Chapter 172: A Malignant Tumor

Chapter 172: Chapter 172: A Malignant Tumor

The instant he stopped Hiashi, Hyuga Kagami shouted, "Clan Head, don’t act rashly! He’s the chief envoy of Kumogakure!"

Hiashi’s expression immediately turned grave upon hearing this, and the biting killing intent emanating from his body vanished without a trace.

As the head of the prestigious Hyuga Clan of Konoha, Hiashi naturally understood just how sensitive Gloya’s status as Kumogakure’s chief envoy was. If something happened to him within the Hyuga Clan compound, the consequences would be unimaginable.

Shisui shouted furiously, "Gloya, are you trying to start a war?!"

Never in his wildest expectations had he imagined that Gloya, the chief of Kumogakure’s delegation, would actually sneak into the Hyuga Main Family residence and even attempt to abduct the heiress of the Main Family.

Gloya pulled out a kunai and pressed it against Hinata’s throat.

Hinata had long since fallen unconscious and was completely unaware of what was happening. But when the sharp kunai pressed against her pale neck, a faint expression of pain unconsciously appeared on her young face.

Seeing this, Hiashi immediately roared, "Stop!"

Gloya made no further move. Instead, he chuckled softly and said, "Heh, I didn’t expect you to notice me so quickly!"

Kagami’s gaze grew profound, his expression darkening.

Gloya’s composure at this moment gave Kagami a faint sense of unease. What puzzled him even more was how Gloya had managed to infiltrate the Hyuga Main Family residence without making a sound.

"Something’s not right. How did he get past all those layers of guards and sneak into Hinata’s bedroom?"

In an instant, a question took root in Kagami’s mind.

Because of the Byakugan, the security surrounding the Hyuga Main Family residence was hardly inferior to that of the Hokage Building. Even Kagami himself wasn’t completely confident that he could sneak into Hinata’s bedroom without being detected.

Logically speaking, Gloya knew nothing about the layout of the Hyuga Main Family residence, so successfully infiltrating it should have been even more impossible for him.

Yet the fact remained that Gloya had not only successfully infiltrated the bedroom of Hinata, the young lady of the Main Family, but had even come within a hair’s breadth of abducting her from the residence.

At the thought that the hard-won peace might now go up in flames, Shisui was both furious and bewildered as he demanded, "Why?! Does Kumogakure really crave war that badly?"

"No!"

Gloya suddenly let out a strangely emotional growl.

"If that’s the case, then why are you doing this?" Kagami asked coldly before curling his lips. "Don’t tell me all of this is just for a pair of Byakugan?"

"Byakugan?! Hmph! In my eyes, bloodline abilities like yours aren’t worth a damn!"

Gloya pressed the kunai harder against Hinata’s throat. Its razor-sharp edge sliced through her skin, and a thin streak of crimson blood trickled down.

Shisui was completely baffled. "If you’re not after the Byakugan Kekkei Genkai, then why did you sneak into the Hyuga Clan compound in the middle of the night? And why did you try to abduct the young lady of the Hyuga Main Family?"

Gloya gradually calmed down, returning to his previous cold composure. "Malignant tumors like you would never understand!"

Hiashi slowly activated his Byakugan, his gaze locked firmly onto Gloya as he searched for an opportunity to rescue Hinata.

Kagami, however, knitted his brows tightly.

He had realized that Gloya seemed to have already resolved himself to die.

After pondering for a moment, Kagami probed, "Let Hinata go. We can pretend none of this ever happened."

Gloya gave a mocking smile. "As expected of a village accustomed to deceiving itself. Even an act as vile as mine can be tolerated?"

Shisui snapped angrily, "We’re giving you a chance to live, and you’re still not satisfied? You bastard—"

Kagami stopped Shisui and said in a low voice, "Enough. He never intended to leave here alive in the first place!"

By this point, Kagami had vaguely guessed the deeper purpose behind Gloya’s attempt to abduct Hinata.

There was just one thing he still couldn’t understand.

What exactly was Gloya trying to accomplish by staking his own life to set up this scheme?!

Gloya sized Kagami up for a moment and made no attempt to deny it. "That’s right. You guessed correctly."

Shisui asked in confusion, "Why?!"

Gloya’s expression became calm.

"To eliminate the malignant tumor of the shinobi world!"

"Malignant tumor!?" Kagami paused, then said with an intrigued expression, "This ’malignant tumor’ you’re talking about... you wouldn’t happen to mean Konoha, would you?"

Having already resolved himself to die, Gloya spoke frankly. "Konoha indulges and upholds the hidden-village system. Doesn’t that make you the malignant tumor of the shinobi world? Your First Hokage clearly possessed the power to unify the entire shinobi world, yet he stood by and watched as one hostile hidden village after another was established. Doesn’t that make Konoha the very source of these wars?"

Shisui was immediately at a loss for words. "That..."

Hiashi’s expression also grew solemn. He had never expected Gloya to say something like this.

"Why didn’t your First Hokage unify the shinobi world and put an end to war once and for all?" After a brief pause, Gloya continued his interrogation. "Why did he create these war machines called hidden villages?"

Faced with Gloya’s questioning, Shisui was left speechless, while Hiashi remained silent.

For those who had only recently lived through the Third Shinobi World War, the horrors of war weren’t mere descriptions written on the pages of a book.

They were painful experiences they had endured firsthand.

Those memories had been carved so deeply into them that even now, many shinobi only had to close their eyes to once again see the mountains of corpses and seas of blood that had covered the battlefields.

Tracing things back to their source, the establishment of the hidden villages truly had been one of the primary reasons warfare had grown so drastically in intensity.

During the thousand-year Warring States Period, although chaos and conflict had been constant, the major shinobi clans still had to consider the survival and continuation of their bloodlines. As a result, conflicts between clans would generally stop before reaching the point of mutual destruction, and battles where both sides fought to complete annihilation were exceedingly rare.

Thus, while warfare had been incessant during the Warring States Period, its overall intensity had remained relatively limited.

But after the establishment of the hidden villages, both the scale and intensity of warfare increased dozens of times over almost overnight.

Countless Kekkei Genkai clans and secret-technique clans whose legacies had endured for a thousand years either vanished entirely or fell into decline within the mere forty or fifty years following the establishment of the hidden villages.

Take the Yuki Clan with their Ice Release, the Kaguya Clan with their Shikotsumyaku, and the Uzumaki Clan with their Sage Bodies, for example. All of them had once been renowned Kekkei Genkai clans during the Warring States Period, yet now every one of them had been wiped out, leaving behind only a handful of surviving clansmen scattered throughout the shinobi world.

Even the Senju Clan, which founded Konoha, had dwindled to only a few members and was now on the verge of extinction.

As for weaker secret-technique clans, such as the Hatake Clan, renowned for its swordsmanship, and the Kato Clan, masters of the ’Spirit Transformation Technique,’ they had fared even worse—some had gone extinct altogether, while others had fallen into decline.

And if the conflict between the Uchiha Clan and the village continued to deteriorate, then within just a few years, even the Uchiha—the Kekkei Genkai clan that had founded Konoha alongside the Senju—would disappear from the shinobi world.

"Since Konoha lacks the ambition to unify the shinobi world, then let us of Kumogakure do it!"

Gloya sneered coldly before continuing, "For the sake of ultimate peace, my sacrifice is nothing!"

Seeing that Gloya was about to make his move, Kagami’s gaze sharpened, and he shouted to Shisui beside him, "Quick! Use genjutsu to restrain him!"

Shisui hurriedly activated his Sharingan. The three tomoe within his crimson eyes spun rapidly as he cast a genjutsu on Gloya...