“Phew…!”
Back home in the Hyūga compound, Tiange spent a long time just breathing, working through the killing intent that still churned in his chest.
The Slaughter Sword Intent was too dangerous.
Without a strong enough will to anchor yourself, it swallowed you whole.
Ever since accepting the inheritance, he had spent the entire first year on nothing but basic sword forms.
Then the second year came, and he met a man named Slaughter, and that man had opened the gates of hell for him.
Once a year at most, he could enter.
The rest of his time went toward suppressing what came back with him.
The first task had been simple in the most horrifying way: kill everyone in a village.
Don’t die doing it.
After that, an entire city.
Those were the only two tasks he had ever completed, both simulated, technically.
But those people had been too real.
Their emotions too real.
Even now, the faces came back to him at odd moments.
Every single one.
By his estimate, the next task would demand he wipe out an entire nation.
The one after that, a whole world.
The only mercy was time.
No matter how long he spent inside, only an instant passed in the outside world.
And the scenario never ended on its own, not until Tiange was dead or the task was done.
He failed.
He tried again.
Failed again.
Tried again.
Inside those simulated scenes, there was no meaningful difference from reality.
He had made friends in there.
He had been betrayed.
And through all of it, through each act of slaughter repeated across countless failed attempts, his heart had gone cold.
Every time he completed a task, he would find himself face to face with the man named Slaughter again.
The tasks came from him.
The inheritance came from him.
Tiange had genuinely begun to wonder whether someone like that could even exist: a person with not a trace of warmth, only killing.
Wherever he walked, slaughter followed at his heels.
If Slaughter had set up something like a gladiatorial arena, a hundred people, last one standing, Tiange could have lived with that.
Or if he had been dropped into some place filled entirely with criminals and monsters.
The psychological weight would have been nothing like this.
By comparison, the Byakugan inheritance was almost peaceful.
It only required him to fight every Byakugan user he could find.
Defeat them, and he could absorb their ocular power and choose two of their techniques to inherit.
“Knock, knock knock!”
“Tiange, it’s me.
Can you come out for a moment?”
A knock at the door.
Hizashi’s voice from outside.
“Creak!”
“Father.
Is something the matter?”
“I want to talk with you.”
Hizashi turned and walked toward the courtyard.
Tiange followed.
“Tiange, I don’t know what you’ve been through.”
“But I think you need to get your head right.”
“We can’t choose extreme methods just for the sake of power.”
“You’re already very strong.
My suggestion is that you take a rest.”
“Hinata’s class is graduating in the next day or two.
I’m thinking of having you go as their team leader jonin — what do you think?”
So that was it.
Tiange finally understood.
His father was worried about him.
Afraid Tiange would sink into becoming nothing but a killing machine.
Wanting him to spend more time around children, to hold onto whatever humanity he had left.
The Slaughter inheritance had affected more than just himself.
Then let it rest.
Tiange had felt it too, something had been off lately.
He was growing more and more bloodthirsty, and the creep was hard to ignore.
He would set the Slaughter Sword Intent aside for a few years and focus on the Byakugan inheritance instead.
Just as his father said, that alone was more than enough for the ninja world.
“Father, I understand.”
“Go ahead and arrange it.
I’ll go as team leader jonin.”
Looking at the worry in Hizashi’s eyes, the refusal simply wouldn’t come.
This man.
This family.
They were the last softness left at the bottom of his heart.
Tiange didn’t want him to worry.
If this was enough to ease his mind a little, then why not just do it?
“Good!”
“Go get some rest.”
“I’ll go talk to your uncle right now and work it out with him.”
Hizashi was delighted.
The thought had come to him the moment he’d seen Hanabi earlier, he’d been trying to figure out how to get Tiange around the younger children more.
Then it hit him: wasn’t Hinata’s class graduating in just a few days?
He could have Tiange take them as a team leader jonin, and have him guide Hanabi at home on top of that.
Surrounded all day by children who hadn’t yet been touched by the world, maybe that would temper something in him.
Dilute the killing nature a little.
He hadn’t said any of this outright, though.
He was afraid Tiange would refuse.
If he forced it, Hizashi worried the whole thing would backfire.
Watching his father’s excited figure disappear around the corner, the corner of Tiange’s mouth curved up, barely, almost imperceptibly.
“Father is very worried about you.”
“All these years, I could see it.
He blames himself.”
“He probably thinks that if it weren’t for what happened back then, you wouldn’t have become this way.”
“He blames himself for not being strong enough — for needing his son to carry all of that.”
“Since you left, I’ve never once seen him this happy.”
Neji stepped up beside him, eyes still on the spot where Hizashi had vanished, and spoke quietly.
From the moment Hizashi had knocked on Tiange’s door, Neji had heard it.
He’d been standing at the living room doorway the whole time, listening.
“As long as he’s happy.”
Tiange glanced down at him.
“How are your injuries?”
“Nothing serious.
Didn’t you say two or three days?”
“Brother — just now.
Your eyes?”
Neji couldn’t hold it back any longer.
“That is the evolved form of the Byakugan, the Tenseigan.
An eye on the same level as the legendary Rinnegan.”
“Work hard.
You, Hinata, and Hanabi, all three of you have a chance to awaken it.”
So it was true.
The Byakugan really could evolve.
Neji’s eyes lit up.
That invincible bearing, that absolute power, Brother said it would come with hard work?
But…
“Brother, you’re saying Hinata also has a chance to evolve her eyes?”
It wasn’t that he doubted Tiange.
It was just that Hinata’s performance had always been so thoroughly ordinary.
He believed it for Hanabi, she had shown remarkable talent practically from birth.
But Hinata…
really?
“She can.”
“Her chance is actually the greatest of the three of you.”
“Her Byakugan bloodline purity is higher than both yours and Hanabi’s.”
“Then why has she always performed like that?”
“Uncle raised her wrong.
Her personality is too timid.”
“If I told you she has never once eaten her fill in all the years she’s been alive, would you believe me?”
“She’s so soft she doesn’t even dare to say when she hasn’t had enough to eat.”
“If she had been allowed to eat until she was full from the time she was small, even if her Gentle Fist stayed terrible, with a body that chakra-rich backing her up, she would never have ended up the way she is now.”
Neji went still.
Hinata had never eaten her fill?
Was that actually true?
He remembered her eating more than him at meals.
And even then it wasn’t enough?
But if Brother said it, it was right.
“Brother, I have to go tell Uncle this right now!”
He was already running toward Hinata’s house before he finished the sentence.
“Mind your injuries!”
“I’m fine!”
➤ Next:
Counter resets every Monday.
Smash the vote button below!