Stopped? Resting in place?
A flicker of surprise crossed Hyuga Yukyō's face as he silently leaped between the enormous branches. The focal point of his Byakugan settled on the four thousand Iwa gathered together. Within his vision, every Iwa ninja was either sitting or standing, pulling out food, Ration Balls, and the like to replenish themselves.
They showed no signs whatsoever of conducting a carpet search. Instead, they were resting where they were, almost as if they were waiting for something. And it seemed that wait would last quite a while.
What was going on?
What had happened? After pausing briefly on a branch he had landed on, he leaped out again, moving no slower than before. Yet as he shot forward, an uncontrollable thread of doubt rose in his heart.
In his view, Iwa's actions were already abnormal.
Anything abnormal was suspicious. Although it looked highly advantageous to him at the moment—what he feared most was Iwa conducting a carpet search—Iwa resting in place gave him time to leave this primeval forest. With the Byakugan, once Iwa started moving again, he was confident he could avoid every possibility of being discovered. After all, he was already circling away from those Iwa ninja. Once he reached a certain distance, he would be completely safe. All that would remain would be to head to the place Hirohiko had mentioned and find Taki Chiba.
However, there was surely more behind Iwa's rest than met the eye. An army of four thousand Iwa ninja was chasing a single person. Did they really need to stop and rest? Impossible! If four thousand Iwa ninja had truly been driven to the point of needing rest while pursuing one person, that person would have long since been smashed to pieces.
No one—no one could, alone, hold