Hidden Sound Periphery

The forest along the border of the Land of Rice Paddies appeared especially eerie in the morning mist.

Hyuga Xiao stood on the branch of an ancient tree, his Byakugan maintaining a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree surveillance state without blind spots. In his vision, chakra flowed like a dense spiderweb—three kilometers ahead, Hidden Sound Village's outer defensive barrier emitted dark purple energy ripples, like the breathing of some living creature.

"Split into three teams to scout."

Elder Xiao's voice came from below. The Main House elder stood at the very front of the group, his hands clasped behind his back, his tone as calm as if he were arranging an ordinary patrol.

"The eastern route will be handled by Tetsu Hyuga and Hyuga Qing."

"The northern route, Lan Hyuga and Tuo Hyuga."

"The western route—" Elder Xiao's gaze swept over Xiao. "Hyuga Xiao, scout it alone."

Xiao lowered his eyes and assumed a respectful posture. "Yes."

The western route.

That was exactly what he wanted.

The ancient scroll discovered at the abandoned shrine last night, coupled with the intelligence Anko had provided, had already pinpointed the entrance to Hidden Sound Village's underground laboratory in the western valley—there was a passage disguised as a natural cave, leading directly to Orochimaru's core research facility.

"Remember," Elder Xiao said with unquestionable authority, "scouting is the priority. Retreat immediately if you find anything unusual. Hidden Sound Village may be a small ninja village, but Orochimaru is not someone to be trifled with."

It sounded perfectly righteous.

But Xiao's Byakugan saw the truth clearly—when Elder Xiao spoke, the chakra flowing through his body did not fluctuate in the slightest. This Main House elder did not care at all whether Branch House members lived or died. He was merely carrying out some predetermined "attrition" procedure.

Just like Shu Hyuga, who had died yesterday.

Just like the Temporary Enhancement Curse Seals inside the other three teammates, which were slowly eroding away their lives.

"Move out."

At Elder Xiao's command, five figures scattered and vanished into the dense forest.

The terrain along the western route was more complicated than expected.

Xiao raced through the treetops, his Byakugan fixed on the path ahead. In his vision, the chakra flow through the forest began to show abnormalities—energy in certain areas had twisted unnaturally, as if it had been forcibly altered by some external force.

The closer he got to Hidden Sound Village's outskirts, the more obvious the abnormalities became.

Thirty minutes later, Xiao stopped at the edge of a cliff.

Below lay a bottomless valley, its depths filled with grayish-white fog. Yet the mist could not conceal the truth from his Byakugan—deep in the valley, a massive opening more than ten meters wide was hidden behind the cliff face, its surroundings covered in dense Curse Mark runes.

The runes glowed with dark red chakra, spreading across the rock wall like blood vessels.

"Found it."

Xiao slowed his breathing, his pupils narrowing slightly.

The underground laboratory entrance Anko had mentioned was deep inside that cave at the valley floor, wrapped in layers upon layers of Curse Mark traps. According to her description, Orochimaru conducted Curse Mark mass production, bloodline transplants, and even research related to the "God Tree" there.

The God Tree.

The term made Xiao frown.

The ancient scroll mentioned that the Caged Bird Seal was an inferior version of the Karma Seal, and that the Karma Seal's origin seemed connected to something even older called the "God Tree Seed." If Orochimaru was researching the God Tree as well...

"System."

Xiao silently called out in his mind.

[Fate-Breaking System activated]

[Current main quest: Investigate Hidden Sound Village's underground laboratory]

[Quest reward: Byakugan purity +5%, Destiny Points +200]

[Warning: High-concentration Curse Mark energy field detected. Host is advised to proceed with caution.]

Caution?

A cold smile curled at Xiao's lips.

He had never been a cautious person—at least not after gaining sufficient strength. So-called caution was merely a mask the weak had no choice but to wear in desperate circumstances.

And now, it was time to take off that mask.

He leaped from the cliff, adjusting his posture in midair. His toes tapped the rock wall several times, and he silently descended toward the valley floor. Throughout the fall, his Byakugan remained locked onto the energy nodes of the Curse Mark traps.

Thirty meters.

Twenty meters.

Ten meters—

Just as he was about to land, Xiao's pupils suddenly contracted.

Something was wrong.

Amid the valley fog, aside from the dark red Curse Mark energy, there were several other lingering chakra traces. They were fresh, no more than two hours old, and...

"Signs of battle."

Xiao landed without making a sound, his body curling behind a boulder like a cat.

Through his Byakugan, he saw more than a dozen shuriken scattered across the valley floor, scorch marks from Fire Release on the cliff walls, and shallow craters blasted into the ground by Lightning Release. More importantly, a faint scent of blood lingered in the air.

Someone had gotten here before him.

And they had fought the guards.

Xiao held his breath and slowly approached the cave entrance. The closer he got, the clearer the signs of battle became—the four guards who should have been stationed at the entrance had now become four corpses.

The bodies had been casually tossed into a corner beside the cliff wall. Every one of them had a deep cutting wound across the throat, sliced clean to the bone, the edges so smooth that they seemed to have been severed in an instant by an extremely thin blade.

"What a fast blade."

Xiao crouched down and carefully examined one of the corpses.

The dead man was a Hidden Sound middle ninja, dressed in a standard Hidden Sound uniform. But there was a special emblem on the chest—a sword entwined by three snakes. Anko had mentioned this insignia before. It was the symbol of Orochimaru's Direct ANBU.

To kill four members of Orochimaru's Direct ANBU instantly, the intruder had to be at least Elite Ninja level.

And...

Xiao's gaze fell upon the wound on the corpse's neck.

The cut surface was unnaturally charred, as though burned by intense heat, yet there was none of the broad damage characteristic of Fire Release. He had only seen such traits in one place—

"Hidden Cloud Village."

Records from an intelligence scroll flashed through Xiao's mind.

Hidden Cloud Village's Lightning Release Body Technique, especially the Lightning Release: Lariat series, could concentrate Lightning Release chakra into the hand blade or weapon during high-speed charges, inflicting the dual damage of cutting and burning.

The wound characteristics matched perfectly.

But why would Hidden Cloud Village's people be here? The Land of Rice Paddies and the Land of Lightning were separated by the entire Land of Fire. Hidden Cloud's reach was far too long.

Unless...

Xiao rose to his feet and pushed his Byakugan to its limit, extending his gaze through the layers of Curse Mark traps at the cave entrance and deeper inside.

Within the cave was a downward-sloping passage. Dense Curse Mark runes covered the rock walls on both sides. The runes formed a massive defensive barrier; any unauthorized intruder would trigger an alarm or even suffer backlash from the Curse Marks directly.

But now, the barrier had been damaged.

It had not been brute-forced. Instead, someone had used an extraordinarily delicate technique to cut several tiny openings at key nodes in the barrier's energy flow. It was like cutting several person-sized holes into an airtight net, with every cut placed precisely enough to avoid triggering a single alarm.

"An expert."

Xiao raised his assessment another level.

Someone capable of instantly killing four ANBU members and silently damaging a Curse Mark barrier personally arranged by Orochimaru was likely stronger than a mere Elite Ninja.

An elite from Hidden Cloud Village?

Or...

A name flashed through Xiao's mind.

"Killer B?"

No. If it were the Eight-Tails jinchuriki, the battle traces would not be this "clean." A jinchuriki's fighting style was more violent, with a far greater range of destruction. The battle before him had clearly been a precise assassination.

Then who was it?

Xiao did not continue guessing.

He drew a deep breath. A faint chakra glow appeared around his body—the rudimentary form of the Hyuga Clan's Gentle Fist technique, Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven. He deliberately suppressed it until it was nearly invisible, using it only to prevent his own chakra from leaking out.

Then he stepped through the opening cut into the barrier.

The cave was deeper than he had imagined.

The passage sloped downward all the way, its incline growing steeper as the surrounding temperature dropped. The Curse Mark runes on the rock walls emitted a dim dark-red glow, making the passage resemble the esophagus of some monstrous creature.

Xiao moved slowly.

Every ten meters, he stopped to scan the path ahead carefully with his Byakugan. It was not because he feared traps—those traps had already been damaged by the earlier intruder—but because he feared running into them.

Judging by the freshness of the battle traces, the intruder had entered the cave no more than half an hour before him. Half an hour was enough for an elite ninja to penetrate quite far, but they might also have been delayed somewhere for some reason.

He did not want a direct conflict with them.

At least, not yet.

The primary objective of this infiltration was to gather intelligence on the underground laboratory, especially its God Tree research. If possible, he also wanted to find more clues about the Karma Seal and the origins of the Caged Bird Seal.

As for the intruder who had arrived first...

As long as they did not get in his way, Xiao did not mind letting them serve as a free pathfinder.

He continued deeper.

After extending downward for roughly two hundred meters, the passage began to branch. The main passage continued downward, while several side paths split off in different directions.

Xiao stopped at the intersection, sweeping each branch with his Byakugan.

At the end of the left branch was a vast space packed with experimental equipment and cultivation tanks, its chakra reactions clustered as densely as a beehive—it should have been the Curse Mark mass-production area.

At the end of the right branch was a relatively smaller space, but the chakra reactions inside were extremely bizarre, as though many different types of energy had been forcibly kneaded together, constantly colliding and annihilating each other—the bloodline transplant laboratory.

And the main passage continued downward, leading to...

Xiao's pupils widened slightly.

At the end of the main passage was a space he could not completely see through.

It was not too far away. Rather, the space was enclosed by some higher-level barrier. The energy density of the barrier was astonishingly high; even the Byakugan's penetrating vision was greatly weakened. He could only vaguely make out a huge object radiating a dark golden glow.

That object's chakra reaction...

"The God Tree?"

Xiao's heart gave a violent thump.

Though he had never seen the true God Tree, the chakra emitted by that object was completely consistent with a certain resonance gradually awakening within him as his Byakugan purity increased.

It was energy belonging to the Ōtsutsuki Clan.

Energy belonging to the Tenseigan.

Just as Xiao was about to continue deeper, a sudden change erupted—

"Boom!!!"

A muffled explosion sounded from deep within the main passage.

It was not the explosion of a ninjutsu technique. It sounded more like some kind of energy container rupturing. Immediately afterward, a violent chakra shockwave swept through the passage. Wherever it passed, the Curse Mark runes on the rock walls shattered one after another, dark red energy fragments spraying out like a torrential rain.

Xiao retreated instantly, pressing his body tightly against the rock wall as he expanded the chakra shield of Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven to its maximum.

"Crack—"

Fine fractures appeared across the shield's surface.

Merely being brushed by the aftershock had nearly broken through his defense. If he had been at the center of the explosion...

Xiao's expression darkened.

The intruder who had arrived first had likely triggered something they should not have touched.

And worse still—

"The alarm has been triggered."

In his Byakugan vision, the chakra flow throughout the entire underground laboratory began to shift violently. Defensive mechanisms that had been dormant were fully activated. Countless Curse Mark runes emerged from deep within the rock walls, dark red energy surging toward the main passage like a tide.

At the same time, more than a dozen powerful chakra signatures rose from different areas of the laboratory and rushed toward this place at tremendous speed.

Orochimaru's guard force.

They had been discovered.

Xiao clenched his teeth.

It was still not too late to retreat—taking advantage of the chaos and following the original route back, he should be able to escape the cave before the guards surrounded him.

But...

His gaze turned toward the depths of the main passage.

That object radiating dark golden light was right there. The God Tree research, the truth behind the Caged Bird Seal, perhaps even the secrets hidden behind the system...

"I'll gamble on it."

Xiao made his decision.

Instead of retreating, he charged into the depths of the main passage, straight toward the chakra shockwave that had yet to fully dissipate.

His body raced through the tunnel, his Byakugan working at full force as he avoided the Curse Mark traps activating around him. Some traps could not be avoided, so he directly used Gentle Fist to strike their energy nodes—after all, the Hyuga Clan's Gentle Fist was the ultimate technique for manipulating chakra flow, making it even more effective against these Curse Mark traps than ordinary ninjutsu.

Thirty seconds.

He dashed through the final stretch of passage, and the space before him suddenly opened up.

It was a circular chamber more than fifty meters in diameter. At the center stood a transparent cultivation tank over ten meters tall. The tank was filled with dark green nutrient fluid, and in the middle of that fluid—

"This is..."

Xiao's breathing stopped.

Floating in the cultivation tank was neither a plant nor an animal.

It was a person.

A naked young girl curled into a fetal position.

She looked only twelve or thirteen years old. Her silver-white hair drifted slowly through the nutrient fluid, and her skin was so pale it was nearly translucent. Most bizarrely, dozens of dark golden root-like tentacles grew from her back, connecting to the inner walls of the cultivation tank. They pulsed at a slow rhythm, channeling some kind of energy from the tank into her body.

And her chakra...

Xiao's Byakugan could clearly see that the quality and density of that chakra had surpassed the realm of ordinary ninja, even surpassing Kage level.

It was energy approaching the level of a Tailed Beast.

No.

It was purer than a Tailed Beast.

That was...

"An artificial jinchuriki?"

The thought flashed through Xiao's mind.

But the next second, he dismissed the thought.

Because the girl opened her eyes.

They were a pair of pure white eyes with no pupils.

They looked very much like the Hyuga Clan's Byakugan, yet were completely different—there was no emotion in those eyes, only pure, icy indifference, like the void of the universe.

She looked at Xiao.

Then her lips moved slightly.

There was no sound.

But Xiao understood what she was saying.

She said—

"Save... me..."