The Price of Submission, Thunder in Hidden Leaf's Shadows

"Clan Head Hiashi..."

The few words Naruto spoke were like boulders cast into a deathly still abyss, stirring invisible ripples.

His silver-white eyes held not the slightest emotion as they quietly regarded the head of this prestigious Hidden Leaf clan.

The air did not freeze. Instead, it seemed forcibly twisted by some higher-dimensional existence. Every Hyuga clansman could feel it: within the Byakugan vision they took such pride in, Naruto's presence had become both incomparably blurry and incomparably clear—an incomprehensible contradiction that nearly drove them mad.

"Now, do you think I'm worthy of Hinata?"

The calm question was like a fuse, igniting the last of Hyuga Hiashi's dignity.

"Arrogant!"

Hiashi roared, forcibly suppressing the tremor rising from deep within his bloodline. "Take him down! Let him witness the Hyuga Clan's iron laws!"

He could not retreat!

Behind him stood a thousand years of the Hyuga Clan's glory!

Yet Naruto moved.

He did not unleash any earth-shattering pressure. The instant the twelve Hyuga elites lunged at him, he merely took a leisurely step forward.

The first to charge was a branch family jonin, whose fierce Gentle Fist strike went straight for Naruto's heart.

Yet in Naruto's silver-white eyes, the flow of chakra within the jonin's body, the next contraction of his muscles, even his accelerated heartbeat from nervousness, were all as clear as lines on his palm.

"A flaw."

Naruto did not even turn aside. He simply extended two fingers and, at an utterly inconceivable angle, casually caught the incoming wrist.

Crack!

The crisp sound of shattering bone made everyone's teeth ache!

Before the jonin could scream, Naruto had already borrowed the force to turn, flinging him like a ragged sack toward two clansmen charging from the other side. The three immediately tumbled into a heap.

It had all happened in the blink of an eye!

"Your Gentle Fist has only learned the form, not the momentum."

Naruto's voice was cold and calm, as though a grandmaster were lecturing an unteachable disciple.

Hyuga Hiashi's pupils contracted violently!

Impossible!

That had clearly been the Gentle Fist's Flowing Water Stance, using the smallest cost to deflect force and counterattack!

But how could an outsider grasp such essence upon seeing the Hyuga Gentle Fist for the first time?!

"Together! Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm!"

Several experienced jonin immediately pulled back. Both palms shot out, and several condensed chakra shockwaves sealed off every possible path of Naruto's escape from different angles!

"A futile effort."

Stars flowed through Naruto's silver-white eyes. He saw through the path of every Vacuum Palm, even the weakest point where they converged.

He neither dodged nor evaded. His right palm thrust forward as well, and a similarly condensed yet utterly different chakra suddenly erupted!

Divine Sky Strike!

This palm was not Gentle Fist, but a pure, highly concentrated chakra burst technique, striking precisely at the central point where the several Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palms met!

Boom—!

There was no violent explosion. Instead, there came a suffocating annihilation.

The several Vacuum Palms instantly collapsed as though they had encountered their natural enemy. The violent airflow surged backward, sending the jonin staggering and reeling as their blood and chakra churned!

In only two moves, more than half the Hyuga elites had lost their combat ability!

"Monster..." Neji, supported by his clansmen, trembled all over as he watched the scene. The Byakugan forcibly shut within him throbbed with agonizing pain, but it was far less than the shock and terror in his heart.

"Your turn, Clan Head."

Naruto slowly turned toward Hyuga Hiashi, whose face had gone deathly pale.

"I will never..." Hyuga Hiashi clenched his teeth, a trickle of blood spilling from the corner of his lips.

He poured the purest chakra of the Main House into both palms, his figure flashing forward like lightning!

Gentle Fist Art: Eight Trigrams: Sixty-Four Palms!

This was an attack he had wagered everything on!

Palm shadows danced in an airtight barrage, every strike landing precisely upon one of the sixty-four major acupoints around Naruto's body!

Yet beneath Naruto's God's Perspective, this seemingly flawless palm technique was like a chessboard whose every secret had already been exposed.

"Two palms, slow by one-tenth of a second."

"Four palms, your force is off by three inches."

"Eight palms... your shoulder muscles have begun to stiffen."

"Sixteen palms... your chakra supply is starting to falter."

Naruto's body weaved through the dense palm shadows like a phantom strolling through a downpour without a drop touching him.

With every sentence Naruto spoke, Hyuga Hiashi's heart sank further.

His opponent could not only see through his movements, but also discern the slightest changes in his body and chakra!

When the thirty-second palm struck out, Hyuga Hiashi was already drenched in sweat. To his horror, he discovered that every one of his attacks lay within the other's predictions. Step by step, he was being led into an invisible trap!

"Right here."

Naruto's icy voice rang beside his ear.

He finally stopped evading and extended a single finger, pointing at Hyuga Hiashi's chest from an angle that completely defied reason. It struck an absolute blind spot that seemed guarded by countless palm shadows, but where the old force had been exhausted and the new had yet to arise.

In Hyuga Hiashi's eyes, only that infinitely enlarged finger remained.

Pfft!

The finger landed squarely.

There was no immense force, yet a supreme, overwhelmingly tyrannical ocular power mixed with the Uzumaki Clan's unique sealing chakra invaded in an instant!

Hyuga Hiashi was struck as though by lightning, his entire body going rigid.

The chakra within him was like a rebel army encountering its king. It instantly crumbled and was forcibly sealed within his meridians, unable to move!

The Main House Byakugan he had always taken pride in let out a mournful cry and surrendered from the deepest depths of its bloodline before this power!

Thud.

Hyuga Hiashi's knees gave way. Using the last of his strength, he kept himself from kneeling completely, but one knee still smashed heavily into the ground, cracking the hard concrete beneath it.

He raised his head, his face filled with terror and despair that shattered everything he believed.

"This... this is... the Otsutsuki Clan's..."

He could not even fully speak the legendary name that existed only in the Hyuga Clan's oldest scrolls!

The stairwell fell into deathly silence.

"Phew..." Naruto slowly exhaled a breath of foul air. Two trails of blood slowly ran from the corners of his eyes, a shocking sight.

His face had become somewhat pale, and his breathing was slightly hurried.

Even with a Sage Body supporting it, the power of these eyes was far from something he could squander at will.

He raised a hand and wiped away the blood. Looking down at Hyuga Hiashi, who knelt on one knee, his voice carried a trace of weariness, yet was even more domineering.

"I am Minato's son, and the last male of the Uzumaki Clan in this world. How could my bloodline and power possibly be understood by a rotten clan like yours, stubbornly clinging to the past and doing nothing but using the Caged Bird to mutilate your own kin?"

"Look at Neji." Naruto pointed at the dazed genius. "Is this your rule? A pitiful wretch twisted by hatred, while you, the clan head, have indulged it until now. Pathetic!"

Hyuga Hiashi's worldview had been completely shattered.

The Fourth Hokage's son!

The Uzumaki Clan!

And those legendary eyes!

Any one of those was enough to overturn the balance of Hidden Leaf!

Resist?

He looked at his clansmen groaning all over the floor and felt the chakra sealed tightly within his body. A sense of helplessness drowned him.

Pride and dignity were worthless before absolute, incomprehensible power.

"I've set my sights on Hinata."

Naruto declared with resounding force, "When she grows up, I'll make her the most glorious wife of Naruto Uzumaki! Whoever dares object, I'll personally tear down your Hyuga Clan's ancestral hall and toss your ancestors' tablets into a dung pit!"

Arrogant!

This was the victor's declaration to the defeated!

Hyuga Hiashi trembled violently. Humiliated fury burned in his heart, yet he could not find even a trace of oxygen to turn it into an inferno.

He had lost, beyond all dispute.

He gritted his teeth as an absurd yet only viable thought coiled around his heart like poisonous vines: If... if resistance is impossible, then submitting to such a future powerhouse with divine blood and making Hinata the bond between them... could the Hyuga Clan perhaps undergo an unprecedented evolution amid this humiliation?

That thought crushed the last of his will to resist beneath the crushing reality known as "the clan's future."

[Ding! Target associated with the conquest detected: Hyuga Hiashi. His psychological defenses have been completely shattered! His will to resist has collapsed, and his attitude has shifted from "hostile" to "fear," "awe," and "humiliated opportunism"!]

In the shadows atop the apartment building, two masked ANBU stood as rigid as stone statues.

"Tobi... did you see that?"

The ANBU codenamed "En" spoke in a dry voice filled with incredulous horror.

"I saw it."

The ANBU codenamed "Tobi" stared fixedly at the blond boy below, wiping the blood from the corners of his eyes in the stairwell. "Naruto Uzumaki... unilaterally suppressed the Hyuga Main House head and twelve jonin. The Byakugan... has undergone an unknown evolution. Combat assessment... impossible to calculate."

After a brief, deathly silence, "Tobi" suddenly snapped back to his senses, his voice carrying an urgency never heard before.

"Immediately! Highest-level alert! Report every scrap of information we just recorded, without missing a single word... to the Hokage! Hidden Leaf... is about to change!"