Chapter 157: Abundant Murals of Loulan

The air grew increasingly scorching, and the Earth Flow Wall actually began to melt like chocolate, with orange-red magma flowing everywhere.

Sasori's Hellish Flame Furnace Battle Array was originally a tool he used to smelt minerals and steel, so melting the Earth Flow Wall was a matter of mere minutes.

Fortunately, Maki had drawn away one of the flamethrowers; relying on just a single flamethrower was not enough to create crossfire coverage.

However, charging the several-hundred-meter distance to the Dragon Vein relied far too much on the speed of Ghost Walk; he had to use Jinx's Get Excited! for another speed boost.

"Yura-chan..."

"What is it?!" Yura snapped impatiently, caught in a life-or-death situation.

"Look into my eyes." Baki grabbed Yura's shoulders with both hands, gazing into her eyes with the utmost tenderness.

Yura froze slightly. Such affectionate eyes—what was he trying to do?

"Yura... I might die very soon..."

"There is one more thing... that I've always wanted to tell you but didn't dare. Death has given me the courage..."

"Wh-What?" Yura was dumbfounded. Was he going to confess his love on his deathbed?

With a slightly weary smile, Baki slowly leaned close to Yura's ear, curled his finger to gently brush aside the long hair hanging by her cheek, and whispered in an extremely tender voice...

"Oh oh oh! Is the old man finally going to chase a girl? Am I going to get a stepmom?" Karin's eyes shone brightly.

"Hurry up, hurry up! I'm dying of thirst!" Obito urged.

"If I happen to survive..." Baki's voice was filled with absolute tenderness.

Gulp... Yura's hand clenched so tightly around her kunai that it creaked. Was this what it felt like to have someone confess to you? Even though this guy was so disgusting, flirty, fickle, and improper...

Yue, what should Teacher do?

Yura's favorability rating, just like her heartbeat, was fluctuating between positive and negative like an EKG readout.

"Could you please stop dyeing your hair green?" Baki's voice suddenly turned playful.

Beep...

Her heartbeat flattened into a straight line.

"Damn it! Such monkey behavior!" Karin was holding up both middle fingers as she cursed.

"Heh heh heh heh..." Enjoying the thrill of the prank, Baki's left hand morphed into an octopus tentacle and whipped outward, grabbing a half-section of a stone pillar that had been knocked over by Hiruko earlier, and hurled it toward Sasori's direction.

Sasori also slightly raised the nozzle of his flamethrower, the immense impact suspending the stone pillar in mid-air before it dropped. Within mere seconds, a crater dripping with magma had already been burned into its surface.

Taking advantage of this opening, Baki had already dashed forward, his speed leaving only a blue afterimage in the air.

"The target is the Dragon Vein? It's a pity that without this woman, the Dragon Vein cannot be sealed." Sasori glanced at Sara beneath his feet, ignoring Baki entirely as he instead pointed both flame nozzles at Maki.

"Damn it..." Maki gritted his teeth. The stone pillar he was hiding behind emitted cracking sounds, burning hot like an iron plate. Continuing to crouch there meant being burned to a charcoal briquette was only a matter of time.

First, release a decoy, then use the distraction to escape with his true body!

Maki took off his cloak, wrapped it around a stone, threw it out from behind the pillar, and performed the Transformation Technique with hand signs.

Bang!

The cloak transformed into Maki's likeness, drawing Sasori's attention.

... But the next second, the cloak had already been burned to ashes by the flames, and Maki hadn't even had time to execute the Body Flicker Technique.

It was over now. Fortunately...

Baki had promised him that he would take good care of his wife and daughter; he didn't seem like the kind of man to break his word.

...

Relying on the speed of Get Excited!, Baki ran to the root of the Dragon Vein. Vigorous Dragon Vein chakra erupted from underground, the fierce, howling wind whipping his clothes into a frenzy.

It was just like the planetary engines in The Wandering Earth; the violent energy of the Dragon Vein was like the flames spewed from an engine, though the temperature wasn't particularly high—it merely gave one a sense of utter insignificance.

Profound incantations were engraved on the surrounding ground, though Baki couldn't understand them; they presumably belonged to a type of sealing formula.

Even stranger was that although this tower was a purely ultra-modern technological structure, the walls surrounding the incantations looked extremely ancient. Though heavily weathered, one could still faintly make out some mottled murals.

It seemed Anrokusan still cherished cultural relics quite a bit.

Baki temporarily had no time to worry about murals; he had to resurrect Fufu first.

He didn't dare throw Fufu directly into the Dragon Vein energy myself; after all, ordinary people simply couldn't withstand such violent chakra. And if she *could* withstand it... what if it created a super Fufu monster?

She had always been eyeing his body, after all.

Beside the Dragon Vein stood a metal conduit connected to an instrument. A stream of power branched off from the Dragon Vein—likely used by Sasori or Anrokusan to study the Dragon Vein chakra.

Baki retrieved a handful of Fufu's red hair, carefully spread it out on the instrument's workbench, and flipped the diversion switch. Instantly, a surge of Dragon Vein chakra was guided through the cables, swirling around Fufu's red hair and slowly causing it to float upward.

"Hurry up!" Baki pushed the energy flow directly to maximum; he didn't have much time to spare.

Taking advantage of the time it took to charge Fufu, Baki walked over to the dilapidated wall to examine the murals.

Unexpectedly... they actually depicted the story of Ōtsutsuki Kaguya's descent into the world.

The Dragon Vein was related to Kaguya as well?

Fine, Baki conceded that most unnatural things in the shinobi world could be traced back to Kaguya in some way. Something as powerful as the Dragon Vein was most likely brought by Kaguya as well.

First painting: Kaguya descended and landed in the most prosperous and fertile Land of Ancestors on the continent—the predecessor to the Land of Wind.

Second painting: Kaguya was welcomed by all the people of the Land of Ancestors and won the favor of the Emperor. Soon, the two married, and Kaguya leaped to become the noblest woman on the continent.

"The Emperor was most likely controlled by genjutsu, just high on his own supply every night. Would my Grandma Kaguya ever look at a native like him?" Baki thought maliciously.

It was as unbelievable as Queen Elizabeth running off to Africa to marry a black chieftain.

The people in the previous murals were still running and jumping about with happiness, their faces wreathed in joyful smiles, but starting from the third mural, things began to grow solemn and sorrowful.

After Kaguya planted the God Tree in the mountains, it excessively drained the planet's energy, causing the rivers in the Land of Ancestors to drop and massive numbers of trees and crops to wither. Starving refugees and corpses littered the earth everywhere. The weakness of the Land of Ancestors emboldened the neighboring Land of Toil to make aggressive moves and resort to force; amid the warfare, refugees wailed across the land, and the Land of Ancestors nearly fell.

The fourth mural was so mottled it was almost indistinguishable, but Baki could guess that it must have depicted Kaguya eating the fruit to quell the wars, becoming the true ruler, giving birth to Hagoromo and Hamura, and periodically sacrificing villagers to the God Tree.

The fifth mural was precisely the crucial turning point of the story: Ōtsutsuki Hamura and Hagoromo cut down the God Tree, leaving a deep pit and giant cavern in its original location.

Meanwhile, in order to draw the planet's energy, the God Tree's root system had already spread throughout the vast underground of the Land of Ancestors. Even though the Sage of Six Paths cut down the God Tree, he had no way to clear out the root system that spanned the entire nation, and they still maintained their pre-mortem mission, gathering all the nutrients they could collect wherever their roots reached back to the severed stump, soaring upward as a towering pillar of purple light.

This was known as the "Dragon Vein"!

"So the Dragon Vein came about this way?" Baki felt as though he had discovered a new world. "Good grief, a few severed roots stuck in the desert of the Land of Wind can produce such powerful energy. If they were stuck in the Land of Fire, wouldn't it turn into a planetary engine and push the planet away!"

The final mural depicted the Sage of Six Paths, fearing that someone would use the Dragon Vein to commit evil, sealing the Dragon Vein with a sealing formula and entrusting a female red-haired disciple of his, along with a small garrison of guards, to protect the Dragon Vein for generations.

These guards protecting the Dragon Vein also gradually evolved into the Loulan tribe amidst centuries of wind and sand, and the female disciple became the Queen, guarding this secret from generation to generation so it wouldn't be utilized by those with malicious intent.

Clearly, the previous generation of the Queen had been hoodwinked by Anrokusan and failed to uphold the mission handed down by the Sage of Six Paths.

Or perhaps she had simply completely let go of it—why should her descendants act as jailers in this ghost of a place for all eternity? Did she owe him something? Why force countless generations of descendants to pay off a debt?

Just when Baki thought he had finished reading, he suddenly discovered that beneath those weathered walls lay a stone tablet inscribed with tadpole-like text. Baki crossed his eyes trying to read it, but failed to comprehend any profound scriptures.

"Old man, do you want me to translate it?" Karin trotted over, wearing the Demon's Shadow cloak.

"You understand these characters?" Baki raised an eyebrow.

"Tch, who else is to blame but you? When I was little, you forced me to study this and that, learning a little bit of everything—of course I understand a little bit of everything," Karin said, crossing her arms with great displeasure.

"Quick, quick, translate this!" Baki pointed at the stone tablet.

"Actually, I know what it says without looking. This stone used to be placed in your study to prop up the leg of your Gwent card table, and I translated the content when I was a kid," Karin rolled her eyes.

"Ahem... Fine then, what does it say?" Baki was extremely embarrassed.

"It was written by the Sage of Six Paths. He said he once thought about returning the power of the Ten-Tails to this desert, but because of his attachment to the tailed beasts and his fear that someone would use the Dragon Vein after his death to spark wars in the shinobi world, he never made up his mind until his death, and finally decided to split the tailed beasts into nine parts," Karin translated roughly.

A锦囊 (brocade pouch) written for himself in the future: Make Loulan Great Again.

What Bunpaku said before he died about Shukaku finding a better destination.

"Oh!!! It seems I've connected all the clues!" Baki snapped his fingers.

"Hey! Think of something and go save them already!" Yura's roar echoed over; Maki was practically getting steamed alive.