Before the words could even settle, Shisui felt a broad, firm palm—clad in a black glove—rest lightly on his shoulder.
In the next instant, there was no warning. No rippling sensation of spatial distortion. Shisui simply felt a sickening twist in his very being, as if the entire world were being crushed and reshaped by an invisible titan. The whistling wind, the rustling leaves, and the hum of the kikaichū insects vanished instantly.
Replacing them was a heart-palpitating sense of weightlessness and spatial pull. It felt like a mere second, yet also like an eternity.
When his feet touched solid ground again, the environment had changed completely. The damp, cold scent of the forest was replaced by a sterile air mixed with the sharp smell of disinfectant. The atmosphere was dry and constant, carrying the frigid chill of a laboratory. Beneath him, the soft earth had turned into cold metal plating. A low, rhythmic mechanical hum vibrated through the air.
The chakra chains binding him retracted into Shura's broad sleeves like living things, and the heavy sealing pressure vanished along with them.
"Cough..." Without the chains to support him, Shisui's battered body lurched. He nearly collapsed but managed to steady himself, his ears twitching as he tried to map out this vast space through sound alone.
This place is...!
"I've brought him," Shura's low voice sounded, directed at someone else in the room.
Two figures stepped out from behind a console flickering with complex data. One was a shadow clone wearing a white lab coat and a surgical cap, humming a nameless tune as he approached the operating table to prepare instruments and a pair of single-tomoe Sharingan for transplant.
The other figure stood tall in a deep blue, high-collared robe. Her raven-black hair fell loosely, obscuring a small portion of her right face. Under the cold surgical lights, her skin looked almost transparently white. Her eyes, deep and calm like the finest black jade, rested quietly on the disheveled Shisui. Her gaze carried the detached insight of a researcher observing a specimen.
It was Uchiha Hikari.
"With your ocular power, logically speaking, no one in Konoha should be your match in a one-on-one fight." Hikari stood with her arms crossed. When Menma told her Shisui had been ambushed and his eye gouged, she had found it hard to believe.
Seeing Shisui now—one eye covered by a patch and the other a hollow, bloody socket—an unfamiliar flicker of anger rose in her heart. For a clan defined by their Dojutsu, gouging an eye was the ultimate humiliation.
Even with one eye gone, Shisui had grown significantly over the past year and a half. To be blindsided to this extent... Hikari found it almost ironic, remembering how he had once self-righteously tried to persuade her to return to the village.
Hearing her voice, Shisui's heart sank. Despite the time passed since their last encounter, the pressure Hikari exerted had never dissipated. If anything, as Shisui grew stronger, he realized more clearly how bottomless her power truly was.
Shura, his face hidden behind the white three-eyed fox mask, spoke flatly, announcing a cold decision: "In a moment, we will transplant a new pair of eyes for you. Single-tomoe Sharingan. They'll be enough for basic use."
He spoke as if it were a trivial matter. Hikari didn't say anything, merely offering Menma a slight nod.
The shadow clone in the lab coat began tinkering with the cold metal instruments. A sealed, frosted container was opened, revealing two crimson eyes soaking in pale green fluid—each with a single black tomoe etched into the pupil.
"Single-tomoe Sharingan?" Shisui frowned. "How do you have...?" A dark suspicion began to spread in his mind.
Menma let out a short huff. "Don't overthink it. They're just clones activated with Yin Release chakra and cloning technology. If we actually wanted real Sharingan, do you think the Uchiha clan in Konoha would still be this peaceful?"
The words were laced with contempt, but Shisui actually felt a bit relieved. He knew Shura and Hikari had visited Fugaku before. If they truly desired the clan's eyes, they wouldn't settle for single-tomoe clones. He knew Hikari's terrifying strength; if she chose to act, no one in the Uchiha clan—not even the village—could stop her.
She was like a second Uchiha Madara.
Outside the Village
At the clearing where the scent of blood was thickest, Aburame Tatsuma arrived first. His sleeves billowed as a black cloud of insects swarmed the area where Shisui had last stood, buzzing frantically to collect any lingering scents or pheromones.
Yamanaka Fu followed closely, his hands forming seals as he projected a powerful mental pulse to scan every inch of the earth, trying to catch any residual spiritual ripples.
Several Root shinobi dropped silently from the trees, sealing off the perimeter. They scanned the bloodstains on the grass and the stark, bloody handprint on the tree trunk Shisui had leaned against.
"The blood trail ends here," one shinobi said, kneeling to inspect a clump of dark red soil. "He was heavily injured. His mobility should have been at its limit."
"The pheromone trail... is gone," Tatsuma's voice came through his mask, sounding uncharacteristically troubled. "Right here, his scent vanished into thin air. There are no signs of departure—no footprints, no broken branches, no residual chakra. It's as if he was erased from existence."
"The mental residue is also extremely faint and cut off abruptly," Fu added, his brow furrowed behind his mask. "There are no signs of a struggle or the mental 'drag' that usually follows high-speed spatial movement. This is... bizarre."
The air felt frozen. The elite Root members stood in disbelief. How could a near-dead, blinded Uchiha Shisui vanish from under the noses of a dozen elites, including the Aburame's tracking and the Yamanaka's mental scan? It defied all logic.
"Expand the search!" Tatsuma ordered, his voice tight with suppressed fury. "A five-kilometer radius! No, ten! Dig through the earth! No space-time ninjutsu leaves zero traces. He must be nearby!"
The Root shinobi scattered like a black tide into the deepening night. Insects buzzed further out, and Fu pushed his mental network to the limit, scanning like a massive radar.
However, as the hours ticked by and the forest grew colder, they found nothing. Aside from the wind wailing through the branches and the futile hum of insects, there were no more clues.
Uchiha Shisui had vanished from the face of the earth, leaving behind only the cold confusion of Root and the lingering, heart-chilling scent of blood.