Squelch!
The sound of a blade piercing flesh was especially muffled within the Hyuga Clan's courtyard.
Blood dripped down the blade as Hizashi Hyuga's body slowly pitched forward.
Hiruzen Sarutobi shut his eyes in agony, tears streaming down his aged face. He turned away, unable to bear watching any longer.
Yet while everyone was drowning in grief and heaviness, while even Hiruzen was immersed in self-reproach, no one noticed the courtyard air distort strangely for one-thousandth of a second.
[Shatter, Mirror Flower, Water Moon.]
The "Hizashi" Hiruzen, the Anbu, and the arriving Hyuga clansmen saw lying lifeless in a pool of blood was merely a perfect illusion Yue Uchiha had overlaid onto their retinas, created with the utmost Yin Release and a high-precision White Zetsu clone!
In the actual physical space, the real Hizashi Hyuga had been silently dragged into the shadows underground by an absolute force of attraction just before the blade could sever his carotid artery.
"Am I... dead?"
In the darkness, Hizashi touched his uninjured neck, his face full of confusion.
"No. You have just been reborn."
Several days later, in the Land of Lightning, Kumogakure.
An ice coffin containing the sealed corpse of the "Hyuga Clan Head" was transported back to the Raikage Building by Kumogakure's delegation, completely untouched.
"Lord Raikage, Konoha has submitted. This is the culprit's corpse they handed over." Kumogakure's deputy envoy looked smug, even carrying himself as though expecting credit. "Please have the sensory and medical divisions dissect it and extract the secret of the Byakugan!"
The Fourth Raikage, A, sat behind his broad desk and looked at the ice coffin. Yet there was not a shred of delight on his face—only an indescribable strangeness.
The Byakugan?
Never mind whether the person in that coffin was truly the Hyuga Clan Head. Even