Who Was More Unreasonable

The dense explosions, like a string of firecrackers, instantly filled the entire ancestral hall! Blue palm shadows, a deep-blue water dragon, and an earth-yellow giant dragon collided madly and annihilated one another! Chakra currents raged like an out-of-control meat grinder, shredding the ground around the two of them until gravel flew and dust filled the air!

Puff! Puff! Puff!

The water dragon lasted fewer than twenty palms before collapsing with a crash! Under the torrential barrage, the earth-yellow giant dragon shuddered violently as its scales peeled away one by one! Neji was like a small boat caught in a raging storm; every penetrating palm strike made his body convulse, blood continuously spilling from his mouth and nose, while his breastbone groaned under the unbearable strain! Yet his feet seemed rooted to the ground, nailed firmly in place without retreating half a step!

"Break for me!" Yuumu Hyuga roared. The final dozen or so palms merged into one, becoming an utterly condensed palm force that slammed fiercely into the wavering earth-yellow dragon silhouette!

Boom—crack crack crack!

The earth-yellow giant dragon let out a mournful cry and exploded! The remaining palm force struck Neji's crossed arms without mercy!

Puff—!

A huge mouthful of blood sprayed out! Neji flew backward like a kite with its string cut, the sound of his breastbone shattering clearly audible! His body smashed heavily into a hard pillar of the ancestral hall before rolling to the ground, leaving behind a glaring trail of blood.

The ancestral hall fell deathly silent. Only Neji's suppressed, pained breathing and the faint sound of blood dripping onto the floor remained.

He had actually... forcibly endured a Jonin's Eight Trigrams One Hundred Twenty-Eight Palms ultimate technique! Though grievously wounded and on the verge of death, he was still alive!

"Impossible..." Even the Jonin from the Main House and the clan head's faction, who had been fighting, instinctively stopped. In shock, they stared at the slender figure struggling unsteadily to his feet from the pool of blood. He was drenched in blood, his chest sunken and both arms twisted unnaturally, yet his back remained straight! Those bloodstained Byakugan stared fixedly at Yuumu Hyuga, burning with unyielding fire!

"Bastard... you're courting death!" Yuumu Hyuga was utterly enraged by that gaze, and the unprecedented humiliation ignited a crazed killing intent within him. No longer caring about any consequences, he spread the fingers of his right hand wide and aimed at the wavering Neji several yards away. Chakra compressed and spun at high speed in his palm, releasing a piercing shriek!

"Gentle Fist Ultimate Technique: Eight Trigrams Air Palm!"

A terrifying chakra shockwave, condensed almost into substance and capable of piercing refined steel, tore through the air and shot toward Neji's heart at a speed too fast for the naked eye to discern! This was a killing blow! Unstoppable!

"Neji—!" Countless Branch House children screamed, closing their eyes in despair.

Death! An unprecedented shadow of death instantly seized Neji's heart! His Inner Qi was nearly exhausted, and his body was on the verge of collapse! He could not block it! There was absolutely no way he could block it!

At that one-ten-thousandth of a second, at the brink of despair!

"Heavenly Mirror Reversal!!!"

A hoarse roar erupted from Neji's throat in the final moment of his life! It was not chakra! It was Inner Qi driven by burning the source of his life! Within his Sea of Consciousness, the Primordial Bagua Diagram suddenly burst forth with an unprecedentedly blazing azure light!

Buzz—!

A pale azure chakra sphere, far larger than normal and condensed almost into substance, erupted around Neji! Its surface was no longer blurred currents of air, but countless clearly visible Primordial Bagua runes spinning at high speed! The sphere was not perfectly round; instead, it possessed a strange mirror-like texture, as though it could refract everything!

Boom!!!

The condensed Eight Trigrams Air Palm slammed viciously into the pale azure "mirror" sphere!

There was no earth-shattering explosion!

The terrifying shockwave capable of piercing steel, the moment it touched the sphere's mirrored surface, vanished like a clay ox entering the sea, instantly absorbed and broken down by a profound force! The next instant, the mirror surface of the sphere flared brilliantly, and a chakra shockwave nearly identical to the incoming Air Palm reflected back along its original path at an even faster speed and with even greater ferocity!

"What?!" The vicious grin on Yuumu Hyuga's face froze instantly, turning into boundless horror and disbelief! He had no time to react at all!

Splurt—!

The reflected Air Palm struck his right shoulder squarely! Blood and shattered bone fragments exploded outward! Yuumu Hyuga let out a shrill scream as he was blasted away like a tattered sack, crashing heavily into the ancestral hall wall before sliding limply down. His right arm twisted at a bizarre angle, completely ruined!

Dead silence!

A hundred times, a thousand times worse than before! The entire ancestral hall seemed to have been frozen in time!

Everyone looked petrified, staring fixedly at the boy in the center, who swayed on the verge of collapse yet still stood within the pale azure sphere, at the glaring blood beneath his feet, and at Yuumu Hyuga in the distance, whose fate was unknown.

Ro... Rotation?!

And it had... reflected the Eight Trigrams Air Palm? A Rotation that had never appeared in the clan's history?!

The secret of secrets among the Main House's hidden techniques! The ultimate defensive technique that even many Main House elites had failed to master! And yet... and yet a Branch House boy had learned it and even developed it further?!

A genius, a genius! The eyes of the clan head's faction lit up.

"Monster! What a monster!" The Great Elder trembled with rage, his aged face twisting out of shape. His withered finger shook as he pointed at Neji, his voice as shrill as a night owl's. "You stole the Main House's forbidden secret! Your crime deserves death! You cannot be allowed to live!"

The last four words were like ice from the ninth hell, carrying killing intent that could not be washed away even by the waters of three rivers and five seas! His shriveled body erupted with terrifying chakra utterly unmatched by his age. At the tip of his snake-headed staff, a blinding white light condensed! It was a highly compressed chakra sphere emitting destructive fluctuations! He intended to act personally, to erase this Branch House monster who had completely slipped beyond control and threatened the foundations of the Great Elder's faction from this world. No—he would leave Neji alive long enough to force the secret of this mutated Rotation from him!

The snake-headed staff descended upon Neji's head with the force to crush everything. Drained of strength and collapsed on the ground, Neji no longer had the power to resist! The white light dazzled, and death's shadow engulfed him completely!

"Stop!" Hiashi Hyuga roared. Held back, he could only watch as Neji was about to die. The other elders of the clan head's faction could only shout in fury as well. It seemed that today's events had long been calculated.

Neji lay in a cold pool of blood, shattered ribs piercing his lungs and organs. Every breath came with bloody foam. He watched the destructive white light rapidly grow larger in his vision. His Inner Qi was exhausted, his body ruined; even moving a finger had become an impossible wish.

Was this the end?

Unwillingness! Intense, overwhelming unwillingness surged through his veins like lava! Reborn into this life, having broken free from the fate of the original story and gained hope to change everything, was he really going to die so miserably in this filthy ancestral hall, at the hands of these rotten Main House members?

"Who dares lay a hand on my disciple—!!!"

Rumble—!!!

A world-shaking roar, like furious thunder from the nine heavens, brutally shattered the dead silence beneath the ancestral hall's dome! Along with that roar came a terrifying aura, tyrannical beyond compare, descending from above like an ancient beast awakening!

The heavy, solid black-stone dome of the ancestral hall exploded like paper! Countless chunks of stone, swept along by violent winds, rained down like meteors!

Dust billowed into the sky!

A figure descended before Neji with the force to crush everything, like a god arriving in the mortal world! The hard black-stone floor beneath her feet cracked and collapsed like fragile biscuits, instantly forming a deep pit several yards wide!

The shockwave swept outward like a tsunami! The nearby Main House elders were violently thrown away like leaves in the wind! The Great Elder's killing blow was forcibly knocked aside by the savage impact!

The dust slowly began to settle.

A tall figure stood proudly at the center of the crater. Her golden hair danced wildly in the violent airflow like a burning sun. One hand rested on her hip, while the other hung casually at her side. The sleeve of her green robe bore the embroidered character for "gamble," though it was now stained with dust and stone fragments.

She tilted her head slightly, revealing a beautifully lined jaw and tightly pressed lips that commanded awe even without anger. Her amber eyes blazed with fury enough to burn away the eight horizons as they slowly swept across the hall, like a queen surveying her enraged domain.

The entire Hyuga Clan ancestral hall trembled beneath that aura of supreme dominance.

Lady Tsunade had arrived!

A jagged piece of dome rubble, as large as a millstone, had been granted terrifying momentum by the violent impact. Like a cannonball fired from its barrel, it tore through the air with a piercing shriek and flew straight at the Great Elder, who had just been knocked back and had yet to recover from his shock!

"Great Elder, watch out!" A Main House elder cried out in horror.

The Great Elder's pupils constricted sharply! He was, after all, an old powerhouse. In haste, he gathered chakra to protect his chest and raised his snake-headed staff across his body!

Crack—!!!

The bone-cracking sound was painfully clear!

The force within that boulder far exceeded all expectations! The Great Elder's protective chakra shattered like an eggshell, and the snake-headed staff blocking its path bent out of shape! The boulder slammed viciously into the arms he had crossed before his chest!

"Ugh—ah!"

The Great Elder let out a miserable, pained groan as if he had been struck by a battering ram, his feet leaving the ground as he flew backward! His body crashed heavily into the thick stone altar holding the memorial tablets of past clan heads! With a thunderous crash, the stone altar shattered into pieces! Memorial tablets clattered across the floor!

He collapsed amid the rubble, his arms twisted at bizarre angles, his chest heaving violently as blood continuously spilled from the corners of his mouth. His face was pale as gold paper, and his gaze toward the golden figure in the center was filled with terrified horror!

The entire ancestral hall was silent enough to hear a pin drop. Only the sound of rubble pattering down and the Great Elder's suppressed groans of pain remained.

Tsunade slowly withdrew her gaze, as if she had merely tossed aside an annoying rock. She bent down slightly and looked at Neji, who lay in the pool of blood, barely breathing yet keeping his eyes stubbornly open. When she saw the horrifying depression in the boy's chest and the glaring blood covering his body, the fury in her eyes that could burn the heavens abruptly turned into a chill cold enough to freeze souls.

"You bunch of senile bastards," Tsunade said, her voice not loud, yet it rang clearly in everyone's ears. Every word carried the weight of a thousand jun, striking terror into their hearts. "Bullying a junior and nearly beating him to death? Did you Hyuga Main House smear your faces on the boards of an outhouse?!"

She slowly straightened, her gaze like tangible blades as it swept over the pale-faced Hiashi Hyuga, over the shaken Main House elders, and finally settled on the Great Elder struggling amid the ruins. An icy, sinister curve appeared at the corner of her lips.

"If you don't give me a satisfactory explanation for this today..."

She raised her foot and took what seemed like a casual step forward.

Boom—!!!

Centered beneath her foot, the incomparably hard black-stone floor seemed struck by an invisible giant hammer, instantly exploding into an even larger spiderweb-like crater! Violent airwaves swept out once more!

"...then I'll tear down your damn ancestral hall!"