Chapter 8: The Gaze of the Byakugan

It was not until the sun slanted toward the west that the two finally brought their training to a close.

Shingo was drenched in sweat, his muscles aching and tense. Mighty Duy was also panting, yet he remained brimming with boundless energy.

"Shingo, your learning speed is incredible!" Duy gave a resounding thumbs-up. "As I expected, I wasn't wrong about you, you have a truly dazzling youth burning inside of you!"

Shingo had already begun to grow accustomed to Duy's eccentric manner of speaking. He picked up his water canteen and handed it over.

"Thank you!" Duy accepted the canteen, tilted his head back, and chugged down a massive gulp. 

"Shingo, can I come here to train with you again in the future?"

"Of course you can." Shingo replied without a moment's hesitation.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

Duy gave a powerful thud to his own chest. "Then it's settled! Starting today, we are partners burning through our youth together!"

When training concluded, Shingo did not simply strip off his clothes and leap straight into the stream as he usually did. After all, there was someone else around today; he merely pulled off his upper garment and stepped into the shallow creek wearing his pants.

The ice-cold water washed over his waist and abdomen, sweeping away the sweat and dirt coating his skin. Seeing this, Duy followed suit, stripping off his top and bounding into the brook.

The sudden chill made Duy shudder involuntarily, instantly followed by the soothing relief of his heated muscles rapidly cooling within the frigid water.

"Hsss… that feels like heaven instantly!"

Shingo sat upon a boulder submerged in the stream, letting the running water wash over his body to drain away the lingering heat trapped deep within his muscles. Just as the two were enjoying this brief respite following their grueling training, Shingo's Mind's Eye twitched slightly.

Deep in the forest, a hundred meters away, more than a dozen presences were quietly closing in.

They kept their bodies low, their footsteps so light they were virtually silent. Relying on the five senses alone, detecting them would have been nearly impossible. But within the field of vision granted by his Mind's Eye, these wild, violent, and chaotic auras stood out like blazing beacons in the dark of night.

Shingo opened his eyes and raised a hand, signaling Duy to remain silent.

Duy blinked in surprise, then immediately understood. Shingo must have sensed something amiss. Without asking unnecessary questions, he instantly lightened his movements and stood up from the stream.

The two quickly scrambled ashore, turning to face the depths of the forest as they braced themselves for combat.

A moment later, shadows emerged from between the thickets.

One pair.

Two pairs.

Three pairs.

Crimson eyes lit up in the dim woods as a dozen black wolves slowly strode out.

They were far larger than ordinary wild wolves, with hunched shoulders, pitch-black fur, and sharp claws restlessly digging small pits into the mud. Saliva dripped from the corners of their jaws, and their heads twitched with a strange, unnatural tremor.

Wolves were cautious hunters. The moment they appeared, they instinctively dispersed to the sides, attempting to form a hunting encirclement.

However, before they could fully spread out, a few of the wolves with the reddest eyes let out excited, low growls.

Duy frowned. "Something's not right."

The beasts of the shinobi world were entirely unlike ordinary animals; just like humans, their bodies harbored chakra. Chakra not only granted them much larger and sturdier physiques but also enhanced their intelligence, not to mention that wolves were naturally cunning creatures to begin with.

Under normal circumstances, a wolf pack would never actively attack humans. They knew full well that if they dared to do so, humans wielding bizarre and terrifying powers would appear the very next day to completely exterminate them. Incidents like this had happened more than once or twice in the forests surrounding Konohagakure; countless animal clans had perished at the hands of shinobi.

Yet these wolves had still come, and their target was exceptionally clear.

Duy did not wait for the pack to complete its encirclement. With a stomp of his foot, his entire figure shot forward like a fired projectile.

The alpha wolf had just lowered its body, preparing to signal the attack, when Duy's fist was already right in front of its face.

"Leaf Rock-Smashing Fist!"

Bang!

With a single downward strike, the alpha's torso caved in, its body bending into an unnatural shape mid-air before slamming heavily into the trunk of a tree behind it.

The death of the alpha did nothing to deter the pack; if anything, the scent of fresh blood only made them more frenzied.

Immediately afterward, two more black wolves lunged toward Duy from his left and right flanks. Duy dropped his center of gravity, ducked beneath the first wolf's snapping jaws, and swept his right leg out horizontally like a steel whip.

"Leaf Hurricane!"

Bang!

The black wolf on the right instantly transformed into a blur, crashing hard against the other wolf mid-air.

Simultaneously, Shingo found himself targeted by the pack.

Rather than retreating, Shingo pressed forward, gathering chakra within the palms of his hands and spreading it outward along his fingertips. His Level 5 Chakra Control already allowed him to shape chakra into a compressed form, sharpening its edges into lethal chakra blades.

It was somewhat similar to a Chakra Scalpel, though nowhere near as refined. But this wasn't a medical surgery, as long as it could slice through the hide and bone of these feral wolves, it was more than enough.

The instant the first black wolf lunged, Shingo sidestepped to evade its bite and thrust his right hand straight into its eye socket. The chakra concentrated at his fingertips tore through the fragile tissue, plunging directly into the brain.

Before he even pulled his hand back, the second wolf was already snapping at his arm.

A flash of insight crossed Shingo's mind, mirroring the stance Duy had used when throwing his punch: grip the ground with the feet, drive the waist through the shoulders, and draw power from the earth.

Instead of stepping back to evade, he took half a step forward and delivered a downward punch with his left hand. The fist, reinforced by the chakra blade, smashed squarely into the wolf's snout.

Crack!

No amount of iron skulls or copper bones could withstand such brute force. A single blow shattered the skull, and the entire wolf was blasted backward, lifeless before it even hit the ground.

The third wolf pounced from the flank.

Shingo had sensed it long ago, his right fist already primed and cocked. Just as he was about to pivot to deliver the punch, Duy's voice rang out from beside him.

"Duck!"

Shingo dropped his head without a moment's hesitation.

Duy's leg swept right over the top of his head, connecting squarely with the black wolf's jaw. The beast spun as it flew backward, twitched on the ground a few times, and went completely still.

"Nice!" Duy flashed a grin at Shingo. "That punch just now had the scent of youth all over it!"

Shingo returned the smile. Having live targets delivered right to your doorstep right after training was certainly impeccable timing.

The remaining black wolves seemed driven into an even deeper frenzy by the continuous deaths of their packmates. They abandoned their coordinated encirclement, their eyes glowing blood-red as they lunged from every direction, which only served to hasten their demise.

Sensing that the wolves posed no real threat to Shingo, Duy quietly stepped back to the flank, leaving Shingo to take the offensive while offering brief pointers and remaining ready to step in should danger arise.

Relying on his Mind's Eye to predict the trajectories of their leaps in advance, Shingo dismantled the pack's assaults with effortless grace. As he fought, he mentally retraced Duy's instruction: the logic of the attack, how every muscle exerted force in coordination, and how to seamlessly transition between strikes.

If the Gentle Fist was like a venom-soaked web, the Strong Fist was like a cannon, devoid of fancy tricks, boasting a terrifyingly destructive caliber.

What Shingo needed to do now was extricate himself completely from that web he had once relied on without his Byakugan, and learn how to fire the cannon.

Before long, without even needing Duy to intervene, Shingo had cut the wolf pack to pieces.

The stench of blood drifted thick through the forest. The final few black wolves could barely stand on their paws, yet they refused to flee, continuing to charge forward with a mindless, deranged persistence.

Realizing there was no further training value left, Duy efficiently dispatched the remaining beasts and gave Shingo a thumbs-up.

"Great job, Shingo! To reach this level on your very first time learning the Konoha-style taijutsu, you really are talented!"

Shingo squatted down, washing his blood-stained hands in the running stream. "It's mostly because you're a great teacher."

"Don't be modest!" Duy said earnestly. "Youth is about boldly acknowledging your own strength!" 

With that, Duy squatted down beside one of the wolf carcasses and began inspecting it. He pried open a wolf's eye to examine it closely, then pinched its jaws open and sniffed, detecting nothing unusual aside from the standard gamey odor of a beast.

"This isn't quite right."

"Have you seen wolves like this before?" Shingo asked.

"When I run laps around the village, I usually spot them over in the western forest. I actually thought it strange, they used to be out all the time, but the last few days of training, they completely vanished. Turns out they ran all the way over here."

Duy looked down at the carcass, his brow furrowing deeper. "And they're normally smart creatures, they never attack humans unprovoked. These wolves are definitely acting abnormal. Back then, their eyes looked like any normal beast's. Just look at them now; they're red enough to scare you."

Shingo crouched down. Without touching it with his bare hands, he swept his Mind's Eye directly over the corpse.

Very quickly, right behind the ear of the wolf in front of him, he discovered an extremely fine needle puncture.

The location was well-concealed, further hidden beneath a patch of black fur. Without the extraordinary perception of the Mind's Eye, noticing it with the naked eye would have been virtually impossible.

Shingo shared his discovery with Duy, though he had already formed a private conclusion in his mind.

Either there was an experimental base nearby and a test subject had broken loose, or someone had injected these wolves with a substance designed to incite blind ferocity, deliberately luring them here.

The first possibility was unlikely. For one, the Second Hokage had passed away, Orochimaru had not yet fully matured, and Danzō possessed piles of research files but lacked the personnel to utilize them, leaving most such experiments sitting idle.

Secondly, even if Danzō had restarted some form of experiment, given his meticulous operational style, he would never allow test subjects to escape in batches. Not to mention that these very wolves had been roaming the western forest just days ago.

That left only one remaining answer.

As for who would pull off such a stunt, he didn't even need to guess.

He had been coming here to train for several months now. This training ground was remote; ordinary villagers didn't know about it, and shinobi rarely passed through.

However, the long-range observation capabilities of the Byakugan were more than enough for the Hyūga clan to pinpoint his routine movements from afar.

While Shingo possessed the Mind's Eye, if someone were standing kilometers away keeping watch on him, a Level 2 Mind's Eye was still far too weak to detect a covert observer.

They confirmed he trained here regularly. They confirmed this location on the edge of the village was sufficiently secluded. Then, they prepared a pack of black wolves driven rabid by drugs, culminating in his death between their jaws.

A six-year-old child killed by a wild beast attack while training at the edge of the village.

It sounded entirely plausible. No one would find it strange; they would simply assume the little guy had run out of luck. Even if an investigation were launched, it would never lead back to the Hyūga clan.

The only thing they hadn't anticipated was that Shingo's strength far exceeded their expectations, nor had they expected Might Duy to happen to show up here today.

A wave of nausea briefly rolled through Shingo; the sensation of being watched by those cold, malice-filled eyes sent a chill running across his skin.

He had already left the Hyūga.

Yet it seemed the Hyūga had no intention of letting him go just yet.

"Shingo?" Duy noticed his silence and asked, "Did you find something?"

Shingo's expression quickly returned to normal. "It's nothing."

He stood up, his tone calm. "These wolves probably contracted some kind of disease."

"A disease?" Duy blinked, instantly turning serious. "We need to be careful then! Who knows if this sickness will spread? We have to report this to the village immediately!"

Shingo looked at his deadpan earnestness and fell silent for a moment.

Duy actually believed it.

Reporting it to the village, however, might not necessarily be a bad thing. The Hyūga clan didn't dare deal with him out in the open because they had reservations and fears. If this matter were brought to light, it might force those rats hiding in the dark to lie low for a while.

"Right, reporting it to the village is definitely the safer option. If it really ends up infecting other animals, villagers heading out past the walls will be in serious danger." Shingo nodded in agreement.

Duy immediately declared, "No time to waste! I'll carry these carcasses and report this to the mission desk right now!"

"I'll go with you. Since we both ran into them together, having two people explain the details will make things clearer."

"Alright! Shingo, I can already feel the burning fire of your youth! This is what youth is all about!"

The two made their selection, picking out two wolf corpses with the most bloodshot eyes. Each hoisted a carcass over their shoulder and set off toward the mission desk.

The setting sun dipped below the tree line, stretching their shadows long across the ground.

Back in the forest, the remaining wolf corpses still emitted the faint stench of fresh blood, while deep within the woods, the wind began to rise.