The night wind, carrying a faintly sweet, fishy scent leaking from the Hyuga Ancestral Shrine—a mixture of withering life and warped space—brushed over the rooftop.
Hyuga Xiao's black hair stirred gently in the breeze, but his Tenseigan, glittering with brilliant starlight, remained fixed coldly on the deep forest eight hundred meters away.
Within his vision, six frigid chakra signatures moved rapidly through the shadows of the trees with an inhuman, absolutely precise rhythm.
Their movements were uniform, their landings soundless. Every arc of every leap seemed calculated thousands of times over, wasting not the slightest bit of strength. Their chakra was suppressed to the utmost, like ice beneath a deep pool. Were it not for the Tenseigan's all-seeing vision, even the most elite sensory ninja would have struggled to detect their traces from such a distance.
Uniformly pale bone masks concealed every expression.
Their standardized black combat suits allowed them to blend into the night.
"Root..."
A faint curve touched Hyuga Xiao's lips, tinged with contempt and amusement.
Shimura Danzō's Root.
Though that old dog had already turned to ash, the sharp-scented hyenas he had raised still lurked in Leaf Village's shadows, following their instincts, drawn by disturbances in power and the scent of death.
"They arrived even faster than the Third's direct ANBU. Not exactly surprising."
Hyuga Xiao assessed them coldly in his mind.
After all, compared to the hypocritical radiance of protecting the Will of Fire, these tools stripped of emotion possessed a more direct, more frenzied craving for pure power and chaos.
He did not move.
He did not even release a trace of killing intent.
Crushing these six ants would have been easier for him than breathing.
But that would have been too wasteful.
How could a grand drama about to begin lack a few "messengers"