The Truth of the Caged Bird

Inside Konoha Hospital.

Hizashi Hyuga tossed and turned in his hospital bed for most of the night before exhaustion finally dragged him into sleep.

In his dream, Hizashi vaguely sensed the sound of wind.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself in the Hyuga Clan's council hall, where candlelight flickered.

"Konoha can no longer afford to continue the war with Cloud Village. The Hyuga Clan must give Cloud Village an explanation..." Hyuga Hiashi sat kneeling in the seat of honor, his shadow stretched long by the candlelight.

The elders of the Hyuga Main House below and the Branch House shinobi were all taken aback.

"Why?! It was clearly that Cloud Village bastard who kidnapped Lady Hinata!" A Branch House jonin said indignantly.

"Because we cannot continue fighting." How could Hyuga Hiashi possibly be willing to accept this?

But now, pressure from all of Konoha was forcing the Hyuga Clan's hand.

The hall erupted into an uproar. A Main House elder's Byakugan glimmered in the shadows.

"What condition did Cloud Village propose?"

Yes, Cloud Village was pressing them so aggressively. What could they possibly want?

The Hyuga shinobi in the council hall all looked toward their clan head in the seat of honor.

"A culprit." Hiashi's answer instantly froze the air.

As Hiashi's words fell, the discussions in the council hall grew even louder.

Whether Main House or Branch House, none of the Hyuga shinobi could accept such a condition.

A Cloud Village envoy had entered the Hyuga Compound to kidnap the Hyuga Clan's eldest daughter and was killed on the spot. Yet the victims were supposed to hand someone over?

"There is no need for the clan head to step forward. If they only want a culprit, then giving them one will suffice." Beneath his long brows, the Main House clan head's Byakugan stared deeply at Hizashi, seated among the Branch House members.

Hizashi Hyuga wanted to say, "What about the mysterious person from last night?"

Yet he discovered that his body stood up against his will, walked to Hiashi, and knelt before him. "Let me go, brother."

"The Branch House exists to protect the Main House. As the head of the Hyuga Clan, you absolutely cannot come to harm."

"No! That's not how it happened!" Hizashi felt as if his soul had left his body as he stood to one side, watching the cold-faced "himself" say those words.

"What about that mysterious person? Wasn't there a mysterious person? Just blame the Cloud Village envoy's death on him!" Hizashi shouted at "himself" from the side.

But the Hyuga shinobi in the council hall seemed unable to see him at all and continued discussing whether it was feasible.

Hyuga Hiashi wanted to say something, but "Hizashi" stepped forward and punched him, telling him to shoulder the Main House's responsibility.

Next, Hizashi watched "himself" say his final words to his son, Neji, before willingly going to his death.

After the Hyuga Clan handed over the "culprit who killed the Cloud Village envoy," Cloud Village had nothing more to say.

As a mere observer, Hizashi watched "himself" walk toward death. At his own funeral, he watched his wife and son embrace and weep bitterly, and felt cold all over.

"No! This is a genjutsu!"

"Fake! It's all fake!"

The intense emotional shock made Hizashi realize something was wrong, and he began circulating his chakra to disrupt it.

But he could not break free from the genjutsu no matter what he did.

His vision suddenly went dark, and Hizashi returned to Konoha Hospital.

He abruptly sat bolt upright in bed, cold sweat pouring from him and soaking through his bandages.

"Was it a dream?" Hizashi panted, raising his right hand to touch his forehead.

"It wasn't a dream." A cold voice suddenly came from beside him.

Hizashi shuddered and turned his head. A mysterious figure in a long robe, wearing a White Three-Eyed Fox Mask, leaned against the window. Pure moonlight shone upon the mask, casting a cold, faint gleam.

"It was you!" Hizashi faced him as though confronting a great enemy, trying to rise from the bed and fight. But he found himself restrained, unable to leave the bed.

"Another genjutsu!" Sweat kept streaming down Hizashi's forehead. Even ordinary jonin might not possess such layered genjutsu.

Tap—

Uzumaki Menma leaped down from the windowsill and slowly approached Hizashi.

"Who exactly are you? What do you want?" Hizashi still struggled, but no matter how he disrupted the flow of chakra in his body, he could not break through this illusory world.

"How pathetic." Uzumaki Menma came before Hizashi. "Everything you just saw would have been your ending without me."

Hearing that, Hizashi shook his head, trying to refute him. "Impossible! Even without you, the Cloud Village envoy kidnapped the Hyuga Clan's eldest daughter. If he was killed, it would only..."

As he spoke, Hizashi suddenly stopped. He felt as though he had fallen into an ice pit.

Even a top-tier shinobi like White Fang had been driven to death. What was impossible about a Hyuga Branch House shinobi like him being used as a scapegoat?

"See? Deep down, you have already accepted that fate." Uzumaki Menma's voice was deep, carrying a trace of sorrow.

"That is why I say it is pathetic."

"The Caged Bird was originally meant to protect the Hyuga people, yet it turned most of them into inferiors, no better than slaves."

Hizashi instinctively retorted, "What do you know?! The existence of the Caged Bird! The existence of the Hyuga Branch House! They are all for—"

"Do you want to know?" Uzumaki Menma interrupted him.

"The truth behind the Caged Bird." The Three-Eyed Fox Mask slowly drew closer to Hizashi Hyuga.

Menma extended a hand and slowly pressed it against Hizashi's forehead.

A violent, dark chakra invaded Hizashi's mind.

In an instant, Hizashi saw a different scene.

On a vast, empty battlefield, two armies flying different banners faced each other before erupting into fierce war!

Hizashi stood in the center of the battlefield, watching the enemies slaughter one another around him. They wore strange clothing, and their features differed slightly from the people of the Land of Fire. But what Hizashi found unbelievable was that every person in this war possessed a pair of Byakugan.

The scene shifted.

In the Shinobi World, shinobi dressed in Warring States Period attire, with the Hyuga Clan crest printed on their backs, were being massacred. The killers were one of the sides that had just faced each other.

Countless Hyuga Clan members were slaughtered, their Byakugan torn from their sockets. Then those mysterious people vanished from the Shinobi World.

The scene shifted again.

Two armies faced off, but every soldier on one side had their eyes tightly shut, relying only on Mind's Eye perception.

A tall tower was pushed out from within their formation. Atop the tower sat an eyeball-shaped stone, bound by chains of various runes.

With a wave of the commander's hand, the eyeball-shaped stone erupted with blinding light, and a purple beam blasted toward the enemy forces charging from the opposite side.

Wherever the purple beam swept, explosions erupted one after another!

Several thousand soldiers from the opposing army were wiped out just like that.

"This... this..." Hizashi watched the victorious side scour the defeated army for Byakugan and fuse them into the eyeball-shaped stone. His heart was deeply shaken.

"This is the truth behind the existence of the Caged Bird."

As the mysterious figure's words fell, the battlefield around Hizashi changed again.

Before him stood Hyuga Clan members, one after another, and the conspicuous Caged Bird Cursed Seals on their foreheads.

"Fake! It's all fake!" Hizashi roared in fury. More than twenty years of clan indoctrination made him unable to accept such a reality.

"These are all illusions you fabricated! They're all fake! I can tell! I can tell!"

"You will never drive a wedge between the Hyuga Main House and Branch House!"

Within the genjutsu space, Hizashi Hyuga nearly went mad as he denied it all.

"Then what about this?" Uzumaki Menma appeared before Hizashi in the genjutsu space and formed a hand seal with one hand.

A wave of chakra spread from Uzumaki Menma's body and struck Hizashi with perfect precision.

"Ah!" The next instant, Hizashi felt as though ten thousand blades had pierced his brain, causing unbearable pain.

The Caged Bird Cursed Seal activated.

"Why... can you..." Hizashi clutched his head with both hands, his face twisted in agony. His Byakugan were filled with shock and terror.