Shaking with rage-when will the Branch Family...

After sending away all the clan children who had gathered to watch, Shisui turned his gaze to Oto.

Being stared at by Shisui, who was younger than her, made Oto uncomfortable. His eyes held a melancholy look. He was just a kid, yet he wore such a gloomy expression. It really rubbed her the wrong way.

Although she had barely taken part in clan affairs since graduating from the Ninja Academy, Oto still knew Obito Uchiha's-no, Shisui Uchiha's-reputation.

He was a prodigy who had awakened his Sharingan while still at the Ninja Academy. After graduating early, he had quickly earned promotion to Chunin through combat. A seven-year-old Chunin was exceedingly rare in Konoha's entire history.

Shisui was, without question, the clan's genius. Even its Jonin regarded him as the hope for the Uchiha's revival.

But Shisui stood out too much. Displaying such talent at so young an age made him an easy target for enemy nations seeking to eliminate him.

The threat might even come from within the village. After all, the Uchiha did not have a particularly good reputation there.

Zou Hyuga had also brought these matters up with him before, warning him not to get too involved in village or clan affairs.

After a moment of silence, Oto Uchiha raised her eyes to Shisui and said, "Lord Shisui, if there's nothing else, I'll be on my way."

A wry smile tugged at Shisui's lips. Oto was older than him, yet she addressed him so formally.

That probably wasn't merely because he was his grandfather Kagami's descendant. It also signaled a sense of distance.

Obito Uchiha and Oto Uchiha were two oddballs the clan loved to talk about. The former was so cheerful that he hardly seemed like an Uchiha, but he had shown exceptional talent. Sadly, he had died in the war against Iwagakure.

The latter kept a low profile, but she had remained a Genin for years without promotion. She didn't normally team up with her clansmen, either, instead partnering with a Genin from the Hyuga Clan.

A Hyuga and an Uchiha teaming up-that alone was enough to draw attention.

Of course, none of that was why Shisui had stopped her.

After spending a long time choosing his words, Shisui finally said slowly, "Oto, why can you talk so calmly with the villagers when the others can't? They're too..."

"Too arrogant... is that what you're trying to say?"

Oto Uchiha smiled, then furrowed her brows and said:

"As Uchiha, we're born with a family background and talent that other shinobi can never hope to match. Once we grow up and awaken the Sharingan, we can easily become Chunin or even Jonin. It's only natural to look down on ordinary people..."

"But Oto, you don't seem to have awakened your Sharingan either..." Shisui interrupted.

Oto Uchiha was momentarily speechless. Only then did she realize she had never publicly revealed that she had awakened her Sharingan.

"Don't get hung up on the details!" Crossing her arms in an X to signal no, Oto Uchiha continued, "What I'm trying to say is that true pride is held within, not flaunted!"

"We have nothing to be proud of when facing ordinary people. If we're going to show our pride, we should do it before the Sannin or Lord Hokage. What kind of Uchiha bullies ordinary people?"

After Shisui's interruption, Oto Uchiha's carefully cultivated air of wisdom vanished, and she blurted out everything she really felt in one breath.

"True pride is held within..."

Shisui mulled those words over. He had never heard anything like them before. When he had asked Obito in the past, he had only received a few vague remarks. Oto had given him a much clearer answer.

By the time he came back to his senses, Shisui found that Oto Uchiha had already left. His opinion of this older member of his clan had changed as well.

Oto really is a proud Uchiha.

Deep within the Hyuga Clan Compound stood a detached house.

Zou Hyuga lived in this unassuming house. Compared with the Main Family's grand residences, his was much more modest.

As a member of the prestigious Hyuga Clan, he had lost his parents long ago in the successive shinobi wars. Even their faces had grown hazy in his memory. All that remained to prove their relationship was a family photograph in a white frame.

The only person he could really call family was his elderly uncle, who was old in every sense of the word.

He was over sixty, had no children, and was the oldest living elder of the Main Family.

Thanks to him, Zou had faced little harassment despite belonging to the Branch Family. Even his resource allocation was second only to that of the Main Family's members. Those resources allowed him to slowly improve his strength so he could protect himself.

In a sense, money and resources were immensely important to shinobi.

Shinobi born into clans were powerful not merely because of their bloodline abilities and secret techniques, but even more because of their foundations.

Although the Ninja Academy did everything it could to close that gap, Genin graduates from shinobi clans possessed raw abilities comparable to Chunin. That was an undeniable fact.

He took off his shoes, stepped into the entryway, and checked whether any of the security traps he had set around the house had been disturbed.

Once he had finished, Zou Hyuga went underground through a secret passage, entering a basement that covered several dozen square meters.

This was his laboratory. It had little equipment, and its sole research subject was himself.

Even if someone discovered a laboratory of this scale, they would find nothing suspicious about it.

He had been conducting research in this cramped basement for six years. His subject was himself-or, more precisely, the Caged Bird Seal.

Under his uncle's protection, he would neither suffer harassment from the Main Family nor receive orders to protect its members.

But he could not accept the idea that Branch Family members should die to protect the Main Family.

The mere thought of being sent to die in a Main Family member's place someday made him tremble, chilled to the bone.

He didn't want to die. He only wanted to live in peace. If possible, he would choose to settle in the Land of Iron, then marry and start a family in that peaceful nation, perhaps having a child or two.

His uncle was already elderly. For a shinobi in an age of war, reaching such an age was already considered a long life.

But he clearly would not survive another decade. When that time came, Zou would have to face the reality of the Main Family and the Caged Bird Seal himself.

With that in mind, he had begun researching how to break the Caged Bird Seal early on.

The Caged Bird Seal was a seal created by the Hyuga Clan's ancestors to protect weaker clan members. Although its purpose had become twisted over time, its origins could still be traced back through a thousand years of Hyuga history, and even to Hamura's descendants on the moon.

From his hazy memories, Zou Hyuga vaguely recalled that the Ōtsutsuki Clan on the moon and the Hyuga Clan shared the same ancestor and the same Caged Bird Seal system.

There was also the Moon Otsutsuki Clan's greatest treasure, the Giant Tenseigan.

It was a powerful ocular technique formed from hundreds upon thousands of Byakugan, on the same level as the Rinnegan.

It might even have been the origin of the Caged Bird Seal system, though that was only speculation.

Zou Hyuga had once dreamed of possessing a pair of tenseigan to break the Caged Bird Seal, but reality had dealt him a crushing blow.

The tenseigan was formed by combining countless pairs of Byakugan, and he had no way to reach the moon where the Ōtsutsuki lived.

In other words, he could only obtain the tenseigan by slaughtering every Hyuga in the Shinobi World.

That was something he neither had the ability nor the willingness to do. The risks were simply too great.

So he could only turn his attention to another line of research: a byproduct of his attempts to break the Caged Bird Seal, the strange markings that covered his body.