As it turned out, [Zhuixia] had far fewer bugs than the Naruto world did.
Hanabi had in fact tried it — gouging out her Byakugan and then restoring them.
It worked.
The catch was that after restoration, the extracted eyes would simply go inert. The dōjutsu power flowed straight back into her own eyes the moment she finished regenerating.
Not a single exploit to be squeezed out. She'd paid a considerable price for nothing.
Still, when she woke the next morning, Hanabi felt clear-headed and refreshed. That sensation of a clean system reboot — crisp and total — was genuinely pleasant.
She even entertained the thought: if she ever felt unwell, she could use this "self-hanging from the southeastern branch" trick to recalibrate herself.
In the end, she decided against making a habit of it.
[Zhuixia] only worked while she was wearing it. If she ever grew careless and went for it unequipped — one false step and it would be game over for real.
"The pressure really hasn't let up one bit, though."
[Asceticism] wasn't simply a training accelerant. It seemed to operate as an adaptive ability.
After sparring against Master Jingliu's ice-crystal constructs, Hanabi felt she had gone through a genuine transformation — and yet [Asceticism] had added a new weight in kind, still holding her output to the level of an ordinary person.
Even with chakra augmenting her movements, walking had become a miserable affair.
And to be clear: this wasn't just difficult for a girl.
Any man, strapped up, encased in iron armor, and weighed down with limiters on his strength, would be suffering just as badly.
"Truly lives up to the name — Asceticism."
Since [Asceticism] needed to work in tandem with [Curse Bind] and its own built-in training enhancement, she had no intention of canceling it.
If anything, she rather liked it.
The trouble was that this kind of training was fine for daily practice, but moving two steps and gasping for three made her current errand genuinely inconvenient. So Hanabi simply activated [Zhuixia] and used it as a makeshift ODM gear rig.
That way she could move at speed without releasing the restraints.
She made straight for a training ground.
Practicing there were the three members of Guy-sensei's team: Hyuga Neji, Rock Lee, and Tenten.
"Big brother~"
Neji's scalp prickled the instant he heard that voice. Whenever Hanabi called him "Onii-sama" in that particular tone, it meant she was about to stir up trouble.
Among everyone who knew her, Neji probably had the clearest picture of Hanabi's affairs — because whenever she needed something done, she came to him first.
"Oh, it's Hanabi!" Tenten was the first to come running over. She and Lee both knew Hanabi well enough.
"Ahem. Hanabi." Neji walked over too, though in front of his teammates he was visibly stiff.
He couldn't help it. On the very day their team formed, Hanabi had shown up with gifts and said, with complete sincerity, to Guy-sensei and Lee: "Onii-sama is in your hands~" That scene lived rent-free in his memory, and every time it surfaced, Neji felt like he could die of embarrassment on the spot.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
"Is something the matter, Hanabi?"
He kept his voice formal in front of his teammates, but privately he always caved.
He couldn't help that either. It was the feeling of having your mother show up at your workplace to give gifts to your boss and coworkers — the kind of damage that left permanent scars.
"Neji-nii-san shouldn't have any missions coming up for a while, right?" Hanabi asked.
"Guy-sensei has us on intensive training for now. No missions." Tenten answered.
The reason for the intensive training was no mystery to Hanabi.
The Chūnin Exams were just around the corner.
"Now is the time to sing the praises of youth, Hanabi! You should ditch that kimono you can barely walk in, put on some training clothes, and come run with us!" Lee flashed a brilliant, white-toothed smile.
They didn't see each other constantly, but Hanabi got along well enough with all three of Guy's team. And because her taijutsu was genuinely decent, Lee always seemed to want to hand her a green spandex suit and drag her off to "sing the praises of youth" — the way some people look at an untreated back and think, what a waste of perfectly good cupping therapy.
"Hanabi's cute just as she is~" Tenten, for her part, was very fond of this pretty little girl.
"If no one has any missions — I'd like to borrow Neji-nii-san for a few days. Would that be alright?"
Hanabi turned to Neji.
"Sure." He answered immediately.
"Go help your sister, Neji." Tenten said.
"Don't forget your daily training, Neji!" Lee gave a firm thumbs-up.
The two of them returned to practice, and Neji fell into step beside Hanabi as she led him away.
"What is it?" he asked.
"This."
Hanabi tossed him a scroll.
"Make-Out Paradise"— wait. Byakugan!"
The scroll's cover bore the title of a famous author's acclaimed romance novel. But Neji felt the wrongness immediately. He activated his Byakugan and saw it — the chakra flowing across the surface, forming characters visible only to the Byakugan's eye.
A hidden message written in chakra flow itself. Nearly classified intelligence.
"…A Warring States-era seal… Uchiha Nanashi?" Neji's expression went odd.
"Ah — I came across it during a past mission. That one got a little hairy." Hanabi said.
"You're not planning to go break this Uchiha's seal, are you." It was less a question than a statement — Neji had a fair idea where this was heading.
"That's exactly it."
Of course.
He'd known it wouldn't be anything good.
"You're not going to report this to Konoha?" Neji asked.
"She's just a child." Hanabi said. "The Uchiha clan is gone. If word got out about her situation, things could get very ugly."
"…Fair enough."
Neji had no illusions about what adults were capable of assuming at their worst — and he couldn't say she was wrong.
At the very least, while Konoha's notorious schemer Danzō was still breathing, a lot of things genuinely had to be done without Konoha knowing.
"A god of evil…"
Neji read on.
His brow furrowed.
According to what Hanabi had written, someone who had made a pact with a god of evil was preparing to break the seal.
"Using the god of evil to take control of this sealed Uchiha?"
He kept reading.
According to Hanabi, the one who had made the pact intended to use the god of evil to possess Uchiha Nanashi.
"From their perspective, a Uchiha that someone saw fit to seal away would naturally be some kind of terrible villain. There's only so much you can learn about the Warring States period."
A lot of things Hanabi only knew because she had read the "script." Without that, she genuinely wouldn't have known — for instance, that Uchiha Hikari was simply a child starved of love.
Interpreting her as a threat was the obvious read.
"Is something like that even possible?" Neji turned it over in his mind.
"There's at least one confirmed successful test case." Hanabi said.
"Wait — you already looked into this?!" Neji's composure cracked. "Something this dangerous—!"
"Of course."
Hanabi turned, reached back, and gently pulled aside her collar to reveal her back.
"That—!"
"The god of evil's mark." Hanabi said. "Some kind of compressed chakra energy — or information — currently spread out as a seal. What happens if it fully decompresses is anyone's guess."
Sorry, Boruto. I'm borrowing your Karma concept for a little while.