บท 177: Chapter 176: Millennium Clan History: The Hyuga Burial Ground

Hizashi Hyuga took out a soldier pill, swallowed it with some water, and looked up at the distant mountain peak.

The mountain stood about three hundred meters tall, with a slender middle and broad ends, resembling a gourd. A waterfall cascaded down its side like a ribbon tied to the gourd.

It was exactly like the illustration on the scroll.

This is the place...

Hizashi breathed a sigh of relief, gripping the scroll tightly. He patiently grounded every fiber of it into dust. Once the scroll was completely destroyed, he gathered the harder remnants, piecing them together according to the method his brother Hiashi had taught him, and it surprisingly formed a key.

The Hyuga Clan's Burial Grounds were an absolute forbidden zone, with only three people knowing its exact location: the "Clan Leader," the "Gravekeeper," and the "Hidden Elder." The secrecy was well-maintained.

The entrance to the burial grounds was entirely mechanical, with chakra-based techniques only found deep underground, making it difficult for any shinobi to detect. Additionally, the area was remote, far from any major roads, so ordinary people would have no reason to venture close.

Hizashi had left the village, traveling over mountains and through rivers, taking winding paths to ensure he wasn't followed. A ninja with the Byakugan was already hard to track, and as the head of the branch family, Hizashi believed that with such caution, no one could possibly be tailing him.

He rested for a while before continuing his journey.

Less than an hour later, Hizashi arrived at the foot of the gourd-shaped mountain, standing under a giant tree.

'This is the resting place of countless Hyuga ancestors...' Hizashi inserted the key into the mechanism, and the entrance slowly opened, revealing a deep darkness.

'The resting place of ancestors... it will also be my tomb,' Hizashi thought, a wave of sorrow washing over him, even though he was a shinobi of strong will.

With lingering affection for his wife and child, Hizashi turned to take one last look at the bright world outside.

But this final glance sent a chill down his spine.

Beneath a large tree stood a young man with pure white eyes, his right arm wrapped in a black bandage, seemingly smiling at him.

'Yuto Hyuga... he's been following me all along?'

The thought barely formed when a roar exploded in Hizashi's mind.

"Revolv..." Hizashi was shocked, channeling all his chakra to perform the Hyuga clan's famed defensive technique.

"Lion's Fang Bite!" But before Hizashi could spin his chakra, Yuto struck, appearing right in front of him.

As a master of Gentle Fist, Yuto knew the weakness of Revolving Heaven all too well.

With a heavy stomp, his foot, enhanced with chakra, smashed into Hizashi's leg, breaking it along with the rock beneath.

At the same time, Yuto's hand, clad in Lion's Fang, pierced through Hizashi's abdomen, twisting violently and shattering the branch family's head's spine.

One was on the verge of entering his grave, seeking to end his days in peace; the other had been lurking in wait, with focus levels worlds apart. The fight started and ended in an instant.

Yuto withdrew his hand, flicking off the blood, and curiously asked, "Hizashi-sama, you kept zigzagging along the way. I thought you noticed me... Spending so much time to shake off any potential tail, this place must be really important, right?"

Hizashi, his eyes lifeless, leaned against the edge of the entrance, blood foaming from his mouth, unable to speak.

With his spine shattered and abdomen pierced, Hizashi was no Uzumaki or Senju; he didn't possess such extraordinary vitality.

As he watched Hizashi's breath grow weaker, Yuto shook his head and casually put him into a sealed scroll before entering the cave alone.

The cave was dark and silent, sloping downward at a fixed angle, leading deep underground. Yet, it wasn't damp, nor was there any musty smell, indicating the considerable effort and labor put into its construction.

Fearless and skilled, Yuto, with his Byakugan activated, walked deeper into the cave, almost as if taking a leisurely stroll.

Around seven hundred meters below the surface, wooden reliefs began to appear on the walls of the underground passage. In Yuto's Byakugan-enhanced vision, these wooden reliefs emitted a unique chakra, clearly protected by secret techniques inscribed to prevent decay.

The first relief depicted two hands clasped together, one with a leaf symbol on the wrist and the other with a tomoe. Below the hands was an eye without pupils, though it was engraved with symbols representing the sky.

Yuto tilted his head, recognizing that this relief likely depicted the founding of Konohagakure, with the pupil-less eye possibly symbolizing Ryusuke Hyuga.

The second relief showed a sea of flames, with countless pupil-less eyes struggling in the fire. The artist, evidently a master with vivid imagination, depicted numerous arms extending from the pupil-less eyes, their twisted forms portraying a hellish, tragic scene.

This event happened thirty-five years before the founding of Konoha, a brutal battle known as the "Shinoyahara Uprising," which devastated the Hyuga clan, and claimed the life of Ryusuke Hyuga's father.

Yuto had only read about this battle in passing in books; the elders never went into detail during their teachings.

He glanced at it briefly before continuing downwards.

Relief after relief appeared before Yuto, each becoming older and older as he delved deeper.

Starting from the fourth relief, Yuto could no longer recognize the events depicted. This was the flaw in the current education within Konoha and the major clans; they focused heavily on the history after the founding of Konoha, rarely delving into events prior.

Of course, even without knowing the exact history or dates, Yuto could still understand some of the stories.

In front of the twentieth relief after the "Founding of Konoha," Yuto paused for a long time.

This relief depicted only two figures: a towering shadow of a person and the caged bird curse mark. The artist had used chaotic, almost frenzied lines to portray the scene, with such force that it seemed to pierce through the wooden fibers of the relief and into the stone wall behind it.

—The beginning of the Caged Bird Seal.

Yuto's hand brushed over the chaotic, angry lines, taking a long moment to regain his composure before moving forward to explore.

After a seemingly endless darkness, he finally reached the end.

The final relief depicted a giant tree.

Countless tiny human figures knelt around the tree, its branches bearing many bizarre fruits: tomoe, pupil-less eyes, bones...

This relief told the story of the origin of chakra, a creation myth for shinobi. But except for Yuto Hyuga, a transmigrator, and the Ōtsutsuki clan, no one else knew the true meaning of this relief.

But even without knowing the full meaning, the Hyuga clan still preserved these reliefs in The Hyuga Burial Ground. The depth of a thousand-year-old clan was more than just Gentle Fist and the Byakugan.

Taking a deep breath, Yuto walked past the relief corridor and entered the final chamber of the underground world.

It was a hemispherical "stone grotto," with countless holes carved into the rock walls. Each hole was of a standard length, densely packed, resembling eyes staring at Yuto from the darkness.

Yuto's fingers trembled slightly, not out of fear, but from uncontrollable excitement!

In his Byakugan's vision, the contents of these grottoes were clearly visible—countless Hyuga corpses lay in coffins within the caves, most of them well-preserved.

"What luck..." Yuto exhaled deeply.

His original plan had been to capture Hizashi, turn him into a puppet, and deceive Hiashi to obtain more corpses of his clan. But he hadn't expected this trip to yield so much more than anticipated—he had found the tomb storing the Hyuga clan's corpses!

Roughly estimating, there were at least tens of thousands of corpses here. If all were turned into masks, they would stack up higher than Yuto himself!

This was definitely going to be a profitable endeavor.

(End of Chapter)

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