Indoor Confrontation: Uchiha Fugaku's Arrogance and Prejudice

Behind the medicine shop counter, the faint bitterness of herbs hung in the air. Sosuke slipped several wrapped packets of angelica root and astragalus into his wide sleeves, then casually tossed down a few coins.

"Thank you, Boss." He nodded gently, then turned and lifted the heavy cotton curtain over the door.

Outside, the late autumn wind swept a few dead leaves into his face, bringing a touch of real chill. Sosuke drew the collar of his pure white fox-fur cloak closer, burying half his face in the soft fur. Yet his gaze quietly passed over the bustling street and settled on a two-story wooden building diagonally across from him.

It was a teahouse called Green Leaf. The street-facing sliding window on the second floor stood half-open, offering a clear view of the entire street below.

Just moments ago, Mikoto's hurriedly retreating figure had not gone far before she was stopped by someone coming down from the second floor of the teahouse and half-forcibly taken back upstairs.

It was a young man in a dark blue high-collared kimono, with the striking red-and-white fan crest of the clan emblazoned on his back. His arms were folded across his chest and his chin tilted slightly upward. Two deep lines beside his mouth lent his otherwise handsome face an exceptionally harsh arrogance.

The direct grandson of the Uchiha clan's Great Elder, and the sole candidate to become the next clan head—Uchiha Fugaku.

Standing in the shadows at the street corner, Sosuke curled his lips into a faint, cold smile. The prey had already entered the game. Now, it was time to teach this self-important young clan head a lesson.

He strode across the street at an unhurried pace and climbed the creaking wooden stairs of the teahouse.

Inside the second-floor private room, the atmosphere was so oppressive it was hard to breathe.

A copper kettle atop a small red-clay stove burbled with boiling water, but the rising white steam could not dissolve the coldness between the two people.

"Mikoto, you have disappointed me greatly." Fugaku sat cross-legged in the seat of honor, looking down at the girl kneeling across from him as he rebuked her in an unquestionable tone. "I saw everything clearly from upstairs just now. As the future mistress of the Uchiha clan, you actually pulled and tugged with a piece of trash on the street who cannot even refine chakra. Where did you leave the Uchiha clan's dignity?"

Mikoto lowered her head, her hands clutching the hem of her kimono so tightly that her nails nearly dug into her palms.

"Young Master Fugaku, Sosuke was helping me out of that situation..." She bit her lower lip, trying to explain. "The Security Force was making a scene in the street and had already stirred up dissatisfaction among the villagers."

"Shut up!" Fugaku slammed his palm onto the low table, splashing tea from the cups. "The Security Force maintains Hidden Leaf's public order. It is only natural for them to act forcefully! As for that Senju Sosuke, a cripple who relies on a woman's protection and could die of illness at any moment, what right does he have to lecture the Uchiha clan?"

Fugaku snorted, his eyes full of undisguised contempt. "The Senju Clan was eliminated by the times long ago. In today's Hidden Leaf, only the Uchiha clan is the strongest clan. You are about to marry me. Stay away from that unlucky invalid from now on, unless you want his bad fortune to rub off on you."

Mikoto suddenly lifted her head, a flash of deeply suppressed fury passing through her clear eyes. She could endure Fugaku's tyranny toward herself, but she could not endure him trampling so viciously upon someone who had just extended a helping hand to her.

"Young Master Fugaku, the Senju Clan once—"

"Once what?"

A somewhat hoarse yet extraordinarily steady voice suddenly came from outside the sliding door of the private room.

Accompanied by two muffled coughs, the wooden door was slowly pulled open by a pale, slender hand. Sosuke stood properly outside, draped in that eye-catching white fox-fur cloak. He held a snow-white silk handkerchief, and an unhealthy flush still lingered at the corners of his mouth. Yet his deep black eyes pierced through the curling steam and stabbed straight into Fugaku's gaze.

"So in Young Master Fugaku's eyes, the Senju Clan that founded Hidden Leaf has already been reduced to something eliminated by the times."

The air in the private room instantly froze.

Mikoto stared in astonishment at Sosuke, who had returned after leaving, and her heartbeat suddenly skipped. Why had he come up here? With his condition, how could he withstand facing Fugaku?

Fugaku narrowed his eyes and looked Sosuke up and down, this youth who seemed as though a gust of wind could blow him over. Far from showing any embarrassment at being overheard, he instead let out a deeply mocking snort.

"Who did I think it was? So it is the last surviving seedling of the Senju Clan." Fugaku did not even shift his body, maintaining his lofty posture. "The ninja world has always respected strength. A piece of trash who cannot even perform the Three Basic Techniques dares to eavesdrop on me? Get out. You have no place to speak here."

Faced with this merciless expulsion, Sosuke not only did not get angry, but instead calmly walked into the private room and sat cross-legged in the empty spot beside Mikoto.

He even lifted the copper kettle from the red-clay stove and poured himself a cup of hot tea.

"Young Master Fugaku is right. The ninja world does indeed respect strength." Sosuke held the teacup in both hands, feeling the warmth against his palms. His tone was as mild as if he were chatting with an old friend. "Still, although I am an invalid, the renown of the First and Second Hokage remains clearly carved upon Hokage Rock. Every villager in Hidden Leaf enjoys the peace that the Senju Clan purchased with blood."

Sosuke lowered his eyes and gently blew away the foam floating atop his tea. Then his tone abruptly shifted, like a soft blade smeared with deadly poison, silently slicing through Fugaku's defenses.

"And the Uchiha clan... as Hidden Leaf's current 'number one great clan,' can only guard the thankless post in the Security Force generation after generation. Every day, you haggle with merchants in the streets and cannot even cross the threshold of the Hokage Building. That kind of 'strength' truly inspires admiration."

Bang!

Fugaku crushed the teacup before him in one hand. Scalding tea and ceramic shards dug into his palm, yet he did not seem to notice at all.

Sosuke's words contained no profanity, yet they had struck with ruthless precision upon the Uchiha clan's greatest sore point.

Suspected by the higher-ups, politically marginalized, possessing tremendous military might yet only able to serve as vicious watchdogs at the gate—this was the eternal thorn in the hearts of the Uchiha leadership. Now, that thorn had been ripped out before their faces by the cripple they despised most, and then a fistful of salt had been rubbed into the wound.

"Senju Sosuke! You are courting death!" Fugaku's face instantly turned livid, veins throbbing across his forehead.

Mikoto listened from the side with her heart pounding in alarm. Looking at the pale youth beside her, whose hand trembled even as he held his teacup, a storm surged through her heart.

Without shedding a drop of blood.

With only a few casual remarks, he had pushed the arrogant and overbearing Fugaku to the brink of losing control. This wisdom and bearing, this ability to see through people and strike directly at their weak points, made Mikoto feel an unprecedented urge to look up to him. By comparison, Fugaku's furious rage, which relied only on brute force to crush others, seemed so crude and incompetent.

"Young Master Fugaku, why get angry?" Sosuke set down his teacup, covered his mouth with the silk handkerchief, and coughed violently several times, as though those words had exhausted all his strength.

He raised his head. His eyes glistened with tears forced out by his coughing, and his tone carried the desolation and self-mockery of someone who had seen through life and death.

"I am merely a dying man. Naturally, I do not understand the greater situation. I only know that true power belongs to those who make the rules and control the board. Not those fierce dogs who have collars fastened around their necks by the rules, are thrown into the streets to bite people, and still take pride in it."

Sosuke's gaze swept over Fugaku's twisted face before finally settling on Mikoto. His voice softened.

"Placing a clan's future in the hands of a brute who cannot even see his own circumstances clearly. Miss Mikoto, is your political marriage truly saving the Uchiha clan?"

That sentence became the final straw that broke the camel's back.

At that moment, Fugaku's reason snapped completely. Not only had his clan been humiliated to his face, but even his fiancée, whom he regarded as his personal possession, was now looking at him with doubt under this cripple's verbal guidance.

Unforgivable!

"A cripple like you dares to spout nonsense at me!"

Boom!

An extremely violent chakra filled with the stench of blood erupted from Fugaku's body. He abruptly rose to his feet. Within his eyes, three black tomoe spun wildly in scarlet pupils.

It was the tangible killing intent of a jonin, like raging waves of a furious sea, instantly filling the cramped teahouse room.

The wooden sliding door groaned under the pressure of the wind, while the tea set on the table clattered from the vibrations.

Mikoto's face turned deathly pale. Instinctively, she tried to step in front of Sosuke. "Fugaku! Stop! Have you lost your mind? He has no chakra!"

But Fugaku could no longer hear anything. He looked down at Sosuke from above, suddenly thrust out his right hand, and clawed toward Sosuke's throat with a gust of force that tore through the air.

Faced with this lethal strike, Sosuke remained seated without dodging.

All color instantly drained from his handsome face. His breathing became extraordinarily rapid, and the teacup slipped from his hand, splashing water across the tatami. His entire body swayed precariously, as though he would suffocate under that terrifying killing intent the next second.

A perfect victim, utterly incapable of resistance.

Yet deep within those widened black eyes, filled with apparent terror, lay an extreme coldness and cruelty that no one could detect.

Just as Fugaku's fingertips were about to touch Sosuke's throat.

Deep within Sosuke's body, in the meridians tightly suppressed by the Four Symbols Seal, the instinct of his beginner-level Sage Body was thoroughly enraged by this foreign killing intent. An ancient, violent green chakra, like a primordial beast awakening, gave a silent roar within his blood.

A cold green gleam silently flashed through Sosuke's eyes.