Chapter 166: The Mysterious Disappearance Of Uchiha Shisui
Before he could finish speaking, Shisui felt a broad palm wearing black gloves gently rest on his shoulder.
The next Moment!
There was no warning, no sense of spatial distortion!
Shisui only felt a discomforting twist in his body!
It was as if the entire world had been instantly crushed and reassembled by an invisible giant hand!
The whistling wind in his ears, the rustling of leaves, the buzzing of insect swarms…
All sounds vanished without a trace in an instant!
In their place was a heart-palpitating sense of weightlessness and spatial pulling!
It felt like just an instant, yet also like a long time had passed.
His feet touched solid ground again.
The surrounding environment had completely changed.
The cold damp forest aura was replaced by a scent mixed with disinfectant.
The air was dry and constant, carrying the unique coldness of a laboratory.
The ground under his feet had changed from soil to metal floor.
In his ears was a low, rhythmic mechanical hum.
The chakra chains binding him loosened and retracted like living things, vanishing into Shura’s wide sleeves.
The heavy seal power also disappeared with it.
“Cough cough…” Without the chains’ support, Shisui’s severely injured body staggered, nearly collapsing.
He barely steadied himself, his ears twitching slightly, as if sensing this vast space through hearing.
Here…!
“The person has been brought.” Shura’s low voice rang out, addressed to another person in this space.
Two figures slowly walked out from behind an instrument flashing with complex data.
One wore a white lab coat and a white surgical cap, softly humming an unknown tune, approaching the operating table and preparing various instruments and one-tomoe Sharingan eyes for transplantation.
The other wore a deep blue high-collared long robe, outlining a slender yet powerful figure.
Raven-like long hair draped down, covering half of the right face.
The exposed skin was nearly transparent white under the cold lights.
A pair of eyes like the finest black jade, deep, cold, and calm, quietly fixed on the disheveled Shisui.
That gaze carried a detached scrutiny like examining an experimental subject.
It was Uchiha Hikari.
“With your eye power, in a one-on-one, there shouldn’t be anyone in Konoha who can beat you.” Uchiha Hikari crossed her arms. When Menma mentioned that Shisui Uchiha had been ambushed and had his eyes gouged, she hadn’t quite believed it.
Now seeing Shisui with one eye covered by an eyepatch and the empty socket of his right eye bleeding, for some reason, a surge of anger rose from the bottom of Uchiha Hikari’s heart.
For a dojutsu bloodline limit family, gouging eyes was the gravest humiliation!
Even if Shisui had lost one eye, in this more than a year of growth, he wouldn’t be weaker than when he fought her back then.
Yet he had been ambushed and lost his last eye.
Thinking of how Shisui had earnestly urged her to return to Konoha with him.
Uchiha Hikari found it amusing.
Hearing this voice, Shisui’s heart sank sharply.
Even though a year and a half had passed since their last clash, the oppression from Uchiha Hikari never faded with time.
Instead, as Shisui grew, he increasingly felt Uchiha Hikari’s strength was unfathomable.
Shura’s face with the white three-eyed fox mask turned toward Shisui, his voice flat yet announcing a cruel decision: “In a bit, we’ll transplant a new pair of one-tomoe Sharingan eyes for you. That should be enough.”
As if stating something trivial.
Uchiha Hikari said nothing, merely nodding slightly to Menma.
The shadow clone in the white lab coat had already moved to the operating table nearby, fingers fiddling with cold metal, producing faint clinking and friction sounds.
A sealed metal container emitting chill was opened, revealing two scarlet Sharingan eyes immersed in pale green liquid, each pupil branded with a single black tomoe.
“One-tomoe Sharingan?” Hearing they were transplanting Sharingan eyes for him, Shisui frowned: “Why do you have…”
A bad premonition spread in his heart.
Menma snorted lightly: “Don’t overthink it. They’re just clones activated by cloning technology and Yin Release chakra. If we really wanted Sharingan eyes, do you think the Uchiha Clan in Konoha would still be so calm?”
The words dripped with contempt, but Shisui felt somewhat relieved.
Because he knew Shura and Uchiha Hikari had once visited Clan Head Fugaku, so upon reflection, he thought if they truly needed Sharingan eyes, it wouldn’t be just one-tomoe.
Shisui knew well how terrifying Uchiha Hikari’s strength was. If she made a move, no one in Konoha’s Uchiha Clan could stop her.
Just like Uchiha Madara back then!
————
Outside Konohagakure Village, that forest clearing with the thickest blood scent.
Yuruma Aburame arrived first, his wide sleeves stirring without wind, swarms of parasitic insects like returning bees instantly covering the area where Shisui last stood, emitting dense, frantic buzzing as they madly collected lingering scents and pheromones in the air.
Fū Yamanaka followed closely, hands forming seals, powerful mental perception spreading like ripples, meticulously scanning every inch of land, every leaf, trying to capture any residual mental fluctuations or chakra traces.
Then, several Root ninjas wearing animal masks descended silently like ghosts, warily sealing off the surroundings.
Experienced and swift, their gazes swept like hawks over the bloodstains on the ground, the trampled and crushed grass, and the glaring bloody handprint on the tree trunk Shisui had last leaned against.
“The bloodstains are thickest here.” A Root ninja crouched, pinching a bit of dark red mud with his fingers, his voice cold.
“His injuries are extremely severe, massive blood loss, mobility should be at its lowest.”
“The insect swarms’ pheromone tracking… broken.” Yuruma Aburame’s voice came through the mask, carrying rare bewilderment and gravity.
“Right in this area, the aura… vanished into thin air. No traces of departure, whether footprints, broken branches, or residual chakra fluctuations… all gone. As if… instantly erased by something.”
“Mental remnants… also extremely faint, and abruptly cut off.” Fū Yamanaka withdrew his perception, brows furrowed under the mask.
“No signs of violent struggle, no mental drag trails from high-speed long-distance movement… extremely bizarre.”
The air seemed to freeze.
All Root ninjas halted, their eyes under the masks filled with incredulous shock.
How could Shisui Uchiha, severely injured near death, deprived of both eyes, with chaotic chakra, vanish into thin air under the watch of over a dozen elite Root members, doubly locked by the Aburame clan’s top tracking insect swarms and the Yamanaka clan’s powerful mental perception?
This defied all reason!
“Expand the search radius!” Yuruma Aburame’s voice carried suppressed rage and reluctance.
“Centered here, five kilometers radius! No, ten kilometers! Dig three feet deep! No space ninjutsu can leave absolutely no clues! He must still be nearby!”
The command given, the Root ninjas scattered again like a black tide, blending into the deeper night.
The insect swarms buzzed outward to farther areas, Fū Yamanaka’s mental power raised to the max, like a massive radar net repeatedly scanning.
Yet time ticked by, second by second.
The night grew deeper, the forest chill more biting.
Aside from the wind’s whine through treetops and the futile buzzing of the swarms, there were no further valuable discoveries.
Shisui Uchiha, like evaporating from the human world, completely vanished from this bloodstained forest.
What remained was only the Root ninjas’ cold bewilderment, and the lingering, heart-palpitating thick blood scent in the air.
