The air in the safe house hung heavy as lead.
Kurenai Yuhi lay on a makeshift blanket, her breathing weak but steady. The azure Surveillance Mark on her chest glimmered faintly in the dim light, like a fragment of a star embedded in flesh and blood. Samui stood guard by the door, her right hand resting on the hilt of her short blade, her ears twitching slightly as she caught every sound outside.
Hyuga Xiao sat cross-legged in the center of the room.
His eyes were closed, and fine beads of cold sweat seeped from his temples. The Tenseigan's vision spread outward from him—within a radius of three hundred meters, every falling leaf, every crawling insect, every faint fluctuation of chakra formed a three-dimensional, constantly shifting picture in his mind.
This was the "Omnidirectional Perception" granted to him by the Tenseigan Prototype. The price was chakra being consumed at an astonishing rate.
"Southeast, one hundred seventy meters." Xiao's lips barely moved, his voice extremely low. "A three-man squad. Their chakra feels cold and yin-leaning, and their footsteps are evenly spaced—they're using Root's standard tactical formation."
Samui's eyes sharpened. "They found us that quickly?"
"They aren't tracking our scent. They're tracking residual chakra." Xiao opened his eyes, the pale blue gleam in them especially striking in the darkness. "The Tenseigan Chakra I released while treating Hong left behind special energy ripples in the air. Root has secret techniques specifically for tracing those ripples."
He rose to his feet, moving lightly, though every muscle was taut like a fully drawn bowstring.
"How much time do we have?" Samui asked.
"At most ten minutes before their first probing attack arrives." Xiao walked to the window and lifted a corner of the curtain with his fingertip. Outside lay an abandoned residential district on the