Chapter 197: Who Could It Be?

Chapter 197: Chapter 197: Who Could It Be?

Hyuga Kagami actually wasn’t too worried that the Third would trace Kawa and Homura’s unusual behavior back to him and Shisui.

After all, no one knew what kind of people Kawa and Homura really were. Without understanding their personalities, trying to arbitrarily deduce the logic behind their actions was questionable in itself.

What Kagami truly cared about was the Third’s reaction after hearing that Homura possessed the Mangekyo Sharingan.

From the Third’s startled and uncertain reaction, Kagami immediately realized that Fugaku must have concealed the fact that Homura possessed the Mangekyo Sharingan from him.

"Have these Uchiha lost their damn minds? They were handed such a perfect opportunity to shift the blame—why didn’t they take it!?"

Kagami simply couldn’t make sense of it.

As far as he was concerned, this was the perfect opportunity to dump the blame elsewhere. As long as they pinned the Nine-Tails Incident on the mysterious Homura, whose identity was completely unknown, the village higher-ups’ hostility toward the Uchiha Clan would inevitably decrease.

Yet Fugaku had actually hidden this information from the Third.

Not only had this caused the Uchiha Clan to miss a golden opportunity to shift the blame, it had also deepened the Third’s wariness toward them.

Kagami glanced back at the Hokage Building one more time before putting the matter out of his mind.

By custom, whenever a mission to protect an important person ended with that person being killed, all the shinobi assigned to the mission would be punished. As such, Team 11 should originally have faced extremely severe punishment.

But after the Third personally took action and still returned empty-handed, no one brought up the matter of punishment again.

Thus, not only did every member of Team 11, Kagami included, escape punishment entirely, they were even granted a full week of leave after the grueling battle the previous night.

After thinking it over for a moment, Kagami headed toward the hospital.

At the hospital.

After examining Kagami’s injuries, the medical-nin on duty shook his head. "They’re all just superficial wounds. They’ll heal on their own in a day or two. There’s no need to use Medical Ninjutsu on them."

Kagami smiled. "I’m worried I’ll scare my fiancée looking like this, so please."

The medical-nin said nothing more. Treating injuries of this degree was hardly difficult for him, so he immediately began using Medical Ninjutsu to heal Kagami’s wounds.

Once the treatment was finished, Kagami removed the bandages from his body and quietly left the hospital.

This trip to the hospital had merely been to patch up a small loophole in his disguise.

After all, Kagami was about to meet with Clan Head Hiashi, and the Water Release clone he was currently controlling didn’t have the Caged Bird Curse Seal.

If he went to meet Hiashi using the Water Release clone, there was a very real chance that the absence of the Caged Bird Curse Seal would expose him.

As the head of the Hyuga Clan and someone who held authority over the Caged Bird Curse Seal, Hiashi undoubtedly possessed some kind of secret technique for sensing it.

Therefore, Kagami had to meet Hiashi in his Yin Release original body.

That meant the injuries on his Water Release clone had become a loophole. After all, his Yin Release original body was completely uninjured. Before switching back to it, he needed a reasonable explanation for why the wounds on his Water Release clone had suddenly disappeared.

Before long, Kagami, having switched back to his Yin Release original body, arrived at the Hyuga Clan compound.

Hiashi, who had spent the entire night on edge, immediately summoned Kagami to the main family’s residence upon learning of his arrival. After dismissing everyone else from the room, he anxiously asked, "I’ve already heard about what happened last night. What’s the deal with those two bounty ninjas?"

Kagami shook his head. "I don’t know who they are either. Shisui and I had just brought Gloya’s corpse near the outer wall when we were attacked. They took the corpse from us. We chased them beyond the wall afterward, only to fall into an ambush in the forest."

Hiashi said worriedly, "I heard that even the Third failed to capture them and lost quite a few ANBU in the process. Those two bounty ninjas are definitely no ordinary shinobi!"

After learning that a bounty ninja capable of using Ice Release had become involved in the incident, Hiashi had already ruled out the possibility that Kagami had disguised himself as the bounty ninja.

Instead, he had begun to suspect that Kagami might somehow be working together with the Ice Release bounty ninja. That was why the first thing he asked upon seeing Kagami was about those bounty ninjas.

Upon learning that Kagami didn’t know either of them, Hiashi felt both relieved and worried.

He was relieved that Kagami hadn’t secretly colluded with bounty ninjas of unknown origin.

What worried him was that those two bounty ninjas had taken Gloya’s corpse directly from Kagami’s hands.

In other words, those bounty ninjas knew that Kagami was connected to Gloya’s death.

If they spread word of what had happened, then whether it was Kagami himself or the Hyuga Clan as a whole, they would likely find themselves in considerable trouble.

Seemingly seeing through Hiashi’s concerns, Kagami said, "Clan Head, you don’t need to worry too much. No one is going to believe the word of a couple of bounty ninjas. And there’s even less chance that Lord Hokage would suspect the Hyuga Clan merely because of some rumors spreading outside the village."

Hiashi nodded slightly.

In truth, he understood this as well. Unless Gloya’s corpse had been discovered directly inside the main family’s residence and the Hyuga were caught red-handed, mere rumors from the outside world would have a hard time causing any substantial harm to the Hyuga Clan.

Kagami said, "Clan Head, there are a lot of suspicious points about what happened this time. For Gloya to infiltrate the main family’s residence, someone must have helped him. And whoever that person is, they not only know the layout of the main family’s residence, but also harbor deep hostility toward both the Hyuga Clan and the village. We can’t afford to ignore them!"

Hiashi’s expression darkened at the mention of a traitor within the clan.

What happened last night had clearly been meticulously planned by Kumogakure, and the person who assisted Gloya was almost certainly hiding somewhere within the Hyuga Clan.

After all, even the Third Hokage didn’t know the detailed layout of the main family’s residence.

Only a member of the Hyuga Clan possessing the Byakugan could possibly have helped an outsider bypass layer after layer of guards, infiltrate the main family’s residence without anyone noticing, and even make it all the way into the bedroom of the main family’s young heiress.

After letting out a soft sigh, Hiashi hid nothing from Kagami and said frankly, "I already conducted a preliminary investigation last night, but I found nothing!"

Kagami rubbed his chin as well and murmured, "Who could it be?"

At first, the first person who came to Kagami’s mind was Danzo, but he quickly ruled him out.

For one thing, Danzo didn’t necessarily know the layout of the Hyuga main family’s residence.

For another, Danzo had no reason to do something like this.

Even if he was dissatisfied with the Hyuga Clan, he would only move against them after dealing with the Uchiha. There was no way he would push the Hyuga Clan into the Uchiha’s camp before the Uchiha problem had even been resolved.

Simply put, in the original timeline, whether it was standing by and allowing the Third to die at Orochimaru’s hands or exterminating the Uchiha Clan, Danzo’s objective had always been perfectly clear—

the position of Hokage.

No matter how despicable his methods might have been, he had never intended to destroy Konoha.

The person who had helped Gloya last night, however, had clearly been trying to drag the Hyuga Clan into the mess, incite both the Uchiha and Hyuga—Konoha’s two great clans—to rebel, and plunge Konoha into civil war.

In other words, whoever had helped Gloya was aiming for nothing less than the destruction of the Hyuga Clan...

and the destruction of Konoha itself.