9:00 PM.
Kaguya Washirou left the Mizukage Building after a long day of work and headed back to the clan compound. It wasn't until he heard the steady, rhythmic breathing of his sleeping clansmen that he finally allowed himself to exhale a long, tired breath.
Upon reaching his private estate, Washirou's first move was to check the door. He squinted his aging eyes, confirming that the single leaf he had wedged into the crack of the frame was still in place. Only then did he slowly push the door open.
He raised his hands, weaving the Seal of the Ram.
Once again, he meticulously checked the sensory barriers he had placed in every corner of the courtyard—over the eaves, within the crevices of the walls, and along the perimeter. Finding no signs of disturbance, Washirou stepped into the attic with a stony expression.
In his current position, he carried the weight of the entire Kaguya clan's interests and power. The more authority he wielded, the heavier that responsibility felt. Over time, Washirou had stopped trusting anyone. Even the servants responsible for cleaning were dismissed; he lived in total isolation now. He never cleaned the first floor of the attic, allowing dust and cobwebs to accumulate so that even the slightest movement would leave an unmistakable mark on the creaking wooden floorboards.
Even that wasn't enough. He had commissioned the Barrier Corps to set up a dense array of seals throughout the building, leaving only his private room untouched. He limited himself to only four hours of sleep a night, and before closing his eyes, he engaged every defensive barrier in the attic and stationed guards outside his door.
He had pushed his security to the absolute limit. Only through these extremes could Washirou find enough peace of mind to rest for those four hours.
However, despite everything appearing perfectly normal, Washirou's expression darkened slightly as he stepped further into the attic. He scanned the first floor again. Nothing seemed out of place—even the gaps in the warped floorboards were exactly as he had left them the day before.
Maintaining a calm facade, he walked forward, his steps kicking up thin trails of dust. Before ascending to the second floor, he paused to look back, memorizing every footprint he had just made. Satisfied, he entered his narrow, ten-square-meter room. It was a minimalist space where nothing could be hidden, yet it was the only place where he felt truly safe. On the tatami floor sat a simple white futon and a square table. Atop the table sat a single teacup and a teapot, polished to a dull shine from years of use.
Back in the safety of his room, Washirou let out a heavy sigh, finally shedding the exhaustion of the day. Moving with the slow, deliberate gait of an old man, he sat cross-legged at the table. He picked up the teapot and twisted the lid, swirling it a few times out of habit before preparing to pour.
It was a natural, seamless routine he had performed thousands of times.
Yet, the moment Washirou peeked at the water level inside the teapot, a flash of startled, furious light erupted in his eyes.
No one knew that although Washirou toyed with the teapot every night, he never actually drank a single drop of the tea inside. The water level was his final fail-safe—a "sleep switch" of sorts. It was a technique the head of the Kirigakure Medical Corps had suggested to help him manage his obsessive-compulsive tendencies and insomnia.
At this moment, seeing that the water level was a hair higher than it should have been, Washirou realized the truth instantly:
Someone had been here, and they had tampered with his tea.
Despite the realization, Washirou didn't let his composure slip. He continued to fiddle with the teapot for a moment before pouring a cup, just as he always did. Then, he suddenly coughed twice and reached into his inner robe for a pack of cigarettes, acting as if a sudden craving had struck him.
He set the teacup down naturally and lowered his head. Using the motion of reaching for the cigarettes as cover, he quietly scanned his surroundings. Nothing below, nothing to the left or right. That meant—
Washirou snapped his head up. In the next heartbeat, his eyes locked with those of a youth hanging upside down from the ceiling. The boy had pure white eyes, long black hair, and an elegant, gentle face.
For a split second, Washirou was struck by the boy's ethereal, melancholic aura, but his physical response was far more violent.
"Shikotsumyaku: Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets!"
His aged body moved with the grace of a seasoned dancer. Washirou flipped backward, his hands whipping upward with the momentum. Ten fingertip bones launched from his hands like bullets, whistling through the air in a dizzying, lethal trajectory aimed straight for the intruder's vitals.
Throat, eyes, forehead, joints, heart, groin, major arteries...
Whiz! Whiz! Whiz!
However, as those bone bullets—carrying enough kinetic energy to punch through solid steel—approached within twenty centimeters of the boy on the ceiling, they abruptly slowed. One by one, as if someone had pressed a pause button, they hummed to a halt in front of the youth's face.
The boy looked down at Washirou with a calm, indifferent gaze. He slowly raised a hand. A sudden, violent gust of wind rose within the small room, nearly knocking Washirou off balance. A green longsword, radiating an ominous and dangerous aura, slowly materialized in the boy's hand.
Furious and alarmed, Washirou barked, "Who are you!?"
The boy with the Byakugan replied with a deadpan expression, "Sarutobi Asuma."
Washirou flinched in shock. "What? You're the Third Hokage's son!?"
But he quickly realized he was being played. The kid's expression had been so serious that he had instinctively believed the lie for a second.
"No... you brat! How dare you mock me!"
Washirou's eyes turned cold, his facial muscles twitching with a murderous rage. However, his first instinct wasn't to attack again. Instead—
Boom!
Washirou kicked off the ground. A dense forest of bone spikes erupted from his back, and he hurled himself backward like a runaway train, slamming into the wall behind him!
He smashed through the wall, leaving a human-shaped hole in his wake. In an instant, he put over ten meters of distance between himself and the white-eyed brat. He was a split second away from crashing through the outer wall and leaping into the heart of the Kaguya clan compound.
"Heh... did you expect that, brat? This is my true escape route!"
Washirou couldn't help but let out a sinister, triumphant cackle, a look of arrogant madness stretching across his aged face.
Even if age had cooled his blood, Washirou was still a member of the Kaguya clan—and the Kaguya were born for the thrill of the hunt. His combat instincts had told him instantly that fighting a Byakugan user in a cramped room while his own body was failing was a losing move.
The assassin had the disadvantage now. As long as Washirou could reach the compound and alert his clansmen, they could surround and slaughter the intruder!
But then, as he fled, a strange sense of wrongness washed over him.
The boy wasn't chasing him. Furthermore, a sudden wave of regret welled up from the depths of his heart—a feeling that he had done something wrong.
It was as if his original goal shouldn't have been this. He should have been thinking deeper, looking further ahead. Yet, he had acted on pure, animalistic instinct.
Moreover... he realized that the pain he should be feeling from ripping bones out of his back... wasn't there at all.
Realization dawned on him. Washirou's expression froze. He desperately surged his chakra, forcing it to circulate erratically through his pathway system to disrupt the flow!
The world cleared instantly.
Outside the window, the moonlight was bright and the night was still.
Washirou was still sitting at the square table. His hand was frozen, mid-reach, clutching the pack of cigarettes inside his robe. The teapot lid lay upside down on the table, and a strange, sweet fragrance was wafting from the pot.
And sitting across from him was a tall youth dressed in a black tactical bodysuit. One of the boy's fingers was pressed firmly against the center of Washirou's forehead.
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