Do Not Believe Everyone Can See the Light

The wooden door opened a crack.

The moonlight of the Hour of the Boar poured through a gap in the roof, falling directly onto the worn blanket in the corner.

Shisui was still lying there.

His breathing was faint but steady, his chest rising and falling slowly, with no sign of waking.

Lin Feng stepped into the watchtower and closed the door behind him. The pain in his left arm forced his Sharingan open uncontrollably, its Three-Tomoe slowly turning in the darkness. He lowered his head and glanced at his shoulder—the black runes had already crept past his collarbone and were slowly spreading toward his neck.

The Curse Seal's tracking pulse throbbed once every ten seconds, like a red-hot needle stabbing into his bones.

He took the stuck-together page from his robes.

Its edges were jagged, and dust from the archive room still clung to the back. The front was covered in writing, hurried yet neat. It was Shisui's handwriting.

Lin Feng crouched beside Shisui and unfolded the page beneath the moonlight.

"Methods of Suppressing Kotoamatsukami—"

The very first line made his pupils contract.

"The caster must release it voluntarily before activation. No external force can dispel it. No sealing technique can block it. No Curse Seal technique can interfere with it. Once Kotoamatsukami is activated, its ocular power will completely erode the target's will structure. It is irreversible."

There was another line in smaller writing below.

"Lord Danzo ordered research into countermeasures, but after three hundred and seventy-two chakra simulations, the conclusion remains unchanged: Kotoamatsukami's only weakness is the caster's self-restraint. If the caster chooses not to release it, no one can stop it."

Lin Feng's fingertips stopped at the edge of the page.

The blacked-out passage.

This was the page.

Shisui had torn this page out of the archive room. He had carried the truth Danzo most wanted buried, then gone to the cliff above the Naka River, opened his Sharingan, and, before Danzo—

Jumped.

"Shisui."

Lin Feng's voice echoed through the empty watchtower.

"You tore out this page not because you wanted to hide Kotoamatsukami's weakness. You did it so you could die in front of Danzo and seal away this ability forever... didn't you?"

Shisui did not respond.

Only the candle flame flickered.

The page trembled faintly in Lin Feng's hand. He understood the resolve hidden between Shisui's lines—Danzo had driven Shisui to death not to steal his eye.

It was to seal away Kotoamatsukami.

What Danzo feared was not Shisui, but Kotoamatsukami itself. He could not tolerate an ability capable of completely rewriting another person's will existing in Konoha, even if it belonged to an Uchiha, to Shisui, to a shinobi willing to give everything for the village.

So Shisui had to die.

The page detailing the suppression method had to vanish within Root.

The secret that "Kotoamatsukami cannot be released by external force" had to be buried forever.

Lin Feng folded the page and tucked it into the deepest part of his ninja tool pouch. At that moment, the pain in his left arm suddenly intensified, the black runes writhing like living things.

He sensed it.

The Curse Seal's positioning pulse was no longer merely transmitting outward. It was waiting for a reply. Some technique in Root's direction had recalibrated the tracking frequency and was locking onto this watchtower.

Halfway through the Hour of the Boar.

The radicals in the clan grounds would soon gather.

The Curse-Mark Hound could lock onto this place again at any moment.

The timing of the two routes on the map had completely overlapped—stay and protect Shisui, or go to the Uchiha Clan Grounds and stop the coup.

Lin Feng closed his eyes.

The Curse Seal on his left arm was still pulsing, sending his location to Root with every beat. His chakra was resisting the seal's spread, but the black runes still advanced slowly. They had crossed his shoulder and begun creeping toward his heart.

"Reverse Crow Summoning is not a tracking technique. It is a homing technique."

Shisui's voice suddenly echoed in his memory.

"The most important mark is not on the enemy. It is beside the thing you want to protect."

It had been an afternoon a month ago. Shisui stood atop a tree at the Uchiha Training Ground, three crows perched on his shoulders, Lin Feng's reflection captured in his scarlet Sharingan.

"If you're ever tracked, don't try to erase the mark. The essence of tracking techniques is connection, and connection goes both ways."

Shisui raised his hand, and a crow landed on his fingertip.

"Let it return home."

"Send the mark back to its owner."

Lin Feng opened his eyes.

"Beside the thing you want to protect..."

He repeated the words under his breath and looked down at the unconscious Shisui.

Shisui's breathing remained faint. If the Curse-Mark Hound locked onto this place, Shisui would undoubtedly die. If Danzo came personally, Shisui would still die.

But if—

Lin Feng stood and walked toward the watchtower window.

The moonlight of the Hour of the Boar was at its brightest.

He raised his left hand. The black runes twisted beneath the moonlight like thin snakes slithering under his skin. The Curse Seal's positioning pulse throbbed again, stronger this time. The technique in Root's direction was almost done locking on.

"You taught me."

Lin Feng spoke to the unconscious Shisui.

"Protecting your comrades isn't a choice between two options. If this path is blocked, open a third one yourself."

He formed hand seals with his left hand.

He had practiced the Reverse Crow Summoning Technique's seals three hundred times, but he had never used it in this condition. The Curse Seal's power resisted his chakra, and the black runes writhed violently as though they wanted to burrow into his bones.

Lin Feng gritted his teeth.

The Three-Tomoe in his Sharingan spun faster.

He used the Curse Seal's tracking pulse as the source of the mark, poured his own chakra into it, and then—

Guided it in reverse.

The essence of Reverse Summoning was not transferring chakra, but transferring "relationships." Contractual relationships, summoning relationships, tracking relationships—every connection went both ways. Danzo had used the Curse Seal to track him, which meant a chakra channel had been established between Danzo's Curse Seal technique and himself.

Shisui had said it before.

Return home.

Send the mark back to its owner.

Lin Feng's left hand traced the final seal beneath the moonlight.

A dark crow formed in his palm, condensed from chakra. It was not a living creature, but the physical manifestation of the technique. Black patterns identical to the Curse Seal flowed between its wings.

A dim glow split off from the black markings on Lin Feng's arm.

It sank into the crow's body.

"Go."

The crow beat its wings.

It flew soundlessly out the window.

And vanished into the night.

Three seconds later—

Lin Feng felt the tracking pressure from the Curse Seal abruptly change direction. The positioning pulse that had been pointed at him all along seemed to snap in half, then shot back in the opposite direction. Somewhere on the outskirts of District Seven, Danzo's Curse Seal technique received "Lin Feng's location"—but it was not the watchtower.

It was Danzo's own location.

The mark had returned home.

The tracker had become the tracked.

Lin Feng leaned against the window frame. The black runes on his left arm still throbbed, but their rhythm had clearly slowed. The Curse Seal infection was still spreading. The runes had reached the top of his shoulder and were creeping toward his chest. But he could sense that Danzo's attention toward District Seven had been sharply pulled away, like a hunting hound suddenly catching the scent of the wrong trail.

He was not sure how long this technique could fool Danzo.

But at least for now—

He had bought time.

Lin Feng turned and walked toward Shisui.

"I found the third path."

He crouched and checked Shisui's pulse and breathing. His Sharingan confirmed that Shisui's chakra circulation remained stable, his wounds had not worsened, and the consciousness seal caused by the genjutsu was slowly beginning to release on its own.

"When you tore out that page, you knew Danzo would never let you leave Root alive."

Lin Feng's voice was very soft.

"You never planned to leave alive. You only wanted to bring out the truth and let Kotoamatsukami be sealed forever within your death."

Shisui's eyelashes trembled faintly.

But he did not wake.

Lin Feng stood and pulled the blanket back over him. He looked out through the watchtower window at the night—the Hour of the Boar was nearly over, and torchlight could faintly be seen in the direction of the Uchiha Clan Grounds. The radicals had begun gathering.

He had to leave.

He had to go to the Uchiha Clan Grounds with half his body consumed by the Curse Seal, with the truth written in Shisui's hand, with that page that had been blacked out and brought back into the light.

Lin Feng walked toward the watchtower door.

His footsteps landed on a crack in the floorboards, producing a faint creak.

A voice came from behind him.

Very faint.

Like sleep-talking.

"The Third Hokage... he knows..."

Lin Feng spun around.

The Three-Tomoe in his Sharingan abruptly contracted.

Shisui was still lying there, his eyes closed, his lips moving slightly. His expression had not changed, and his breathing remained faint and steady. He had merely murmured a single line in his unconsciousness.

The Third Hokage.

He knew.

The candle flame flickered once.

Lin Feng stood at the doorway, the moonlight stretching his shadow long behind him. The scarlet glow of his Sharingan froze in the darkness, reflecting the unconscious Shisui, the wavering flame, and the immense shadow cast by those sleep-muttered words.

He did not question him.

An unconscious man would not answer.

But he knew this was no coincidence.

In the deepest layers of Shisui's sealed consciousness, in the depths of his subconscious that even Danzo's genjutsu could not reach, there was another name he had not spoken aloud.

The Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi.

He knew Danzo was going to move against Shisui.

But he had not stopped him.

Lin Feng turned around and pushed open the wooden door.

The final sliver of moonlight in the Hour of the Boar fell across his back.