A dark gold scroll hovered above the altar of piled bones, radiating an alluring yet dangerous aura.
Hyuga Xiao did not immediately reach out.
His Tenseigan spun slowly within its sockets, bright blue chakra patterns spreading along the corners of his eyes, seeing through the structure of the entire altar area instantly—a certain active curse mark was sealed inside the scroll, connected to thirteen chakra nodes buried beneath the altar. Once the scroll was moved, the nodes would activate.
A trap. Xiao said in a low voice.
Samui had already retreated to the edge of the stone door, forming hand seals as Lightning Release chakra gathered into dense electric arcs at her fingertips. "How long to crack it?"
"Thirty seconds."
Xiao's hands pressed against the ground, the Tenseigan's vision piercing through the stone slabs to lock onto those chakra nodes hidden within the altar's base. Each node connected to a branch house corpse, maintaining operation with soul fragments as energy—this was a typical Hyuga Main House method, using the lives of the branch house to guard the secrets of the Main House.
Yet today, this trick was coming to an end.
Cycle Rotation: Rupture.
Bright blue chakra gushed from Xiao's palms, rapidly spreading along the ground and precisely injecting into the thirteen nodes. It was not destruction, but reverse infusion—forcibly flooding the node structures with Tenseigan-level chakra, causing them to overload, disorder, and interfere with one another.
The altar began to vibrate.
The pile of bones emitted a cracking sound, and those soul fragments imprisoned for hundreds of years finally gained release under the impact of the Tenseigan chakra, rising as specks of fluorescent light. The barrier of the entire forbidden area began to collapse, the spell scripts on the stone walls shattering inch by inch.
Now!
Xiao flashed forward,