Deep within the shelter, the stale smell of mildew mingled with the bloody tang of stone.
Hyuga Xiao's fingertips had barely left the charred blood groove on the stone wall when a scalp-crawling scratching sound came from behind him.
"Riiip—"
It was the dull sound of fabric being forcibly torn apart, mixed with the shrill scrape of nails against stone slabs.
Xiao spun around.
On the stone platform, Kurenai Yuhi, who had been wrapped in the cocoon of light from the "Yang Formation," was now rolling violently. The azure chakra glow flickered erratically as silver-gray energy erupted from within and battered it.
She bit down hard on her lower lip, dark red blood winding from the corner of her mouth and dripping onto her pale neck. Those hands that were usually so steady while forming seals now clawed desperately at the edge of the stone platform. Her nails had already curled back, blood seeping through them, yet she seemed utterly unaware.
"Urgh... ah..."
Broken cries of pain squeezed from her throat, like a trapped beast driven into a corner.
Xiao crossed the distance in one step and waved away the outer shell of the cocoon.
An extremely frigid current of air instantly rushed toward him. Hong's clothes had been completely soaked through by cold sweat, clinging tightly to her skin. But what made Xiao's gaze turn icy was the abnormality beneath her skin.
The silver star patterns that had supposedly been forced back into her heart had not stopped moving. They had abandoned their invasion of her physical surface and instead launched a frenzied assault toward a deeper realm—the dimension of her soul.
Within the Tenseigan's vision, Hong's chakra pathways had twisted into a tangled mess. A vast will carrying the laws of higher-dimensional time was frantically stirring and slicing