The room at the Tanzaku Street inn was filled with the mixed scent of medicinal herbs and disinfectant.
Samui lay on a crude bed, a sealing talisman Tsunade had hastily drawn stuck to her forehead. Her breathing had stabilized, but her face was still frighteningly pale. An unnatural chakra glow occasionally flickered beneath her skin—the restless resistance of three conflicting powers suppressed by the seal.
"Half a month."
Tsunade stood by the window with her back to the room, her voice devoid of emotion.
"Your method is theoretically viable. By repeatedly suppressing it, letting it erupt, then suppressing it again, you force her body to adapt to the chakra conflict under extreme conditions. It might even produce some kind of mutated fusion. But the chance of success won't exceed thirty percent."
She turned around, her golden eyes fixed directly on Hyuga Xiao.
"The other seventy percent is that her chakra pathways rupture during the process, her chakra goes berserk, and she dies without even leaving a trace behind."
Xiao sat on a wooden chair beside the bed, his hands folded over his knees. His posture was so proper it was almost rigid, like the standard model from a Hyuga Clan etiquette lesson. Hearing Tsunade's words, he merely nodded slightly.
"I know."
"You know?" Tsunade raised an eyebrow, a trace of mockery entering her voice. "And you still let her endure that kind of pain? Every failed suppression means the agony of chakra running rampant through her body, like having every bone in her body shattered one by one and forcibly set back in place. And it won't happen just once. It will happen over and over, until she either adapts or dies."
Xiao's gaze fell on Samui's face.
Even unconscious, the Hidden Cloud kunoichi's brow was faintly furrowed, as though