Three years ago, on a soft and bright spring day.
Four-year-old Neji met his cousin, who was a year younger than him, for the very first time.
She was tiny, soft, and looked incredibly delicate.
She was the kind of well-behaved child that made you instinctively want to pat her head as she obediently followed Lord Hiashi…
“Neji, this is Lady Hinata.
She is the person you will protect for the rest of your life.”
Hearing his father’s voice beside him, Neji nodded subconsciously.
She’s so cute~
I’m going to protect her for the rest of my life.
That was the thought that blossomed in Neji’s heart the first time he met Hinata.
She is absolutely brutal!
When on earth is she going to let me go?!
This was Neji Hyuga’s current opinion of Hinata.
The Hyuga Clan, Training Ground.
Inside the traditional, purely wooden structure, two children stood facing each other, one dressed in a black training uniform and the other in white.
No way!
Didn’t we just practice this morning?!
Why do we have to do another round?!
Only seven years old, his face still holding a trace of childish innocence, the young boy in the white training uniform looked at the cute, smiling girl standing opposite him.
He was barely managing to maintain his calm facade.
Neji Hyuga instinctively glanced around.
Only a few attendants stood at the edges of the training ground.
His father, Hizashi Hyuga, was absent due to clan affairs…
Which meant!
He wouldn’t even get the chance to cry out for his dad to save him!
“Neji-niisan, one must never slack off in training.
You must give it your all.”
“I am sure that with your talent, brother, you do not need anyone to remind you.”
Opposite him, Hinata, clad in her black training uniform, resolution clear in her eyes, seemed to sense her cousin’s internal distress and offered a well-meaning reminder.
???
My talent?!
How come I didn’t know I had that kind of talent?
Neji wept bitter tears in his heart, but forced into a corner, he could only bite the bullet and agree.
Hinata’s father, Hiashi Hyuga, and Neji’s father, Hizashi Hyuga, were twin brothers born from the same mother.
Because of the unique nature of the Byakugan, the mere order of the brothers’ birth dictated their drastically different fates.
This was the Hyuga clan’s distinct division between the Main House and the Branch House.
The Branch House was branded with the Caged Bird Seal.
If the Main House willed it, they could use the curse to execute a Branch House member at any moment.
The Caged Bird could never be removed; liberation came only when the body perished and the soul departed.
Yet, beneath this seemingly ruthless rule lay a hidden layer of deeper meaning.
The Tenseigan.
This was an absolute secret of the Hyuga, passed down solely through word of mouth between successive heads of the Main and Branch Houses.
Only by gathering a vast number of Byakugan could one awaken the Tenseigan.
If the extreme measure of the Caged Bird Seal were used simply out of fear that outsiders might steal the Byakugan, it would be entirely unnecessary.
No matter how strong the Byakugan’s sensory abilities were, they couldn’t match the Uzumaki clan’s Mind’s Eye of the Kagura.
If they wanted it that badly, they could just kidnap any Uzumaki man to use as breeding stock, and sooner or later, they would obtain the Mind’s Eye of the Kagura.
Therefore, the Hyuga clan’s Caged Bird Seal was never meant to guard against outsiders—it was meant to guard against their own people.
This was also why, for thousands of years, no one from the Branch House had ever rebelled against the Main House.
Furthermore, because the Caged Bird had to be actively triggered by the Main House rather than activating passively, there was a built-in check.
If a member of the Main House became too tyrannical, obstinate, or cruel, and the Branch House could no longer endure it, a rope might secretly find its way around that Main House member’s neck while they slept.
After all, nobody was a fool.
Otherwise, back when Konoha was founded, given Hashirama Senju’s personality, he would have definitely intervened if he discovered the Hyuga were employing such a completely one-sided, extreme method.
And right now, standing across from Hinata, Neji Hyuga was a member of that very Branch House.
Hinata and Neji each assumed their Gentle Fist stances, simultaneously activating their Byakugan.
The Gentle Fist was a unique style developed by the Hyuga clan, leveraging the Byakugan’s ability to see the human chakra pathway system.
It allowed them to inject chakra directly into the opponent’s tenketsu, pathways, and internal organs.
The Gentle Fist was the ultimate, defining technique of Hyuga taijutsu—bar none.
In battle, as long as physical contact was made, the enemy’s tenketsu would be sealed, blocking the flow of chakra through their pathways.
It was a peerless weapon for close-quarters combat.
Over time, Gentle Fist became virtually synonymous with the Hyuga.
Shinobi of the Hyuga clan gradually began to specialize exclusively in Gentle Fist, rarely utilizing standard ninjutsu.
At this moment, Neji, standing opposite Hinata, had been hailed as a genius since childhood.
This title of “genius” represented Neji’s immense natural talent for the Gentle Fist.
As for why Hinata could utterly dominate this so-called genius during their daily training to the point of making him want to cry uncle—the reason was quite simple.
In the training ground, Hinata and Neji executed the opening stance of the Gentle Fist: Eight Trigrams Palms, as if an invisible Taiji-Bagua diagram had materialized across the floor.
Neji stood on the Yang side, while Hinata stood on the Yin side.
In the next second, both of them moved almost simultaneously!
One palm.
With lightning speed, Hinata and Neji clashed palm-to-palm, an invisible shockwave of chakra exploding between them!
With just a single strike, Neji’s expression shifted slightly.
Two palms.
Another clash.
Neji’s striking force noticeably intensified.
Four palms.
The two exchanged a flurry of offense and defense in a brief span of time.
Neji’s face was now completely tense.
A hand, swift as a lightning bolt, pierced through the gaps in Neji’s dual-arm defense and pressed right against his chest.
An invisible burst of kinetic energy erupted at Neji’s chest.
Under the impact of this force, Neji couldn’t help but stagger back two steps.
Eight palms, eight moves.
Within the Gentle Fist: Eight Trigrams Palms, one could strike up to one hundred and twenty-eight times.
Yet, the exchange between the two had barely reached a fraction of that before Hinata’s Gentle Fist shattered Neji’s defense and landed directly on his chest.
Neji Hyuga was effectively “dead.”
“Again!”
Hinata withdrew her palm and stood tall, immediately resuming her combat stance.
Neji looked down at his chest, gritted his teeth, and continued his battle with Hinata.
For a time, the training ground was filled with their shifting figures, and the constant crackle of chakra bursts from their clashing Gentle Fists echoed endlessly.
This world was one ruled by lineage and bloodlines.
The protagonist, Naruto, possessed Otsutsuki blood.
The deuteragonist, Sasuke, possessed Otsutsuki blood.
The Uchiha, Senju, Uzumaki, Hyuga, and Kaguya clans all traced their lineages back to the Otsutsuki.
This held true for the heroes, and just as true for the villains.
Rounding it down, it meant that under those peak conditions, no one really held a unique bloodline advantage over the other.
So, how could Hinata defeat the so-called genius Neji within ten moves under identical conditions?
As the biological mother of the future savior, Boruto Uzumaki, Boruto had perfectly inherited the bloodline advantages of both Naruto and Hinata.
What exactly was Hinata’s advantage?
Or rather, did Hinata possess the inherent talent required to be a true powerhouse?
After all, looking at the original timeline, Hinata’s future was merely that of a housewife, topping out as a Special Jonin at best.
The Hinata Hyuga of the original canon was completely love-brained.
All day long, it was nothing but “Naruto this” and “Naruto that,” often spent stalking him from afar.
As the protagonist’s wife, she perfectly met everyone’s expectations of her role.
Furthermore, due to her personality, it’s highly likely that the canon Hinata rarely ever truly unleashed her full capacity.
Even during the Fourth Shinobi World War, while the other members of the Konoha 11 were pulling off incredible solo feats left and right, the canon Hinata had to rely on a Nine-Tails chakra cloak and a flashback power-up just to barely scrape together a Sixty-Four Palms strike to take down a single Ten-Tails clone.
That was honestly a bit painful to watch.