Searching

"And then?"

"And then...? Somehow, that merchant made it to the Hidden Leaf Village. At first, the Anbu thought he was a spy sent by another village. Only after interrogating him with Genjutsu did they learn what had happened."

Hinata gave an "oh" and continued picking at the rice in her bowl.

Seeing that Hinata had merely said "oh," Hyuga Hiashi was deeply disappointed.

After learning about this, he had tried his best to make it sound terrifying when telling his daughter about it. Yet he had not expected that it would fail to scare her at all.

Hyuga Hiashi looked utterly dejected at not seeing a frightened expression on his daughter's face.

He could no longer remember how long it had been since he had held his adorable daughter. A month, or... a year?

Though part of it was because he wanted to maintain his dignity as a father.

But wasn't a three-year-old daughter supposed to be at the age where she threw herself into her father's arms and acted spoiled?

Hyuga Hiashi knew that if he went to hug his adorable daughter, she would not refuse. But... how could he bring himself to do it?

Leaving Hyuga Hiashi's intense inner turmoil aside, Hinata was observing the merchant who had luckily escaped with his life from a place half a village away, perhaps even beyond the village's boundaries.

On him, Hinata saw the unique aura belonging to Bizarre Creatures. It seemed this merchant had once come into close contact with one.

However, why was the merchant being held so far from the village? And the room imprisoning him was actually covered in Sealing Jutsu.

Though she found the room's arrangement rather strange, no matter what, this merchant had not lied.

Incidentally, only a few days after voluntarily shutting down nearly all the functions of her eyes, Hinata could no longer resist undoing the "seals."

Aside from the comfortable sensation in her eyes making Hinata extremely uncomfortable, she realized that her strength was growing too fast—so fast that even she was having trouble adapting.

The Cun Jin Cultivation Method and Great Void Sword Qi were manageable. With the Idle System's help, she had a minor epiphany once a day and a major epiphany once every three days. There was no risk of losing control.

But the Byakugan was different!

Hinata had thought the Byakugan was evolving toward the Tenseigan, but she had not expected its evolution over the past three years to be so... simple.

Far sight, X-ray vision, insight—aside from its three-hundred-and-sixty-degree vision without blind spots, the Idle System had spent these years continuously strengthening those three abilities.

By now, they had been enhanced to an utterly outrageous degree.

As a result, even with her Immortal Body and an extremely active brain, Hinata found it strenuous to analyze everything her eyes saw.

Thus, Hinata had no choice but to seal part of her eyes' functions, and then those "seals" became more and more numerous.

Until Hinata completely sealed her own eyes...

That was wrong. Strictly speaking, it counted as running away from her own power.

After realizing this, Hinata gradually undid the "seals" on her eyes.

In truth, Hinata had also been courting death a little. Who told her to keep fully activating her Byakugan and taking everything within a one-kilometer radius into her sight?

The fact that her brain had not burned out was already proof of how powerful Hinata's Immortal Body was!

Over the past few days, Hinata had often activated her Byakugan to scan the area around the Hidden Leaf Village.

But the entire world was enveloped in chaotic, twisted power, and as far as the eye could see, it was pitch-black.

Those twisted powers could be considered the natural camouflage of Bizarre Creatures. Furthermore, Hinata's primary targets of observation were the Hidden Leaf Village and several surrounding villages. She only gave other places a cursory glance before passing over them. After all, fully activating the Byakugan still put some strain on her.

This caused her to miss the appearance of a Bizarre Creature. Hinata found that deeply regrettable.

If she could personally witness the formation of a Bizarre Creature, it would also be a considerable revelation for her.

Now that she had confirmed the merchant really had seen a Bizarre Creature, the next step was to find the village he had mentioned.

But in this era, it would not be an exaggeration to say that there were hundreds or thousands of similar villages.

Even after finishing her meal, Hinata had not found her target.

That was the downside of X-ray vision. When a huge pile of things overlapped, she could not even tell what was what.

Half an hour later, inside Hinata's room.

After half an hour of searching, Hinata finally found an abandoned village with bloodstains in many places.

"This should be it, right?"

Hinata was certain because she had seen traces of blood throughout the village. In some places, the blood had pooled into large puddles, leaving only dark black stains after it dried.

"Strange. Why can't I see any ropes?"

The merchant had said that his guards had all been hanged and strangled by ropes. In the end, their heads had been separated from their bodies, leaving not even intact corpses behind.

But now, not to mention ropes with heads hanging from them, she could not even see any corpses.

"Did I find the wrong place? Or did it leave...?"

If she had found the wrong place, no other village matched the merchant's description any better.

Hinata focused even more intently, attempting to find the so-called ropes. If it had truly left, she at least needed to find traces of where it had gone.

As time passed, Hinata did indeed see an aura similar to the merchant's lingering over the bloodstains.

If that chaotic, twisted power was something like black fog, then traces left behind by Bizarre Creatures would produce something like "smoke," much like the smoke that rose when an object burned.

The difference was that the "smoke" left behind by different Bizarre Creatures came in different colors. Though Hinata had only seen two Bizarre Creatures.

After carefully examining the area, aside from discovering the traces left by the Bizarre Creature, Hinata did not find even a single hair from its actual body.

"Did it really leave? Where could it have gone?"

Hinata had not seen any sign of intelligence in Black Shadow. It was as though Black Shadow acted entirely on instinct.

Then this Bizarre Creature, whose true body was unknown but seemed to be some kind of rope, should also have been active around the village.

Yet Hinata searched everywhere within dozens of miles and found no trace of any Bizarre Creature, as if it had vanished into thin air.

Hinata stopped searching. Prolonged use of the Byakugan had left her brain somewhat tired, so she had to rest for a while.

Unexpectedly, Hinata, who had only intended to close her eyes for a brief rest, actually fell asleep at once.

By the time she woke up, it was already evening.

"Where is Father?"

Preparing to eat as usual, Hinata only realized after sitting at the dining table that Hyuga Hiashi had not appeared.

"Hiashi went to take care of something. He'll be back in a little while," Hinata's mother explained.

Even so, Hinata's mother did not make Hinata wait for Hyuga Hiashi to return before starting the meal. They began eating right away.

Clearly, this "little while" was a really long while.