The moonlight was mostly swallowed by clouds.
The entire alley was plunged into darkness, deathly silent, as quiet as if someone had tightly gripped its throat.
Uchiha Yuya lay motionless on the tatami mat.
His ears, however, were like taut bowstrings, magnifying every surrounding sound countless times.
There were no footsteps.
Even the sound of the wind was ridiculously faint.
But the system prompt wouldn’t lie.
One hundred meters, and it was still shrinking crazily.
A faint sound came from the roof, like a wild cat stepping on tiles.
But Uchiha Yuya knew clearly that the wild cats in the clan grounds had long since been driven away by the patrol teams.
That wasn’t a cat; it was a living Yama coming for his life.
The opponent was lying on the roof, quietly “observing” him.
Uchiha Yuya remained lying on his side, suppressing his breathing to the minimum.
His Chakra was tightly suppressed at the bottom of his dantian; the leaked aura was weaker than that of an ordinary civilian.
The “cat” on the roof lay there for a full three minutes.
Three minutes was enough for a professional killer to figure out the target’s background.
Weak Chakra, deep asleep, living alone with no guards.
Exactly as written in the intelligence report: a pure, battle-power-of-five weakling.
“Snap.” A small hole suddenly broke through the side window.
A thumb-sized pebble pierced the paper window, bounced off the opposite wall, and made a crisp sound.
Uchiha Yuya sprang up from the tatami mat, his movements as flustered as a dog with its tail stepped on.
He kicked over the water cup by the bed, scrambled toward the door, and let out a distorted, duck-like voice: “Who!
Who is outside!” The voice was shrill and shaky, carrying a tremor.
But in the moment of this clumsy rolling, his peripheral vision precisely locked onto the blind spot where the pebble had flown in from.
Northwest direction.
To the left of the roof.
That’s where the person was.
Uchiha Yuya didn’t even reach for the ninja tool pouch in the corner.
For a loser who failed his exams three times, the first reaction to being scared awake in the middle of the night would definitely not be to pick up a weapon and fight head-on.
He had to find a shield that fit his persona.
He grabbed the broken wooden basin he had repaired during the day by the door and huddled into the corner of the main room.
He held the wooden basin tightly against his chest, trembling into a ball: “Don’t, don’t come over…
I have nothing…” There was silence on the roof for a few seconds.
Then, a very light current of air swept past from the direction of the west wall.
Uchiha Yuya didn’t look up, but he heard it.
“Pfft.” A very light sound; that was the noise of a shoe sole stepping into soft, wet mud.
West wall, mud, perfect trap, evidence left successfully!
Uchiha Yuya shouted “It’s stable” in his heart, but his body maintained an Oscar-level high-frequency trembling.
After two seconds of silence in the courtyard, a black silhouette appeared at the end of the corridor like a ghost.
No mask, his entire face wrapped in a black mask, revealing only a pair of dead, silent eyes.
Standard Root shadow attire.
The shadow didn’t rush to make a move.
He stared down at Uchiha Yuya, who was huddled in the corner, his eyes cold, as if looking at a broiler chicken waiting to be slaughtered.
“Uchiha Yuya.” The voice was dry, without a hint of human warmth, as if reading a death list.
Uchiha Yuya raised the wooden basin higher, revealing only his eyes, his voice shaking like a broken bellows: “Who, who are you?
A big brother from the patrol team?
I haven’t done anything wrong…” The shadow didn’t respond, simply forcing his way forward by one step.
“Creak—snap!” That loose floorboard he had tampered with snapped on the spot.
The shadow’s right foot sank in half an inch; his reaction was ridiculously fast, instantly shifting his center of gravity to his left foot.
But that one second of hesitation was enough.
The broken wood splinter scraped his pant leg, and a tiny strand of black fiber was firmly hooked, hanging on the edge of the board.
The shadow glanced at his feet, not caring at all.
Just a rotten board; there were plenty of them in such a dump of a courtyard.
He looked up again and continued to advance.
“Who instigated your recent actions?” Straight to the point, no nonsense.
Root interrogations only wanted answers.
Uchiha Yuya peeked half his face out from behind the wooden basin, his face smeared with tears and snot.
Of course it was fake; just now, while scrambling on the ground, he had conveniently dipped his hands in the water on the ground and smeared it on.
“No, no one instigated me…
I’m just afraid of death…” “The atmosphere in the clan isn’t right.
I was afraid that if something happened, no one would care about me, so I went to register it…” This explanation was exactly the same as what he told Uchiha Itachi last night.
If a lie is repeated a hundred times, it becomes truer than real gold.
The shadow didn’t make a sound, directly forcing his way forward two steps.
The distance was less than a meter.
A non-reflective standard short blade appeared out of thin air in his hand.
The cold tip of the blade pressed directly against Uchiha Yuya’s carotid artery.
“Asking one more time.
Who instigated you?” With the metal against his skin, Uchiha Yuya’s Adam’s apple bobbed hard.
This wasn’t a bluff; Root had received a kill order.
Between testing and killing, it was just a matter of a thought.
What he had to do now was make the opponent believe—killing him was even less valuable than killing a chicken.
“There really is no one…” Uchiha Yuya’s voice stopped shaking, instead revealing a numbness of resignation.
“If you want to kill me, then do it.
Anyway, I won’t live for a few more days.
Something big is going to happen in the clan; anyone can see that.” “For a loser like me, no one cares where I die.
I just didn’t want to die without knowing why, so I went to register it.
At least…
at least let people know I was here in this world.” The shadow’s short blade didn’t move away, but he didn’t immediately cut down either.
He was calculating.
A pawn with a real backer would always reveal a flaw when a blade was held to their throat.
Either trying to call for help, or having confidence in their eyes.
But this kid in front of him was cowardly, humble, and a battle-power-of-five weakling.
Facing the blade, he didn’t even dare to resist, only closing his eyes and waiting for death.
The shadow’s scales began to tip.
Perhaps this really was just a coward who had been scared out of his wits and had a momentary lapse in judgment to come up with the crooked idea of registering.
But guessing wasn’t enough; Root needed ironclad evidence.
The angle of the short blade slowly turned, changing from pressing against the skin to cutting inward.
Pressing down another three millimeters would mean bleeding from the carotid artery.
Uchiha Yuya’s heart “thumped.” This wasn’t a drill; this was truly testing the bottom line with his life!
If there was a protector in the shadows, they would definitely intervene before this blade cut down.
If not, then this loser would just be killed.
Uchiha Yuya’s brain was spinning crazily.
Use seal-less Body Flicker?
Are you kidding?
A battle-power-of-five loser instantly becoming a flash master?
He’d be afraid of not dying fast enough!
But he couldn’t actually let this blade slit his throat.
The trigger condition for the Passive Substitute was “fatal attack.” If he flashed ten meters away a second before his throat was cut, that operation would be a hundred times more ridiculous than confessing to Uchiha Itachi!
There was only one way to break the situation.
High-end hunters often need to appear as the most miserable prey.
So, Uchiha Yuya began to tremble violently, his teeth chattering with a clacking sound.
Immediately after, he performed an action that perfectly fit his battle-power-of-five persona.
He kicked off with both legs, as if he had been completely scared out of his mind, and fell straight backward!
The back of his head aligned precisely, smashing hard against the pillar of the wooden corridor.
For this wave of “extreme one-for-one,” he had really smashed into it for real!
An ordinary person losing control under extreme fear was too reasonable.
The short blade slid across.
The tip of the blade drew a line of blood on his neck.
He wouldn’t die, but it stung fiercely.
“Bang!” A muffled sound.
Uchiha Yuya hit the pillar, rolled his eyes, and collapsed to the ground.
This semi-coma was a real physical stun; dealing with a veteran from Root, he couldn’t fool them without shedding some blood.
The shadow withdrew the short blade and stood in place, staring coldly for five seconds.
No hidden sentries, no one coming to the rescue, no abnormal fluctuations.
This was just a pure loser who had been scared unconscious.
In the distance outside the alley, the sound of heavy boots was approaching.
The Uchiha patrol team had arrived.
The shadow didn’t linger, his figure flashed, and he vaulted over the courtyard wall, melting into the night.
The courtyard fell back into dead silence.
Uchiha Yuya lay on the wooden corridor, the back of his head aching as if it were splitting open.
The wound on his neck was still oozing blood, but it was worth it; he had won big this time!
Footprints in the mud, black fiber hanging on the board, knife wound on the neck.
Ironclad evidence, all pointing to that old schemer in Root.
The system countdown in his brain was still ticking.
[Task remaining: 10 hours 47 minutes.] [Passive Substitute cooldown status: Available.] Uchiha Yuya didn’t move, quietly acting as a “corpse.” He was waiting.
Waiting for the patrol team to push open the courtyard gate, waiting for them to witness this perfect “crime scene” with their own eyes.
The coldness on his neck hadn’t faded, but Uchiha Yuya was overjoyed in his heart.
Danzo, you old dog, get ready to take this dark and heavy, earth-shattering pot!