” Early morning, Hokage Building.
Hiruzen Sarutobi tapped his pipe and opened the Anbu briefing on his desk.
The name “Uchiha Yuya” was heavily marked with a red line, followed by two pages of densely packed behavior records.
Public confessions, filing reports with the Konoha Military Police Force, “accidental death” warnings…
The fact that a Genin’s file could fill two pages was absurd in itself.
The old Hokage exhaled a puff of smoke, his eyes deep.
The Uchiha Clan’s problems were on the brink of a cliff.
The deployment of Anbu, Itachi’s mission, Danzo’s relentless pressure; all the gears were meshing and turning according to plan.
At this critical juncture, a crazy dead-last appearing was indeed an eyesore.
But that was all it was.
A piece of trash who couldn’t even spark a flame with the Great Fireball Technique—even if he caused a scene, he couldn’t escape the palm of Buddha’s hand.
It would be counterproductive to irritate the already tense nerves of the Uchiha Clan because of him.
“Continue observing, do not initiate contact.” Hiruzen Sarutobi picked up his pen and wrote four characters at the end of the briefing: Postpone handling.
Almost at the same time, deep in the underground Root base.
Danzo sat in his chair, his single eye staring fixedly at the intelligence report in his hand, his rough thumb rubbing back and forth over the paper.
The version he had was much more detailed than the Third’s.
The Root informant had dismantled the entire process of Yuya digging through clan rules, finding loopholes, and burying sensitive words about “abnormal atmosphere” with extreme clarity.
A piece of trash who had failed the Genin exam three times suddenly got smart and precisely used the rules to insure himself?
Danzo never believed in coincidences in his life.
“Send someone to test him.” He handed the paper to the shadow kneeling on one knee beside him.
“No need to leave him alive, just find out if there is anyone pulling the strings behind him.” The shadow took the intelligence, pausing for half a second.
“My lord, if we make a move on the Uchiha now, will it alert the enemy—” “The plan will be executed within three days.
A dead-last dying on the eve of the turmoil, who has the leisure to care?” The paper was silently tucked into his sleeve, and the shadow vanished into the darkness.
Half an hour later, the door to the Hokage Office was pushed open.
As Danzo walked in leaning on his cane, the Third was watering the potted plant by the window with a kettle.
As their eyes met, the atmosphere in the room instantly dropped to freezing.
“Hiruzen, are you really planning to leave that Uchiha Yuya alone?” “He is just a child who has been stimulated and suffered a mental breakdown.” Hiruzen Sarutobi put down the watering can.
“The most important thing right now is the stability of the big picture, not arguing with a squawking chicken.” “A squawking chicken?” Danzo’s cane struck the wooden floor heavily.
“He wrote ‘accidental death’ in black and white in his official file!
If this file is dug up later, who do you think the finger will point to?” “So what?
You want to deal with a brat in advance, just to make the whole Uchiha Clan alert immediately?” “I am merely clearing out unstable variables.” “Every time you use the excuse of ‘clearing variables,’ you only end up creating more of a mess.” Hiruzen Sarutobi turned around and looked directly at his old friend.
“Danzo, I said, this matter is postponed.” The cane struck the floor again, with enough force to seemingly smash through the floorboards.
“Hiruzen, you will regret this!” “Danzo, I am the Hokage!” Danzo stared at Hiruzen Sarutobi for three seconds, snorted coldly, turned, and strode away.
Bang.
The door slammed shut.
Hiruzen Sarutobi stood by the window, looking at his own statue on the Hokage Rock, and remained silent for a long time.
…
On the other side, the Uchiha Clan Compound.
Yuya’s life now was essentially “hated by dogs and humans.” The series of crazy operations—confession plus filing—had spread throughout the entire residential area.
Now, when he walked on the street, even three-year-old children would walk around him.
“Mom, does that person have a screw loose in his head?” “Shh!
Don’t look at him, walk faster!” Passing by the training ground, several young clansmen were practicing shuriken.
One of them, with a mocking face, deliberately threw a Kunai off-target, pinning it half an inch in front of Yuya’s toes with a “thud.” “Yo, Senior Yuya, are you in such a hurry to go on a date with Lord Itachi?” Laughter erupted all around.
Yuya habitually hunched his shoulders and quickened his pace to slip away.
It wasn’t until he turned into a deserted dead-end alley that he slowly straightened his hunched back.
Isolation is good.
The less people pay attention to him, the less anyone will notice when he runs away on the night of the clan extermination.
Confirming no one was around and there were no surveillance gazes, Yuya leaned against the wall and took a deep breath.
He sank his Chakra to the soles of his feet.
Whoosh!
No hand signs, no smoke, not even an afterimage left behind.
He flashed directly into the shadow of a wall fifteen meters away.
“Holy crap, this smoothness…” Yuya’s eyes lit up.
He tried it again, this time pulling it to thirty meters.
The landing point was extremely precise, his feet landing steadily on the predicted bricks.
He didn’t dare to test the fifty-meter limit.
The back alley was too short, and the skill had a five-second cooldown; he absolutely couldn’t be reckless now.
But this was already enough.
Use Body Flicker to create distance, Substitute to block fatal wounds, and add a perfect Transformation Technique to blend into the crowd.
As long as he operated properly, this little life of his could be considered half-saved.
The premise was, he absolutely could not be exposed.
A piece of trash who failed three times suddenly mastered the seal-less Body Flicker?
If this news got out, it would be even more explosive than his public confession.
Itachi would absolutely move him from the “observation list” directly to the “must-kill list.” Yuya quickly retracted his Chakra, hunched his back again, and dragged his feet toward his dilapidated courtyard.
Returning home, he locked the wooden door.
He sat cross-legged on the tatami, staring fixedly at the calendar with a red circle on the wall.
Time was running out.
The air in the entire clan compound had become viscous.
The patrol teams changed shifts frequently, the sound of idle chatter at night was gone, and that suffocating feeling of a storm about to break made it hard to breathe.
The system interface was quiet, and the taskbar was empty.
Yuya calculated his existing trump cards in his mind: Mental Resilience, max-level Three Body Technique, max-level Body Flicker, Chunin-level Chakra, and passive Substitution.
He could bluff, he could hide, he could run.
But he couldn’t fight.
Facing monsters like Itachi and Kamui Obito, his little stash wasn’t even enough to fill the gaps in their teeth.
The only way to survive was to make the cost of killing him far higher than the cost of letting him go.
His actions over the past two days had already raised this cost.
But it wasn’t enough.
Itachi was a emotionless test-taking machine.
As long as he determined that Yuya was a threat, no matter how high the cost, he would swing his blade.
Therefore, the core question was still that: How much did Itachi think he knew?
That answer would be revealed tonight.
The night grew deeper.
Yuya had just put the washed bowls and chopsticks into the cupboard when extremely light footsteps suddenly came from outside the courtyard gate.
It wasn’t the sound of heavy boots like a patrol team, but a light, stealthy sound, with a movement deliberately made on the last step—a reminder.
Immediately after, a voice as calm as if it had no temperature sounded.
“Uchiha Yuya, I have something to ask you.”