Time Waits for No One

Chapter 242 Time Waits for No One

But he didn't know if he could. He just went to the Anbu every day to report, accept missions, complete missions, return to the village, tap Sasuke on the forehead, and then leave.

All he could do was delay the inevitable, hoping to postpone it for as long as possible.

He hoped that Sasuke could learn one more ninjutsu, make one more friend, and eat one more bento box made by Mikoto during the gaps in this day.

He didn't know how many more times he could take Sasuke to school like this. Maybe countless more, maybe there wouldn't be a next time. He didn't know.

Across the river, Mikoto opened the second-floor window and leaned out to retrieve the clothes that were drying on the windowsill.

Her white shirt billowed in the wind, then she deftly folded it and draped it over her arm. The window was then closed again, and the light flickered faintly behind the windowpane.

As darkness fell completely, the surface of the Nanga River reflected the twinkling lights, as if someone had lit a row of candles underwater.

Itachi took one last look at the lit windows of the Uchiha clan compound, then leaped down from the cedar tree branch and headed towards the Anbu headquarters.

He has tasks to complete tomorrow. And the day after. He wants to do what he can before the string breaks.

Itachi's ANBU mission frequency increased sharply in the following week.

It was not a task directly issued by the Third Hokage, but rather a request for assistance that was diverted from Danzo's "Root".

The border patrol report is unusual; suspicious individuals are active within the Land of Fire. The secret service needs to send someone to confirm.

Every single one of them is reasonable, every single one is urgent, and every single one of them is exactly what a ninja of Itachi Uchiha's caliber needs to handle.

He had no reason to refuse, nor any room to refuse.

When Shisui was around, half of these tasks would be assigned to him.

Shisui is gone now. His name as a rogue ninja hangs on the wanted poster, with the words "Uchiha Shisui, S-rank, life or death" written next to his photo.

Every time Itachi passed by the wanted poster wall of the Anbu headquarters, he would see that photo, and Shisui's face stood out from the row of wanted posters.

Those eyes were too gentle; they didn't seem like those of a rogue ninja, but more like those of a young man still pondering some unsolved problem.

He looked away, accepted the new task roll, and set off.

He only went home twice this week. Once was in the middle of the night, after Sasuke had gone to sleep, he stood in the entryway for a while without turning on the light.

Mikoto came out of the bedroom, wearing an old coat, and without asking any questions, simply handed him the warm rice from the stove.

After he finished eating, he washed the dishes, stood outside Sasuke's room for a few minutes, and then left. The second time was in the evening, just in time for dinner.

Sasuke recited the basic safety guidelines for shurikenjutsu at the dining table without missing a single word. After finishing, he looked at him, waiting for his evaluation.

Itachi said "Very good," and then tapped Sasuke on the forehead.

This time, Sasuke didn't frown. Instead, he asked in a somewhat uncertain tone, "Will you still be here tomorrow?"

Itachi didn't answer, and Sasuke didn't press for an answer; he had already learned not to ask questions.

The atmosphere in the Uchiha clan's territory is also changing.

At the police department's routine meeting, Fugaku's tone was shorter than usual.

Several branch heads began to stay after the meeting to speak privately with Fugaku.

Their voices were low, but Itachi overheard a few words as he walked down the corridor—"Danzo," "surveillance,"

"Prepare".

Fugaku did not respond to these words, but he also did not stop them. This silence itself was a signal, and everyone in the Uchiha clan understood it.

Itachi stood at the corner of the corridor, leaning against the wall, and listened to an entire conversation that he shouldn't have heard.

Then he left quietly, without letting anyone know that he had been there.

The next day, he volunteered for a border patrol mission.

The mission is simple: search the dense forests on the northeastern border of the Land of Fire for signs of suspicious activity.

These tasks are usually done in pairs, but he requested to perform them alone.

The approval was handled by the third-generation official. The old man looked at him, remained silent for a few seconds, and then stamped the scroll.

In those few seconds of silence, Itachi gleaned a lot, but he didn't ask, and neither did the Third Hokage.

The dense forests on the northeastern border of the Land of Fire were as quiet as he had expected.

He wandered among the treetops for three hours without finding any suspicious footprints, chakra residue, or traces of spells.

The forest was so clean it looked as if it had been deliberately swept clean; there wasn't even a trace of a large wild animal.

He crouched on a beech branch, unfolded a map to check the coordinates, and confirmed that he had not deviated from the search area designated by the mission.

Just then, he sensed a very subtle fluctuation of chakra.

It's like the lingering aftertaste in the air the moment a spell is dispelled.

It was faint and unintentional, like someone yawning not far away and then quickly covering their mouth.

Itachi put the map into his sleeve, formed a hand seal for a sensory ninjutsu, compressed the range of his chakra perception to thirty meters around him, and stealthily moved toward the source of the fluctuations.

He stopped at the edge of a clearing in the woods.

A person stood in the open space. A black cloak covered him from head to toe.

The brim of the cloak's hood was pulled down low, revealing only a right eye beneath the mask, but the eye was obscured by shadows, making its exact appearance impossible to discern.

But Itachi could sense an extremely powerful flow of chakra there.

The other person clearly sensed him as well, and slowly turned around, the moonlight illuminating the only hole in his mask.

A scarlet Sharingan, with three tomoe, is slowly rotating.

I've always wanted to see you.

"Uchiha Itachi!"

"Who are you?" Itachi's fingers were already on the buckle of his ninja tool pouch.

"You can call me Madara," the person said, a hint of a smile in his voice that sent a chill down Itachi's spine.

"Uchiha Madara. You should have heard of that name."

Itachi had certainly heard of it: the Valley of the End, the duel with Hashirama Senju, the ancestor of the Uchiha clan.

But Madara Uchiha was already dead, he died at the Valley of the End, at the hands of the First Hokage.

The person in front of me didn't match the legendary Madara in terms of age, physique, or voice. But that Sharingan was real.

There was no trace of forgery in the rotation rhythm of the three-tomoe jade and the texture of the chakra.

"You don't believe me?" The man wasn't surprised. "It doesn't matter. I didn't come here to prove who I am."

He folded his hands in his sleeves, his posture as composed as if he were standing in his own backyard.

"I came here because of you, Uchiha Itachi. The one who stands between the village and the clan."

Itachi's fingers paused for a moment on the buckle of his ninja tool pouch. His expression remained unchanged, but the other person was clearly someone who knew the inside story.

No more than five people knew about this, including Shisui, Fugaku, the Third Hokage, and Danzo.

The person in front of me does not belong to these five.

"You think your trouble is Danzo?" The man continued in his unhurried voice before Itachi could speak, "Actually, it's not."

"Your trouble lies with the Uchiha clan itself; they've already begun preparing for a coup."

"You know about this, you know far more than you think, you're just still hesitating."

"Hesitation is a luxury for someone caught in the middle." He paused, and the Sharingan that was exposed suddenly turned to look directly into Itachi's eyes.

"But you're not the only one hesitating. There are others who have already made their choices."

He raised his hand and made a gesture, not a hand seal, but a more casual gesture, as if beckoning someone to come out from behind the tree.

The weasel shifted its position in an instant, moving from the left side of the tree trunk to the right, while three shuriken were already tucked between its fingers.

But the man didn't pursue, or even move. He just stood there, the smile on his lips deepening.

The man spoke slowly and deliberately, each word as if it had been carefully weighed before being placed into the air.

"You don't have much time left. Danzo won't wait for you, and neither will the Uchiha clan." He folded his hands back into his sleeves and tilted his head slightly.

The crimson Sharingan gleamed with a meaningful light in the moonlight. "I came here today simply to see for myself what kind of person this young man, to whom Shisui entrusted everything, really is."

Stop the water.

Hearing the name spoken by the man in front of him who called himself Madara made Itachi's back muscles involuntarily tighten for a moment.

Shisui was his close friend, and many people knew about their relationship, but only he knew that Shisui had entrusted him with something before he left.

This person couldn't possibly know about this unless—

"You've seen him." Itachi's voice was flat, but another sword was hidden between his fingers.

The man neither admitted nor denied it. He simply chuckled softly.

The laugh was so light, almost as if it were done with a breath, yet it pierced the very spot the tigress least wanted to be touched, as precisely as a needle.

"Shisui is a smart man," the man said. "He saw it before you did: the Uchiha have no future in this village."

"So he left. But you didn't. You're still here, still taking on missions in the shadows, still taking your brother to school every day, still pretending that the string won't break."

He paused, and his tone suddenly shifted from a casual, almost conversational one to a softer, lower hue, as if whispering in someone's ear.

"But you should know better than anyone else—after Shisui left, your strings tightened too."

Itachi did not answer.

A brief silence fell over the clearing in the woods. Moonlight filtered through the gaps in the beech tree canopy, casting dappled silvery-white patches between the two.

The night wind rustled through the dense forest, carrying a faint sound of leaves rubbing together, like countless hands gently clapping in the distance.

The man took a step back. His figure began to blend into the shadows of the trees behind him, just as Itachi had seen before.

It's not an ordinary invisibility technique, but a kind of spatial ninjutsu that erases one's own existence.

The texture of the tree trunk gradually became clearer through his body, like layers of transparent film being stacked one on top of another, eventually merging back into reality.

"Wait," Itachi said.

The disappearance of the tree shadows paused for a moment.

"Who are you working for?" Itachi's voice wasn't loud, but every word was as sharp as the tip of a sword.

A very low, almost sighing laugh came from the shadows of the trees.

"It's not that I'm working for anyone else—it's that we're all working for the same thing."

"That thing is called 'time.' When the time comes, what's meant to happen will happen."

"You can't stop it, Danzo can't stop it, and neither can the Third Hokage." The tree shadow completely dissipated, and the last trace of chakra disappeared completely.

Only Itachi remained in the forest clearing, the moonlight quietly falling on his shoulders.

He stood there, not leaving immediately. He put the shuriken back into his ninja tool pouch, but his fingers remained on the clasp, not letting go.

He could disbelieve every word the man who called himself Ban said.

But that person mentioned Shisui's original words, not the gist, but the wording itself.

Shisui will not tell anyone that this person named Madara cannot be Shisui himself.

That leaves only one possibility: this person's intelligence network has infiltrated to a point where he can no longer track it.

Or worse, this person possesses some kind of ability to peer into other people's memories or conversations.

Either way, it means that today's dialogue is more than just a test.

This is a card laid bare. The other party is telling him: I know everything about you, and I know everything about Zhi Shui.

I know why you're still hesitating, I know what you're waiting for.

I know you won't be able to wait any longer.

He turned around and sped back towards Konoha Village.

The treetops rushed past his head, and the moonlight cast shadows on the forest floor was shattered by his figure.

The sound of the wind filled his ears, but what was louder in his mind than the sound of the wind was the sound of still water.

Itachi suddenly realized that he had been avoiding a question for the past few months.

It's not a question of "village or family," but a more fundamental one: if Shisui is right, what should he do?

Shisui chose to leave not because he didn't love Konoha, but because he had seen things clearly.

Given the situation, staying would only force him to raise his knife against one side. He didn't want to raise his knife against anyone, so he chose the third path.

Itachi always felt that he was different from Shisui. Shisui could walk, but he couldn't.

He has Sasuke, parents, and the responsibilities of the Uchiha clan.

But at this moment, the weasel, who was moving through the dense forest, suddenly asked itself a question—what if one day, the third path no longer exists?

He had no answer.

The moonlight continued to shine on the dense forests of the Land of Fire, and the sound of the Naka River could be faintly heard in the distance.

A night breeze blew from the northeast, carrying the scent of decaying leaves in the forest and the fragrance of pine resin from the distant mountains into his nostrils.

He didn't look back at the clearing in the woods, but that scarlet Sharingan was always in his peripheral vision, like a blood moon that would never fall.

Behind him, Obito and Black Zetsu were watching him leave.

"Taketori Izumi and Uchiha Shisui are currently operating in the Land of Earth, seemingly searching for something," Black Zetsu reported in a low voice from the side.

Obito smiled slightly, his gaze deep: "That's precisely why I chose to step in."

"Regardless of whether Itachi Uchiha awakened the Mangekyou Sharingan, a pair of Mangekyou Sharingan alone is not enough to truly destroy the Uchiha clan."

Just as he said, time waits for no one. If Itachi doesn't make a choice, someone else will make the choice for him.