Chapter 63: Curse
Back at the camp, Sunagakure quickly made preparations to interrogate the Amegakure prisoners.
Besides Kūren, whom the 'Heavenly Restriction Incarnate' had captured alone, the Sealing Squad had managed to capture thirty-odd Chūnin and eight Special Jōnin.
The low number of Jōnin was somewhat disappointing, even after all the preparation. But considering the professionalism of Amegakure, they likely had plenty of experience committing suicide before being captured, so Hiiro Rinko let it go. Amegakure's business capabilities were clearly outstanding, given how many assassination contracts they stole from the Five Great Nations.
The 'Heavenly Restriction Incarnate' carried Kūren—whose limbs and abdomen were tightly bound by reinforced Chakra-suppressing bandages, making him look like a human stick—into a tent pre-arranged as an interrogation room. He hung the captive on an X-frame and then raised several sealing barriers.
Everyone has been busy and is tired. We can't have the prisoner's screams disturbing their rest.
Seeing this, even though Kūren's jaw was dislocated, his eyes clearly conveyed: You know Barrier Jutsu too?!
"Are you surprised? That barrier was also set by me."
Rinko replied casually, then realized his nose felt strange. He blew hard, and a clot of congealed blood fell onto a tissue. He calmly wiped the blood from beneath his nose, incinerating the tissue, feeling a slight shock.
Rinko's secret technique, Seven Essences Unlocking Gates, was a Yang Release ultimate technique and did not typically cause undue burden on the body. This was why, despite sharing similar principles with the Eight Gates Formation, Rinko categorized it as a Yang Release secret art.
While both involve opening the Chakra points, the Eight Gates focuses on releasing Chakra suppression to gain immense, short-term power. Rinko's Seven Essences focuses on internal and external coordination to use Yang Release to activate the body and increase the conversion rate of life energy, maximizing physical performance rather than forcibly inflating strength with raw Chakra. The effect was a 'snowball' of enhanced self-healing, stability, and physical attributes.
The main flaw was the excessive Yang Release making his personality a bit too 'hot-blooded.'
The physical stress he suffered mostly came from the enhancement tattoos he continuously ran to mimic Fushiguro Toji's build. Even with similar height, the gap in muscle mass and inherent durability was significant. Fushiguro Toji once took a blow from Gojō Satoru and only suffered minor scratches. Heavenly Restriction truly was a cheat.
Thinking this, the 'Heavenly Restriction Incarnate' gradually deactivated the enhancements, his figure becoming much leaner. Reaching behind his head, he slowly peeled off the skin-like mask.
"Hah… this is more comfortable. Let me introduce myself. My real name is Hiiro Rinko."
As the massive power faded, so did the manic excitement. With his mindset returning to equilibrium, Rinko felt completely justified in his decision to fight in disguise. A non-existent person cannot have intelligence gathered on them. Lack of intelligence causes uncertainty; uncertainty causes panic; panic causes rash decisions, and rash decisions cause fatal errors. Rinko was well-versed in exploiting these small errors and magnifying them into fatal wounds.
"Alright, I'm pressed for time. Let's get straight to the point."
Taking gloves and a pair of pliers from a scroll on his wrist, Rinko put on his plain, non-prescription glasses. He walked forward, detached, slowly gripping Kūren's dislocated jaw, clamped the pliers onto a tooth, and pulled.
"————!!!"
"Don't worry, I won't let you die—at least, not until I've thoroughly squeezed out all your value."
Rinko held the captive, who was rattling the chains, and quickly injected a small amount of Yin Release Chakra into his brain to stabilize his mind. He then pulled the second tooth.
Using Yin Release to stabilize the spirit, Medical Ninjutsu to ensure life, and Brutal Pressure Pliers for tooth extraction without anesthesia—all thirty-two teeth were gone in a matter of minutes.
"You... you used Genjutsu, didn't you…"
With his teeth gone, the air whistled through Kūren's mouth as he asked, his voice dead, resigned. Repeatedly and forcefully 'stabilized' by the Yin Release, Kūren was now numb, like a mental patient who had been heavily medicated. Only now did he realize that during the battle, the emotions of everyone present, including himself, had been unnaturally amplified.
The hatred, the anger, the despair—all had been excessively magnified.
"Was it Genjutsu? Hmm... you can think of it that way."
Washing the blood from his hands, Rinko paused, as if considering the precise answer, and replied with a trace of uncertainty. He was good at dispelling Genjutsu, but terrible at casting it. While he had done something similar in the fight, Rinko was hesitant to call it Genjutsu.
In his past world, places that held strong memories, like schools or hospitals, easily accumulated curses. When people recalled those 'bad memories,' those places became vessels for emotion. Powerful Cursed Objects were often placed there to ward off evil.
The principle was similar to the Yin and Yang Chakra cores he created in his own body: using a vast amount of the curse itself to gather the surrounding minor curses.
In this battlefield, Amegakure naturally held strong negative emotions toward Sunagakure, the invaders. While it was hard to do in the open, releasing trace amounts of Cursed Energy inside a sealed environment—like his barrier—was enough to incite their negative emotions.
Extreme emotion can boost power, but it also creates openings.
The core belief that enables people to transcend their limits—the firm ideal that allows humans to surpass the illusion of 'reality' and gain superhuman ability—is a powerful force. But if one is confined to a narrow mindset, they only become trapped, unable to see beyond their own boundaries, leaving their conviction undirected.
Rinko didn't believe Amegakure's pent-up fury was wrong. But Konoha, which also ravaged the Land of Rain, was currently a victim of a two-front war. Suna declaring war was also to protect its own citizens.
Since Senju Hashirama's death, the brief peace he maintained had collapsed. In this era, everyone was desperately trying to protect the interests of their own people.
If one simply pours hatred onto the 'enemy' without seeing this reality, without thinking about how to change things, that conviction becomes nothing more than stagnant resentment.
Well, from a small country's perspective, Amegakure isn't on a wrong path so much as they never had a 'right' path to begin with. It was too much to ask a country sandwiched between three great nations to change the times.
But whatever Amegakure's predicament, it didn't stop Rinko from exploiting it.
"It is best for defilement to be solved by defilement itself, because anyone who attempts to cleanse it will inevitably become stained by it. This vicious cycle, we call a 'Curse'." A Cursed User once said this, and Rinko believed it.
Kūren, who was fighting Rinko head-on, suffered not only from the barrier's ambient Cursed Energy but also the mental and spiritual shockwave released by Rinko's attacks, and the unstable Yin Release Chakra mixed with his Seven Essences technique.
The combination of Rinko's unrestrained malice and Kūren's internal 'poison'—the disappointment of failing to kill his enemy—was the Curse that had broken him.
That was why Kūren, his spirit shattered, had collapsed so completely.
As for why Rinko's own Suna men were fine? Their enhancement tattoos used Rinko's Cursed Energy as one component. He had, of course, prepared them beforehand.
"Snake oil. Would you like some? It's high-grade stuff I refined myself. Very soothing."
Rinko retrieved a small tin of ointment from a scroll on his wrist, applied some to his philtrum and temples, and inhaled deeply. With the development of his Yang Release, he no longer needed to take those potent drugs to maintain his body's balance. This level of ointment was enough.
He waved the tin in front of Kūren, who was hanging like a smoked duck, and received no response, as expected.
"No? Alright then. So… before the interrogation, do you have anything you want to tell me?"
Kūren remained silent.
"Mhm. I thought so."
The red-haired young man nodded, understanding the Amegakure Jōnin's refusal to acknowledge the invaders who were ravaging his homeland. Rinko was only asking as a formality; he never expected to get anything out of his mouth.
Unlike a failed mission and capture, Amegakure was facing an external invasion. If Kūren, a Jōnin, lacked the fortitude to resist, Amegakure would have collapsed long ago.
Rinko's goal was simply to use torture to grind down Kūren's will, making it easier to use other techniques to extract his memories later.
During the Warring States Era, the Yamanaka Clan's mind-transfer technique was already famous. Other clans and organizations had developed similar techniques for memory extraction. While these methods were often difficult to apply and inconsistent, they were still widely used.
In response, countermeasures like consciousness sealing or memory modification were also common in the Shinobi World, particularly among Jōnin.
But these techniques rely on the user's will and spiritual strength. If you can destroy the opponent's will, the memory-extraction techniques become much more effective.
This would be a prolonged war of attrition. As the only surviving Jōnin captive, Kūren's victory condition was simply to hold out until Amegakure made its next move. Rinko's victory condition was to break his will before that. Rinko always preferred missions with clearly defined goals.
And so, the interrogation began.
"Why…"
The tormented man finally uttered a sound other than heavy breathing and muffled groans. This was after Rinko had removed his fingernails for the third time and was starting to squeeze the flesh and bone out of his fingers like jelly.
"Hm? What are you referring to?"
Rinko helpfully took gauze to wipe the bloody saliva from Kūren's mouth, then used a Chakra scalpel to peel back the skin from his jaw, and finally ripped the skin from his jaw and neck. He asked the question flatly.
Why did you gain this strength at such a young age?
Why can you commit these cruelties without changing your expression?
Why is Sunagakure so uncaring about ravaging my homeland?
Or why do you still show no emotion whatsoever?
Perhaps Kūren himself didn't know what he was asking, but Rinko was happy to answer.
Inflicting physical agony was, for him, pure mechanical labor. He got no pleasure from it. But since he had already dedicated a mental thread to monitor the captive's condition, letting him die in silence would be a waste. His own processing power was precious, and some things could only be said to a stranger who was destined to die.
"As 'comrades' who will be spending some time together, I'll be happy to answer your questions."