"What?"
Hiashi Hyuga's eyes narrowed instantly, and a sense of foreboding gripped him. He asked in a cold voice, "What else did that guy say?"
"He said…"
Hinata seemed to be stating something that had nothing to do with her. "Every branch family member present today, if they die from the cursed seal or from 'accidental' causes…"
"That blood debt will be on your head."
"He will come to take your life personally."
"And likewise, if he dies, someone else will come to take your life on his behalf."
"A life for a life."
She paused here, her gaze falling on her father's frozen face, and continued, "He also said that aside from the Caged Bird cursed seal…"
"The main family has nothing."
"And is completely fragile."
Hinata's voice was very soft on the last four words, yet they were like the sharpest ice picks, piercing precisely through Hiashi's already fragile psychological defenses!
The living room fell into a deathly silence.
The pale moonlight shone on Hiashi's face, which had instantly lost all color. His facial muscles twitched violently and contorted as he stared at his daughter, his lips trembling, unable to utter a single word.
What did he just hear?
That damned Hyuga Kawa!
That branch family rebel he considered to be an ant!
He actually, actually dared to threaten him so blatantly?
Using the lives of all the branch family members, using such a destructive, all-or-nothing, barbaric method to bind his own life?!
And that phrase, "has nothing and is completely fragile"...
Those eight words had ripped away the glamorous facade of his position as a main family elder, revealing his true, weak nature underneath, which had long been corrupted by arrogance and had lost its true power.
For a moment, a torrent of fury, shame from being exposed as a paper tiger, cold dread, and powerlessness intertwined. Hiashi felt as if an invisible hand had brutally grabbed his heart. Then, it squeezed hard.
"Puff!!"
Without warning, Hiashi vomited a large mouthful of blood. The crimson blood mist bloomed in the pale moonlight, splattering on the front of his dark kimono and staining the floor in a dazzling scarlet!
Hiashi's body swayed violently, one hand tightly clutching his throbbing chest, the other barely propping himself up on the coffee table to keep from collapsing!
He hunched over, breathing heavily.
"Hyuga Kawa!"
A sharp howl filled with hatred and unwillingness erupted from deep in his throat, his hoarse voice echoing through the empty living room.
"I, I will kill you!"
"I will kill you!!"
However, this murderous roar sounded so hollow and powerless in the empty living room, like a defeated dog's wail, filled with the taste of enraged shame.
Hinata stood quietly in the shadow of the entryway, watching her father's frenzied, blood-vomiting, and pathetic state. A complex expression flashed in her white eyes.
She did not step forward to help him, nor did she offer words of comfort. She just gave one last deep look at the figure who appeared exceptionally old, weak, and deranged in the moonlight, then silently turned and left the living room.
In the living room, only Hiashi's increasingly labored breathing and the dark red bloodstain slowly congealing in the moonlight remained. If Hinata were still there, she would have seen Hiashi's eyes gradually turn cold and icy.
Those people simply don't understand what the Caged Bird means, and they don't understand what the main family truly means.
The main family is essentially the few lineages with the purest bloodlines that have been preserved since ancient times. As long as these main family lineages continue to flourish and they choose the person with the purest bloodline from each generation to continue the line, the Hyuga clan can guarantee that they will never lose the Byakugan due to bloodline dilution.
However, if they continue to be consumed by the branch family little by little, one day, the entire Hyuga clan will be reduced to the level of the Lesser Hyuga Clan. A clan that has the bloodline but so diluted that they cannot even activate the Byakugan, ultimately disappearing from the history of the ninja world.
Therefore…
"No matter what, I will never let Hyuga Kawa and those damned people continue to subvert the main family's rightful status!" Hiashi said coldly in his heart.
What if they banded together? No one could remain completely calm and rational in the face of death. As long as a hunter killed enough prey in the same place, the lingering scent of blood would deter other prey from venturing there.
"This is all for the Hyuga clan," Hiashi muttered to himself.
The next day, dusk in the Hidden Leaf Village.
The setting sun, like a giant copper plate, slowly sank towards the western horizon. Its golden-red afterglow splattered across the shimmering river, turning the flowing water into a moving ribbon of silk. The forests on both sides of the river were also coated in a layer of orange-red.
On a riverbank far from the bustling center of the village, a small figure was busy at work. His fingers rummaged through the damp moss and fallen leaves. Soon, he carefully picked a few plump, round mushrooms and put them into a small basket woven from simple vines that hung at his waist.
However, if anyone could hear what he was muttering, they would be very confused.
"This mushroom looks nice!"
He looked at a mushroom cap that emitted a faint green fluorescent light, but the look of surprise on his face was quickly replaced by disappointment. He muttered, "Huh, this one's not edible either?"
"How about this one?"
"Ah, is this one poisonous too? It looks so delicious..."
"Sensei, you know so much. You're way more amazing than the big fox."
There was no doubt that the person picking mushrooms was Naruto Uzumaki.
Meanwhile, in his mindscape, Kurama lay on the ground with its head resting on its arms, snoring as if it were asleep. But when it heard Naruto's words, its giant furry ears twitched, and a vein popped up on its forehead.
As Naruto continued to mutter, Kurama finally couldn't help but open its eyes and look up at its ceiling.
"Hey," Kurama said with impatience. "Can you tell that babbling brat to shut up? How is an old man supposed to get any sleep…"
Thud.
Before Kurama could even finish speaking, its giant head was slammed into the sand. Its pointy fox snout was now full of dirt.
"I told you,"
The man sitting cross-legged on Kurama's head withdrew his hand after lightly tapping it. His eyes were closed, and his tone was calm. "Do not refer to yourself as 'this old man' in front of me."
"Pff."
Kurama lifted its head and spat out a mouthful of sand, looking resentful but not daring to argue. There was nothing it could do. Whether by seniority or by age, it really had no right to call itself "this old man" in front of this guy.
Although the man looked to be in his twenties, who knew how many thousands of years old he truly was?
Of course, seniority and age were secondary. The main reason was that this old guy would hit it with those strange thorns whenever he was displeased. At first, it would talk back stubbornly, but after being hit and yelping in pain, it didn't dare anymore.
It had to save face.
"Hey, old man," Kurama said, resting its head on its arm in a muffled voice. "You've turned this place into this. You're not actually planning on staying, are you?"
The "old man" it was referring to was naturally Hyuga Kawa, who was disguised as "Otsutsuki Kumoichi."
However, he had not told Kurama his name, only his clan name. With his knowledge of the Sage of Six Paths and ancient history from the original story, he was more than capable of fooling this fox who had spent most of its thousands of years eating and sleeping.
Furthermore, the abilities he had displayed were unheard of by Kurama.
"Fox," Otsutsuki Kumoichi opened his eyes and said softly, "How long I stay here depends on the child. I just changed this place on a whim."
On a whim...
Kurama's eyelid twitched as it looked at the current state of the mindscape. The mindscape had been completely transformed. It was no longer the dark and damp place it once was but had become a boundless sea and beach. Clear, transparent water lapped at the shore, making a soothing "whoosh" sound. There was even a slightly salty sea breeze gently blowing. The sky and the sea were one. Bright sunlight hung in the sky, and there was even a wooden cabin standing by the sea.
Who knows how this old guy managed to turn the mindscape into this?
"Are all Otsutsuki as good at living as you?" Kurama asked, feigning disdain to test him.
The Sage of Six Paths had told the Nine Tailed Beasts stories in the past, including those about the Otsutsuki clan, whom he called "aliens." Kurama still remembers the Sage's serious apprehension. It was hard to imagine what kind of power a being that even the Sage was wary of possessed.
But it never expected that it would actually meet one. This made it somewhat curious about what the Otsutsuki clan really was.
"Didn't Hagoromo tell you that curiosity kills the fox?"
Otsutsuki Kumoichi gave it a sidelong glance. "If I had a good relationship with the idiots in my clan, you would still be inside the Ten-Tails, and Hagoromo wouldn't have become the Ten-Tails' Jinchuriki."
"Oh, wait. If I had been more ruthless, you and all life in the ninja world would have been in my stomach by now."
As he said more, Kurama's head sank lower and lower, and it obediently shut its mouth. It had figured it out.
"This old man is a being from the same era as that Goddess of the Rabbit's Mouth," Kurama thought with a shiver. It had heard about the Divine Tree, the Ten-Tails, and the Goddess of the Rabbit's Mouth from the Sage of Six Paths.
Although it didn't know why this old guy had taken on this appearance, Kurama could feel that he could truly turn it into chakra and swallow it. The Yin Release in his soul was just too pure, even more exaggerated than the feeling Madara Uchiha had given it. And this seemed to be just a tiny fragment of the other party's soul.
Formed from nothingness.
To make a soul exist independently without dissipating over time—in all its thousands of years, Kurama had only seen the Sage of Six Paths achieve this.
Although it didn't know what his Yang Release mastery was like, this level of Yin Release mastery had already reached the level of Yin-Yang Release. This was the main reason Kurama submitted.
If this old guy wanted to, he could completely extract its soul and turn it into a ball of pure chakra. So, having a being like this sitting on its head, Kurama, despite its proud nature, didn't feel ashamed at all.
The only thing that made Kurama feel a little confused was why a being like him would care about this human brat.
"This old man doesn't seem to have come for me," Kurama mused. "Even I'm not worthy of his attention. Could Minato Namikaze's son have something special about him?"
With this thought, Kurama looked up at the sky. In the sky, there was a round mirror that reflected Naruto's perspective. This allowed both Kurama and Kumoichi, despite being in the mindscape, to see everything Naruto saw in the outside world.
"Sensei, is this mushroom edible?"
Naruto's voice entered the mindscape. Otsutsuki Kumoichi opened his eyes and said nonchalantly, "With your constitution, yes."
He hadn't asked Naruto to call him "Sensei." But after seeing his power in beating up Kurama, Naruto, who was sharp enough to realize he meant no harm, boldly and shamelessly asked to learn a jutsu. In Naruto's simple mind, it seemed that if he became strong, as strong as the Hokage, he could be accepted like the Hokage.
Kumoichi agreed, and Naruto, pushing his luck, immediately changed his way of addressing him.
Naruto was not a stupid fool. He had just grown accustomed to using bad jokes to hide the distance between himself and others, pretending that he hadn't noticed their rejection. His thoughts were extreme, but unlike truly foolish people, he deliberately chose to act foolishly.
"Hehe, this one's edible!"
Now, by the small river, a look of contentment blossomed on Naruto's face. He carefully picked a few unassuming but thick and plump brown mushrooms, which smelled of fresh earth, and put them into the small, hand-woven basket at his waist.
As it grew later, his basket's bounty grew.
"Phew!"
Finally, Naruto straightened up and let out a long sigh, looking at the sun that was about to disappear from the horizon but was pouring its last and warmest light onto the earth. The afterglow of the setting sun fell on his smiling face, making his golden hair look like burning flames, reflecting off the shimmering, golden river.
"Finally, I can have mushroom soup. This time I don't have to worry about a stomach ache."
Naruto muttered happily to himself as he lit the wood he had gathered. The fire crackled with sparks, and the clay pot filled with mushrooms began to boil.
Gulp.
Looking at the bubbling mushroom soup in the pot, the rich aroma made him swallow.
"I'm going to dig in!"
He put his hands together, his face full of anticipation, and picked up a handmade wooden spoon, just about to scoop some up to taste.
"Hehehe..."
An old, gentle laugh suddenly sounded. Naruto looked up, and an old, wrinkled face appeared before him.
"Whoa!"
Naruto's hand jerked in fright, and he almost dropped the spoon into the fire, instinctively recoiling.
"Don't be scared, child," the old man said with a kind smile, his voice gentle. "I'm just a passing old man."
Grrrrrrrr...
Before he could finish, a clear, loud rumble came from his stomach. Seeing the old man's embarrassed and slightly awkward smile, the familiar scene reminded Naruto of his own recent embarrassment in front of Big Brother Kawa. He couldn't help but let out a little laugh, and his tense nerves relaxed.
"Hehe."
The old man also gave an embarrassed laugh, as if he really were just an ordinary, gluttonous, and clumsy old man. He turned his gaze to the fragrant mushroom soup, a look of appropriate longing in his eyes. He tentatively pointed to the pot. "Child, can I...?"
Looking at the old man's expectant eyes, the last bit of caution in Naruto's heart almost dissipated. He smiled and said, "Yes! Old man, you..."
He was about to nod in agreement, but at that moment, in the mindscape, Otsutsuki Kumoichi opened his eyes, a profound meaning flashing in their depths.
Couldn't resist anymore?
"Hiruzen Sarutobi?" he said. "Is this the Third Hokage of the Leaf Village?"
Kumoichi's calm voice rang out, clearly entering Naruto's ears, and the smile on his face froze.
The Third Hokage?
He looked at the wrinkled, kind-faced old man in front of him, who gradually began to resemble the face on the Hokage Rock in his memory. Although the old man in front of him was smiling and less serious than the one on the rock, the contours of his face were the same.
Realizing this, a question naturally arose.
Why?
Why would the Third Hokage appear here?
Why did he lie and say he was just an "ordinary old man"?
What is it about me that makes a great person like the Hokage put aside his status, disguise himself as a common old man, and purposely come to this remote riverbank to approach me?
My only special thing is...
"Is it Sensei, or the big fox?" A strange pang hit Naruto's heart. Before he met Hyuga Kawa, he truly had nothing. Now, he had finally found a sensei who didn't dislike him and was even willing to teach him. Even the initially terrifying big fox had become friendly...
"Third, Hokage."
Naruto spoke abruptly, making Hiruzen's smile freeze. He then saw Naruto purse his lips and ask in a low voice, "You are the Hokage, aren't you?"
Hiruzen knew very well that the best way to get close to a child was to use an identity that had no status differences or sense of distance. Although Naruto would eventually find out his true identity, at least they would have established a basic rapport that could make up for the distance created by his status. This way, when Naruto saw him in the future, he would think of him as a kind, hungry grandfather, not the unattainable Hokage on the rock.
However, Hiruzen never expected Naruto to recognize him so quickly. This completely ruined his plan to build a good first impression. Noticing the wary look in Naruto's eyes, Hiruzen immediately felt a headache.
But he quickly realized that any cover-up or denial at this moment would only deepen Naruto's suspicion and wariness, pushing the situation to a worse state.
"Oh, my, this old man just wanted to take a little break, go for a walk, and get some fresh air. I smelled your soup and couldn't help but come take a look. I never expected you to recognize me."
He withdrew his outstretched hand and scratched his gray hair, quickly switching to the self-deprecating, helpless smile of an elder. "You're right, child. I am Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Third Hokage."
He admitted his identity, but skillfully attributed it to a chance encounter during a "lazy stroll," trying to downplay the impression of a deliberate approach.
"But I was even more surprised to meet you here, Naruto Uzumaki."
Hearing his name spoken clearly by Hiruzen, Naruto instinctively looked up, his face full of surprise. "You... you know me?"
"Of course I do."
Hiruzen's face showed a gentle smile. "You are a villager of the Leaf, a child of the Leaf. As the Hokage of the Leaf, how could I not know my own child?"
"And recently, there have been some bad rumors in the village about you."
Hearing this, Naruto's heart trembled, and he subconsciously clenched his fists, his nails digging deep into his palms.
Hiruzen keenly caught Naruto's change, so he changed the subject, his voice firm and powerful. "But I know you're a good child, Naruto."
"I have looked into your situation and I know you would not do anything to harm others. Those rumors are baseless and malicious gossip."
As Naruto watched in surprise, Hiruzen smiled warmly. "So, I have already sent people to handle and clarify these rumors. You don't have to worry about them anymore."
Clarify the rumors?
Naruto blinked.
This Hokage is standing up for me?
This caused the high wall that Naruto had built in his heart to show signs of cracking.
And Hiruzen, seeing this, couldn't help but feel a sense of relief. He let his gaze fall back on the steaming pot of mushroom soup, his tone with a perfect amount of relaxed expectation. "Naruto, I haven't had dinner yet. I wonder if this old man is lucky enough to get a taste..."
Hiruzen once again steered the conversation back to the "hungry old man" persona, trying to use food as a bridge to rebuild the shattered sense of friendly familiarity.
Naruto looked at Hiruzen's expectant eyes, then at the pot of mushroom soup he had worked so hard to pick and cook. After a moment of hesitation, he still picked up the spoon, scooped a generous spoonful of the fragrant mushroom soup, and offered it to Hiruzen.
Hiruzen took the spoon, blew on it to cool it, and then carefully took a sip.
Just then, as if he had thought of something, Naruto asked in a low voice, "Third… Grandpa Third... can you tell me why they treat me like that?"
"I don't know the Fourth Hokage, but why do they say I killed him, and why do they look at me like I'm a monster..."
At this, Hiruzen's movements stalled, and the praise he was about to say was swallowed back. This was not an easy question to answer. He wanted Naruto to have a sense of belonging to the village.
"Hmm…"
He organized his words and said gently, "Actually, the people in the village just don't know you well enough. As long as you treat them with the same kindness you show me, one day, they will accept you, understand your kindness, and return that same kindness to you."
Hiruzen observed the changes in Naruto's expression, but Naruto just kept his head down, seemingly deep in thought.
In reality, he was asking his "sensei" the same question in his mind. And his "sensei's" answer was…
"When a mirror is dirty, do you think it's your face that's dirty?"
His tone was calm. "If not, then when you face other people's rejection and malice, why do you think it's a problem with yourself?"
Naruto was stunned for a moment, then he said in his mind, "But, they say I'm a monster, and that I killed the Fourth Hokage..."
"So what?"
Kumoichi opened his eyes and frowned. "If someone wrongly accuses you of eating his food, are you going to cut open your stomach to prove your innocence?"
"No. You should dig out his eyes and swallow them, so he can see clearly inside your belly, instead of harming yourself because of someone else's attitude!"
These extremely biased words made Naruto's mind wander. He suddenly remembered what Big Brother Kawa had said.
"Naruto, it's not your fault."
For a long time, he had endured the disgust and rejection of everyone. Besides Big Brother Kawa, this sensei was the second person to stand on his side and speak for him. Not like this Third Hokage, who was standing on the side of others to deny him.
With this thought, a warm current mixed with a bitter taste rushed to Naruto's eyes, and his nose tingled.
Hiruzen, seeing the tears in Naruto's eyes, secretly felt a sense of relief and joy. He was right. For a child who had been isolated for so long, "acceptance" and "trust" were the things that would move him the most.
With this, there were no more problems.