The Underground Palace Collapses, and the Byakugan Sky Net Makes First Contact

Kyoto, late at night.

The earth was the first to groan in pain.

This was no ordinary earthquake. A dull, violent pulse rose from deep below, as though a beast that had slept for a thousand years was waking. Every beat of its heart made the entire city tremble.

Boom—rumble!

From the direction of the Daimyo Residence, a blinding crimson pillar tore through the night without warning and shot into the sky. Then twelve thicker, fiercer torrents of energy followed. Like monstrous claws, they churned the clouds above Kyoto into an enormous, ominous vortex.

The streets became a living hell in an instant.

The violent shaking jolted sleeping civilians awake, and they fled their swaying homes in terror. Roof tiles rained down. Wooden beams cracked under the strain. Screams and sobs mingled with the thunder of collapsing buildings in an apocalyptic symphony.

"What... what are those monsters?"

"Great Amaterasu! Is this divine punishment?"

Panic spread through the crowds like a plague.

Yet amid the chaos and despair sweeping the city, one area remained grimly, almost unnaturally calm.

On a hill with a clear view outside Kyoto stood a force of Hyuga ninja.

More than a hundred ninja in plain white clothes stood like boulders in the night wind. Each bore the Hyuga Clan branch family's Cursed Seal on their forehead. Veins bulged at the corners of their eyes as pair after pair of pure-white eyes fixed on the center of the eruption—beneath the Daimyo Residence.

"Lord Hiashi!" An elite branch-family ninja dropped to one knee, his voice trembling with shock. "We've detected an extremely dense Chakra signature! Its nature... can't be identified! It's filled with a primal urge to destroy and kill!"

At the front of the formation stood Hyuga Hiashi, the current head of the Hyuga Clan.

His Byakugan