With a roar, Seiichi used all his strength to break free of his restraints.
"Aaah!" A scream of agony followed immediately. It turned out that all of this was a genjutsu cast by the girl to trap Seiichi.
But no matter how sophisticated a genjutsu was, it ultimately came down to a contest of mental strength.
Clearly, the girl's mental strength was still somewhat inferior to Seiichi's.
Seiichi easily broke her genjutsu, and the pain of having her ocular technique shattered made the girl scream.
As Seiichi exerted his strength, the chamber before him instantly shattered like a mirror. Then his surroundings returned to where he had originally been.
At that very moment, the girl had already stepped up to Seiichi, her left hand clamped over her profusely bleeding left eye while her right hand pressed against his chest.
"Yachihoko: Spiritual Engraving!" the girl called out.
Seiichi lowered his head to examine the left side of his chest. With a thought, he dispersed the portion of his Chakra Armor bearing a mark similar to the girl's Mangekyo pattern, then reformed it an instant later.
He then looked up at the girl before him, who seemed utterly heedless of her own life, and no longer wished to hold anything back.
"I just saved your life. Is this how you repay me? If that's how it is, then if you want to die, I'll grant your wish!"
With that, Seiichi drew Shusui Parting Clouds from his waist and pointed its tip straight at the girl.
"Die!!! Fire Style: Majestic Destroyer Flame!!!"
After a moment's thought, Seiichi sheathed his blade again.
He strolled leisurely through the blazing Majestic Destroyer Flame, walked right up to the girl as she spewed fire, and sent her flying more than ten meters with a kick.
"Pfft!"
At that sound, Seiichi attacked without the slightest hesitation. The girl spat out a mouthful of blood, her body collapsing limply onto the cold, hard ground, trembling slightly, as fragile as a withered leaf in the wind.
Seiichi walked steadily up to her, his tall, straight figure like an insurmountable mountain as he looked down at the girl before him.
"All Uchiha deserve to die! Kill me! I absolutely refuse to live as a weapon ever again!!!"
The girl's voice brimmed with boundless resentment and resolve. Her once-clear eyes were now clouded by hatred as she stared fixedly at Seiichi, as though trying to etch his figure into the depths of her soul.
Although blood continued streaming down her face, staining her pale cheeks red, she still gritted her teeth firmly, refusing to yield to the enemy before her.
Seiichi frowned slightly, a trace of bewilderment rising within him. "What exactly did the Uchiha do to you to make you hate your own clansmen so much?"
He stared at the girl, trying to find an answer in her eyes.
"Tell me the truth." Seiichi crouched down and reached out to grip her chin, forcing her to raise her head and meet his eyes. "Perhaps I can help you."
A flicker of surprise crossed the girl's eyes, but anger quickly obscured it. "You're an Uchiha too! Why should I trust you?"
The corners of Seiichi's mouth lifted slightly. "If I wanted to kill you, you'd already be dead."
The girl fell silent for a moment, and some of the hostility in her eyes faded.
He fed the girl a few healing pills to let her recover a little.
"Since you're not even afraid of dying, you might as well satisfy the curiosity of a fellow clansman before you die, and leave your name behind while you're at it.
"You wouldn't want to die without the world even knowing someone like you ever existed, would you?"
Then, through the girl's halting account, Seiichi learned the general outline of her story.
The girl was an Uchiha born during the Warring States period, even earlier than Madara. Because she possessed an ocular technique called Yachihoko, the Uchiha Clan of that time had turned her into a human weapon from childhood.
Her ocular technique, Yachihoko, could erase people's memories and control them by placing marks on their bodies. It could also absorb chakra from those bearing the marks to strengthen herself or others.
On top of possessing Yachihoko, she had also been implanted with Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi to increase her combat power.
From her description, Seiichi also discovered that her Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi were both enhanced versions.
Her Amaterasu had the effect of Sasuke's Kagutsuchi, allowing her to manipulate the shape of the black flames.
Her Tsukuyomi was even more outrageous. The space it created could draw in a large group of enemies, and anyone caught in it would develop a Yachihoko mark.
As a result, she had been raised as a weapon from childhood, sent into battle to kill enemies during wartime and tossed into a dungeon to gather chakra otherwise. Since a weapon did not even need a name, she had been renamed Uchiha Nanashi.
Her so-called clansmen were the ones responsible for her tragic life. In her eyes, they were no different from enemies like the Senju, and were even more hateful.
Apart from her deceased parents, she had never encountered anyone who genuinely treated her well.
Eventually, the Senju and Uzumaki had jointly sealed her away, leaving her filled with hatred for the entire Shinobi World and the Uchiha.
"Sigh... Do you... do you still remember your name? And don't tell me it's that damned Nanashi nonsense."
Seiichi dispersed the armor covering his body, then sat cross-legged on the ground.
After hearing the girl's story, he truly could not bring himself to attack her again.
All her strange behavior earlier now had a reasonable explanation.
After all, the girl did not look very old, and Seiichi did not think she could fool him with her acting.
Besides, determining whether a child without professional training was lying was incredibly easy for Seiichi.
"Hikari. My name is Hikari, Uchiha Hikari!"
The girl struggled to turn her body over, then lay on her back on the ground.
When she mentioned her own name, a light unlike any before shone in her eyes.
"Hikari? That really is a lovely name. As for that damned Nanashi nonsense, let it be history."
"You're the first Uchiha clansman I've met who doesn't disgust me. Unfortunately, I have to go. If I don't leave soon, those pursuers will probably catch up."
Hikari lay there for a while and felt a little better. Then she struggled to get up from the ground, preparing to leave.
"Don't worry. There are no pursuers anymore."
Seiichi pressed a hand against Hikari's shoulder, signaling that she need not hurry.
"You don't have to help me. It'll put you in danger."
Hikari thought that when Seiichi said there were no pursuers, he meant he would deal with them for her.
But she did not want to put the only clansman she did not dislike in danger.
"No, I mean the Senju Clan and the Uzumaki Clan can basically be declared wiped out.
"The Senju Clan currently has only one direct-line member left.
"There might be a few more Uzumaki Clan members left, but they're scattered all across the Shinobi World. There are only two and a half in Konoha, nowhere near enough to amount to much."
"Huh?!"
Seiichi's words left Hikari dumbfounded.
She felt as though she had been fighting the Senju and Uzumaki Ninja Clans to the death just a moment ago, only for someone to tell her the very next moment that both of those immensely powerful clans had been wiped out.
Even a dream would not unfold like that.
"The formation that sealed you away also sealed your time. Because the records are incomplete, I only know that several hundred years have passed since your era. I don't know exactly how many centuries it's been."
"Several hundred years... have passed?"
"Yes."
"To think..."
Before you continue