The exit from the drainage tunnel lay in an abandoned mine three kilometers outside Konoha.
Hyuga Xiao carried the unconscious Kurenai Yuhi on his back, with Samui close behind. Their shadows stretched long through the depths of the mine tunnel. Moss covered the damp rock walls, and droplets fell from the tips of stalactites, striking the pooled water with a monotonous echo.
"Is this place safe?" Samui lowered her voice, keeping her kunai raised in a guarded stance.
"Temporarily." Xiao's voice was especially calm in the mine. "After the cave-in three years ago, this place was designated a Forbidden Zone. The Main House's patrol routes do not extend to somewhere like this."
He turned into a side passage and pushed open a wooden door disguised as part of the rock wall.
Behind it was a secret room of roughly twenty square meters. A map of the Shinobi World hung on the wall, while dry rations and medical supplies were piled in one corner. A makeshift bed lay in the center. This was one of seven safe houses Xiao had secretly prepared over the past half year—every Branch House member knew to prepare for trouble, but his preparations were more thorough than anyone's.
Xiao gently laid Hong on the bed.
The young woman's face was pale as paper, and her lips had taken on an unnatural bluish-purple tint. Though the wound on her chest had been temporarily bandaged, dark red blood had already seeped through the edges of the gauze, its color far too deep to be normal blood.
"The poison is spreading." Samui crouched down, her fingers hovering above the wound. "I can sense the chakra disturbance."
Xiao said nothing.
He closed his eyes, and the Tenseigan pattern on his forehead slowly lit up. Azure chakra spilled from his pupils