Assassination

Hyuga Kaze walked along in a daze, and before he knew it, his steps had carried him to the training ground behind the village.

The training ground was especially quiet at night, filled only with the rustle of wind through the leaves and the sound of his footsteps.

He rubbed his face hard several times, trying to shake off the haze that had plagued him for days and pull himself together.

Time was tight. He needed to make the most of it and get familiar with the rhythm of battle again as soon as possible.

He would warm up first, then tomorrow he would find some beasts in the Death Forest to spar with.

He first went through the basic forms of Gentle Fist several times, then began practicing the Eight Trigrams Thirty-Two Palms.

Afterward, he took out several shuriken and simulated different combat angles.

He threw them at the target on the tree, practicing his accuracy.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Several shuriken landed around the bullseye, none of them striking it.

Hyuga Kaze frowned at the sight. "I'm a lot rustier than I thought."

Though they had landed close to the bullseye.

In actual combat, when facing moving targets, his accuracy would drop even further.

That was why daily shuriken training demanded hitting the bullseye as often as possible.

He then took out several kunai and threw them one after another at the bullseye using kunai throwing techniques.

Time passed bit by bit.

Hyuga Kaze gradually regained his touch, and his accuracy rose higher and higher.

Suddenly!

An inexplicable palpitation made every hair on his body stand on end!

Instinct told him that a powerful threat was rapidly approaching from the woods behind him.

The veins around his eyes bulged instantly. Without hesitation—

"Byakugan!"

His vision shifted at once. Within his 359-degree panoramic field of view,

a concentrated, ferocious surge of chakra was rushing at him from the dense forest behind him!

He twisted his body with all his might, trying to evade it, but his body was still a beat too slow.

Too fast!

A glowing blue-white energy arrow had already appeared before his eyes. There was no avoiding it!

I can't dodge it! His pupils shrank abruptly.

The next moment,

the arrow whizzed past his ear and shot away behind him.

The gust it raised swept up several strands of his hair, which drifted slowly down.

Hyuga Kaze broke out in a cold sweat and stood there blankly, momentarily forgetting to move.

He glanced to the side and saw that the light arrow had not lost any momentum. It accurately shattered the target he had been practicing on.

Then it pierced through the trunks of several large trees behind it before finally exhausting its energy and dissipating into the air.

"Did it miss? Or..." A thought flashed through his mind.

He let out a sharp breath, only then realizing that he had stopped breathing entirely. He began gasping for air.

He had been far too careless!

He had been distracted these past few days, and being inside the village had made him lower the vigilance he should have maintained!

He had never imagined that someone would dare attack a member of a great clan like him within Konoha Village.

He stared fixedly at the dark forest ahead, his Byakugan locking firmly onto the chakra source radiating hostile energy fluctuations.

"Who is it?! Come out!"

That chakra source suddenly moved! Its speed was astonishing!

The next instant, a blurred figure appeared behind Hyuga Kaze out of thin air like a ghost!

So fast!

Hyuga Kaze's heart shook violently. He spun around in haste, instinctively drawing a kunai and driving it fiercely backward!

A crisp metallic clang rang out as the other person blocked the kunai.

Before he could steady himself, his opponent had already closed in, launching an assault like a raging storm!

The attacks came without pause, fast and from tricky angles.

The two exchanged more than a dozen moves beneath the moonlight, the clash of steel ringing without end.

Yet the longer Hyuga Kaze fought, the more alarmed he became.

"This is... the force-generation technique of Gentle Fist?"

His opponent's taijutsu felt incredibly familiar. It was unquestionably rooted in Hyuga Style Gentle Fist.

Yet it also incorporated many fierce, direct moves from Strong Fist styles, making its attack rhythm impossible to predict.

Who could it be?

As far as he knew, there was no brat in the clan who had learned Gentle Fist and then gone off to study Strong Fist.

And this Kunai Combat Technique did not seem to be entirely Konoha Style either.

What surprised him even more was that his opponent's combat instincts were extraordinarily sharp.

Several times, he tried to use Gentle Fist's chakra-point striking techniques, only for his opponent to evade or block them ahead of time by the narrowest margin.

But...

"This person's raw strength isn't that great!"

After fending off several rounds of attacks, the experienced Hyuga Kaze quickly found his opponent's weakness.

He gradually regained his footing and began using his superior strength and extensive combat experience to defuse his opponent's fierce offensive.

At last, he caught a tiny opening during the transition between his opponent's attacks.

He threw a heavy, powerful straight punch, forcing his opponent to stagger back three or four steps.

Just as he was about to press his advantage,

his opponent happened to retreat into a patch of cold moonlight, fully exposing himself.

Revealing a face Hyuga Kaze knew all too well, yet found utterly unfamiliar at that moment.

"Seisen?"

Hyuga Kaze abruptly stopped his attack, completely stunned. "Why are you here?"

He could barely process it. His mind had gone blank, tangled into knots.

A moment later, he widened his eyes and stared at the person before him in disbelief.

Was this really his son, who could not even learn the Three-Body Technique?

"Seisen, what... what is going on?!"

The questions filling his heart nearly burst out, yet he did not know where to begin.

A ninjutsu that could fire arrows, the high-speed Body Flicker Technique, and such masterful taijutsu mixed with Strong Fist.

When had his son become this powerful?

No wonder his opponent's chakra had felt so familiar during their fight.

But the gap between him and his son had been so great that he had never once considered it could be Seisen.

Who would have thought...

His gaze involuntarily drifted to the utterly destroyed target behind him and the several trees that had been easily pierced through.

His voice carried a faint, barely perceptible tremor. "Seisen, that attack just now... was it a new technique you learned?"

Seeing Hyuga Kaze's shocked expression, Hyuga Seisen smiled and nodded.

He raised his right hand, and chakra began gathering on the back of it.

A pale blue, intricately structured cross-shaped spirit mark slowly emerged.

Under the moonlight,

then, beneath Hyuga Kaze's disbelieving gaze,

a spirit bow formed entirely from concentrated blue-white chakra energy appeared out of thin air in Hyuga Seisen's hand.

Hyuga Seisen lifted the spirit bow in his hand. "You could say it's a technique I developed myself!"

"My chakra serves as the bow and its string. The more chakra I pour into it, and the stronger my chakra control is, the sturdier the bow becomes, the greater the draw force of the string, and naturally, the faster and more powerful the arrows I fire will be."

As he spoke, he extended the fingers of his left hand, elegantly hooked the bowstring made of pure energy, and slowly drew it back.

"And what goes with it is an arrow likewise formed from chakra."

As the bowstring was drawn, chakra seemed to be pulled by an unseen force, condensing into a new arrow.

Hyuga Kaze was utterly shaken by the scene before him, which surpassed all his understanding.

He stared dumbfoundedly at the dreamlike energy bow and arrow in his son's hands.

Unable to stop himself, he bent down and leaned closer for a careful look.

"This isn't a dream!"

The chakra flowing through the spirit bow emitted a faint yet exceptionally pleasant hum.

It all felt incomparably real.

"Chakra Spirit Bow? Chakra arrows?"

He muttered to himself.

A moment later, he suddenly slapped his thigh, a look of realization appearing on his face.

Of course! How had he not thought of this?

If chakra condensation replaced the materials of a bow and arrow, then the wielder's strength could be perfectly applied to the arrow.

There would no longer be the awkward problem of a weapon failing to bring out its user's full strength.

And a bow formed from chakra also solved the problem of carrying it, without compromising the secrecy of one's movements during missions.

He had never expected his son to be a genius.

"I knew it. How could I possibly have fathered a son with such poor talent?"

An indescribable surge of excitement and pride instantly swept away the gloom that had weighed on him for days.

He suddenly turned, his eyes blazing as he looked at Hyuga Seisen and asked eagerly, "What rank would you say this technique is?"

Hyuga Seisen shook his head, dismissing the spirit bow and arrow in his hand as he explained,

"It has no rank. The technique is activated from within, so it can be considered a bloodline limit."

"A bloodline limit? Only you can use it?"

Hyuga Seisen thought carefully for a moment, then nodded.

"From a certain perspective, only I can use it."

"The bloodline limit I awakened grants me a specific kind of chakra control."

"It is because of that specific chakra control that I can easily wield this spirit bow and its arrows."

He paused, then explained further, "Without a bloodline limit, simply condensing a spirit bow and arrows like these..."

"would require terrifying chakra control, and even then, the final result might not be nearly as effective."

Hyuga Kaze slowly nodded in understanding.

Many bloodline limits in the ninja world came about in just this way.

It was not difficult to understand, though it was a little regrettable.

After learning the truth behind the arrows, Hyuga Kaze grew curious about Hyuga Seisen's Body Flicker Technique.

"Then what about that Body Flicker Technique just now? When did you learn it?"

"No matter how I taught you before, you could never learn it."