Before he could finish speaking, Shisui felt a broad, gloved hand gently rest on his shoulder.
The next moment!
Without any warning, without any sense of spatial distortion or fluctuation!
Shisui only felt a twisting discomfort in his body!
It was as if the entire world had been instantly shattered and reassembled by an invisible hand!
The whistling wind, the rustling of leaves, the buzzing of insects...
All sound vanished without a trace!
Instead, it's replaced by a heart-pounding sense of weightlessness and a feeling of being pulled apart by space!
It felt like a fleeting moment, yet also like an eternity.
My feet touched solid ground again.
The surrounding environment has completely changed.
The chilly, damp forest scent was replaced by a smell mixed with disinfectant.
The air was dry and constant, with a chill typical of a laboratory.
The ground beneath their feet had changed from soil to a metal floor.
The air was filled with a low, rhythmic mechanical hum.
The chakra chains binding him loosened and retracted as if they were alive, disappearing into Asura's wide sleeves.
The heavy sealing power also disappeared.
"Cough cough-" Shisui lost the support of the chains, and his seriously injured body tumbled to the ground, almost falling over.
He managed to steady himself, his ears twitching slightly, as if he were using his hearing to sense the vast space.
here!
"The person has been brought." Asura's deep voice rang out, addressed to another person in the space.
Two figures slowly emerged from behind an instrument flashing complex data.
One of them, dressed in a white coat and wearing a white surgical cap, hummed an unknown tune as he approached the operating table and began preparing various instruments and the Single Tomoe Sharingan for transplantation.
The other person wore a dark blue high-collared robe that outlined a slender yet powerful figure.
Her long, raven-feather-like hair fell down, obscuring half of her right cheek.
The exposed skin appeared almost transparent under the cool light.
A pair of eyes, like the finest black jade, deep, cold, and calm, were quietly fixed on the wolf-fox-like Zhi Shisui.
That gaze carried a detached and insightful quality, as if scrutinizing an experimental subject.
It was Uchiha Hikari.
"With your eye power, theoretically no one in Konoha should be your match in a one-on-one situation." Uchiha crossed his arms, still somewhat skeptical when Menma that Shisui Uchiha had been ambushed and had his eyes gouged out.
Seeing Shisui with one eye covered by an eyepatch and blood flowing from the empty socket of his right eye, for some reason, a feeling of anger rose from the depths of Uchiha Hikari's heart.
For families with Kekkei Genkai eye techniques, having their eyes gouged out is the most severe humiliation!
Even though Shisui lost an eye, her growth over the past year or so is no less than when she fought her back then.
He was ambushed and lost his last eye.
Thinking back to how Shisui had repeatedly urged her to return to Konoha with him.
Uchiha Hikari found it amusing.
Upon hearing that voice, Shisui's heart sank.
Even though a year and a half had passed since their last battle, the oppressive feeling that Uchiha Hikari gave Shisui had never dissipated with time.
On the contrary, as Shisui grew, he felt more and more that Uchiha Hikari's strength was unfathomable.
Asura, his face clad in a white Three-Eyed Fox Mask, turned to Shisui, his voice flat and emotionless, yet declaring a cold-blooded decision. "We'll transplant a new pair of Single Tomoe Sharingan into you in a moment. That'll be enough."
It was as if they were talking about a trivial matter.
Uchiha Hikari didn't speak, but Menma nodded slightly.
The Shadow Clone, dressed in a white coat, had already walked to the operating table to the side, its fingers fiddling with the cold metal, making a faint clinking and rubbing sound.
A sealed, chilling metal container was opened, revealing two scarlet Sharingan, each with a single black Tomoe branded in its pupil, quietly immersed in a pale green liquid.
" Single Tomoe Sharingan?" Upon hearing that the other party wanted to transplant Sharingan into him, Shisui frowned: "Why do you all have—"
A bad feeling crept into his heart. Menma snorted softly, "Don't overthink it. It's just a clone activated using cloning technology and Yin Release Chakra. If they really Sharingan, do you think the Uchiha Clan of Konoha would still be so calm?"
The statement was laced with contempt, but Shisui felt somewhat relieved.
Because he knew that Asura and Uchiha Hikari had visited the Fugaku clan chief, he thought that if they really needed the Sharingan, it wouldn't be as simple as just a single Tomoe.
Shisui knew full well how terrifying Uchiha Hikari's strength was; if she were to take action, no one in Konoha's Uchiha Clan could stop her.
Just like Uchiha Madara then!
Outside Konoha, in that forest clearing where the stench of blood was strongest...
Aburame Tatsuma was the first to arrive. His wide sleeves fluttered without wind, and a dark mass of Kikaichū, like a swarm of bees returning to their nest, instantly covered the area where Shisui had last stayed, emitting dense and anxious chirping sounds as they frantically collected the remaining scent and pheromones in the air.
The Yamanaka Fu followed closely behind, his hands Hand Seals, his powerful spiritual perception spreading out like ripples on water, meticulously scanning every inch of the land.
He tried to capture any remaining spiritual fluctuations or traces of chakra from each leaf.
Then, several Root ninjas wearing animal masks landed silently like ghosts, vigilantly sealing off the surroundings.
They were experienced and swift, their eyes scanning the bloodstains on the ground, the trampled grass, and the glaring Blood Hand on the tree trunk where Shisui had last leaned.
"The bloodstains are thickest here." A Root ninja crouched down, picked up a clump of dark red soil with his fingers, and said in a cold voice.
"His injuries are extremely severe; he has lost a lot of blood, and his mobility is likely at its lowest."
"The swarm's pheromone tracking has been cut off." Aburame Tatsuma's voice came through the mask, carrying a rare hint of confusion and solemnity.
"Right here, the aura vanished into thin air. There was no trace of its departure—no footprints, no broken branches, no lingering chakra fluctuations—all disappeared. It was as if it had been erased in an instant by something."
"The mental residue was extremely weak, and it was interrupted instantly." Yamanaka Fu withdrew his senses, his brows furrowed beneath the mask.
"There were no signs of violent resistance, nor the mental dragging trajectory that should be present during long-distance, high-speed movement—very strange."
The air seemed to freeze.
All the Root ninjas stopped what they were doing, their eyes behind their masks filled with disbelief and astonishment.
How could Shisui Uchiha, severely injured and near death, blinded, and with disordered chakra, possibly vanish into thin air right under the noses of a dozen elite Root, under the dual targeting of the Aburame Clan's top-tier tracking insect swarm and the Yamanaka Clan's powerful mental perception?
This completely defies common sense!
"Expand the search area!" Aburame Tatsuma's voice was filled with suppressed anger and resentment.
"With this location as the center, within a radius of five kilometers! No, ten kilometers! Dig three feet into the ground! No Space-Time Ninjutsu could leave absolutely no trace! He must still be nearby!"
The order was given, Root ninjas dispersed once more like a black tide, disappearing into the deeper night.
The swarm of insects, chirping and buzzing, spread further afield, while the Yamanaka Fu's spiritual power was also raised to its peak, like a giant radar network scanning repeatedly.
However, time passed second by second.
The night grew deeper, and the chill in the forest became increasingly biting.
Apart from the whistling of the wind through the treetops and the futile chirping of insects, no other valuable discoveries were made.
Shisui Uchiha vanished completely from this blood-stained forest, as if he had evaporated into thin air.
All that remained was the Root ninja's cold bewilderment and the lingering, chilling stench of blood in the air.