you told me you controlled your injuries."
"I couldn't control the injury," Chi Quan said. "The blood did flow. The wound was real. The tear on my side was real too; it was from the blade of the wind-breaking weapon, which I didn't dodge. But I didn't lose control of the branding."
Shikamaru stood up, took two steps, and then walked back.
Say it again.
"I didn't lose control about the branding incident."
"From when?"
Three months ago.
Shikamaru clenched his fist and then relaxed it, relaxed it and then clenched it again.
Three months ago. Chi Quan first mentioned feeling occasional coldness on the back of her neck after returning from a B-rank mission. Tsunade examined her then, saying it might be a reaction to lingering chakra from an old injury, and had Shizune prescribe ointment, but didn't take it seriously. Over the past three months, Chi Quan has mentioned it several times, each time saying, "It's just a little cold occasionally, nothing to worry about." Shikamaru believed her. Everyone believed her.
"You're testing," Shikamaru's voice deepened. "You're testing whether you can control it."
Chi Quan nodded.
"At first, it didn't work. When it got cold, my entire right side would stiffen, like ice water was being poured down my neck. Later, I realized the cold didn't come from the outside, it came from the inside. It wasn't like Helian turning on a switch from a distance—he didn't have that ability. The blood vessel was dead; it only did one thing: when the blood from Helian's side resonated with my blood under certain conditions, the blood vessel would get cold. Helian couldn't control the degree of resonance; he could only sense whether it had occurred."
Shikamaru tried his best to keep up.
"So your blood and Helian's blood are like two strings. He plucks his string, and your string vibrates. The stronger the vibration, the colder it is; the weaker the vibration, the slightly colder it is."
"Yes. But what if I press down on my own strings?"
Shikamaru was taken aback.
Chi Quan placed his right hand back on the back of his neck.
"The interaction is mutual. He can call, and I can choose not to answer."
"Can you make it completely warm?"
"It can't be completely cold," Chi Quan said, "but it can be made so cold that you can hardly feel it. It can also be made to look very cold, but it's just a superficial reaction and doesn't damage the meridians."
Shikamaru stared at the back of Ikezumi's neck with a gaze that seemed to burn through the skin.
"So last night at the bend, that sudden chill you gave me was something you did yourself."
"I amplified the resonance," Izumi said. "Hamura thought the brand had flared up, so he approached without hesitation. Only when he got close could I strike him with my sword."
Shikamaru suddenly remembered a detail.
"You said you slashed him in the chest at the bend, a deep cut. But after he ran away, you said it was a pity," I thought at the time you said you were sorry you didn't kill him. Now that I think about it, you weren't saying you were sorry you didn't kill him.
Chi Quan's lips twitched slightly.
"I'm talking about the wound on his chest. My knife had something I'd applied beforehand."
"What is it?"
"My own blood."
Shikamaru's mind went blank for a moment.
"You want to mark him with your blood? Why?"
Chi Quan looked down at his knife.
"Helian was able to find me through the branding because he has my blood. Conversely, if I could get Helian's blood into my body, or get my own blood into the bodies of those around Helian, theoretically I could sense them in the opposite way."
"Theoretically?"
"I haven't tried it," Izumi said, "but Hamura said that the Yan River originates from the same source. If the Yan River is truly from the same source, there's no reason for it to flow in only one direction."
Shikamaru paced back and forth in the ward four times. His cardiac monitor was still beeping, the sound particularly jarring in the quiet room. He went over and abruptly switched off the monitor.
The beeping sound disappeared.
The ward suddenly became very quiet.
Shikamaru stood by the bed, his back to Ikezumi, his shoulders tense.
"You knew three months ago that the burning could be controlled, but you didn't tell anyone."
"Who should I tell?" Chi Quan's voice came from the window, still calm. "Tell Lady Tsunade to lock me up in the sealing squad for three months of research? Tell Shizune to spend sleepless nights searching through ancient texts for a solution? Or tell you, so you can worry about how to fool Helian?"
Shikamaru turned around.
"So you'll have to carry it yourself."
"I can handle it."
"Your left shoulder has been stabbed through."
"That's a tactical necessity."
Shikamaru strode back to the windowsill, braced himself on the window frame with one hand, and leaned forward, almost touching Izumi's face.
"Tactical needs? You call that a tactical need? Do you know that Silent Sewing's hands were shaking when he was stabbing her? Do you know that Ya sat in the corridor all night without closing his eyes? Do you know that I—" He suddenly stopped, biting the end of his sentence.
Ikezumi didn't dodge. He met Shikamaru's gaze directly, the distance between them less than a palm's width.
The morning light lay across them, illuminating the tiny dust particles floating in the air.
"What?" Chi Quan asked.
Shikamaru stepped back.
He retreated to the middle of the ward, leaned against the medicine cabinet, and looked up at the ceiling.
"What do you mean, 'you'?" he muffledly. "Anyway, you never seem to need anyone else."
Chi Quan didn't respond to that sentence.
He picked up the knife from the windowsill and slowly stood up. His legs were stiff from sitting for so long, so he paused, bracing himself against the window frame with his right hand. His bare feet touched the cold tiles, making his toes even redder.
Shikamaru glanced at him sideways from the medicine cabinet.
"Could you please put your shoes on?"
Chi Quan looked down at his feet, as if he had just noticed them.
"Where are the shoes?"
"Under the bed."
Chi Quan used his foot to hook the slippers out from under the bed and put them on. His movements were slow; his left arm was immobile, and his right hand held a knife, making the process of putting on the shoes seem clumsy and unlike his usual self. Shikamaru watched for a while, then went over, squatted down, and helped him put on the other slipper.
Ikezumi looked down at the top of Shikamaru's head.
"----Thanks."
"Don't thank me." Shikamaru stood up. "Thanking me would make us seem distant. And if we seem distant, you're even less likely to tell me the truth."
Chi Quan opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Shikamaru leaned against the medicine cabinet, his hands in his pockets.
"Tell me. What do you want to do next?"
"7
"Let's take care of the baking first."
"How do we solve this?"
"Find Helian."
Shikamaru almost burst out laughing.
"In your current state, you want to find Helian? You can't even leave your hospital room."
Chi Quan walked to the bedside and slowly sat down. The mattress sank a little, and a small patch of red seeped through the bandage on his side. He glanced down at it but ignored it.
"I don't need to go out. I can use the 'brand' to find him."
Shikamaru's expression immediately changed.
"What did you say?"
"Resonance is bidirectional," Chi Quan said. "I can feel him plucking the strings, and he can feel me plucking them. But what if I trace the source of the resonance in reverse?"
Shikamaru walked to the bedside, pulled up a chair and sat down, facing the pond.
"Explain in detail."
"The essence of branding is the resonance of two drops of blood from the same source at the meridian level. The drop of blood in Helian's hand is the anchor," and the drop on the back of my neck is the needle driven in by his blood." There is an invisible line between the needle and the anchor. This line is not straight; it bends along underground water veins, in the humidity of the air, and even the concentration of bodily fluids. But no matter how it bends, its two ends are always connected to two points.
Shikamaru continued, "If we can deduce the location of the other end by observing the direction and angle of the energy beam's deflection."
“Yes,” Izumi said. “I need someone who can sense things beyond chakra, things that are more subtle. The Byakugan can see meridians, but it can’t see the water lines of the Yan Shui. Hyuga didn’t see the root on the wet slope because he was looking at chakra, not water.”
Shikamaru thought for a moment.
"So you need someone who can 'see the water'."
"The Hisai that Kagura mentioned," Izumi said, "is a defector from Kirigakure who did pathological research on the Ensui bloodline. She can recognize the 'water quality' of the Hamura family's Ensui, and perhaps she can also trace the waterline."
Shikamaru leaned back in his chair, pressing his thumb against his temple.
"You sat on the windowsill all night in the cold wind, just thinking about this?"
"almost."
Doesn't your wound hurt?
"pain."
"Then you still want to?"
"Pain doesn't affect thinking."
Shikamaru let out a long sigh.
"Alright. I'll go find Lady Tsunade and ask her to expedite the transfer of Hisai. But you have to promise me one thing."
Chi Quan looked at him.
"you say."
"From now on, tell me about any new discoveries regarding 'brand' as soon as possible. Not when you think it's okay to tell me, but immediately."
Chi Quan remained silent for a few seconds.
"it is good."
Shikamaru stared into his eyes.
"You hesitated."
"I don't."
"You hesitated for 0.5 seconds."
Chi Quan's lips twitched.
"Did you time it?"
"Professional habits".
Chi Quan lowered his head and placed the knife on the bedside table very gently, as if he were putting down something he had borrowed. He leaned back into the pillow and closed his eyes.
Shikamaru looked at him and suddenly said something.
"You said you were able to control the burning sensation three months ago, but last night Hamura said that it would stop when it flared up." You could actually prevent him from noticing.