Chapter 3: The End of the First Simulation
The morning fog outside the dojo had not yet dispersed, but Hyuga Hinata's training gi was already soaked through with sweat.
With each breath, she exhaled large clouds of white mist, which were then scattered by the wind of her palms as she struck with all her might. Although the tip of her nose and her cheeks were red from the cold, her eyes remained focused, staring intently at the acupuncture points marked on the wooden dummy.
"Stop."
Hyuga Hiashi's voice rang out suddenly. Hinata stopped immediately. Her sweat-dampened bangs stuck to her forehead, but they couldn't hide the hint of expectation in her eyes.
"Go bathe and change your clothes. Take a rest. This afternoon, Hizashi will bring Neji over. You met him yesterday, so do not show any timidity."
His tone was calm, without a single ripple of emotion, and his face betrayed no expression whatsoever.
But Hinata understood that sometimes, no answer was an answer in itself.
It wasn't until Hiashi's figure disappeared down the corridor that the light in Hinata's eyes gradually dimmed. "Can I still not satisfy Father?"
After a while, Hinata patted her cheeks and took a deep breath to encourage herself. "This afternoon... I must do my best this afternoon!"
Time skipped to the afternoon. Hyuga Neji and Hyuga Hinata were sparring in the dojo.
Although he had not yet awakened the Byakugan, Neji could accurately predict Hinata's every move and plan his next step in advance, solely relying on his understanding of the Gentle Fist style.
He deliberately slowed down his speed, leaving her room to react. But even so, the pressure Neji brought caused fine beads of sweat to cover Hinata's forehead.
"Hinata-sama, please focus a little more," Neji reminded her softly.
He felt that he had already broken down the Gentle Fist into its simplest components. Hinata's slow progress was only because she wasn't serious enough. Even if a person was clumsy, could they really fail to learn the Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms?
"Okay."
Hinata bit her lower lip in agreement, trying hard to make her movements faster. However, blindly increasing her speed only caused her to further disrupt her own rhythm. In the end, under Neji's constantly held-back punches, she stumbled backward, falling completely into a disadvantage.
On the sidelines, Hyuga Hizashi watched the two quietly.
Seeing Neji control the rhythm of the battle with ease, every move revealing the leeway of a genius, while Hinata—the Heiress of the Main House—was still full of mistakes even when Neji was being so considerate...
Hizashi's brows furrowed almost imperceptibly. His gaze drifted to Neji's forehead more than once, and an emotion he thought had disappeared began to brew in his heart again.
When Hinata nearly fell again due to her messy footwork, a trace of extremely subtle killing intent leaked from him.
A bird with such talent, yet it cannot fly freely!
And the root of it all is simply because he was born a little later than my brother.
Almost at the exact same instant the killing intent leaked out, Hyuga Hiashi was already standing in front of Hinata.
No questions, no warnings. He directly formed a hand seal.
"Ah!!!"
Hizashi suddenly clutched his head, let out a miserable scream, and fell to his knees. The searing pain of the Cursed Seal caused his body to curl up, rolling in agony on the dojo floor.
"Father!"
Neji's voice carried a panic never heard before. He immediately rushed to Hizashi's side but froze the moment he knelt down.
He didn't dare touch his father, who was struggling in pain, nor did he know what to do to help him. He could only watch helplessly as his father's face twisted little by little.
Hiashi eventually softened his heart and lowered his hand, releasing the seal. "Hizashi, I thought you had let it go long ago."
Hizashi lay in Neji's arms, gasping violently, and revealed a hideous smile. "Yes, I thought I had let it go too."
You did it for your son, and I did it for my daughter.
Hiashi's eyes contained nothing but coldness. "Hizashi, do not forget your status. This pain is the price for overstepping your bounds."
After leaving the dojo, Hinata stayed alone in her room, the scene from earlier still lingering in her mind. Even now, she couldn't figure out exactly what had happened.
She ran to her desk and took out the black notebook from the drawer. Opening the title page, she found that below the original [Start Simulation], two new options had appeared at some point:
[Continue Simulation]
[Designated Simulation]
The first one was easy to understand, but the second one... Just as she was puzzled, a line of small text slowly emerged on the paper.
"So that's how it works."
[Designated Simulation] allowed her to manually add content, changing the plot direction of the simulator to achieve a specific outcome, but using this function would increase the simulator's cooldown time.
Hinata bit her lower lip, picked up a pen, and wrote stroke by stroke in the blank space.
[This afternoon, Father suddenly used the Caged Bird Seal on Uncle Hizashi. Father clearly said that the seal was used to protect the eyes of the Branch House members, so why did it turn out like this?]
[I want to know the reason, and what I can do about it.]
Soon, new text emerged on the notebook.
[Konoha Year 54. The diplomatic mission from Kumogakure arrived, and Father became busy. I found an opportunity to sneak out of the mansion again. Because of the doubts in my heart, I decided to go find Neji-niisan.]
[However, just outside the wall, I discovered a suspicious figure. The person had dark skin, looking very much like someone from the Land of Lightning.]
[Now, I have two choices.]
[1. Shout loudly that there is an enemy spy here.]
[2. Ignore it and continue to look for Neji.]
Without hesitation, Hinata immediately tapped the second option.
[Because I didn't want to be discovered, I decided to pretend I saw nothing and sneak away.]
[When I arrived in front of Uncle Hizashi's house, I didn't know what to say once we met. Just as I was hesitating, two figures suddenly walked around the street corner in the distance. It was Neji-niisan and Kiyonari.]
[I was just about to reach out and say hello when a sharp pain suddenly came from the back of my neck. In the final instant before I lost consciousness, I saw a dark-skinned hand.]
["It's someone from Kumogakure..."]
[When I woke up, the Kumogakure Jonin who attacked me was already dead. According to Father, he was killed by Neji-niisan and Kiyonari. They saved me.]
[I instinctively doubted this, but when Father saw the look in my eyes, he revealed an expression of 'just as I expected,' and even a hint of... relief.]
[Soon, Kumogakure accused Konoha and the Hyuga Clan of shielding the true culprit. They claimed Father killed the envoy they sent to Konoha and demanded that Konoha and the Hyuga Clan hand Father over.]
[No one would believe that two children who weren't even ninja could kill a Kumogakure Jonin. They only believed that Father pushed the responsibility for the murder onto two children. In the end, Father left a suicide note, destroyed his own eyes, and had the village hand over his corpse.]
[But Father's death was not the end. Instead, this incident pushed the Hyuga Clan completely to the extreme.]
[The Main House believed that the Branch House conspired with outsiders to force the Clan Head to his death, so they wanted to use the Caged Bird to strengthen their control. This move further enraged the Branch House. They believed the Main House only saw them as tools, not as fellow clansmen of the "Hyuga."]
[It seems there are only two endings left for the Hyuga Clan: division or civil war.]
[This simulation has ended.]
[Evaluation: What exactly killed Hyuga Hiashi?]