Underground Base.
"Master, take care~."
"Mm."
Uchiha Izumi stood at the entrance, about to see Hyuga Sho off.
Hyuga Sho reached out and patted her on the head.
The girl's reluctant expression revealed her inner thoughts.
It was clearly only a mid-term mission, and they would merely be apart for a while.
Yet Uchiha Izumi felt as if she had lost something... or rather, she felt the pain of wanting happiness but being unable to obtain it.
Inertia.
Hyuga Sho relied on the time he had spent cultivating her over the past two consecutive months.
This allowed Uchiha Izumi to successfully develop a dependence on him.
Two months of training had already made Uchiha Izumi extremely familiar with that kind of life.
Now that he was suddenly leaving,
she couldn't help feeling dejected.
As he turned to leave, Hyuga Sho engraved Uchiha Izumi's reluctant gaze into his mind.
Hyuga Sho's expression turned cold, and he left the spot with a single Shadow Flash.
There was no doubt.
Uchiha Izumi's emotional stimulation was not the end. It was merely the beginning.
Before unlocking the Mangekyō Sharingan,
Hyuga Sho would lay the groundwork with all kinds of interactions and even farewells.
He would prompt Uchiha Izumi to accumulate these emotions within her heart.
The Sharingan was the Eye of the Mind's Reflection.
In other words...
The emotions in one's heart were one of the conditions for awakening the eyes.
If someone ate three pieces of bread and became full,
that didn't mean the first two pieces had been useless.
What Hyuga Sho was doing now was making those first two pieces of bread and feeding them to Uchiha Izumi.
As he quickly moved away from the village,
Hyuga Sho headed toward the Land of Demons.
Several days later...
He crossed the Land