Chapter 168: The Clan’s Tolerance Is Nothing Special
Itachi’s target was Uchiha Inabi, who spoke the most vicious words and issued the most blatant threats!
Inabi only felt a bone-chilling killing intent instantly lock onto him!
He didn’t even have time to form hand seals, only seeing a palm carrying fierce strong wind rapidly enlarging before his eyes!
That speed was so fast that even his proud Sharingan experienced a momentary lag!
Bang!
A muffled loud bang!
Itachi’s right palm, containing violent chakra and towering rage, solidly imprinted on Inabi’s chest!
The force was so great that Inabi’s chest bones emitted a teeth-grinding groan!
His entire body was like being hit head-on by a high-speed horse carriage, feet leaving the ground, mouth spraying a mist of blood, body like a tattered sackcloth bag with its string cut, fiercely flying backward!
“Inabi!” Tekka cried out in shock and anger, kunai instantly unsheathed in his hand, stabbing straight toward Itachi’s back heart with a sharp sound of air breaking!
However, Itachi seemed to have eyes on the back of his head; the action of sending Inabi flying showed no lag at all, his body twisting strangely at an impossible angle, causing Tekka’s sure strike to miss instantly!
At the same time, Itachi’s left leg swept horizontally backward like a steel whip, carrying a screech that tore through the air!
Pa!
The leg shadow precisely struck Tekka’s wrist holding the kunai!
Sharp pain transmitted, the kunai flying out of hand! Tekka grunted, body staggering sideways from the immense force!
“Arrogant!” Uchiha Yashiro roared, finally reacting, hands rapidly forming hand seals!
Chakra gathered at his fingertips! He could not tolerate a junior being so presumptuous!
However, Itachi’s movements were faster! More ruthless!
The instant he repelled Tekka, his figure didn’t pause at all, pouncing toward Yashiro who had just stabilized his stance, like a maggot attached to bone!
That pair of eyes, usually calm as still water, now burned with terrifying crimson light!
Three pitch-black tomoe spun madly, transforming into a cold and eerie complex pattern—Mangekyo Sharingan!
Terrifying eye power erupted like a tangible tidal surge!
An invisible mental impact accompanied by cold killing intent slammed fiercely into Yashiro’s mind!
Yashiro’s hand seal actions instantly froze!
Itachi Uchiha’s three-tome Sharingan pressure bore down like a mountain, making Yashiro’s proud three-tome Sharingan feel a stab of pain and dizziness!
As if his soul were frozen by that crimson pattern! He looked in horror at that pair of eyes, close at hand and belonging to the legendary power, feeling the threat of death from Itachi for the first time!
Just as Itachi’s fist containing violent chakra was about to smash into Yashiro’s face!
An even more massive, heavier, and vast pressure descended without warning over the entire courtyard!
The air seemed to solidify instantly!
Falling maple leaves stalled in midair!
That pressure carried the clan head’s unquestionable dignity and an absolute suppressive force from the depths of the bloodline, like an invisible giant hand, instantly choking Itachi’s violent actions and freezing the shocked and angry Yashiro and Tekka!
“Stop!”
A low, majestic voice containing thunderous anger exploded at the door!
Uchiha Fugaku’s tall figure appeared at the end of the corridor.
He wore dark clan head robes, his face solemn as water, eyes like cold blade edges, sweeping over the wrecked courtyard.
Inabi slumped on the ground spitting blood, Tekka with a swollen red wrist and pale face, and Yashiro locked by the Mangekyo Sharingan, standing stiff on the spot with horror on his face.
Finally, his pair of eyes containing the same crimson glow, with a pinwheel pattern slowly rotating, Mangekyo Sharingan, deadlocked on his son in the center of the courtyard—Itachi Uchiha, who was emanating a violent aura, fist still halted before Yashiro’s nose tip.
“Itachi!” Fugaku’s voice was like cold ice, every word heavy as a thousand catties, carrying deep disappointment and shock-anger, “Tell me! Why did you strike your own clan members so heavily?!”
Itachi had awakened the Mangekyo in such a situation; as a father, he was very pleased.
But Itachi had awakened the Mangekyo against clan members; as clan head, he was very disappointed.
The clan head’s pressure was like a tangible heavy hammer, smashing fiercely onto Itachi’s heart.
His father’s questioning was like another cold dagger, stabbing ruthlessly into Itachi’s heart still burning with rage.
Disappointment?
The undisguised disappointment in his father’s eyes felt more bone-chillingly cold and suffocating to him than Yashiro and the others’ vicious suspicion!
Why?
Why even his father…
Couldn’t see his pain?
Couldn’t see his anger driven to desperation?
Only saw the result of him striking at clan members?
Looking at the cold and heavy disappointment in his father’s eyes, at the hatred burning in the eyes of the disheveled Inabi and Tekka on the ground, at the shock and humiliation lingering on Yashiro’s face.
An indescribable sorrow and immense loneliness, like cold tidal waters, instantly drowned all the rage in Itachi Uchiha’s heart.
He slowly lowered the fist clenched tight before Yashiro.
The violent chakra around him rapidly receded and calmed like an ebbing tide.
That pair of eyes, just now burning with crimson rage flames and eerily rotating Mangekyo Sharingan, also rapidly dimmed, returning to bottomless black.
But in that blackness, there was no longer the former calm, only a thoroughly ice-sealed exhaustion and bone-deep alienation.
He scanned this familiar courtyard, looking at the faces of clan members—some angry, some shocked and doubtful, some disappointed.
Here, once the home he desperately wanted to protect.
Now, it felt so strange, so suffocating.
Suspicion entwined like poisonous vines, anger easily ignited war, capacity so narrow it couldn’t tolerate any differing views, couldn’t tolerate one person trying to find a way out in the cracks.
“Why?” Itachi’s voice rang out, no longer angry, no longer agitated, calm like a frozen lake surface, yet carrying a bone-piercing cold that penetrated the heart.
“Father, you should ask them why they used the most vicious suspicion to tarnish my bond with Shisui, to trample my stance.”
He slightly raised his head, gaze no longer on Inabi and Tekka on the ground, but past them, toward the sky outside the courtyard enclosed by high walls, appearing especially oppressive.
His voice was not loud, yet clearly entered everyone’s ears, carrying a resoluteness like severing the past:
“The Uchiha’s capacity… is too low. Too low to hold trust, too low and only heading toward destruction in suspicion and internal strife.”
He withdrew his gaze, finally looking deeply at his father Fugaku one last time.
That gaze was complex to the extreme, with pain, unwillingness, hard-to-sever bonds, but ultimately all turned into cold, unquestionable resolve.
“Shisui’s disappearance, I will investigate clearly… in my own way!”
With those words, Itachi looked at no one else.
He turned around, the hem of his deep blue clan robes drawing a cold hard arc.
His steps steady, without the slightest hesitation, stepping over the ground covered in golden fallen leaves, heading straight for the mansion’s door.
His back in the autumn sunlight stretched a long, solitary shadow.
He did not look back.
Leaving the courtyard in dead silence.
Fugaku watched his son’s resolute departing back, the pinwheel pattern in his Mangekyo Sharingan slowly turning, beneath that solemn majestic face surging with unseen stormy waves.
‘Those eyes…’ Yashiro and Tekka struggled to stand, exchanging uneasy shocked glances with Inabi.
The heavy sound of the door closing echoed long in the empty and oppressive courtyard.
