Space itself seemed to have been silently bitten open by the sharpest venomous fang!
A gaunt hand like a ghost's claw, wrapped in grayish-white bandages steeped in the stench of time and conspiracy, shot out of that rift like lightning!
Beneath the gaps in the bandages, a Sharingan as crimson as blood, its three black Magatama spinning, gleamed with resentment accumulated over decades, cold malice, and unwavering murderous resolve!
That hand tightly gripped a kunai.
The kunai's blade radiated twisted corruptive power, as though all the filth and depravity in the world clung to it! An ordinary person would suffer a mental breakdown from merely looking at it.
The timing was vicious beyond compare!
It came at the very instant Neji's mind had broken free of the intoxication of his surging power, only to become immersed in comprehending his new strength—a fleeting, imperceptible moment of lowered guard as he remained vigilant against hidden dangers!
Fast! Faster than the constraints of space and time!
The ghostly hand, clutching its poisoned kunai like a death-dealing spike from the deepest hell, ignored the final aftershocks of the chaotic energy field and ignored the Mystic Crystal defense instinctively surfacing over Neji's body, stabbing with ruthless precision at the vulnerable vital point in the center of his back!
Its target was the newly formed core on his back, the nexus that bore the Three-Phase Immortal Power!
Danzo! This man who had lurked in the shadows like the most patient venomous serpent had finally bared his poisoned fangs at the most unlikely moment!
That strike contained the forbearance of his entire life in hiding, his greed for Konoha's authority, his bone-deep wariness of Neji—the "variable"—and... the utterly twisted, crazed resentment born after all his foundations had been stripped away!
Die! Neji brat! Take your secrets and