The air on the fourth floor of the laboratory was as thick as congealed grease.
Orochimaru's clone, fused with Hashirama Cells, stood ten paces away. Faint blue-green veins writhed beneath his pale skin. In his sockets, the Byakugan dug out of a living Hyuga Branch House member gave off a sickly milky-white glow—these were not pure Byakugan, but grotesque products forcibly altered by Hashirama Cells.
"What a pity, Hyuga Xiao."
Orochimaru's voice carried the raspy hiss unique to serpents, his tongue licking across the corner of his mouth. "If you were willing to cooperate, I could help you completely remove the Caged Bird Seal. I could even... grant you power beyond the Main House."
Xiao stood where he was, his arms hanging naturally at his sides.
His breathing was terrifyingly steady.
"Power bought with the lives of my own clan?" Xiao's voice was soft, so soft it was almost as though he were speaking to himself. "Then what makes me any different from you?"
"Different?" Orochimaru laughed, the sound echoing through the sealed space. "The difference is that you will live, while they will die. This world has never distinguished between good people and bad people—only the living and the dead."
The instant his words fell, Orochimaru moved.
It was not the Body Flicker Technique.
His body twisted and deformed like melting wax. His limbs stretched in ways that defied human anatomy, while wood-like patterns emerged over his skin. Those malformed Byakugan abruptly erupted with blinding white light—
Illusion Art: Myriad Forest Realm!
His vision twisted in an instant.
The laboratory walls vanished, replaced by an endless primeval forest. Towering ancient trees burst from the ground, while vines coiled in from every direction like living snakes. The air reeked of rotting leaves and wet soil. More deadly still, countless Byakugan