Chapter 37

Hitomi's gaze locked onto Yami, her expression cold. "So you are hiding here, traitor," she said, her words laced with contempt.

Yami met her accusing stare, trying to show calm. "Staying in one's own house is hardly considered hiding. And may I ask why the clan leader is destroying my home? If you were so jealous of my house, I can simply gift it to you - there's no need to demolish it."

But Inside, however, Yami's mind was full of fury and tension. 'I was correct. It was indeed them who captured Murama. But why are they so hasty in attacking me? Did they manage to extract information from him?' He clenched his fists.

'No, that's impossible. The Weaver Bug's safeguards should have prevented that.' Yami's eyes narrowed as a realization struck him. 'They must have grown desperate, finding no Intel, and are now trying to force the truth out of me by brute force. That's it.'

Hitomi's eyes narrowed as she scrutinized Yami, her disgust evident in every word. "You're still playing the innocent, are you, traitor? How pathetic."

She leveled him with a cold stare. "I'll give you one chance - plead guilty to all your crimes, and you may get a lighter death sentence." Not that she planned to do it even if he surrendered.

Yami forced himself to maintain his outward composure, even as his mind raced. "Can you explain to me, Clan Leader, what crimes I have committed? I'm afraid I don't know," he replied smoothly.

Inwardly, Yami felt a surge of confidence. 'Aha, so they don't have any real evidence. She's just trying to make me confess.' He straightened his posture, his eyes glinting with defiance.

"What a stupid bitch, did she really think I would fall into her-"

Yami's contemptuous thoughts were abruptly cut short as Hitomi's palm connected with his chin in a devastating uppercut. The force of the blow sent him careening through the air, crashing through multiple walls before his body came to a rest on the other side of the house.

Aargh! Cough!

"You!!" Yami cursed, blood leaking from his split lip as he held his throbbing chin. The shock of Hitomi's blow still reverberated through his skull, leaving him disoriented.

"I gave you the chance," Hitomi stated, her fists now cloaked in a bluish chakra aura up to her elbows. "Now," she declared, her eyes narrowing, "it's time for your retribution."

In a blur of motion, Hitomi flickered directly to Yami's position and unleashed a powerful strike towards his head. Yami barely managed to push himself up and dodge the punch, the sheer force of it caving in the floor where he had just been.

Quickly putting distance between them, Yami glared at the Hyuga matriarch, his expression twisted with pain and fury. "You'll pay for this, you bitch!" he snarled, his hand reaching into his robes to pull out a pair of knuckle busters.

But Hitomi was already upon him, her palms moving with blinding speed as she struck his stomach. Yami gritted his teeth, stifling a pained grunt, and reacted instinctively. Channeling his chakra into his knuckles, he formed a pair of enhanced brass knuckles.

As Hitomi's palm shot towards his midsection, Yami also unleashed a powerful punch, the chakra-infused strike colliding with her attack creating a shockwave that rippled through the air.

Hitomi's eyes widened momentarily, But she did not falter as her chakra coating protected her hand from the sharp knuckle busters, she used her Byakugan to read his movements and seamlessly shifted her weight, redirecting the force of his punch, her palm glancing off his knuckles.

In the same fluid motion, Hitomi's other hand lashed out, her fingertips precisely targeting the tenketsu points along Yami's arm. A series of rapid strikes disrupted the flow of his chakra, momentarily numbing the limb.

Yami grunted in pain, but he refused to back down. Switching tactics, he unleashed a flurry of quick jabs, forcing Hitomi on the defensive. Her graceful footwork and timing allowed her to evade or parry each strike, but Yami's relentless barrage began to wear her down, as shallow cuts formed on her body from the sheer force of his knuckle buster strikes.

Sensing an opening, Yami thrust his palm forward, aiming to strike Hitomi's neck. But the Hyuga matriarch anticipated the move, her body twisting to the side. She seized his wrist, using his own momentum against him.

Hitomi then spun and executed a textbook Jūken strike, her chakra-infused palm slamming into Yami's shoulder. The impact disrupted the flow of chakra in his entire arm, rendering it nearly useless.

"Aargh!!" Yami cried out, his face contorted in pain and fury. In a desperate counterattack, he unleashed a powerful kick towards Hitomi's stomach, aiming to kill her chakra coils.

Sensing the attack, Hitomi quickly raised her remaining functional hand to block the blow. The force of Yami's strike shattered her chakra-enhanced coating, but she managed to absorb the impact, staggering back slightly.

'Left hand is half useless,' Hitomi thought, feeling the messed up tenketsu points and ruptured blood vessels in her hand.

Yami too staggered back, his face twisted in agony as he looked at his own right arm, now rendered nearly useless by Hitomi's strike. "Dammit, why is she so strong?!" he cursed inwardly, realising he had greatly underestimated her.

He then took out a few pills from his pockets and popped them into his mouth. These were Chakra Enhancement pills, allowing him to brute force the chakra in his hand for now, even if he lacked the same precise control.

Meanwhile, Tatsuya watched the fight from the sidelines, but he didn't interfere. He wanted to see if Yami had any other reinforcements or tricks up his sleeve before intervening. For now, he trusted his mother that she could hold her own.

The fight was growing more intense by the second, when something caught Tatsuya's eye. A body was moving through blinding speed from the basement towards Hitomi's direction. His nerves tensed as he sensed the potential threat.

Tatsuya was only able to notice it, because he had paid extra concentration on the basement, because that was the only place where anybody could hide from his vision.

Hitomi also detected the approaching presence, but she was too occupied with Yami to deal with it. From the warning her instincts gave, she knew if the attack connected, it could be fatal.

'Right on time!! Go, kill her!' Yami rejoiced inwardly, sensing his reinforcements moving in for the kill.

But Hitomi paid no mind to the incoming attack, focusing solely on her fight with Yami, which earned her one straight blow to Yami's face breaking his nose.

But as the deadly strike was about to impale her torso, it was suddenly halted mid-flight.

In a blur of motion, Tatsuya had appeared, slamming the would-be assassin heavily into the ground. "You think you can backstab my mother, in front of me?!" he growled, punctuating his words with a vicious kick to the attacker's stomach, sending them crashing away.

The attacker groaned in a small grunt as he crashed into the wall.

"Tch, the brat's here too," Yami spat, his expression twisting with frustration as he felt the pain from his broken nose. If before he was considered good-looking, his whole face now looked mangled and disfigured.

Hitomi gave a small glance at her son, a flicker of pride crossing her features before she refocused her attention on Yami. "Keep him busy, while I deal with him," she said to Tatsuya.

He nodded and glanced at the attacker. The man wore a black cloak covering his body and a white dog mask covering his face, with a sheathed katana at his hip.

"Root..." Tatsuya thought as he watched the man quickly stand up and perform a series of rapid hand seals. Immediately, dozens of earth spikes emerged from the ground, surging towards Tatsuya's position.

He quickly jumped away to dodge the deadly spikes, but due to the size of the room made it nearly impossible to completely evade them.

But just as the spikes were about to impale him, multiple blobs of chakra burst forth from Tatsuya's body and striking the spikes, disrupting the trajectories of the earth attacks and causing them to collide and destroy one another.

Tatsuya landed gracefully, his eyes narrowed as he assessed his opponent. 'He is very quick, and it seems he also has a high tolerance for pain. I'm sure my kick broke at least a few ribs, yet he's already recovered and reacting with a counter attack,' Tatsuya thought.

'And that quick reaction with the Katana shows he's likely a close-combat specialist and with those chakra levels, he is at least Jonin level,' Tatsuya deduced.

As for the technique he used, it was just a basic application of Hyuga clan biology - the ability to release chakra from every point of their body, rather than just a few key tenketsu like other ninja. It was a more rudimentary version of the {Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven technique} though it lacked the rotational power, but still effective enough it can disrupt the trajectories of the earth spikes .

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