Dozens of pairs of Byakugan locked onto Shu Shiraishi.
The veins bulging at the corners of their eyes looked like living green caterpillars.
Chakra surged through the air, rubbing against itself with a faint, continuous hum.
Fallen leaves on the steps swirled up in the currents. Before they could rise far, invisible Gentle Fist force shredded them to fragments in midair.
Tension was at breaking point outside the gates of the blue-brick courtyard.
Shu Shiraishi stood at the foot of the steps.
He looked at the impenetrable wall of people in white kimonos before him.
He gave a derisive snort.
"Stopping me?"
He raised his right hand and slowly reached behind his waist.
He gripped the hilt of his straight sword.
His thumb shoved hard against the guard.
"Creak-"
The blade scraped against the inside of its sheath, the sound dry and harsh.
The long sword came free.
Its blade pointed diagonally at the ground, streaked with half-dried blood from the encounter with the Uchiha.
"Arrogant!"
The Main Family elder at the front let out a furious shout.
The old man was in his sixties, with a grizzled beard. He thrust both hands forward.
"Gentle Fist: Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm!"
A dense blast of Chakra erupted from his palm.
It shrieked through the air, heading straight for Shu Shiraishi's face.
The distance was less than five meters. It was so fast that even its afterimage was hard to see.
Shu Shiraishi didn't retreat.
He slid his left leg half a step forward, his combat boot crushing the fragments of fallen leaves underfoot.
He clenched his left fist and smashed it straight into the incoming blast, without any flourish.
"Bang!"
His fist collided with the Chakra.
A deafening thud rang out.
The Vacuum Palm's force, powerful enough to punch through a stone wall half a meter thick, was smashed apart by sheer muscle.
It turned into a violent wind that swept outward, making Shu Shiraishi's black short-sleeved shirt snap and flutter.
The aged skin on the elder's face twitched.
He froze for half a second.
In that half second,
spiderweb cracks exploded across the flagstone beneath Shu Shiraishi's feet.
He vanished into thin air.
"On the right!"
The elder's Byakugan gave him a 360-degree field of vision. He clearly caught sight of the dark figure.
He saw him clearly.
But his body couldn't keep up.
Shu Shiraishi's speed was far beyond the limits of human reflexes.
The elder had only managed to raise his right arm two inches
when a flash of silver blade chopped down.
It was like cutting through tofu.
"Splurt."
His entire right arm flew off at the shoulder.
The cut was smooth, the exposed bone stark white.
A tenth of a second later, a jet of blood erupted more than two meters into the air.
The elder opened his mouth wide, but before a scream could escape his throat,
the silver flash swept sideways.
It never paused.
"Crack."
The sharp blade severed his cervical vertebrae with a crisp snap.
A grizzled head fell onto the blue bricks.
It rolled twice before striking the threshold and coming to rest.
His pure white eyes were still wide open, the veins at their corners still bulging.
The headless body swayed twice, then crashed to the ground.
Hot blood sprayed from the neck cavity like a shower of red rain.
It drenched several nearby Main Family members from head to toe.
Their pristine white kimonos were instantly stained with glaring patches of scarlet.
The formation fell into disarray.
Sword in hand, Shu Shiraishi strode up the steps.
He plunged into the crowd like a tiger among sheep.
"Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms!"
Two middle-aged Main Family ninja lunged at him from either side, their eyes red.
Their hands blurred as their fingertips struck at the acupoints all over Shu Shiraishi's body.
Shu Shiraishi didn't even raise his sword.
He turned slightly and lashed out with his left leg like a whip.
The sole of his boot slammed into the sternum of the ninja on the left.
The man's chest caved in, and he flew into the courtyard like a broken sack, smashing a stone lantern.
The ninja on the right just managed to jab two fingers into Shu Shiraishi's shoulder.
"Clink."
Instead of the sensation of striking an acupoint, he felt the recoil of jabbing solid iron.
Both fingers broke outright, bending backward at an extreme angle.
He retreated with a scream.
Shu Shiraishi swung his sword backhanded.
The blade swept across his throat.
His scream stopped abruptly. Clutching his spurting neck, he sank to his knees on the steps.
It was a one-sided massacre.
There were no Hand Seals, no flashy exchanges of Ninjutsu.
Only speed pushed to its utmost and overwhelming violence.
Before absolute strength, Gentle Fist was as slow as a toddler learning to walk.
The blade flashed.
Sprays of blood followed in its wake.
Arms were severed. Tendons were sliced.
Screams rose and fell before the Hyuga Clan's gates.
In the span of a few breaths,
more than a dozen Main Family experts lay dead or gravely wounded on the ground.
Severed limbs littered the area. Blood ran down the steps and dripped into the gutter beside the street.
The twenty or thirty remaining Main Family members completely broke down.
They backed away step by step.
The Byakugan and Gentle Fist they were so proud of couldn't even touch the edge of his clothes.
Someone dropped his Kunai and didn't even dare pick it up.
Shu Shiraishi stepped on a corpse's chest and crossed the threshold.
He entered the Hyuga Clan's courtyard.
His straight sword pointed diagonally at the ground, blood dripping from its tip.
"Drip. Drip."
Hyūga Tensō stood in the middle of the courtyard.
He looked at his clansmen wailing all over the ground, at the blood filling his vision.
His legs gave way.
If an elder beside him hadn't gripped his arm tightly, he would have fallen to his knees in the muddy water.
Shu Shiraishi walked up to Tensō.
The Main Family ninja around them hastily scattered into a wide circle, avoiding him like the plague.
No one dared block him again.
Shu Shiraishi raised his right hand.
He gently rested the still-dripping sword against Tensō's neck.
The cold blade lay against his carotid artery.
A thick drop of blood slid down the edge and into the collar of Tensō's white kimono.
It carried a warm, bloody smell.
Tensō shuddered all over.
His breathing stopped, and his neck stiffened like a board.
"L-Lord Hokage." Tensō's teeth chattered wildly, his voice breaking beyond recognition.
"Release the seal."
Shu Shiraishi stared at him, his tone as flat as if he were asking for directions.
"Don't make me say it twice."
Tensō swallowed.
His Adam's apple moved against the sharp blade, nicking the skin.
A sharp sting followed.
"My lord." Tensō's voice trembled with desperate tears. "If the Caged Bird Seal is abolished, the Hyuga will fall apart. How are the hundreds of us in the Main Family... supposed to keep the Branch Family in line?"
It was his last struggle.
Without the Cursed Seal, what right did the pampered members of the Main Family have to make the Branch Family risk their lives for them?
Shu Shiraishi pressed his wrist down slightly.
The blade cut through the skin of Tensō's neck, and blood seeped from a thin red line.
"What the fuck do I care whether you can keep the Branch Family in line?"
Shu Shiraishi leaned forward and lowered his voice.
"All I know is, if you don't make the hand seal now,
"the Hyuga Clan gets a new head today. Let's see if the next one's neck is hard enough."
The shadow of death gripped Tensō's throat.
He looked at the dozen or so headless corpses on the ground.
His mental defenses crumbled.
"I'll release it. I'll release it."
Tensō nodded repeatedly, tears and cold sweat running into his grizzled beard.
He raised his trembling hands.
Under Shu Shiraishi's cold gaze, he slowly formed a complex hand seal.
Chakra gathered along his meridians.
Tensō bit the tip of his tongue and spat out a mist of blood. Then he slammed both hands onto the ground.
"Release!"
An invisible wave spread outward from him in every direction.
It passed through the courtyard walls, crossed the streets, and swept through all of Konoha.
Outside the alley,
the Branch Family boy who had been rolling in the puddle of slop suddenly stopped moving.
The agonizing pain in his forehead vanished.
It was as if a rusty nail had been pulled out.
The boy sat up in a daze and raised a mud-covered hand to his forehead.
It was smooth and clean.
The blue-green, cross-shaped Cursed Seal was gone.
Outside the courtyard walls. On the street corners. In the trees.
More and more Hyuga Branch Family members gathered. They had originally heard the commotion and come to protect the Main Family.
Now, all of them froze where they stood.
A Branch Family Jonin in his thirties removed the green Forehead Protector from his head with trembling hands.
He walked over to a puddle by the roadside.
He looked down.
His face was reflected in the water.
His forehead was bare.
The mark that had plagued him for thirty years, forcing him to live like a dog.
It was completely gone.
"It's gone."
The Jonin murmured to himself. Large tears splashed into the puddle, shattering his reflection.
"It's really gone..."
The sound of weeping spread like a plague.
Quiet sobs turned into loud wails.
Thousands of Hyuga Branch Family members stood in the streets, outside courtyard walls, and on rooftops.
They tore the Forehead Protectors from their heads and hurled them to the ground.
They touched their unmarked foreheads.
Some threw back their heads and howled; others covered their faces and fell to their knees.
The humiliation that had weighed on generations, buried deep in their bones, was released at this moment.
No one knew who started it.
An elder of the Branch Family turned toward the Hyuga gates.
His knees slammed onto the flagstones. He placed both hands on the ground and pressed his forehead to the backs of his hands.
He kowtowed, striking the ground.
Thud.
Then came a second. A third.
In the streets. In the alleys.
The dense crowd dropped to their knees as one.
Like a field of wheat flattened by a gale.
The sound of knees striking the ground joined into a dull roar of thunder.
Thousands of pairs of pure white eyes stared through the courtyard wall at the figure with his back to them, holding a blade inside the gates.
There was no more numbness in their eyes. No more servility.
There was only fervent reverence.
He was the god who had given them freedom.
In the courtyard.
Hyūga Tensō sat slumped on the ground.
He listened to the thunderous kowtows and cries outside the wall.
In the past, those sounds could only have been meant for him.
Tensō looked down at his hands.
They were empty.
His power over life and death was gone. The rope that had bound the Branch Family in slavery had snapped.
Those thousands of his kin who had awakened the Byakugan would never again obey even a single command from him.
He had become a commander without troops.
Tensō's legs were as limp as noodles. He kicked weakly at the ground twice.
Then he collapsed completely.
His eyes stared fixedly at the pool of blood on the ground. His mouth hung wide open, but he could not make a sound.
His mind was blank.
Only one thought remained.
The Hyuga Main Family was finished.