The Assault Begins

The darkness before dawn was at its thickest.

Hyuga Xiao stood at the edge of the forest outside Hidden Sound Village, his Byakugan glowing with a faint bluish light in the night. Behind him, the other two Branch House members—Takuya and Hikō Hyuga—silently arranged their ninja tool pouches. Both wore forehead protectors, but beneath them were the Caged Bird Seals that could never be erased.

"Fifteen minutes." Ko Hyuga's voice came from the shadows of the trees.

The Main House elder was not standing on the front line. Instead, he hid on high ground thirty meters behind them. His Byakugan was also active as he coldly surveyed Hidden Sound Village's frontal defenses—three wooden barricades, the faint outlines of watchtowers behind them, and more patrolling Sound Ninja than expected.

Xiao could sense that Takuya's breathing was somewhat rapid.

This man had been eroded by a Curse Mark in the laboratory yesterday and nearly died, yet now he was being sent to the very front of the battlefield again. Hikō, on the other hand, was comparatively calm. He simply kept checking the edge of his kunai, his movements mechanical and numb.

"Lord Ko." Xiao suddenly spoke, his voice gentle. "If we launch a frontal assault, the three of us may not..."

"May not what?" Ko Hyuga cut him off, his tone carrying unquestionable authority. "The Branch House's duty is to clear obstacles for the Main House. Your task is to create enough commotion to draw the Sound Ninja's main force. As for whether you survive—"

He paused, and his voice turned colder.

"That depends on your own abilities."

Xiao lowered his head, the shadow of his forehead protector concealing the chill that flashed through his eyes.

Just as expected.

They were using the Branch House as bait, trading their lives for the chance for Leaf Village's ANBU to infiltrate. He knew this tactic all too well—on the Hyuga Clan training grounds, the Branch House was always arranged in the front row during ninjutsu sparring, using their bodies to test the opponent's killing moves while the Main House stood behind them, observing, analyzing, and devising countermeasures.

Tools.

Consumables.

"I understand." Xiao spoke softly, with just the right trace of trembling in his voice. "We'll do our best."

Ko Hyuga glanced at him and said nothing more.

Time passed second by second.

The eastern horizon began to pale. Birdsong in the forest gradually grew denser. The guards on Hidden Sound Village's watchtowers changed shifts, and the newly arrived Sound Ninja yawned, clearly not fully awake yet.

Now.

"Move." Ko Hyuga's command entered the minds of all three directly through the Caged Bird Seal.

It was a forcible neural stimulus, like red-hot iron needles piercing their temples. Takuya grunted and rushed out first. Hikō followed close behind.

Xiao moved as well.

But he was half a beat slower than the other two, and his charge deliberately veered toward the relatively weak flank. Through his Byakugan, he clearly saw the Sound Ninja's chakra signatures—seven behind the frontal barricades, two in each watchtower, and at least three patrol squads hurrying in from deeper within.

"Enemy attack—!"

The Sound Ninja's alarm tore through the morning silence.

Kunai and shuriken shot from behind the barricades like a storm. Takuya roared and unleashed Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven. A blue chakra whirlwind deflected the first wave of attacks, but its range was limited. Three shuriken still grazed his shoulders, spraying blood.

Hikō had already reached the barricade and assumed the opening stance of Gentle Fist: Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms. His palm strikes were precise and vicious, instantly disrupting the chakra points of two Sound Ninja. But as those two fell, more Sound Ninja surged out from behind them.

"Fire Release: Phoenix Sage Fire Technique!"

Several fireballs spewed from the Sound Ninja's mouths, sealing off Hikō's retreat. He had no choice but to abandon pursuit and roll away awkwardly. The sleeve on his left arm had already been scorched by the flames.

Xiao moved along the flank.

He deliberately made his movements look clumsy—one kunai throw missed its mark, and he nearly fell while dodging a Fire Release attack. Yet his Byakugan vision was like the most precise radar, bringing every detail of the battlefield under his control.

At the front, Takuya and Hikō had already fallen into a bitter struggle.

The two stood back to back, alternating between Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven and Eight Trigrams Palm, barely holding off the encirclement of more than a dozen Sound Ninja. But their chakra was depleting too quickly. Takuya's breathing had become disordered, and Hikō's palm strikes had lost their initial precision.

Meanwhile, Ko Hyuga remained in the rear.

That Main House elder showed no intention of joining the fight. He merely observed the battle with cold detachment, as though watching a performance that had nothing to do with him.

The corner of Xiao's mouth curved into a faint smile.

Just as expected.

He deliberately allowed a kunai thrown by a Sound Ninja to graze his right shoulder. The sharp blade sliced through cloth and skin, and blood immediately seeped out. Xiao groaned and staggered backward, retreating behind a large tree at the edge of the battlefield.

"Xiao!" Hikō caught sight of this amid the fierce battle and shouted anxiously.

"I'm fine!" Xiao leaned against the trunk, covering his wound with his right hand, pain in his voice. "Hold on, I'll be right—"

Before he finished speaking, he slid weakly to the ground.

He had chosen this position skillfully—it was within the battlefield's visible range, allowing Ko Hyuga to see through his Byakugan that he had been "injured and incapacitated," while also lying in a blind spot from the Sound Ninja's attacks. More importantly, from here, his Byakugan could see through layer after layer of obstacles toward the other side of Hidden Sound Village.

Then he saw them.

On the western side of Hidden Sound Village, about eight hundred meters from the frontal battlefield, seven chakra signatures were infiltrating at high speed. Their route was extremely professional, perfectly avoiding all patrol routes and warning traps as they headed directly for the underground laboratory entrance.

The chakra signature leading them...

Xiao's Byakugan pupils contracted slightly.

Silver-white hair. A forehead protector covering his left eye. The shape of the short blade on his back. And that distinct, pure lightning-nature chakra fluctuation.

Kakashi Hatake.

Leaf Village ANBU—or rather, Kakashi Hatake, the Elite Ninja instructor of Team Six, as he should now be called—was leading a six-man squad into Hidden Sound Village through its weakest flank.

And their target was undoubtedly Orochimaru's underground laboratory.

Xiao's heart beat steadily and powerfully.

Everything was proceeding as expected.

Leaf Village's higher-ups—whether the Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi or Root leader Shimura Danzō—had never expected these three members of the Hyuga Branch House to truly break through Hidden Sound Village's frontal defenses. All they wanted was a sufficiently loud "commotion," bait capable of drawing the Sound Ninja's main force to the front.

Once Kakashi's squad infiltrated the laboratory and obtained Orochimaru's research materials, or something even more important...

Whether the three Hyuga Branch House members lived or died was utterly irrelevant.

In fact, if they all died here, it might be even better for the Main House—they would have completed the mission, reduced the Branch House population, and could add a measure of tragic honor to the clan after the battle under the name of "heroic sacrifice."

What perfect calculations.

Xiao leaned against the tree trunk. His right shoulder was still bleeding, but his expression was terrifyingly calm. In his Byakugan vision, Ko Hyuga finally moved—the Main House elder began slowly advancing toward the center of the battlefield, though he still showed no intention of directly entering the fight. It was more as though he were assessing the situation and searching for the most appropriate "time to withdraw."

On the frontal battlefield, Takuya and Hikō were nearly unable to hold on.

"Eight Trigrams Palm: Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven!"

Takuya unleashed the Hyuga Clan's absolute defense once more, but this time the range was noticeably smaller and its rotation slower. Three Sound Ninja seized the chance and rushed in from three directions at once, their kunai stabbing straight toward his vital points.

Hikō roared and rushed over to save him, knocking one Sound Ninja away with a palm strike. But the attacks of the other two had already landed.

Squelch—

The sound of kunai piercing flesh.

Takuya was struck in the left shoulder and right abdomen simultaneously, blood gushing out. He staggered backward, and Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven completely dissipated.

"Takuya!" Hikō's eyes turned red.

"Don't worry about me!" Takuya gritted his teeth and shoved Hikō away. "Go! If one of us can get out, then get out!"

"Go?" A Sound Ninja squad captain sneered and waved his hand. "Leave them all here!"

More Sound Ninja surged in from behind, completely sealing off the two men's retreat.

Xiao remained seated behind the tree.

His Byakugan swept over Takuya and Hikō, over the steadily approaching Sound Ninja, over Ko Hyuga in the distance who was "assessing the situation," and finally settled on Kakashi's squad, which had already infiltrated the underground laboratory entrance.

Those seven chakra signatures were rapidly descending. They had clearly entered the laboratory.

The time had come.

Xiao slowly stood up.

His right shoulder was still bleeding, but he seemed unable to feel the pain. He raised his left hand and formed a simple hand seal.

Shadow Clone Technique.

White smoke dispersed, and a clone identical to him appeared at his side. The clone accepted the bloodstained cloth strip Xiao handed over, skillfully wrapped it around its right shoulder, then sat back beneath the tree in the posture of someone too badly injured to move.

Meanwhile, Xiao's true body silently blended into the shadows of the trees.

One of the Byakugan's abilities—seeing through objects—allowed him to clearly perceive the structure of the underground laboratory. Kakashi's squad was moving rapidly downward, their objective obvious: the laboratory's core area at its deepest level.

What was there?

Xiao did not know.

But Orochimaru's Active Curse Mark Seed was still in his arms, and it was producing a faint resonance with something deep within the laboratory. It felt like a summons, but also like a warning.

He needed to take a look.

Not to help Leaf Village, and not to save Kakashi.

Only for himself.

To uncover the true secret of the Caged Bird Seal, to find a way to completely lift this curse, and to one day personally crush the arrogant superiority of the Hyuga Main House.

Xiao's figure swiftly darted through the forest.

He avoided the frontal battlefield and circled to the southern side of Hidden Sound Village. Most of the defenses here had been redeployed because of the battle at the front, leaving only a few scattered guard posts. Xiao's Byakugan easily found gaps in the patrols. Like a ghost, he slipped through the defensive line and arrived at another entrance to the underground laboratory.

This was a backup passage he had marked during his reconnaissance yesterday—a ventilation duct concealed by vines, just wide enough for a person to pass through.

Xiao did not hesitate. He flipped into it.

The inside of the duct was damp and cold, reeking of mold and the pungent scent of chemical reagents. He slid downward like a snake, his Byakugan remaining active as he watched for possible traps.

Thirty meters down.

Fifty meters.

One hundred meters.

When his feet touched solid ground again, he had reached the second level of the underground laboratory. It was even colder than the upper levels. Fluorite embedded in the walls emitted a miserable green glow, illuminating densely packed cultivation tanks lining both sides of the corridor.

Various biological tissues floated in the tanks—some still vaguely human-shaped, while others had twisted and mutated into indescribable monsters. Bubbles occasionally rose through the liquid with soft gurgles.

Xiao frowned.

Orochimaru's experiments were even crazier than he had imagined.

He concealed his chakra and moved forward along the corridor. In his Byakugan vision, Kakashi's squad was two hundred meters ahead. They had reached the laboratory's lowest level and were confronting something.

Xiao quickened his pace.

After rounding a corner, the sight before him brought him to a halt.

This was an enormous circular chamber more than fifty meters in diameter. Its dome rose high above, and in the center stood a bizarre "tree"—not a real tree, but a column formed from countless masses of flesh and chakra. Its surface was covered in pulsing vein-like patterns.

At the top of the tree hung dozens of translucent, egg-shaped sacs.

Inside each sac floated an unconscious human body. Tubes had been inserted into their foreheads, chests, and limbs, extracting pale golden liquid from their bodies and feeding it into the central "tree."

Kakashi's squad stood at the entrance to the chamber.

The six ANBU members had spread out in a fan formation. Kakashi stood at the front, his exposed right eye fixed firmly on the central "tree." His Sharingan was active, its Three-Tomoe slowly rotating.

"This is..." One ANBU member's voice trembled slightly.

"A chakra extraction device." Kakashi's voice was cold. "Orochimaru is using living people to cultivate something."

His gaze passed over those sacs before suddenly stopping on one of them.

A red-haired woman in her twenties floated inside it, wearing a Kusagakure forehead protector.

"That's..." Kakashi's pupils contracted.

Xiao saw it as well.

It was not only that female ninja from Kusagakure. In sacs closer to the tree's core were ninja from Hidden Cloud, Hidden Rock, and even Hidden Sand. One corpse wore a Hidden Sound uniform, but that face...

Xiao recognized it.

It was Takuya's teammate, the Hidden Cloud Elite Ninja who had been eroded and mutated by a Curse Mark in the laboratory yesterday.

Orochimaru not only used living people for experiments, but refused to spare even dead test subjects, draining every last bit of chakra from them.

"Captain, what do we do?" an ANBU member asked quietly.

Kakashi fell silent for several seconds.

His Sharingan rapidly scanned the entire chamber, analyzing every possible trap and defensive mechanism. Finally, his gaze settled on the roots of the central "tree"—there was a control console there, its screen flashing with complex curse formulas and data.

"Our mission is to obtain the experimental data," Kakashi said. "Lord Shimura Danzō specifically emphasized that we must acquire the God Tree Cell Cultivation Records."

He paused, his voice growing colder.

"As for these people... the mission comes first."

The ANBU fell silent.

But no one objected. That was the rule of ANBU—the mission outweighed everything, including the lives of innocents.

Kakashi began moving forward.

His movements were extremely cautious, every step landing where the chakra fluctuations were most stable. The Three-Tomoe in his Sharingan spun rapidly as he analyzed every trace of abnormal energy flow in the air.

Xiao hid in the shadows, taking everything in through his Byakugan.

His gaze fell on the control console as well.

God Tree Cell Cultivation Records...

If Orochimaru really was researching the God Tree, and if those records contained a connection between the Caged Bird Seal and the God Tree's power, then he had to obtain them.

But Kakashi was here.

A direct confrontation would not be wise. Kakashi Hatake's strength ranked among the very best in all of Leaf Village, and he also had six ANBU elites with him.

Xiao needed to wait.

Wait for an opportunity.

Kakashi had reached the control console. He placed his hand on the operation panel, his Sharingan rapidly scanning the curse formulas on the screen as he began attempting to break through the access restrictions.

Just then—

The central "tree" suddenly began pulsing violently.

The vein-like patterns erupted with blinding golden light. The hanging sacs burst one after another, and the bodies inside fell to the ground like rags. But bizarrely, they were not dead. They convulsed as they crawled to their feet, their eyes hollow and vacant, their bodies emitting violent chakra fluctuations.

"Stay alert!" Kakashi shouted.

The ANBU instantly entered combat stance.

Yet those "revived" test subjects did not attack them. Instead, as though answering some summons, they crazily lunged toward the central "tree," using teeth, nails, and every possible means to tear at its trunk, trying to burrow into its pulsing veins.

Screams, tearing, and the sound of flesh being ripped apart blended together.

The entire chamber became a hellish scene.

Kakashi's Sharingan widened sharply.

He saw it—in the instant the test subjects tore open the tree's outer layer, something even more bizarre was revealed inside: countless twisted human faces, like souls sealed alive within the tree, howling in agony.

And at the deepest part of the trunk, a fist-sized "fruit" emitting a pale golden glow was slowly taking shape.

"That is..." For the first time, Kakashi's voice wavered.

Xiao's Byakugan was fixed on that fruit as well.

His body trembled.

It was not fear, but some instinctive craving—the "Active Curse Mark Seed" in his arms was resonating frantically, as if it wanted to burst from his body and pounce on that fruit.

[Detected a high-purity God Tree energy carrier]

[Analysis progress of the Fate-Breaking System: 23% → 41%]

[Warning: This energy carrier is resonating with the Curse Mark Seed within the host. Contact carries an 80% probability of triggering uncontrollable mutation.]

[Recommendation: Evacuate immediately.]

Xiao did not move.

His eyes fixed on the fruit, on the test subjects madly gnawing at the trunk, and on Kakashi rapidly cracking the console.

Then he saw something deeper—

At the core of the trunk, directly beneath the fruit, was an embedded stone slab.

Ancient writing was carved into the slab—the writing of the Ōtsutsuki Clan. Xiao could not recognize the words, but his Byakugan could make out the image: a figure with a Rinnegan on its forehead and nine Truth-Seeking Orbs floating behind it, pressing a hand against the head of someone kneeling on the ground, their forehead marked with the Caged Bird Seal.

There was also a line of tiny writing beneath the image.

Xiao pushed his Byakugan to its limit and finally made out the contours of those words—

It was the crest of the Hyuga Clan.

And a warning written in blood:

"Whoever touches this object shall surely suffer the God Tree's backlash and remain a slave for all eternity."

Kakashi saw the stone slab as well.

The three tomoe in his Sharingan spun wildly as he tried to decipher the meaning of the writing. But the Ōtsutsuki Clan's script lay beyond the Sharingan's ability to interpret, and he could only barely make out a few key words:

"God Tree... fruit... sacrifice... Caged Bird Seal..."

At that moment, the console screen suddenly lit up with a blinding red glow.

A cold electronic voice echoed throughout the entire chamber:

"Self-destruct sequence activated."

"Countdown: 60 seconds."

Kakashi's expression changed.

"Retreat!" he barked.

The ANBU immediately began to fall back without hesitation. But the test subjects that had been frantically gnawing on the trunk suddenly changed direction and surged toward them like a tide, using their bodies to block the only exit.

Battle erupted in an instant.

Kunai, shuriken, and the flashes of ninjutsu exploded throughout the chamber. The ANBU were formidable, but there were simply too many test subjects, and they had no fear of death. Even after their heads were severed, their bodies still lunged forward to bite.

Kakashi already had Lightning Cutter in hand. Azure electricity tore through the air, instantly clearing every test subject within five meters ahead of him. But more test subjects poured in from behind.

"Captain! The exit is blocked!" an ANBU roared.

Kakashi's Sharingan swept rapidly across the surroundings.

There was no other exit.

This chamber was sealed. The only passage was the corridor they had entered through, and it was now completely blocked by dozens of test subjects. Sixty seconds was nowhere near enough time to carve a bloody path through them.

Unless...

His gaze fell on the "tree" at the center.

That pale golden fruit was giving off increasingly intense energy fluctuations. The vein-like patterns on the trunk began to crack, and golden fluid gushed out like blood.

Kakashi's pupils contracted.

He realized something—the self-destruct sequence Orochimaru had set up was not meant to destroy this chamber.

It was meant to ripen that fruit.

It would use the lives and chakra of everyone here as its final nourishment.

"Everyone, gather around me!" Kakashi's voice was more severe than ever. "Prepare your strongest defensive ninjutsu!"

The ANBU quickly assembled, and the glow of various defensive ninutsu lit up.

But Kakashi knew it was not enough.

If that fruit truly exploded, the resulting shockwave would be enough to level the entire underground laboratory. Even if they endured the first wave, they would still be buried a hundred meters underground.

Unless...

His Sharingan turned toward the console again.

Cracking progress: 87%.

Just a little more.

As long as he got the data, as long as he completed the task Lord Danzo had assigned...

Kakashi clenched his teeth as Lightning Cutter blazed even brighter. He prepared to stake his life on one final attempt—to force his way through the test subjects' encirclement in the last instant before the fruit exploded and seize the data storage device inside the console.

Xiao, hidden in the shadows, saw all of it.

His Byakugan swept over the wildly surging test subjects, Kakashi's team preparing to risk their lives, and the fruit that was about to explode.