Once the dam of the mind collapsed, the body's collapse followed like a mountain flood bursting through its banks, unstoppable and devastating.
Hiashi Hyuga could no longer feel his limbs.
It was not numbness, but a deeper sensation of being hollowed out and stripped away. He could clearly "see" that his hands were still stuck to that cold, bizarre altar, but those hands no longer belonged to him. They had become two vicious conduits, two greedy pump nozzles, mercilessly and frantically drawing the last warm currents of life from his body into an unknown abyss.
"Hack... hack..."
A leaking rasp came from his throat. Every breath felt as though it were tearing apart his rusted lungs. His vision had long since blurred; those Byakugan that had once seen every detail now held only murky gray-white haze. Even his daughter before him had become a swaying ball of light.
But he could feel it.
He could feel that ball of light growing brighter and hotter, carrying a newborn, lofty aura that made even his soul tremble.
And he himself was growing colder and darker, like a candle squeezed dry of wax, with only the final flicker of its wick left to die.
Dignity?
What was that?
The Main House's glory?
It was nothing but a joke!
Everything he had pursued his entire life, the iron hand he had used to suppress the entire clan, the bloodline he had been so proud of—all of it had become the sharpest blades, flaying him alive until not an inch of him remained whole.
That Master Control Scroll lying on the ground now looked like a verdict inscribed with the word "foolishness." He was the bird locked inside the cage, a pathetic fool who had been toyed with until the very end!
"Crack..."
A faint