"Xiao... save me..."
The voice sounded as though it had been hauled up from a deep well—wet, reeking of blood and froth.
Hyuga Xiao's pupils contracted slightly.
Before him stood a monster stitched together from dozens of Branch House bodies. Its twisted Byakugan were still spinning madly, but one pair of eyes—the third one in the upper right—was staring fixedly at him. The whites were covered in bloodshot veins, and his blurred reflection lay in their depths.
Those were Ryota Hyuga's eyes.
Xiao remembered those eyes. The night before the Chunin Exams three years ago, Ryota had found him on the mountain behind the training grounds. The two had stolen two bottles of sake from the Main House storehouse and sat on a cliff drinking beneath the moon. Ryota had said, "Once we become Elite Ninja, let's apply for transfer to the border forces and get as far away from the Main House as possible." Moonlight had fallen into his eyes, making them shine as though they might overflow.
Now, those eyes were embedded in a writhing mass of flesh, surrounded by the eyeballs of other Branch House members, densely packed like maggots crawling over rotten fruit.
"Xiao..."
Another cry.
This time, it was not just Ryota. Two eyeballs in the lower left turned at once, while lips—or whatever the cracks split across that rotten flesh could be called—opened and closed with difficulty. "Kill... me..."
"It hurts..."
"Main House... liars..."
Seven or eight voices overlapped. Some were hoarse, some shrill, and some no longer sounded human at all. They came from different parts of the aggregate, like a chorus squeezed out of hell.
Clone Shisui stood half a step behind Xiao, his Sharingan slowly turning. In a low voice, he said, "Residual consciousness. They must have still been alive when