A bit of trivia:
The Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist were far from a unified group. In fact, each member had irreconcilable conflicts with the others.
This stemmed from the seven sword wielders belonging to different departments.
Suikazan Fuguki belonged to the Hidden Mist's Hunter-nin squad; Kuriarare Kushimaru and Momochi Jūzō belonged to the Mizukage's direct ANBU; Muashi Jinpachi and Tsukusa Yaijin belonged to the Surprise Attack Force; while Kurosuki Raiga was a member of a squad that executed high-difficulty missions exclusively for the Mizukage, roughly equivalent to a jonin squad.
The mysterious Third Mizukage of the Hidden Mist precisely controlled the delicate balance among the Seven Ninja Swordsmen, making these desperadoes serve him.
However,
The reason Kuriarare Kushimaru and Muashi Jinpachi—two people with completely different personalities and terrible compatibility—could come together across departments and even form the "Ruthless Duo" had nothing to do with anything else. It was simply because:
The Blast Sword Shibuki and the Longsword Nuibari could form a perfect combination.
Both of these ninja swords had the advantage of extremely strong killing power—once they hit, it meant certain death or crippling injury. But their shared weakness was that when intelligence was transparent and in direct frontal assaults, it was very difficult to catch the enemy. The Longsword Nuibari required pre-positioned wire threads, while the Blast Sword Shibuki's attack patterns were straightforward and easily predicted.
However, once combined with Kuriarare Kushimaru's speed advantage—no less than Hyuga Yu's current three-gate state—along with Muashi Jinpachi's strength and area damage advantages, when the two sword wielders coordinated feint attacks to create hitting opportunities and timing for each other, the situation rapidly deteriorated!
Just like now—
After opening three gates, Hyuga Yu, who could quickly defeat Ao with his taijutsu and intelligence advantage, found himself facing these two.
In just two exchanges,
One of his arms was blown off, and one of his eyes was blinded.
However, Hyuga Yu's expression remained unchanged. After learning the enemy's specific identities, all of this fell within his predictions.
His mission was to retrieve the main family's Byakugan.
His objective was to rescue Hyuga Natsu and Hyuga Tetsu.
In that regard, Hyuga Yu had already completed two-thirds of what he intended to do.
What remained was to give these two fellows an unforgettable memory, and to buy time for Hyuga Natsu to escape the battlefield.
At this moment,
Hyuga Yu sacrificed one Byakugan, somersaulting backward through the air by stepping on it, escaping the range of Kuriarare Kushimaru's Longsword Ninja Art: Ground Spider Stitch.
While avoiding having a foot severed and falling into an inescapable situation,
He immediately deactivated his Eight Gates state and, mid-air, condensed four chakra needles in his palm, inserting them successively into his Yintang acupoint, Jingming acupoint, Cuanzhu acupoint, and Taiyang acupoint. Simultaneously, he peeled off a talisman affixed behind his ear.
Using the chakra needles to seal several meridians connected to his eyes, severing the eye connections, disrupting the brain's central nervous system, and then activating a binding seal formation pre-inscribed on his body.
Hyuga Yu's only remaining functional Byakugan immediately fell into complete darkness.
And at this moment,
Hyuga Yu, with his hollow white single eye open, came before the main family member.
A small hand gently took his hand, guiding his palm glowing with the "Delicate Affliction Extraction Technique" to Hyuga Genko's eye socket.
At the same time,
The Caged Bird activated!
The seal Hyuga Genko formed immediately sent the signal to activate the Caged Bird curse mark!
But soon, this command was distorted in Hyuga Yu's chaotic central nervous system into activating the "Sealing Technique: Binding Formation."
The binding formation inscribed on his body activated a fraction of a second before the Caged Bird, though this only bought Hyuga Yu less than half a second.
The Caged Bird erupted immediately!
Intense pain assaulted him!
However, Hyuga Yu's expression remained unchanged. Years of experimentation had long enabled him to locate the central nerve through which the Caged Bird induced suffering, and he had severed this pain-sensing nerve in advance.
Anyone frequently subjected to the Caged Bird knew:
The Caged Bird's activation followed a sequence—first inflicting pain, then destroying the eyes, and finally damaging the brain.
Like a logically precise program, each step executed swiftly and accurately.
But,
What happens when this program encounters an unexpected error?
At this moment,
Hyuga Yu successively extracted Hyuga Genko's two Byakugan, silently counting in his mind, sensing every sign of the Caged Bird's activation.
The chakra within his body began gathering uncontrollably toward the Caged Bird curse mark, and soon, from the curse mark surged a cyan chakra the same color as the Caged Bird seal.
The moment this cyan chakra appeared, it immediately rushed along his meridians toward Hyuga Yu's eyes.
His sole remaining left eye began to swell, compress, and distort within its socket!
The next instant,
"Bang!"
Hyuga Yu's remaining Byakugan imploded from within its socket, turning into a puddle of pus.
Immediately after,
A surge of cyan chakra emerging from the Caged Bird curse mark on his forehead bypassed the chaotic mess of eye meridians he'd created and rushed rapidly toward his brain.
Hyuga Yu's heart constricted sharply, feeling as if an ice-cold snake had crawled up his spine.
He immediately raised his palm, stuffing the two main family Byakugan from his palm into his eye sockets, and within microseconds, reconnected the two Byakugan with the optic nerves, tiny nerve and blood vessel tissues, and the tendons between the four rectus muscles within the eye socket—using a technique that completely disregarded post-operative results and only pursued speed.
Finally, he connected the eyeballs with the severed ends of the rectus muscles within the eye sockets!
The next second,
The cyan chakra from the Caged Bird curse mark rampaging through Hyuga Yu's brain suddenly halted.
It was only one millimeter away from Hyuga Yu's brain!
And at this moment,
"It" seemed somewhat bewildered.
"It" had clearly already destroyed Hyuga Yu's Byakugan; the next step should be to destroy the brain, causing Hyuga Yu to immediately enter a brain-dead state.
But just then,
Hyuga Yu's eye sockets suddenly contained another pair of extremely pure Byakugan!
For a moment, this chakra fell into hesitation between the options of [return to destroy the Byakugan] and [directly destroy the brain].
The person who had programmed the logic of this curse technique probably never imagined someone would exploit this bug in such a perilous manner.
Finally,
This cyan chakra remained between the meridians of Hyuga Yu's eyeballs and brain, lingering and deliberating.
Suddenly, it surged back fiercely toward the pair of Byakugan Hyuga Yu had just replaced!
"Not good!"
Hyuga Yu's heart immediately tightened.
At this moment,
The Caged Bird hadn't executed the command to destroy his brain, but instead chose to return.
This meant it very likely intended to execute the sequence of destroying the eyes then destroying the brain once more!
But Hyuga Yu currently had no other Byakugan to extract and replace, to repeatedly execute this process and exhaust this Caged Bird chakra. Moreover, his current environment didn't support another eye replacement attempt.
Outside was still a battlefield!
At this moment, Hyuga Yu's heart was like a fully drawn bowstring. He didn't dare even take a deep breath, fearing that if he opened his mouth to inhale, his brain would explode catastrophically in this extremely unstable and dangerous state!
However...
Contrary to Hyuga Yu's expectations—
As if touching some ineffable, indescribable boundary,
This cyan chakra reversed its previous ferocious demeanor, approaching Hyuga Yu's newly replaced pair of Byakugan in an extremely gentle, soothing manner.
The moment they made contact,
This cyan chakra—of a quality far higher than any type of chakra Hyuga Yu had ever encountered—silently permeated into Hyuga Yu's eyes like gentle rain.
A hazy white light gradually rose before Hyuga Yu's eyes.
His eyes felt somewhat itchy.
And this brand-new pair of Byakugan belonging to him seemed... to also be undergoing some subtle transformation.
Within the eyeballs, some entirely new "organ" was growing.
————
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