“Danzō.
I’m here.”
Tiange walked the entire length of the tunnel without encountering a single Root ninja.
Whether they had all been deployed earlier, or were gathered somewhere ahead waiting for him, he didn’t know.
The tunnel branched in every direction, but every other passage was pitch black.
Only one path stayed lit the whole way.
Danzō had clearly left it as a guide.
This confident?
Tiange didn’t care.
He followed the light until he stood before a massive stone gate.
The gate ground open slowly after those words.
Beyond it was a great hall.
Brilliantly lit.
Danzō sat enthroned at the center high seat, Fū Yamanaka and Torune Aburame flanking either side.
Directly below stood twenty or thirty Root ninja in absolute silence.
The last of the manpower.
“Tiange Hyūga!”
“You’ve finally come!”
“Do you know how long I’ve waited for this day?”
Danzō was visibly elated.
As he watched Tiange, the excitement on his face twisted, slowly, into madness.
“Seize him!”
His voice was thick with violence, a complete reversal from the man of a moment before.
THUD!
THUD!
THUD!
The instant Danzō’s words hit the air, the twenty or thirty Root ninja dropped one after another, collapsing to the ground without a sound.
Torune Aburame and Fū Yamanaka stood at Danzō’s sides, bodies trembling uncontrollably, faces drained to a terrifying pallor.
Sweat rolled ceaselessly down their faces, as though they were staring at something no human being should ever see.
“Genjutsu?”
Danzō froze.
From the moment Tiange appeared, every move had been under watch.
Not so much as a twitch had been detected, so how had Torune and the others been caught?
Then Danzō’s gaze locked onto Tiange’s eyes.
The veins bulging at the corners.
“Byakugan?”
Could the Byakugan actually cast genjutsu?
Danzō found it inconceivable.
It wasn’t as though the Byakugan had never been studied.
But aside from its exceptional perception, nothing particularly special had ever turned up.
In the end, attention had turned to a different eye, one whose fame echoed across the entire ninja world.
The Sharingan.
“Ah…”
“Kill me — please, kill me!”
“GROAHHH…”
“What?”
Danzō’s pupils contracted sharply.
What kind of genjutsu was this?
How could it be so devastating?
Root ninja had no names.
No emotions.
Only a codename, and the sacred, supreme directive to be loyal to Danzō.
Their will had been forged through countless brushes with life and death.
What manner of genjutsu could reduce Torune Aburame and Fū Yamanaka, the two ranked just below Danzō within Root, to this?
Torune was outright begging to be killed.
Fū Yamanaka’s mouth was overflowing with blood, unable to form a single word.
THUD.
THUD.
Two bodies hit the ground.
Neither had held on.
Both had breathed their last.
“Only you remain, Danzō.”
Tiange’s voice was utterly calm.
Not a single ripple.
As though pronouncing Danzō’s death was simply the most natural thing in the world.
“Heh…”
“Heh heh heh heh…”
“Tiange Hyūga — the stronger you are, the more excited I become!”
“Once you’re my slave, my dog, you’ll help me rise to the seat of Hokage without question.”
Danzō broke into laughter.
Every reason to be confident.
From the moment Tiange walked in, the power of that eye had been in use, continuously, without pause.
“Your confidence rests on that left eye?”
“Kotoamatsukami — the so-called supreme genjutsu.
Is that all it is?”
“From the moment I walked in until now, you’ve used it no fewer than five times, trying to bend my will.”
“But it doesn’t seem to have done much good.”
The smugness on Danzō’s face died instantly.
“No, how could you possibly know?”
“And how could you still be unaffected after all this time?”
CRACK!
Unable to accept it, Danzō unleashed the chakra of his left eye with such force that it shattered the bandages wrapped around it.
The Mangekyō Sharingan was laid bare, the eye that housed the supreme genjutsu.
Crimson.
Ice-cold.
Chakra poured out with reckless abandon as Danzō dropped all restraint and pushed to full power.
“Kotoamatsukami!”
“Ha ha…”
“Tiange Hyūga, you are far too arrogant!”
“Now, go outside and slaughter the entire Hyūga clan!”
Tiange hadn’t dodged.
Hadn’t evaded.
Had taken the full force of Kotoamatsukami head-on.
Danzō was overcome with ecstatic joy and issued the command without hesitation.
“Danzō.”
“Had enough fun?”
“Then you can die now.”
“What?”
“That’s impossible!”
“How can you be unaffected?”
“I don’t believe it!”
Tiange’s words sent Danzō’s spirits plummeting.
Danzō roared in disbelief.
Life is unpredictable.
Danzō didn’t know that not everyone’s life follows the pattern of great rises and great falls.
It was entirely possible for a life to rise greatly, then fall, and fall, and fall, and fall, and fall, and fall.
“Why?”
Danzō glared at Tiange.
Burning.
Refusing to accept it.
The answer had to exist somewhere, wasn’t this supposed to be the supreme genjutsu of the Uchiha clan?
“Because the Byakugan is the ancestor of the Sharingan.”
“My Byakugan can briefly see the future.
Every thought you have is completely laid bare before these eyes.”
CLANG!
The sword left its scabbard and severed Danzō’s right arm clean from the shoulder in a single motion.
Tiange had no desire for the trouble of having to kill someone more than once.
“Ahhh…”
Danzō clutched the stump, eyes wide with utter disbelief.
Now belief was starting to take hold.
Those eyes could truly foresee the future.
Otherwise, how could Tiange have known the secret of the right arm?
“Danzō.”
“I’ll send you on your way.”
“Let me show you the true power of the Byakugan.”
The words left Tiange’s mouth and the Byakugan erupted, a burst of brilliant azure light blazing from those pale eyes.
Green chakra enveloped Tiange’s entire body as he rose into the air.
Tenseigan Chakra Mode.
Twelve jet-black spheres floated before him.
Truth-Seeking Balls.
Green chakra coated four of them, and those four swelled into enormous chakra light blades.
Tiange gripped the blades and swung, lightly, almost casually, toward Danzō.
“Golden Wheel Reincarnation Explosion!”
BOOM!
BOOM BOOM BOOM,
Sword light tore up from beneath the earth and swept horizontally across the ground.
Everything in its path was cleaved in two without exception.
The earth itself split open, a chasm hundreds of meters long carved into the world.
The sight of it shook all of Konohagakure.
Every person surged toward the direction the sword light had passed.
The Third, seated in the Hokage office, could no longer endure the urgency clawing at their chest and rose to rush out.
More and more figures gathered along both sides of the chasm, staring at the Hyūga clan members who stood rooted at the starting point, utterly dumbstruck, hearts churning with something that had no easy name.
WHOOSH!
A streak of green radiance shot up from the chasm, eight Truth-Seeking Balls orbiting it, hovering in midair.
“Tiange Hyūga?”
Shock and disbelief rippled through the crowd below.
Tiange cast a cold glance at the Third.
Gaze swept the entire scene.
Then it settled, finally, on the direction of the Hyūga clan.
“Back to the compound.”
A streak of flowing light, and he was gone, shooting toward the Hyūga clan grounds.
“It, it really is Lord Tiange!”
“Go, go, go, back to the clan, now!”
The Hyūga scrambled back to their compound in a rush, not one of them sparing the Third so much as a glance.
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