“Anko, are you serious?”
“Weren’t you supposed to be here to comfort me?”
Under Yūgao Uzuki’s suspicious gaze, Anko Mitarashi kept going:
“Who in Konoha doesn’t know Tiange Hyūga’s fearsome reputation?
That’s someone who kills members of their own clan without a second thought!”
“Did he ever stop to think about you when he did this?”
“I was against you two getting together from the start, you’re the one who insisted!”
“So young, and already with a body like that, who knows when he might just be gone, leaving you a living widow?”
“At least now that he’s dead things aren’t so bad, you two weren’t married yet.
This is the most brain-dead person I’ve ever seen!”
“It never even crossed his mind that what he did could drag you down with him, or wipe out his entire clan!”
“Look at the other clan members who came along, not a single one stepped out to stop him.
Not one!”
“Even if nothing happens to him now, with that personality, sooner or later he’ll die a violent death!”
“And Yūgao — search your heart.
These two years with him.
Were you truly happy?”
Happy?
Maybe?
The time they’d spent together was never much to begin with, Yūgao was always buried in Anbu missions.
And Hayate Gekkō spent every single day doing nothing but training with his sword.
On top of that, the man was such a block of wood he didn’t even dare hold hands.
To say nothing of romance.
Two whole years, and it seemed like that had never happened even once.
Yūgao Uzuki carefully thought back over every moment since the day Hayate Gekkō’s pursuit had been accepted.
It seemed like there was no real difference.
Between before and after.
Between having been with him and not.
Seeing the silence, Anko Mitarashi grew worried.
Worried that Yūgao might do something foolish.
Especially something brainless like going after that star of disaster for revenge.
“Yūgao!”
“Don’t do anything stupid!”
“What’s so great about men, anyway?”
“Come play with snakes with me, I’ll teach you the Summoning Technique from Ryūchi Cave!”
“Look at me.
Always single.
Isn’t that just fine?”
“Anko, relax.”
“I won’t go looking for revenge.
You don’t know, being in the Anbu, I’ve seen things most people never get to see.”
“I’m not that foolish.
If I were, I would have made a move just now.”
Hearing that, Anko finally felt at ease.
“Yūgao!”
“That’s the best way to think about it!”
“Trust me — that guy is someone we can’t afford to mess with.”
“Just watch.
Konoha will lose an elder tonight, and as for him, not a thing will happen to him.”
Yūgao Uzuki gave a small nod, crouched down, and began tidying the body on the ground.
“Yūgao, what are you doing?”
“Helping tidy things up.
Consider it seeing him off.”
“Then I’ll help!”
“No need.
Just stay with me — I’ll handle it.”
While the two of them tended to Hayate Gekkō’s body, Tiange had already made his way to a hidden corner of Konoha.
He stopped in front of the barrier ahead, turned his head, and looked back at Neji in the crowd.
“Watch closely, this is how you use the Vacuum Palm.”
Tiange bent his knees slightly, right foot stepping forward, and settled into the stance for the Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm.
Hands open into palms.
Mind reaches the eyes.
Eyes reach the palms.
Palms release the force.
Tiange thrust a single palm toward the barrier.
A colossal hand erupted in the air, 50 meters tall, roughly 20 meters wide, and came crashing down.
“BOOM!”
One strike.
The barrier didn’t hold for even a moment.
It shattered.
Only then did everyone notice what lay behind it: a small mountain, 70 or 80 meters high.
The mountain’s surface bore a single massive palm imprint, driven in to an unknowable depth.
At the base, a dark opening gaped in the rock.
“Wait here.”
“Anyone who comes out from inside, kill them.”
Tiange said it to the Hyūga clan members, stepped into the opening alone, and vanished.
“…Gulp.”
Neji stared blankly at that palm imprint and swallowed.
My dear big brother, you’re telling me this is the Vacuum Palm?
Then what exactly have I been using all this time?
A fist-sized gust of air that couldn’t leave a mark on anything.
Neji fell into a daze.
Every desperate year of effort suddenly felt like it had been for nothing.
“Take it easy, don’t compare yourself to him.
Your brother, he’s…
a bit of a freak.”
“A Vacuum Palm at this level, not to mention you, even your great-uncle couldn’t pull this off.”
“It’s not just your great-uncle.
No one in the entire history of the Hyūga clan has ever managed it.”
Hizashi Hyūga gently patted Neji’s shoulder and offered those words of comfort.
He understood how hard Neji worked.
Understood the desire to catch up to Tiange.
But it simply wasn’t possible.
Compared to peers his own age, Neji was undeniably a genius.
When it came to Tiange, though, even Hizashi didn’t know what to say.
Nearby, Hiashi Hyūga caught those words from a sibling and felt a twitch at the corner of the mouth.
Dear sibling, could you please not bring me up right now?
If you’re going to comfort someone, comfort them.
There’s no need to lift one person up while cutting another down at the same time.
If pulling that off were possible, the Hyūga clan would never have sunk to where it is today.
Anyone who said otherwise, a single slap would silence them, so why would we have spent all these years getting pushed around by Konoha’s upper echelons?
“Hinata!
Hanabi!”
“Did you see that?”
“That is the greatest genius in the entire history of our Hyūga clan.”
“Take him as your example.
Keep striving, even if you can never catch up.”
“But you must understand: it is not that the Byakugan is weak, it is not that the Gentle Fist is weak, it is the person wielding them who is not strong enough.”
Those words stung, but Hiashi wasn’t about to let the teaching moment slip by.
“Father, does that mean you aren’t strong enough either?”
“Is that why you can’t use a Byakugan and Vacuum Palm like Brother Tiange?”
“Pfft, ”
Hiashi felt as though the chest had just been stabbed by a sibling, then stabbed clean through again by this little chatterbox of a daughter.
Looking down, Hiashi met Hanabi’s wide, perfectly innocent eyes staring right back up.
Beside them, Hinata knew she absolutely could not laugh right now, and was biting it back so hard her whole face had gone red.
Hizashi looked at little Hanabi and suddenly thought: this niece had quite a future ahead.
“Big brother,” Hizashi said, perfectly straight-faced, “I think Hanabi has real talent, perhaps even more than Neji.
Raise her well.”
The moment those words were out, the worry that had been sitting on Hizashi’s chest lifted a little.
With Tiange’s strength, there was no concern about anything going wrong for him.
The only real concern was whether his state of mind might go off course.
But looking at Hanabi just now, Hizashi had an idea, perhaps this little girl could be a way to keep Tiange from growing so consumed by slaughter.
What Hizashi didn’t actually know was that Tiange’s situation was never something that needed worrying about in the first place.
The reason things were the way they were was simple: the sword path inheritance Tiange was currently working through was the Slaughter Sword Intent.
Once the inheritance was complete and the Slaughter Sword Intent was fully mastered, this would begin to correct itself on its own.
Of course, killing too much carried a real risk of being consumed by it, but that was a threshold Tiange had to cross alone.
Without crossing it, the Slaughter Sword Intent would never reach completion.
The inheritance would never be finished.
This was also the reason why, after all these years, Tiange had still not cleared this very first sword intent inheritance.
The slaughter lived through inside the inheritance space was too brutal.
Too terrifying.
Every time Tiange entered, it took a long time to pull himself back together afterward.
“Danzō.
I’m here.”
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