The searing pain—like ten thousand shuriken stabbing into his brain—was something Hizashi had experienced not long ago.
Just recently, while observing Hinata's training, he had unintentionally revealed deep killing intent toward the exceptionally gifted child. Hiashi noticed immediately and punished him on the spot by activating the Caged Bird seal.
Right in front of Neji.
But why could the mysterious man before him perform the activation seals for the Caged Bird?
This was the deepest secret of the Hyuga main family—passed down only orally from clan head to clan head for hundreds of years.
No one outside the main family should possibly know it!
And in all the centuries since the Caged Bird seal was created, there had never been a single recorded case of an outsider using it.
Yet this masked man kept shattering every piece of knowledge Hizashi thought he understood about the Hyuga clan!
As Uzumaki Menma finished forming the hand seals, the excruciating pain in Hizashi's head finally began to subside.
"You… you are not a member of the Hyuga clan!" Hizashi gasped, staring at the mysterious figure with lingering fear. This was the only thing he could be certain of.
"And you are not one of those who slaughtered my clan in the past!" Without realizing it, Hizashi had already begun to accept the "historical truth" Menma had forced into his mind.
It wasn't as if Byakugan had never fallen into foreign hands before. During the Third Shinobi World War, Ao of Kirigakure had seized a Byakugan from a Hyuga main family member and gained the title of "Byakugan Killer."
But such cases were exceedingly rare—far too insignificant to justify the Hyuga implementing the Caged Bird seal on such a massive scale.
Therefore, only an overwhelmingly powerful external enemy—one even the Hyuga clan could not resist—could explain why the Caged Bird had been created in the first place.
"Your true goal is that eye, isn't it?" Hizashi recalled the terrifying power of the gigantic eye he had seen in the illusion, his voice trembling. "The one formed by fusing countless Byakugan together."
Hizashi was no fool.
On the contrary, he was extremely intelligent—intelligent enough that in the original future he would willingly sacrifice himself, leaving behind a carefully written "suicide note" instructing Neji not to hate the main family.
A letter that Hiashi would keep hidden until the time of the Chunin Exams.
In its own way, that had also been Hizashi trying to protect his son.
"You are very perceptive," Menma said calmly. "That's one of the reasons I chose you instead of your brother."
He did not bother denying his ambition.
The existence of the giant Tenseigan was equivalent to a celestial weapon—something capable of striking the entire shinobi world from the moon while leaving the people below completely powerless.
A weapon of that scale was naturally something Menma intended to grasp in his own hands.
Even in the Limited Tsukuyomi World, he had searched desperately for traces of the giant Tenseigan and the Otsutsuki clan on the moon.
But no matter how thoroughly he scoured the Hyuga archives of that world, he had found nothing.
Hearing himself compared to his elder brother, Hizashi clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white.
"You are no weaker than him," Menma continued. "In fact, I can tell you have already mastered the essence of Eight Trigrams: Sixty-Four Palms. So why didn't you use it in our previous battle?"
His words struck directly at Hizashi's deepest insecurity.
That's right…
If not for the overwhelming sense of mortal danger when his blind spot was attacked, he never would have used Rotation.
"I… I am not inferior to him…" Hizashi muttered.
This had been the scar haunting him for over twenty years.
Just because he was born a few minutes later than his twin brother, he had been condemned to the branch family.
His forehead branded with the Caged Bird seal.
Forbidden from learning the highest levels of Gentle Fist and Hyuga secret techniques.
And worst of all—his children and descendants would bear the same curse for generations to come.
"Pledge your loyalty to me."
Wearing the white three-eyed fox mask, Uzumaki Menma stepped closer to Hizashi and raised his right hand, forming a single seal.
"Caged Seal Suppression!"
As the final seal was completed, Menma pressed his palm firmly onto Hizashi's forehead.
A surge of dark, violent chakra poured into Hizashi's mind, temporarily sealing the power of the Caged Bird curse.
In that instant—
Hizashi felt something he hadn't experienced in decades.
Clarity.
And freedom.
The cursed mark on his forehead did not disappear completely—but it dimmed significantly.
The lingering pain vanished in an instant.
And most importantly—his blind spot was gone.
His Byakugan's full three-hundred-sixty-degree vision had returned!
Tears flowed uncontrollably from Hizashi's white eyes.
He had almost forgotten what this sensation felt like.
This long-lost freedom stirred something inside him that had been buried for more than twenty years.
"The seal will only last twenty-four hours," Menma said as he withdrew his hand.
This technique was something he had personally developed in the Limited Tsukuyomi World, utilizing the Uzumaki clan's innate talent for sealing jutsu.
In truth, the principle was simple.
The Caged Bird was essentially a parasitic curse seal—a combination of chakra manipulation and sealing techniques that fed on the host's chakra to maintain itself.
Therefore, anyone who truly mastered sealing arts could, with enough research, create a method to suppress it.
At least temporarily.
As for completely erasing the Caged Bird—
Menma knew at least three different methods.
Three.
Unfortunately, he had never been able to test them in the Limited Tsukuyomi World.
And even this relatively simple suppression technique was something almost no one would dare to research.
The Uzumaki clan—masters of sealing—had been wiped out long ago.
Within Konoha, true sealing specialists were incredibly rare.
And any Hyuga who even approached the field of sealing arts would immediately be stopped by the main family.
Hizashi slowly reached up and touched the mark on his forehead, savoring the fragile taste of liberty.
"Will you remain a coward for life," Menma's voice echoed as the illusion began to fade, "or become a hero of the branch family—even if only for a few minutes?"
The genjutsu space collapsed.
Hizashi found himself back in his hospital room.
Bright sunlight streamed through the window, so dazzling that it almost felt unreal.
After experiencing multiple layers of illusion, he could no longer easily distinguish reality from fantasy.
Hizashi activated his Byakugan and felt the full, unobstructed field of vision he had lost so long ago.
"This… is the scent of freedom?"
He thought of his son.
Of Neji screaming in agony as the Caged Bird seal was carved into his forehead—while he, as a father, could only kneel helplessly and watch.
He thought of all the branch family members branded with the curse—those white eyes filled with suppressed resentment and despair.
And of his elder brother, Hyuga Hiashi, elevated above him by fate simply because he had been born first.
"Be a coward for life… or a hero for a few minutes?"
The mysterious man's words coiled around Hizashi's heart like a venomous serpent.
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