Standing not far behind them was a girl who appeared to be only twelve or thirteen years old.
She wore simple clothing utterly out of place with the era. Her features were delicate, yet devoid of vitality. But what truly sent chills down their spines were her eyes—empty and indifferent, as though they reflected none of the colors of life.
"Uchiha... Hikari!" Sasuke forced out the name through clenched teeth, his voice trembling slightly under the immense pressure.
The information from the heavenly screen had long since been etched into his mind: a survivor from the Warring States Period, a "weapon" imprisoned by the Uchiha clan, whose hatred for the Uchiha ran to the marrow of her bones...
She had come to settle the score!
To cut off the last bloodline of the Uchiha!
"I told you," the girl's voice suddenly dropped to freezing cold, killing intent spreading around her until it almost seemed to condense into tangible frost, "my name is 'Hikari.' Uchiha... that is a surname that should have been erased long ago."
She utterly rejected any connection to that clan, every word like a poisoned shard of ice.
Yet unexpectedly, Hikari's gaze did not linger on Sasuke. Instead, with an almost playful interest, she glanced toward a dense patch of shadow at the edge of the street.
Raising her voice, she spoke clearly into the silence.
"You've watched for so long. Are you still not going to show yourself? I really am... about to kill your 'dear' little brother."
She deliberately emphasized the words "dear," her tone dripping with ridicule.
"Or are you waiting for the moment I strike, looking for a chance to kill me in a single blow? That's not very becoming, is it? A brother who uses his own little brother as bait..."
She deliberately dragged out the last syllable before clearly calling out a name.
"Uchiha—Itachi!"
The name was like a massive boulder thrown into a still lake, instantly stirring monstrous waves in Sasuke's heart.
"Itachi—!!!"
Sasuke let out a heart-wrenching roar. All his fear and confusion were instantly drowned beneath overwhelming hatred and agitation.
He spun toward the shadows, his eyes faintly reddening with emotion as he screamed wildly, "It's you! So it really is you! You've come back! Get out here! Uchiha Itachi! Come out and face me!!!"
Although the "truth" revealed by the heavenly screen continued to swirl through his mind—that the massacre had been meant to protect him, that there had been deeper secrets behind it—
The images of his parents falling, the blood of his clansmen, that cold gaze beneath the moonlit night...
The hatred formed by those memories had long since seeped into his bones. How could something as simple as "the truth" possibly erase it?
The street fell deathly silent. There was no movement from the shadows, as though Hikari's accusation had merely been a bluff.
Just as Sasuke's fury began to mingle with doubt and he started to wonder whether this was one of Hikari's tricks—
"Looks like you've made up your mind not to come out." Hikari's voice became calm again, though it sounded even colder now.
With a flick of her wrist, a kunai silently dropped into her hand. Her fingers nimbly played with the cold metal, which reflected a tiny glint of light.
"Then I'll start with your little brother."
She raised her eyes, fixing her gaze on Sasuke for the first time. He was trembling slightly with emotion, while she spoke as casually as though discussing the weather.
"I'm quite good with a kunai."
"You're in such a hurry to bring down the butcher's blade that you can't even wait a moment longer?"
A low, cold voice suddenly rang out, like an icy blade slicing through the frozen air.
Then, at the edge of the patch of shadows Sasuke had been staring at, a figure slowly emerged, as though peeling itself out of the darkness.
A lean yet upright frame.
And a face carved into Sasuke's very soul.
Uchiha Itachi.
"Itachi..." Sasuke's breathing abruptly stopped, his lips moving soundlessly.
The furious roars and desperate questions he had rehearsed thousands of times were all caught in his throat the instant he truly saw this man.
He merely stood frozen in place, his pupils trembling violently as his eyes remained locked on that face. Ice and fire churned within him—an extreme hatred intertwined with a deeper stirring that even he refused to acknowledge—tearing him apart until, for a moment, he lost the ability to move or speak.
Itachi's gaze skimmed over Sasuke's face, which was filled with complicated emotions, as lightly as a dragonfly touching water. The glance lasted only an instant—almost cruelly brief.
Then all of his attention locked onto Hikari like cold iron.
There was no ripple in those pitch-black eyes. Only a bottomless coldness and solemn vigilance.
"Wonderful." Hikari seemed not to notice the chill in Itachi's eyes. The kunai spinning around her fingers accelerated slightly, tracing a gleaming silver arc.
Not only did the killing intent around her not diminish with Itachi's appearance—it surged violently like a fire being fed fuel. A nearly delighted yet utterly warmthless smile spread across her lips.
"The last Uchiha bloodline... has actually gathered here of its own accord today. Kill all of you, and the disgusting name Uchiha can finally be completely erased from this world. I like that kind of 'perfection.'"
"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!"
Almost as soon as her words fell, the sounds of bodies cutting through the air rang out in succession!
More than a dozen figures appeared like ghosts from the surrounding rooftops, treetops, and alleyways, forming a precise tactical formation that completely sealed off the area around Hikari.
They wore the masks of Konoha's ANBU and stood in silence, but the glint of ninja tools in their hands and their tense stances announced the highest level of hostility.
Hikari merely swept her peripheral vision around them with extreme contempt, her expression unchanged.
These ANBU elites were no more than chickens and dogs in her eyes.
From beginning to end, there had only been one person capable of truly arousing her interest and making her feel threatened—Uchiha Itachi.
The genjutsu and ocular power those eyes possessed were something she instinctively feared from deep within the memories carried by her bloodline.
"You can't do it." Itachi's voice remained steady. Within the tense encirclement, every word carried with unquestionable calm.
"The grudges of the Warring States Period have long since been buried by the river of time. The Uchiha clan... has also long since reached the end that fate ordained for it. Obsessively gnawing on a corpse that has already decayed will only trap you, too, among the ghosts of the past. What meaning is there in that?"
"How could someone like you—the pampered son of a clan head—possibly understand my pain?!"
Hikari's voice suddenly rose, every word forced out through gritted teeth and soaked in resentment and hatred accumulated over a century. It was not simple killing intent, but a despair born of prolonged imprisonment and exploitation, twisted until it had seeped deep into her bones.
Itachi did not directly respond to her accusation. He merely raised his eyes slightly, his gaze seemingly passing through the chaos before him and toward the deeper reaches of Konoha, as though sensing something.
After a moment, he let out an almost inaudible sigh. There was a hint of helplessness in it, as though his plans had been disrupted.
"It seems today is not an appropriate time. I originally intended to find an opportunity to deal with Sasuke, this potential problem, before he lost control and became an even greater threat in the future. I didn't expect that the first 'obstacle' I would encounter after infiltrating Konoha would be you."
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