Chapter 3: Ghost in the Serpent's Shadow
"Is something wrong, Isamu-sama?"
The lights were dim. Three scented candles set the mood, their dull red glows illuminating the moderate living space. The aroma of roses and jasmine wafted around the room, and the shut windows ensured they would not escape. The sheets were clean, he'd come fresh out of the shower, and the scented soap he used masked the natural body odor his Inuzuka teammate often complained of.
A pair of rotund breasts bounced before him and filled his hands. Her nipples were hardened enough to protrude, and her areola was a rich pink. His gaze lingered more on them than on her face. She was not unattractive, not truly, but she paled in comparison to some of the other true beauties in his clan. He'd had his eye on her since she was a little girl grasping at the hem of her mother's yukata, too shy and soft-spoken to greet guests.
He'd watched her grow from a child to a young ripe girl of fifteen, and in a way, he'd lived for this moment. She had not become a peerless beauty, but her thighs were slightly thicker than others, and she possessed the most perfect pussy he'd ever gazed his eyes upon. His eyes had seen it since she was six, and fortunately, aging had not changed that part of her in the slightest.
Best of all, Isamu knew without a doubt that she was unsullied. That alone was worth all the promises and empty words of marriage he filled her head with.
In all honesty, Isamu would rather have a peerless beauty like Hanami-sama. Yet, he wasn't so foolish to openly covet the wife of the clan head. Even now, in this moment, thinking of her made his cock harden. He'd occasionally stay in the comfort of his own room and activate his Byakugan, leering into the walls of her residence to latch his gaze on her whilst she was in private. He would stroke his cock tirelessly as he peered past her clothes to her body, which, despite the claims of her being born with a sickly constitution, was not at all lacking.
He wasn't alone in this, of course. In a clan where everyone could see through walls and objects, it'd be a joke to believe that no one had done so for personal benefit. There was likely no Hyūga woman who'd not been seen naked by a Hyūga man. The prim-and-proper, stick-up-the-ass act the entire clan put up was a farce maintained so no one outside their clan would realize that the vast majority of Hyūga were perverts, nudists, and exhibitionists.
"Isamu-sama?"
Isamu tried to smile. "I'm just getting warmed up."
Blasted vixen, he sneered. Do you think this is easy?
Hyūga women were all despicable wenches. Whereas men would gaze at women's bodies to satisfy their lust, women would gaze at men's bodies to judge and evaluate. Isamu was fortunate that he was around average. If he weren't, he'd be as infamous as Maro, whose every movement incurred the stifled laughs of the clan's women, as everyone knew he had a penis the size of a baby's finger.
If he were blessed, then he'd be like Botan, one of the guards in the Branch House who always incurred the hushed whispers and excitement of the women, because he possessed an extraordinary cock of eight-and-a-half inches — the largest in the entire clan.
It was not out of the realm of possibility that he was being watched by the vixen's friends. No doubt, if he failed to prove himself a competent lover, by dawn, there would be no woman surnamed Hyūga who did not know he was a one-minute man.
If not that, then some of his adversaries amongst the clan were watching him. They wanted to see him fail so they could mock his performance and steal his toy from him.
The burden lay entirely on him, as the man, to perform. The burden was so heavy that Isamu was beginning to question if the ten minutes or so of pleasure he would get from her tight virgin cunt would be worth the potential blow to his reputation if he failed.
Alas, he was a man, and it was the duty of men to shoulder heavy burdens.
He'd spread her legs mercilessly and prepared himself to pierce her when a chill ran down his spine. He snapped his head behind him but found no presence whatsoever.
What was that?
He could have sworn that there was a dagger at his neck. There was a feeling, as though someone was not only watching him, but they were out to kill him.
Isamu swiftly formed the Horse and Tiger hand seals with his index fingers. "Byakugan!"
His eyes scanned the full breadth of his living quarters, yet, found nothing. There were no chakra signatures, no presences save for him and his toy, and nothing out of the ordinary in the slightest.
He deactivated his eyes, and let out a breath.
Is the stress of the situation making me paranoid?
"Isamu-sama?"
The vixen was clearly confused. Fortunately, she was not impatient. She was stupid like that. A stupid little girl he would enjoy now and again to wet his cock between missions. In the end, she was just a peon of the Branch House, and he was a nephew of an Elder of the Main House. All the promises he'd uttered of marriage were empty words, and if her father were to try to speak up, he'd tell his Aunt to suppress him with the Caged Bird Seal.
I've been thinking too much!
There was nothing for him to worry about.
Isamu spread her legs again —
Something struck his neck.
His eyes bulged momentarily, before rolling into the back of his head. He collapsed, frothing at the mouth. The young girl accompanying him attempted to scream, only for something to strike her neck, as she, too, collapsed without a single word.
Isamu's thoughts had not been wrong. Mere minutes after both parties collapsed, two girls burst into the room with their Byakugan active.
Yet, no matter how much they searched —
They found nothing.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
A small boy slid across a wooden floor unseen and soundless. He evaded physical contact with anyone, and danced between a group of guards, all of them possessing bulging, vein-riddled eyes and examining the area viciously. One guard, in particular, locked his gaze directly on him, only to swiftly move along, searching underneath beds, between corridors and cupboards, and completely ignoring his presence entirely.
Zi Wuji stuck himself to the roof of the room, his mastery of the adhesive properties of chakra making it so the action was as seamless as breathing. The man, Isamu, had been covered with a white cloth whereas the girl with him, Akina, had awoken mere moments later, confused and terrified.
The questions they asked her were standard but grew increasingly accusatory as time passed by. The two women who'd discovered them also gave their account of events to the guards. The guards did not raise any eyebrows once the women blatantly confessed to have been watching the entire event of two people having sex, as though it were a common occurrence. Their narration of events was the same — Isamu looked behind him, activated his Byakugan as though he'd seen something, deactivated it, and then collapsed to the ground a moment later, dead.
Zi Wuji didn't wait long until the two women were incriminated along with their friend. Within moments, an Elder of the Sect arrived. The elderly woman had a stern, cold demeanor, and long graying hair. Once she removed the cloth covering Isamu, her cold demeanor vanished, and the only thing left was pure, unbridled rage.
"Kazuhiko-sama, please, we had nothing to do with —"
"Silence!"
Zi Wuji activated his eyes. The Elder made a strange hand seal. He peered into her chakra circulatory system, watching, observing, and memorizing the precise method by which the chakra flowed. Moments later, a pulse of chakra traveled out of her body, and he watched the skulls of the three girls alight. They hit the ground, screaming and grasping at their foreheads.
His eyes shot to their heads, to the chakra imbued and engraved into their skull. Witnessing the effects of his Byakugan deepened his understanding. Miniscule daggers formed and began piercing their brains. Upon contact with brain matter, the phantom daggers of chakra spun rapidly, drilling into the brains of the women, and their screams intensified a hundredfold.
This… this is… a formation? Zi Wuji sucked in a deep breath. From the method of activation to the means of operation… this is indeed a simplified formation, only that it utilizes chakra instead of Qi…
The Elder held no mercy in her heart, and from start to finish, kept her hand in the strange seal which sent out a specific pulse of chakra, triggering the formation in the women's skulls. Zi Wuji memorized not just the seal, but the method by which the woman's chakra circulated. He did this whilst watching the effects amplify.
Permanent brain damage, Zi Wuji clicked his tongue. She does not intend to show mercy.
The Elder did not release the seal until the three women's brains were hacked and slashed into a slushy mush pile within their skulls. Only when they stopped screaming and blood dribbled from their noses, did the Elder's anger dissipate. She barked an order to the guards to dispose of the women and take her nephew's corpse somewhere, and the guards, shaken, eagerly bowed and listened to her commands.
Zi Wuji slid down the wall and exited the room. He moved on the roof, sliding silently until he reached his destination, the quarters reserved for him and his father.
To a casual observer, it would appear as though there were sudden ripples in the air, and a young boy was painted into reality with massive strokes of a brush. His white eyes were keen and activated, and a contemplative expression lay deep on his lips.
To think my recreation of the Phantom Treading Steps would be at a level where not even those who are old and experienced can see, hear or sense my presence…
Zi Wuji frowned.
Yet I was almost detected when I attempted to kill. Masking killing intent is far harder than masking chakra….
His recreation of the Phantom Treading Steps worked on the same basis of repulsion and attraction inherent in the most basic of techniques, the Tree Walking Exercise. Repelling sound waves was the first step, and repelling light was the second step. Combining those two steps together made him invisible and inaudible, but as he'd been experimenting, he'd learned that to truly be undetected, he needed to mask his chakra.
He knew the location of all 361 points of his body where chakra escaped from, and as an infant, he had very little chakra, to begin with. Suppressing his chakra to become undetectable was not a challenge when his eyes could act as a guide to tell him how effectively he was doing so.
The hardest part of mastering the technique was learning to deceive the Byakugan.
The Byakugan's greatest strength, the ability to pierce through layers of objects, was ironically its greatest flaw. When looking at a person, there were numerous layers. The first was the layer of cloth or armor. The second was the layer of skin, then the integumentary system, then the central nervous system, then the chakra circulatory system, and finally, the skeletal system.
When gazing through a wall to the room beyond it, the wall became invisible, and as such, out of the perception of the eyes so the brain could focus on the information the user wanted to see. The problem did not lay in the eyes, but in the limited brain capacity of the users. Attempting to gaze at all layers at once would only create a confusing mesh, so most focused on one layer at a time.
Zi Wuji discovered this was exploitable.
Using a thin sheet of chakra over his body, he hid between layers and effectively made it so he was in the blindspot of the Byakugan at all times. He would not register as an 'object' to be seen, but as something to peer past. The illusion worked in the same manner as how one's nose was always directly in their line of sight, but unless one actually focused on their nose, they would not recognize its existence.
They needed to know where he was and focus on him to find him, but they couldn't know where he was unless they first found him, and they couldn't find him unless they knew where he was —
It was a catch-22 situation that guaranteed he would never be detected by the Byakugan.
It was outright impossible to discover this weakness without an innate understanding of how the Byakugan functioned, meaning only a person with a Byakugan was capable of finding this flaw and only a person with a Byakugan was capable of exploiting it.
As far as Zi Wuji could tell, no one else in the Hyūga Clan would put so much effort into learning how to subvert and defeat their own eyes, thus, no one else would ever consider the existence of such a technique.
I have what I need to ensure my escape, but… there is the matter of learning that Seal…
He'd sacrificed three lives in order to witness the activation method for the Caged Bird Seal firsthand. He was confident enough to be able to replicate the necessary flow of chakra and utilize it, which meant he could control anyone in the Branch Clan.
However, Zi Wuji's ambition could not be sated.
I must learn how to graft it!
Having such a potent formation in his arsenal would make his life easier. He could think of no less than eight ways to modify it to his benefit, and it was for that reason he had not yet departed from the clan.
Three years… I must wait three years….
He was not impatient. He'd spent eighty years in search of the Way Codex, and cultivators were known to spend decades sitting in meditation to improve their cultivation. A measly three years of time to get his hands upon the means to inscribe such a potent seal was nothing.
In these three years… I will make it so no one in this clan will be my equal!
If I do not succeed, let the heavens tear my name from me, for I am not fit to be called Zi Wuji!
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
The event with Isamu was covered up as a conspiracy by the Branch Clan to kill him. Those who knew the women involved and knew they would never do such a thing were infuriated, but, like the pitiful slaves they were, all they could do was keep their heads down and chew their tongues as though they'd sucked on bittered lemons.
The Elder was not punished for killing the three women. Their lives were disposable, it seemed, like cattle, and it made Zi Wuji sneer. As much as he would desire to kill everyone involved, both the slaves and the slave-owners, he reigned in his temperament and focused only on his training, in preparation for the future.
Within the span of a few weeks, Zi Wuji mastered his utilization of the Byakugan to be able to gaze at anything and everything within a kilometer range. From the lowly fisherman reeling in his latest catch, to the restaurant owner dishing up a hot plate of ramen noodles, to the shinobi, hopping about on rooftops and running in strange manners with their hands placed behind them and their body streamlined forward.
Zi Wuji trained his eyes to read books and scrolls even if they were closed or furled up. As such, he was able to gain access to sensitive or private information and gather more knowledge of his world and surroundings.
From the comfort of his own room, he perused the depths of the Hyūga Library.
This was how he learned the name of the 'village' he resided in. Konohagakure no Sato. The Village Hidden in the Leaves. The second thing he'd learned, was that this 'village' was known as a Shinobi Village. The leader of a shinobi village was a man called a Shadow, and in Konoha's case, it was the Fire Shadow — the Hokage.
The books in the library mentioned how the Hyūga Clan came to be. About a century or so earlier, the entire world was at war in a period known as the Warring Clans Era, which ended with the creation of the village of Konoha by two men, Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara.
The Hyūga were approached by the Senju and after finding the agreement to be to their benefit, joined the village of Konoha.
The more he read, however, the more he found himself enlightened. He learned of the nature of Byakugan, and the myths, and legends surrounding it. Some nonsense about a man on the moon, and legends of balls that sought truth. He ignored the vast majority of fables however mildly entertaining they were and searched for more concrete and reliable information.
The most obvious thing he learned, was the unique fighting style derived from the ability of the Byakugan called the Gentle Fist.
So, they at least have this much awareness… but…
The method he'd used to kill Isamu had involved a swift strike towards the vagus nerve, accompanying an imperceptible pulse of chakra that damaged the brain. To Zi Wuji's surprise, this was the basis of the martial art of the Hyūga.
He'd spied on two siblings training and observed the manner they fought. The stances they began with were firm and solid and reminded Zi Wuji of the Wudang Sect's Eternal Taiji Revolving Art. Their movements were light, lithe, and fast. They attacked not with great physical force, but with gentle taps against the enemy.
They were targeting the other's chakra system. Not only that, they were striking extremely specific places — tenketsu, he learned they were called — and injecting their own chakra into that of their foe in order to cause internal injuries, all while blocking their foe's ability to channel their chakra accurately.
What buffoon crafted such an unbalanced Martial Art?
Zi Wuji observed the Gentle Fist for mere minutes and spotted numerous flaws within it. The blockage of the enemy's chakra was temporary and the martial art was useless against a faster opponent. If the foe possessed too vast a chakra quantity then blocking a few tenketsu would do no good. Furthermore, there were no ranged attacks, meaning, the Gentle Fist practitioners were useless against an opponent at mid-to-long range. Even worse, the martial art was so rigid it did not have the means to implement weapons.
A half-descent swordsman or spearman would have far longer range and reach, and would sooner slice off the fingers of the enemy than let them approach to block their chakra.
Pitiful. They are but glass cannons.
If the Gentle Fist practitioner was to target the internal organs rather than the chakra pathway, a single strike would result in the death of the enemy. However, due to the method they trained, they did not have much, if any experience taking solid hits, which meant their overall endurance to physical trauma was low.
Lethal at close-range, but useless at mid-to-long range… was there anyone who would be foolish enough to engage them at close range, then? Wouldn't anyone with a brain immediately grasp that the key to defeating a Hyūga was to stay at range?
He clicked his tongue.
Long and mid-range… I will need to find means to compensate for both,
Zi Wuji studied the movements of the Gentle Fist in-depth and began practicing them. Eliminating wasted motions, removing the rigidity, and finding ways to cover the weaknesses and the lack of weapons were things he added to his list.
By observing and stimulating the parts of his brain responsible for muscle memory when moving, he found it easier to repeat the actions until they become subconscious.
Then, Zi Wuji learned something even stranger.
Nin…Jutsu?
Within the scrolls in the Hyūga Clan Library were mentions of the esoteric art of ninja techniques.
Ah, so that is what they call Qi Arts in this world, is it? And the Hyūga do not use them… out of… pride?
Once more, Zi Wuji's estimation of the clan fell.
Genjutsu… Illusion Arts…?
His curiosity could not be sated.
A few weeks after the incident with Isamu, when his father returned home from a mission, Zi Wuji assaulted the man with questions.
"Genjutsu?"
"Do you not know any, father?"
"We don't practice genjutsu, Neji-kun."
"Why?"
"It's… not traditional."
"Why?"
"Our clan is famed for our taijutsu expertise, and our signature taijutsu style, the Gentle Fist."
"So we're not allowed to learn things outside of the clan martial arts?"
"Well, no one's going to stop you from doing so, but it's generally frowned upon."
"Ninjutsu as well?"
"Apart from the basic three you'll learn at the academy, and maybe perhaps the Shunshin — we don't particularly use Ninjutsu."
Those words brought Zi Wuji pause.
"...Academy?"
XXXXXXXXXXX
They were fools.
They were all fools.
This entire world was filled with fools.
His father had been against it at first, claiming that he wanted to wait until he was older, but Zi Wuji would have none of it. He insisted and insisted, and when that failed, he played on the man's emotions by pointing out how 'lonely' and 'empty' he felt whenever his father went on missions, and how much 'better' he'd feel if he were occupied during the day.
Guilt was a strong enough motivator, and within a couple of days, Zi Wuji found himself on the outskirts of his clan walls for the first time in his life and standing in front of an actual school building. He'd drawn numerous raised eyebrows upon approaching, and his instructors had seemed weary.
They were reluctant to let him enroll, but also reluctant to offend his father. All of this ended when his father told him to walk up the wall, and the men in dull green jackets scoffed a little, before collectively gasping as he not only walked up the wall of the classroom but began to walk upside down on the ceiling.
Minutes later, they'd put out a written test checking his vocabulary, a test for basic arithmetic, and then, a third and final test, the strangest of which baffled him. He could not tell if the test was too advanced for children his age, or if such was actually the standard of the world. It was filled with numerous calculations, discussions on trigonometry, logic puzzles, and trick questions amongst others.
For a moment, he contemplated failing most of it on purpose, but it was not his style. Should he fail it and it turned out to indeed be a standard test, they would doubt his intellect, and might refuse his entry. As such, he answered it to the best of his abilities.
The looks of terror and amazement on the faces of the teachers when the results came out did not bode well, especially considering how his usually stern and taciturn father was grinning ear-to-ear in public, as though he'd won a bountiful fortune.
Zi Wuji would only learn later on, at dinner, that the third test he'd taken was something called an 'IQ' test. "IQ" meant 'Intelligence Quotient' and was a means to calculate the intelligence of someone. The entire thing almost made Zi Wuji laugh.
As though a paper with a bunch of pointless and impractical questions could be used to quantify one's intellect.
Apparently, when his age was factored into account, his score was nearing 280. He didn't really understand why such a value was a big deal, and he wasn't actually a child but a cultivator reincarnated into a child's body, which was all the more reason he did not put any stock into it.
The next day, he'd been set off with a backpack and numerous school books, and could not escape the whispers from the children and the adults around him.
"That's him…"
"The Hyūga Progidy…"
"Youngest ever… in history…"
It hadn't taken long to realize his name was now etched in the history books. At eleven months of age, he was the youngest to ever enroll in the Academy since its foundation. His teachers introduced him to his class, most of which were between the ages of four to eleven, and Zi Wuji paid little attention to the introductory words of the teacher, and little attention still to the evaluating gazes of his classmates.
They are all fools.
The knowledge he'd sought about the world was handed over to him, for free.
The world he was in was called the Elemental Nations. The country he was in was known as Hi no Kuni — the Land of Fire and was amongst the Five Great Shinobi Countries with the Land of Wind, Land of Earth, Land of Water, and the Land of Lightning.
The current leader of his village was a man called Namikaze Minato. There had been Three Great Shinobi Wars, each one supposedly more volatile than the last. Shinobi were divided into ranks, with most of his teachers being of the rank of Chūnin. They made up the vast majority of the workforce of the shinobi village, and were otherwise clanless, with their only affiliation being that of the village itself. Their skills were more advanced than the beginner Genin but about sorely lacking compared to the truly skilled individuals referred to as Jōnin.
The fact that all of this information was so freely given and accessible was not what made Zi Wuji call them fools. The fact that his teachers swiftly realized he was too advanced to be placed in the beginner classes was also not what made him consider them fools.
No, what made Zi Wuji consider this a world of fools, was his first ever day in the advanced class, wherein the Chūnin instructor loudly claimed the lie that Ninjutsu could only be performed by utilizing hand signs. What made Zi Wuji realize the sheer foolishness, was not only the man spouting this lie and believing it —
But it was when the man performed his first 'demonstration'.
With a puff of smoke, the brown-haired, nondescript man morphed into a taller, handsome, blond-haired, blue-eyed man wearing a white coat and with flames licking the edges.
Zi Wuji sucked in a deep, heavy breath of air, and grasped at his chest to prevent himself from screaming obscenities.
Veracious Heaven Transformation Art!
His Byakugan was active, so there was no mistaking it. The transformation was not an illusion. It was not a trick of his eyes. The transformation was solid. One hundred percent, it was a solid transformation. The man in front of him had used chakra to cloak his entire body and change it to that of an entirely different person.
And, to the denizens of this world, this was a low-rank technique.
FOOOOOLS!
Zi Wuji nearly screamed at the top of his lungs. The Veracious Heaven Transformation Art in the Rain World was a technique so feared and revered, that when rumors of a single page documenting its methods were discovered, it led to a massive war between sects to acquire it. The power to change one's physical form was a power that defied the heavens. It was on the same level as the Way Codex, in so much that one could alter their body as they wished and spit in the eye of fate and destiny.
The so-called, Henge, or Transformation Jutsu the instructor displayed was clearly inferior, but it was still a solid transformation. The instructor made it clear when he moved, touched objects, and lifted things and his body made the corresponding actions.
Zi Wuji nearly ripped his hair off his head. He nearly started hyperventilating when he observed the correct flow of chakra needed to perform the technique and found it utterly inconsequential to learn in lieu of his perfect control.
The more detail one added to the technique, the more realistic it became. As someone with the Byakugan that was able to zoom ten times over, attention to detail was something he possessed in spades.
The teacher asked everyone to practice the technique, but Zi Wuji didn't need to practice. He molded his chakra perfectly, in the same manner, he saw the teacher do it, and transformed into a perfect copy of the man, such that the entire classroom went silent.
"T-that's… v-very impressive, Hyūga-san —"
"Excuse me? Why are you pretending to be me, Hyūga-san?"
"What? I'm not —"
"You can undo the transformation now, Hyūga-san."
'What do you mean by that? Oi! That isn't funny!"
"I'm not joking —"
"O! Oi! I'm the teacher here!"
"Oh? Then, let's turn to the students. Which of us do you think is the real sensei?"
Zi Wuji watched the students all incorrectly assume the original was the impostor, and the impostor was the original. Only after they'd all made the mistake, did he revert his technique, silently returning to his seat without another word.
Fools.
They truly, truly, had no idea as to just what they'd unleashed upon the world.
Complete and utter fools.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Neckbeard_Satan
Neckbeard_Satan Before anyone asks:
Yes, the Transformation Technique is canonically a solid transformation. Numerous moments in the series prove this, the most famous being Naruto transforming into a fuma shuriken and being thrown by Sasuke during the Wave Arc, and his joint transformation with Gamabunta into a fake-Kurama to fight Shukaku during the Chunin Exams arc.
It is not, and has never been, an 'illusory' technique.
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