"What exactly do you want?" Hyuga Ieyasu gritted his teeth, his voice squeezing out from between them.
"I told you, I want the person."
Danzo's expression remained unchanged. "Give me Aokawa, and this scroll will rot in the Root's incinerator forever."
"No!"
Hyuga Ieyasu refused subconsciously, his eyes flickering. "Everyone knows what kind of place your Root is!"
"If I hand him over to you, how will I explain it to Hyuga Hiashi? What will the Branch House think? Sending a clansman with military merit to the Root for no reason—this is shaking the Foundation of the Main House's rule!"
He was making a final struggle.
Usually, enslaving the Branch House in the name of the Family and protecting the Main House was somewhat justifiable.
But now, he was being asked to hand someone over directly.
He didn't even want to give people to the Hokage's Anbu, let alone the Root.
He feared Danzo, but he also feared Hiashi using this as a pretext.
Within the Family now, that junior Hyuga Hiashi was already secretly accumulating power, attempting to break free from the control of the Elder Council.
If he handed over such a huge piece of leverage at this time... "Explain?" Danzo snorted coldly, as if he had heard a joke.
He slowly stood up, picked up the scroll on the table, and tapped it gently against his hand.
"It seems Elder Ieyasu still hasn't seen the situation clearly."
"Since you care so much about Hyuga Hiashi's opinion, how about this?"
Danzo made a move to put the scroll back into his sleeve, his tone nonchalant. "I will go to the Clan Chief's residence right now and hand this over to Hyuga Hiashi personally."
"I imagine that compared to me, Clan Chief Hiashi should be much more interested in these accounts."
"After all, he dreams of finding a reason to clean out those 'virtueless' old parasites in the Family to reclaim the real power that belongs to the Clan Chief."
These words struck like a bolt from the blue.
"Wait!"
Hyuga Ieyasu practically sprang out of his chair.
Danzo stopped in his tracks, his back to him, a cold, triumphant smirk curling at the corner of his mouth.
But when he turned around, his face was once again a mask of icy indifference.
"What? Has Elder Ieyasu changed his mind?"
Hyuga Ieyasu panted heavily, staring fixedly at the scroll in Danzo's hand.
A deathly silence fell over the hall.
There was only the slight crackle of the burning candlelight.
After a long time.
Hyuga Ieyasu slumped back into his chair, looking as if he had aged ten years in an instant.
He picked up the saucer that no longer held a teacup, his hand shaking violently, and smashed it hard onto the floor.
"This matter... is not that simple."
"The Hyuga Clan has always prided itself on being the number one noble house in Konoha; the clansmen are proud and arrogant."
"Yielding to the Main House is for the sake of the Family's Legacy."
"But..." his voice was hoarse, as if his throat were filled with sand, "even if I am an Elder, directly mobilizing someone with military merit to be enslaved by the Root—it doesn't make sense."
"I cannot agree to you immediately."
"I can wait for Aokawa to return and pressure him into being willing to go to your Root himself, but I cannot directly transfer him to you."
This was his final bottom line.
It was also the only buffer time he could fight for in this desperate situation.
Danzo gave him a deep look.
He did not press further.
Politics is an art of compromise; even a cornered dog will jump over a wall.
Since the other party had relented, it meant their psychological defense had collapsed; the rest was just finding a way to save face.
"Fine."
Danzo leaned on his cane and slowly walked toward the door, his voice echoing in the empty hall.
"As long as you agree, the matter with Aokawa will be easy to handle."
"When Aokawa returns, I want to see Aokawa's name on the Root's roster."
"Otherwise..."
He didn't finish, but the unspoken chill was more piercing than any threat.
His figure disappeared into the night.
Leaving Hyuga Ieyasu alone, slumped in his armchair, staring blankly at the shards all over the floor.
After a long while.
He suddenly grabbed the teapot on the table and hurled it violently toward the door.
"Bastard!"
"They're all bastards!"
...Land of Hot Springs, Konoha Front Lines Main Camp.
The night was heavy; most of the campfires in the camp had been extinguished, leaving only the occasional sound of patrolling Ninja footsteps.
Inside a remote, independent Barracks, the lights were still brightly lit.
There were no extra furnishings in the room, just a cot and a square table piled with scrolls.
Two identical figures sat opposite each other, the air thick with a sense of anxiety.
The real Aokawa sat cross-legged on the bed, his brow furrowed, playing with a piece of Chakra induction paper in his hand.
Opposite him, his Shadow Clone sat slumped in a chair with no regard for decorum, holding a pen and frantically drawing messy lines on a piece of scrap paper.
"It makes no sense."
Aokawa casually crumpled the paper into a ball, a wisp of pale blue spirit particles flame igniting at his fingertips, burning it to ash.
"If the nervous System is controlled through a Cursed Seal, then the signal source must be Chakra."
"As long as it's the flow of Chakra, it's impossible to escape the insight of the Byakugan."
"Although the members of the Branch House have the Caged Bird Seal carved into them, their Byakugan functions are complete."
"If there were obvious Chakra fluctuations surging into the brain along the meridians when the Main House activates the Cursed Seal, the Branch House members would notice immediately."
"As long as it's noticed, theoretically, it could be intercepted."
The Shadow Clone stopped his pen and rolled his eyes, his tone full of exhaustion and helplessness.
"Theoretically, that's true."
"But the reality is that for thousands of years, not a single member of the Branch House has been able to intercept this Chakra before their brain was destroyed."
"This points to two problems."
The Shadow Clone held up two fingers and shook them in the air.
"First, the transmission speed of this Chakra is so fast it exceeds neural reaction, similar to the instantaneous arrival of Space-Time Ninjutsu like the Flying Thunder God."
"Second, the form of this Chakra is unique—so unique that even the Byakugan cannot capture it, or rather... it is automatically ignored by the brain."
The real Aokawa shook his head, rejecting the first hypothesis.
"Impossible."
"Space-Time Ninjutsu involves extremely complex formula calculations. If every member of the Main House could launch a Space-Time strike just by forming a seal, the Hyuga Clan would have been the Gods of the Ninja World long ago. Why would they even need Gentle Fist?"
"Then that only leaves the second possibility."
The two looked at each other and said in unison: "Visual Deception."
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