The human body was a remarkable thing. Especially after two years of systematic study under the Hyuuga's Juuken curriculum, Miyuki had developed an intimate, almost surgical understanding of its mechanics.
That graze across Diavolo's chin, for instance. It looked like nothing. In reality, it was everything.
Anyone who'd watched enough boxing had seen it happen. A heavyweight eats a clean hook to the face and stays standing. Then a jab barely brushes his chin and he drops like his legs were unplugged. Knockouts that made no sense until you understood the physics.
The explanation was straightforward. The bones of the skull were interconnected. A high-speed strike that skimmed across the jaw transmitted rotational force directly into the cranium, causing the brain to oscillate inside its casing.
The brain was soft. The skull was hard. When the brain started bouncing off the inner walls of the cranium, the result was tissue trauma and loss of consciousness. In medical terms: concussion.
Human anatomy was full of these counterintuitive tricks. A direct blow to the top of the head was less effective than a glancing strike across the jaw. This wasn't magic. It was applied biomechanics, delivered by someone who'd studied the blueprint.
So after Miyuki's strike connected, Diavolo was now caught in a brief window of impaired consciousness. In gaming terms: stunned.
A fighter of Diavolo's caliber would recover quickly. But "quickly" still meant a few seconds. And a few seconds was more than enough.
Picture your palm as a faucet. The instant you make contact, release the chakra through the opening. Visualize the force reaching the far side of the target. A ripple that passes through flesh and bone like a wave through water...
While Diavolo stood frozen in place, his brain still rattling inside his skull, Miyuki had already committed to the follow-up. No hesitation. No second thoughts.
"Juuken: Eight Trigrams, Four Palms!"
His thin arms blurred through the air like hummingbird wings. Four finger strikes lanced out in rapid succession, each one targeting a specific lethal point on Diavolo's head and neck.
The conventional wisdom in the Hyuuga clan was that Juuken worked by attacking the tenketsu network, disrupting chakra flow or damaging internal organs. And that was true, as far as it went. But in Miyuki's opinion, that understanding was incomplete. The Hyuuga had been using their technique for generations without ever truly grasping the deeper science of what they were hitting.
The human body contained nearly a thousand pressure points. Of those, one hundred and eight were critical. Seventy-two of them could take a hit without necessarily killing you. The remaining thirty-six were lethal zones. Hit them hard enough, and death was the likely outcome.
Those thirty-six broke down further into four categories: numbness points, disorientation points, debilitation points, and killing points. Nine in each category. Among shinobi who studied the body's vulnerabilities, certain targets had fearsome reputations. Strike the crown of the skull and the target collapses. Hit the base of the spine and they never walk again. A blow to a specific abdominal point kills nine out of ten. The temple brings instant death. Sever the connection at the back of the neck and no medic-nin alive can fix it.
Rather than aiming for tenketsu to disrupt chakra circulation, which was the standard Hyuuga approach, Miyuki had always felt it was more practical to simply target the lethal points directly. Faster. More decisive. Less room for error.
And since he had absolutely no intention of holding back against Diavolo, the four points he'd chosen for his Eight Trigrams Four Palms were all kill shots.
Hyakue. The crown of the skull, where the centerline of the head intersected the line connecting both ear tips.
Shintei. The front of the skull, half an inch inside the hairline.
Taiyo. The temple, in the shallow depression roughly an inch behind the midpoint between the eyebrow's tail and the outer corner of the eye.
Amon. The back of the neck, in the hollow between the first and second cervical vertebrae.
Miyuki's index fingers danced across Diavolo's head and neck in a blur. What little chakra he possessed surged through his fingertips and rippled into those four lethal points like shockwaves driven through stone.
Diavolo's consciousness had already snapped back online, but the damage was done. Searing pain exploded through his head and neck, followed immediately by a sensation like a paper bomb detonating inside his skull.
The beauty of targeting pressure points was their tiny surface area. A punch or kick aimed at them would be imprecise, the effect diluted. But a fingertip strike, guided by the Byakugan's insight and carrying penetrative chakra? That was a different equation entirely.
Did that do it?
One second later, Diavolo collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. Miyuki immediately backpedaled several steps, putting distance between them, and stood there catching his breath.
As he'd acknowledged before, his Juuken was still a work in progress. He could produce results, but the execution wasn't polished enough for reliable battlefield use. He couldn't be certain Diavolo was actually down.
"Kaguya-hime. Go check on him."
Maintaining a safe distance, Miyuki sent his Stand forward to investigate. The tiny white figure had been hovering at his side throughout the entire fight, invisible to everyone but him.
That impossible midair dodge from earlier, the one that had left Diavolo questioning reality, obviously hadn't been flight. Kaguya-hime had simply grabbed her master and pulled him sideways. Nothing more.
After two years of practice, Miyuki's control over Kaguya-hime had improved significantly. Her stats had grown too.
Daytime meant no access to Tidal Moon, but even in her base state, Kaguya-hime's current stats read: Destructive Power E, Speed D, Range D, Persistence E, Precision D, Growth Potential ?
Still a sad-looking stat sheet, sure. But going from 4E-1D to 3D-2E was meaningful progress. At least she could contribute something in a fight now.
Following her master's command, Kaguya-hime, who had grown approximately one millimeter taller over the past two years, dutifully floated over to Diavolo's body and extended her floor-length white hair toward him.
That hair was an asset in combat. Absurdly long and strong enough to use as binding wire. And by timing the switch between intangible and physical states precisely, it could produce effects that no opponent would see coming. Like right now.
"HYAAAH!"
The instant Kaguya-hime's hair brushed Diavolo's body, that predatory frame exploded upward off the ground. His hand-blade slashed through the air toward Kaguya-hime's position.
But she'd already phased back to intangible. The strike passed through empty space where nothing visible had ever been.
Huh? Something was definitely there just now...
Diavolo rose to his feet. A thin trail of blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. His complexion was noticeably paler. But the fact that he could stand at all meant the Eight Trigrams Four Palms hadn't inflicted critical damage.
What went wrong? Did I miss the points? Or is it something else...
Miyuki had expected Diavolo might survive the combo. But the injuries seemed even lighter than his worst-case estimate. Something wasn't adding up.
The only ways to defend against Juuken were to block the strike before it landed using ninjutsu-based defenses, or to wear some form of chakra armor like the Raikage's lightning cloak. But Diavolo had used neither.
"Heh heh. So that was the Hyuuga's famous Juuken? Looked like you were going for the pressure points. Not bad. But I'm afraid that sort of thing doesn't work too well on me."
Reading the disbelief on Miyuki's face, Diavolo grinned and held out one hand.
And as Miyuki watched, that hand began to shift. The size of the palm. The complexion of the skin. The placement and thickness of the calluses. Everything was changing, cycling through variations in real time, like a body that couldn't decide what shape it wanted to be.
There it is. Now I get it.
The moment Miyuki saw Diavolo's hand flickering between forms, the answer clicked into place. He understood exactly why his lethal-point Juuken hadn't produced the expected result.