r18novel Chapter 241 Discussion
Chapter 241 Discussion
The perpetual scent of rust permeated the training grounds of Otogakure. Neji's Byakugan gleamed coldly in the moonlight, and the chakra gathered from his fingertips pierced the air like silver needles. The rock wall before him was covered in spiderweb-like cracks, and deep within each fissure were the marks of Baguazhang.
"too slow."
Kimimaro's voice echoed from the shadows. Pale fingers tapped the ground, and three bone spurs suddenly erupted from Neji's feet. The moment the bone blades sliced through his trouser legs, Neji's figure had already drifted back several feet, and the bone spurs snapped wherever his palm swept past.
In his Byakugan vision, Kimimaro's chakra flowed like a serpentine silver snake. Neji suddenly leaned forward, his right palm gliding along the ground, his chakra stirring up a fine dust cloud on the ground. "Kaiten? Po!"
A swirling chakra vortex enveloped Kimimaro, but abruptly dissipated upon contact with his skin. Countless bone spurs erupted from Kimimaro's body, forming an impenetrable prison of bone. Neji's Byakugan suddenly narrowed, revealing the special chakra coursing through the bone joints—a unique bloodline limit unique to the Hyuga clan, capable of hardening and softening bones multiple times in an instant.
"Your Kaiten has a blind spot." Kimimaro's figure flickered in the shadows of the Bone Prison, the bone blade glancing past Neji's throat, the gust of wind slicing through his skin. "At the thirty-seventh angle, there's a 0.3-second delay in chakra flow."
Neji's palm suddenly shifted direction, and the trajectory of the Eight Diagrams Sixty-Four Palms traced a strange arc in the air. This was a technique he had adapted from Kimimaro's bone technique, each palm strike precisely targeting the most vulnerable points of the bone blade. The sound of bone cracking echoed, and Kimimaro groaned, retreating ten steps, his left arm twisting unnaturally.
"You're letting me." Neji retracted his palm, his Byakugan reflecting Kimimaro's bleeding fingers. That counterattack could have clearly broken his opponent's collarbone, but it missed by an inch at the last moment.
Kimimaro didn't answer, simply pressing his hand against the rock wall. Green curse lines spread from his neck to his cheek, and his broken arm bones healed at a visible speed. "Lord Ototake said we're going to attack the Sunagakure supply team next week."
Neji's eyes turned cold.
The Byakugan automatically detected the unusually active chakra nodes near Kimimaro's heart when the curse seal was activated—a sign that the seal was eroding his internal organs. Ototake's system could repair physical damage, but it couldn't eradicate the seal's side effects, just as it could enhance the Byakugan's insight but couldn't erase the shackles etched into the Hyuga clan's bloodline.
The iron gate of the training ground suddenly made a sharp grinding sound, and Yin Zhu appeared in the moonlight, toying with two shimmering crystals. The left one glowed with a pale blue halo, churning with chakra-like energy; the right one was a dark red, with faint veins visible.
"Sugaku Jinchuriki of Sunagaku will be accompanying us." Ototake tossed the blue crystal to Neji, "This is the 'Storm Release Chakra Crystal' that was stripped from the body of a Kumogakure ninja. It will allow your Byakugan to temporarily penetrate the chakra shell of the tailed beast."
As the dark red crystal fell into Kimimaro's palm, it suddenly oozed a burning liquid. His cursed pattern instantly lit up, and his pale skin flushed an abnormal red. "This is..."
"The Uzumaki clan's life force crystal." Yin Zhu turned and walked deeper into the training ground, a corner of his black windbreaker lifted in the wind. "It can suppress the backlash of your bloodline limit, but each use will shorten your lifespan."
Kimimaro gripped the crystal tightly, his knuckles turning white from the strain. Neji's Byakugan caught a skipped beat in his heart, a reminiscent reaction of the usually silent boy when he first accepted the medicine from Ototake in his cage in the Land of Water three years ago.
They had just completed their campaign against the Kirigakure Kekkei Genkai. Kimimaro, in an attempt to cover Neji's retreat, was targeted by Aoki's Byakugan, his entire rib shattered by the water blast of his Water Style. Neji carried him on his back as they ran through the rainforest, his Byakugan vision filled with Kimimaro's chakra, which steadily ebbed like grains of sand in an hourglass.
"Put me down." Kimimaro's voice was weak, but it was filled with unquestionable stubbornness. "You are a genius valued by Lord Yinzhu. There is no need for you to..."
Neji suddenly stopped and placed his right palm on Kimimaro's back. Baguazhang's chakra flowed through his meridians, forcibly stabilizing the bleeding wound. "Shut up." For the first time, an emotion other than indifference flickered in his Byakugan eyes. "Lord Ototake said we are the 'Twin Peaks of Sound Ninja,' and neither of us can survive without the other."
As the rainstorm washed away the bloodstains of the two men, Neji's Byakugan suddenly caught a glimmer of light ahead. It was an abandoned shrine, its stone lanterns lingering with faint chakra fluctuations. As he pushed open the wooden door, he was met with a sight that stung his Byakugan—murals of the Hyuga clan covered the walls, their skeletons exposed in eerie formations.
Kimimaro's pupils suddenly contracted, and his pale fingers stroked the cracks on the mural: "This is... Kaguya's altar." He suddenly started coughing violently, and the blood he coughed up dripped onto the mural, and the bone patterns began to fluoresce.
Neji's Byakugan pierced the wall, revealing dozens of skeletons buried beneath the altar. The chakra residue in these skeletons shared Kimimaro's, but bore the marks of having been forcibly extracted. He suddenly understood that Ototake hadn't sent them to the Land of Water to annihilate the Hidden Mist ninja.
"Lord Ototake needs the bones of the Hyuga clan." Kimimaro's voice was filled with self-mockery. He pressed his palm on the center of the altar, and the bones began to grow uncontrollably. "Just like he needs the Byakugan of the Hinata."
Ningci suddenly pressed down on his shoulder, and the chakra of Baguazhang formed a barrier, pressing the runaway skeleton back into his body. "Don't talk nonsense." The blood vessels in his white eyes bulged from the force. "The curse seal he gave you, he also gave me."
That night, Neji saw Kimimaro cry for the first time. It wasn't because of the physical pain, but because he used his Byakugan to clearly see the stone tablet deep within the altar—it contained the curse of the Hyuga clan, stating that all members of the clan who awakened their bloodline limits would eventually become mindless bone puppets.
The Sunagakure supply team left long tracks in the desert. Neji's Byakugan pierced the yellow sand and locked onto the talisman-covered carriage in the center of the group. Shukaku's chakra surged through the carriage like lava, but was firmly locked by a pale golden barrier.
"Gaara's absolute defense." Kimimaro's bone blade slipped out from his sleeve, and the green curse seal glowed eerily in the sunlight. "It will take three minutes to break through."
Neji shook his head, the chakra gathered at his fingertips beginning to swirl. "No need." Within his Byakugan vision, the absolute defensive chakra flow existed at eight nodes, like the eight points of the Bagua formation. "The barrier in the southeast corner is only 70% as thick as elsewhere."
As Kimimaro's bone blade pierced the barrier, Gaara's sand cascade descended like a tsunami. Neji's Kaiten swirled silver vortexes within the sand, but cracked the moment it came into contact with Shukaku's chakra. His Byakugan suddenly felt a sharp pain as he saw countless tiny grains of sand trying to penetrate Kaiten's defenses—it was Shukaku's consciousness controlling the sand.
"Left!" Kimimaro's voice was filled with anxiety. Three bone spurs suddenly emerged from behind Neji's left side, blocking several sand needles. His back was exposed to the sand waves, and the gravel scratched his back with deep wounds that could be seen to the bone.
Neji's Kaiten suddenly accelerated, and the chakra vortex carried them both out of the sand waves. When he landed, he found that Kimimaro's right arm had been twisted into a strange angle, and the curse seal pattern was flashing wildly where the bone pierced the skin.
"Use this." Neji suddenly broke the necklace around his neck, which contained the Uzumaki Crystal given by Ototake. When he pressed the crystal on Kimimaro's wound, the other party suddenly held his wrist.
"Your Byakugan is almost at its limit." Kimimaro's voice was soft, but it froze Neji in his tracks. The edges of his Byakugan's vision were already darkening, a sign of overuse. "Save it for the pursuers behind you."
The explosions of the supply team echoed across the desert. As Neji watched Kimimaro rise to his feet, propped up by his bone blade, he suddenly remembered what Ototake had said: geniuses are forged with lives. Hyuga Neji had broken the fate of the branch clan, only to have to rely on overdrawing the lifespan of his Byakugan to gain power; Kimimaro had escaped Orochimaru's control, but he couldn't escape the curse of the Hyuga clan.
When the Sunagakure's pursuers appeared on the horizon, Neji closed his Byakugan for the first time. He listened to the sound of wind and sand sweeping across Kimimaro's bone blade, felt the other's chakra flow, and the trajectory of his Baguazhang became more precise in the darkness.
Kimimaro's bone prison and Neji's palm wind intertwined into a net, and Shukaku's sand waves crashed into the net, splashing golden sand all over the sky. Neji could feel that every time Kimimaro swung the bone blade, a subtle chakra would be transmitted through the ground where the two of them touched, as if guiding him in the dark.
When the battle ended, the desert moonlight stretched their shadows. Kimimaro leaned against Neji's shoulder, the green curse seal fading, revealing skin as pale as paper. Neji's Byakugan regained its sight, but he didn't open it immediately—he wanted to remember this feeling, to be able to sense his companions' location without even needing to see.
Yin Zhu appeared at the top of the dune, looking down at the two people supporting each other. A new message popped up on the system panel: ['Bone Pupil Resonance' detected. Do you want to consume experience points to solidify this effect?]
He folded up his faceplate and turned to walk towards the distant Otoshina troops. The wind and sand blew through his windbreaker, revealing the embroidered pattern on the lining—the Hyuga family crest on the left, Kaguya's bone totem on the right, and the character "音" (sound) embroidered in gold thread in the center.
New cracks appeared on the rock wall of the training grounds. Neji's palm winds collided with Kimimaro's bone blade in mid-air, stirring up visible ripples of chakra. In his Byakugan vision, Kimimaro's bone flow gradually synchronized with his own chakra fluctuations, like two blades being polished against each other, growing sharper with each collision.
"Next week's mission is to go to Konoha." Neji's palm wind suddenly slowed down, allowing Kimimaro's bone blade to brush against his cheek. "Lord Ototake said that we must retrieve Hyuga's things."
Kimimaro's bone blade stopped at Neji's throat, his pale fingers trembling slightly. He knew what Neji was referring to—the curse seal carved by the Hyuga main family on the foreheads of the branch families, just like the Kaguya curse that continued to erode his body.
"I'll help you." Kimimaro retracted his bone blade and turned to walk deeper into the training grounds. The moonlight cast a long shadow on his back. "Use Kaguya's bones to break those chains."
Neji's eyes followed his back, and for the first time, he didn't analyze the flow of chakra. He simply stood there quietly until the moonlight caused their shadows to overlap again, just like the murals of the Kaguya clan supporting each other in the shrine in the Land of Water three years ago.
The wind in Sound Village still carried the smell of rust, but Neji suddenly felt that there seemed to be something else in this smell - not blood, nor sand, but a presence that was more tenacious than chakra.
Just like the lines on Kimimaro's bone blade, and the light in the depths of his byakugan.