Chapter 37: Purging Fire
The door clicked shut, sealing off the anxious hum of the hallway and leaving Liumu alone in the sterile quiet of the medical room. He turned, his gaze settling on the still form of Mizukage on the hospital bed. A helpless, weary smile touched his lips.
Looking back, she had always presented herself to the world with such caution, a quiet and reserved presence. Who could have imagined that in the heat of competition, she would resort to such a self-immolating, jade-burning tactic to secure victory?
"Silly girl," Liumu murmured to the unconscious figure. "A loss is just a loss. There would have been other chances."
His smile faded as he examined her more closely. Her dust-stained body was a tapestry of fresh wounds and darkening bruises, punctuated by the horrifying, weeping punctures left by the parasitic insects. The most alarming was her left arm; a sinister, shadow-like toxin was visibly creeping upward through her chakra pathways, inching perilously close to her heart.
Time was a luxury she didn't have. Liumu placed his hands firmly over her chest and abdomen, his expression one of intense concentration. He began the delicate, agonizingly precise work of threading tendrils of the Samadhi True Flame—the Three-Colored Divine Fire—into her system. The parasites were sustained by Kō's chakra. If he could sever that connection, or better yet, absorb the foreign chakra entirely, her immediate danger would pass. Extracting the physical parasites themselves… that would have to wait until she was conscious and could guide the process herself.
The strain of such minute control was immense. Within moments, sweat beaded on Liumu's bald head and trickled down his temples. A grimace of pain and profound fatigue etched itself onto his face as he closed his eyes, using the flame as a sensory probe.
What he found was worse than he'd feared. The insect-borne venom had already infiltrated the delicate network of veins surrounding her heart. The internal trauma from the twin explosive tags during the fight had also wreaked havoc. Worried the raw power of the Divine Flame might overwhelm her already ravaged system, Liumu was forced to exercise ultimate restraint, carefully guiding the fiery threads away from her most vital organs.
There!
With painstaking effort, Liumu's consciousness, riding the threads of flame, finally pinpointed and encircled every parasitic invader. He gathered his will, preparing to draw out the lingering chakra that fed them.
Just then, a voice, dormant for what felt like an age, echoed in his mind.
Ding. Host toxin exposure detected. Initiate purification protocol?
Liumu blinked, bewildered.
Toxin? Me?
He looked down at his own hands. They showed no sign of contamination.
"Unless…" he muttered, realization dawning.
The Samadhi True Flame, a legacy of the Taotie, was now intrinsically part of him. By channeling it into Mizukage's poisoned body, the system had misinterpreted the contact as Liumu himself being afflicted.
"If that's the case…" Liumu's thoughts raced. "Then let's use it."
He mentally gave the command to proceed.
Affirmative. Commencing.
A resonant hum vibrated through his consciousness. Liumu felt a sudden, powerful surge within him—not chakra, but a pure, purifying current activated by the system. It rushed down his arms and poured into Mizukage's body through his palms.
"Mmn…"
A soft, pained murmur escaped Mizukage's lips. The deep furrow of agony on her brow softened ever so slightly.
As Liumu directed the Divine Flame to absorb the parasites' chakra, he witnessed a miracle. The black, venom-laced lines crawling under Mizukage's skin began to recede, fading like ink being sucked backward by an unseen pen. Her complexion, once waxen and grey, regained a hint of vital color.
"In the winner's circle: Hatake Kakashi of Konohagakure!"
In the main arena, Kakashi coolly slid his tanto back into its sheath and descended the steps, his single visible eye betraying no particular emotion.
"He's skilled," Haku—Han—observed quietly from the Konoha section, her gaze following Kakashi before shifting to the defeated ninja from the Land of Craftsmen.
This third craftsman-nin had wielded a pair of "Vajra Knuckles," tools capable of not only absorbing ninjutsu but also firing the stored energy back at the opponent. After strategically probing the weapon's limits, Kakashi, much like Haku had earlier, closed the distance. A relentless barrage of substitution tricks and shadow clones created the necessary opening for a decisive, close-quarters strike.
"It seems we'll need to increase our intelligence gathering on the Land of Craftsmen after these exams," a yellow-haired figure murmured from the shadows of a competitor's entrance.
"Leave that… to me," a drier, more sibilant voice responded. A faint, cold aura emanated from narrowed eyes with peculiar vertical pupils.
While the craftsmen ninjas themselves might not be top-tier combatants, the tools they brought to the Chunin Exams had demonstrated a shocking, disruptive potential.
"I doubt we're the only ones who've noticed," the yellow-haired kunoichi said with a light smile, her eyes scanning the assembled shinobi from every village. "I imagine every major village's intelligence division just had their interest significantly piqued. Keep observing the matches. I'm going to check on the two who were carried off earlier."
"Hah… hah…"
Liumu had no idea how much time had passed. He stared at Mizukage's face, now peaceful in sleep, and dragged in heavy, ragged breaths. The mental and physical toll of maintaining such exquisite control over the Divine Flame was far greater than he'd anticipated.
"A smoke after something like this must feel amazing," he muttered to the empty room, a self-deprecating smirk on his face as he collapsed onto a nearby stool. "Too bad I don't have any."
The template system had completely purged the venom from Mizukage's body. As for the now-dormant parasites and her other injuries, they could be handled by proper medical-nin once she awoke, or by Konoha's own medics.
Tap. Tap.
A sudden, firm knocking at the door broke his reverie. Before he could answer, it swung open.
Liumu looked up, and his mind went blank.
Standing in the doorway was a girl with blonde hair tied in twin tails, looking no more than thirteen or fourteen years old. A playful, assessing glint was in her eye, and most conspicuously, she wore a forehead protector from Otogakure—the Village Hidden in the Sound.
"You… you're… Tsunade?!"
Her appearance was undeniably that of a much younger Tsunade, complete with the legendary diamond-shaped seal on her forehead, now partially hidden by the foreign headband.
"And you're Jiraiya's problem child," Tsunade stated, not seeming surprised he'd recognized her despite her transformed state. She strode past him to Mizukage's bedside without ceremony.
Her hands glowed with the distinctive green hue of medical ninjutsu as she performed a swift, thorough diagnostic scan. After a moment, she withdrew her chakra and fixed Liumu with a penetrating, deeply thoughtful look.
"Did you do this?" she asked, her voice low.
Liumu knew exactly what she meant. After a brief hesitation, he nodded.
A faint, approving smile touched Tsunade's lips. Her hands flew through a series of seals. With a soft poof of white smoke, a small, pale slug summoned itself onto the floor by her feet.
"Take her to the main examination room. Stabilize her. The rest is up to you," Tsunade instructed the slug, which promptly began to glide toward the bed.
Liumu found his voice again. "What about you? Why are you here?" He frowned. The "Sound" team he'd been looking for days ago had clearly been Tsunade, Orochimaru, and likely Minato in disguise. "And why the Sound disguise?"
"Didn't Jiraiya teach you," Tsunade said, her tone turning cool and sharp, "not to ask questions you don't need the answers to?"
Liumu was taken aback.
Tsunade's expression grew serious, all trace of playfulness gone. "What you see isn't always the truth. Given the current… special circumstances," she emphasized, "some things are far more complicated and dangerous than they appear from the outside."
Disguised as missing-nin from a non-existent village, using a high-level Transformation Technique to infiltrate Kumo during an international exam… Whatever mission had brought Sannin here, Liumu realized with a chill, was on a level far beyond a simple Chunin assessment.
(End of Chapter)
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