The sky was clear and bright, a gentle breeze drifting through. Beneath the cliff, the waterfall thundered as it smashed into the pool below. Cold mist hung in the air, scattering into rainbow light.
Perhaps drawn by the cool dampness, a pitch-black crow with glossy feathers beat its wings and carved a spiraling arc through the sky, diving straight toward the pool beneath the falls.
As it neared, it saw countless dead trees at the water's edge, withered grass in clumps, and dead fish floating belly-up, trapped in the basin. A gleam flashed in the crow's eyes as it slanted down toward the fish-filled water.
Hum!
Before it could reach them, the air suddenly rippled with warped distortions. In an instant the waterfall, the pool, the forest, even the earth itself seemed to split in two.
Pff!
Huge beads of blood splattered in a straight line across the ground. The black crow crashed down, its head severed cleanly from its body. Even its tiny, bean-sized eyes had been cut into two neat half-moons.
Konome Taketori's Yang Release clone lightly shifted her boot aside to avoid the blood. Arms crossed over her chest, she stared up at the original body on the boulder, suspicion and shock written across her face.
In the original body's palm, the three-tomoe Sharingan rotated slowly, like a red-and-black fingertip spinning top. Konome Taketori steadied the Wind Release chakra that had surged within her, then aimed the activated Sharingan at the crow still twitching on the ground.
A piercing, miserable caw rang out.
The crow's whole body convulsed, as if it were being shoved into a blender and crushed. Its thin legs twisted and kicked like two dry branches forced to plow the soil.
Those flailing limbs carved faint lines into the barren earth. Dark red blood seeped along the grooves, while that foreign life force, brimming with vitality, trembled as it was dragged out by dōjutsu power.
As the three tomoe spun, the dōjutsu power evolved and formed a membrane like invisible tendrils. At a glance it looked like a transparent, phantom Hashirama cell.
The deep-green light of life was wrapped by that phantom membrane. Konome Taketori's fingers slowly closed, and the membrane instantly contracted, squeezing inward.
Pure, tender green light was wrung out by force. Drawn by the same green Yang Release chakra, it flowed like water into her body. Inside the dōjutsu membrane, only filthy, dead-black residue remained, fading away as the dōjutsu dispersed.
That was the impurity hidden within life force. You could also call it a creature's inherent signature, the very culprit that had blocked the development of Reverse Eight Gates.
It was like an identifying marker mixed into life itself, preventing an individual's life source from being contaminated in a way that could harm the entire species. Like the experimental animals from before, once their life source was polluted, their bodies grew parts that did not belong to them.
That kind of mutation was wildly unstable, and usually more harmful than useful. If those animals were allowed to live and breed, their offspring would inherit all sorts of bizarre traits, and the entire population might even go extinct.
In other words, it was a biological defense mechanism. Sacrifice the individual to protect the stability of the group.
But for her, it was nothing but poison. Removing it was the best possible outcome.
Click, click.
The "key" at her forehead began to spin.
Of the three great Gates, one opened a narrow crack. The purified life force extracted from the crow immediately poured into it, replenishing her life's origin.
"Hah…"
She exhaled a breath of turbid air and closed her eyes, savoring the lingering aftertaste of being filled with life.
"You're saying our Byakugan has a problem?" the Yang Release clone's eyelid twitched. The original body looked like she was inhaling something addictive.
"A huge problem."
Konome Taketori opened eyes that seemed a shade brighter, that ash-gray Byakugan sharp and clear, and spoke with absolute certainty.
"I used to think our eyes were just ordinary Byakugan with a slightly strange color. Nothing special. But once my Sage Body began to sprout, I realized the truth is nothing like what I imagined."
"How so?" the clone asked.
She leaned forward slightly, genuine curiosity lighting her face. At this point she had stopped trying to guess what was going on with the original body, because she couldn't.
Because of the Thunder Drum Mountain mission, the two of them hadn't synchronized information in a long time.
They were one heart, yes, but the original body had been supported by countless shadow clones, plundering Root's and Konoha's libraries. Now she had Reverse Eight Gates devouring life.
She was no longer the same person.
Not just in knowledge and abilities. In everything.
The original body's vitality was richer. She looked healthier, prettier. Even the growth of her chakra seed and her physical development had pulled ahead.
She was taller, heavier. Her chakra reserves were more than double the clone's. And with chakra constantly strengthening muscle day by day, if they truly fought…
Even with Samehada, the clone would never be her match.
Running away might still be safe. But if she stood and traded blows, the original body could open the Eight Gates seal and turn her into a pile of fragments within seconds.
A thick wall had formed between them.
The gap was too large to transmit information freely. The clone's fragile brain would be crushed by the torrent. To protect the dōjutsu power of Kotoamatsukami, that difference could not be bridged for now.
"I suspect our eyes aren't Byakugan at all.
I felt it, that… fetal movement."
Konome Taketori spoke without noticing her clone's thoughts. She lifted two fingers, pointing toward her ash-gray pupils as if she were about to stab out her own eyes.
"Fetal movement of the Tenseigan?" the clone blurted.
She immediately understood what "fetal movement" meant. When Ōtsutsuki Toneri stole Byakugan on the moon, the first stage of awakening the Tenseigan was called fetal movement.
"Not the Tenseigan."
Konome Taketori's gaze shifted, gray ripples spreading like a dead sea.
"Do you remember what the Nine-Tails once said?"
The Yang Release clone froze for a heartbeat, then murmured, recalling it.
"Byakugan is the starting point of all formless power. Ash Bones are the endpoint of all tangible things. Hamura and the power he inherited have completely opposite natures…"
"Exactly."
Konome Taketori turned her palm up and stared at the Sharingan embedded there.
"All Ōtsutsuki begin with pure Byakugan. Only after they devour chakra fruit can they form the various Rinnegan in their brow, each containing bizarre dōjutsu.
The birth of the Rinnegan cannot be separated from the Byakugan. I even suspect the Rinnegan itself is a Byakugan evolved to an extreme.
If Kaguya's nine-tomoe Rinne Sharingan is the endpoint of dōjutsu, then the pure Byakugan that comes first is the beginning of everything.
One beginning, infinite endings. Only that makes sense.
Why would the Ōtsutsuki, who already possess stronger Rinnegan, still keep the most primitive Byakugan?
Byakugan is the origin of all dōjutsu, the starting point of every formless power.
They keep that original Byakugan so they can keep devouring new chakra fruit, stimulating the Byakugan to awaken completely different ultimate dōjutsu each time."
The roar of the waterfall filled the world again.
The Yang Release clone stood there, stunned by a theory that sounded outrageous and yet frighteningly coherent.
In the original story, the Ōtsutsuki could install Rinnegan in their brow, their forehead, even their palms, yet none of them ever willingly discarded the seemingly plain Byakugan.
At most they would sacrifice one. They still kept their original Byakugan.
The clone had once thought it was simply a symbol of Ōtsutsuki identity, or that Byakugan helped balance bloodline limits through its harmonizing effect.
But now she realized something.
A dōjutsu capable of manipulating chakra and balancing bloodlines could not exist only as Byakugan. If everyone went out of their way to preserve Byakugan, then the original body's guess was likely correct.
Byakugan only had basic abilities like long-range vision and x-ray sight. It was nowhere near as strange or overpowered as other dōjutsu.
And yet it was like a seed full of miracles. Under the catalysis of different chakra fruit, it could sprout countless terrifying ultimate dōjutsu.
That was the Ōtsutsuki path of evolution.
Plant Divine Trees on worlds. Harvest chakra fruit. Gain more chakra. And under the pull of pure Byakugan, awaken endless ultimate dōjutsu.
Until they became the legendary Ōtsutsuki God.
"So our eyes are neither Byakugan nor Tenseigan, but another dōjutsu evolved from Byakugan.
Because we lacked chakra before, or lacked life force, it couldn't manifest. Then after you began devouring life and obtained an early Sage Body, it activated and produced fetal movement."
After thinking it through, the Yang Release clone finally grasped what the original body meant.
"That's it."
"But I don't feel anything different about these gray eyes," the clone said, spreading her hands. Her small face was filled with confusion. "Aren't the abilities the same as Byakugan?"
"Think again."
As Konome Taketori spoke, two fresh red slits tore open beneath her eyes. The three-tomoe Sharingan in her palm slowly sank into flesh, and two bulges rose on the back of her hand.
Like mice wriggling under a carpet, they crawled up her arm and reached her face.
Two crimson eyes pushed out of the bloody holes beneath her eyelids.
Four eyes stared in stacked pairs, shifting and converging, like they were facing each other, like an insect's compound gaze.
Terrifying. Wrong. Unnatural.
"It's… flesh manipulation!"
The clone's voice trembled with shock, so loud even the waterfall couldn't drown it.
That ability they had relied on again and again to survive, the ability that formed the foundation of their entire combat style.
It had always depended on the Byakugan's dōjutsu power.
These mutated gray eyes had never shown an obvious special technique. Flesh manipulation had only appeared after Shikotsumyaku awakened, and Shikotsumyaku itself already carried some degree of bodily control.
So they never noticed.
And because other people's dōjutsu were straightforward, Kotoamatsukami, Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi, things that were terrifying without any development…
She had fallen into the trap of assumption.
She never considered that the "flesh manipulation" she had struggled to develop might itself be a dōjutsu.
It was hiding in plain sight.
Once the Yang Release clone understood, Konome Taketori moved the Sharingan back into her palm. The slits beneath her eyes sprouted new flesh and braided shut, her appearance warming back toward normal.
"Without Shikotsumyaku's corpse-like physical resilience, this so-called manipulation wouldn't even have soil to grow in.
I suspect flesh manipulation isn't the true ability of these eyes either. The dōjutsu is still in its budding stage and can't reveal its full form.
Shikotsumyaku's awakening pushed it, and the two combined to produce this mutated power."
That made sense.
The Yang Release clone nodded. If it were truly a special dōjutsu, it shouldn't require Shikotsumyaku to function. Otherwise it wasn't a single dōjutsu at all, but a bloodline mesh born from multiple bloodlines.
"When fetal movement ends, we'll know," the clone said, eyes bright with excitement. "How long will it take?"
Dōjutsu were like opening a mystery box. If it turned out to be a space-time power like Kamui, she would be rich beyond measure.
She could talk all she wanted about looking down on Obito for relying on Kamui, but that was only because she didn't have something like that to rely on.
She wanted a dōjutsu that could crush heaven and earth too.
Toneri awakened the Tenseigan and could blow up the moon. She was still stuck scraping by on the ground.
Konome Taketori closed her eyes and calculated the time needed for the structure of that special power to finish forming within her eyes.
"At least three to five years."
"I might not even exist for three to five years," the Yang Release clone groaned, rolling the Mangekyō in her palm. "You shouldn't have told me at all."
A mystery box placed right in front of her, but she had to wait three years to open it. That feeling was worse than death.
And with that much time, she might already have reconstructed Kotoamatsukami. At that point, this shadow clone carrying the dōjutsu would no longer be necessary.
Most likely, she would dissolve into chakra and return to the original body.
"I just hope it'll be faster…"
"Silence." Konome Taketori cut her off with a wave of her hand. She tilted her head, listening, her expression turning sharp.
Rustle, rustle, rustle.
Branches swayed, leaves brushed, an abnormal sound, like something moving through the trees at speed.
Konome Taketori's face changed slightly.
Around here, not only had the animals been wiped out, even the plants had been turned into fuel for Reverse Eight Gates. There was no way a large animal could be approaching.
That meant only one thing.
A human.
More precisely, a Konoha shinobi.
Byakugan.
Veins bulged at the corners of her eyes. In the fetal movement state, her ash-gray Byakugan shone even brighter, gray light surging like a blade as it pierced the forest ahead.
Chakra more magnificent than the waterfall flared into view, radiant and blazing.
Wrapped within that vast chakra, an elderly, lean figure darted through the trees with terrifying speed.
He wore a black, tight-fitting combat suit and a shinobi cap, with a purple sash at his waist. Mesh guards wrapped his forearms and calves, and layered green armor hung over his right arm. His movements were agile, like an old ape in the canopy.
Hiruzen Sarutobi.
Konome Taketori and her Yang Release clone both narrowed their eyes. In an instant, she understood why Hiruzen had come.
To develop Reverse Eight Gates, she had carved out a bizarre dead domain inside the Forest of Death.
This place was far from Konoha proper, tucked into a remote corner of the vast forest, but it was still within Konoha's territory.
If you discovered mass animal deaths and strange ecological collapse, it would be natural to investigate.
She just never expected the investigator to be neither a chunin, nor a jonin, nor ANBU, nor Root.
But the Third Hokage himself.
The Yang Release clone's knees sank, ready to flee while Hiruzen hadn't arrived yet.
She'd been holed up in Base Three and rushed over the moment the original body called. She was still wearing Root's uniform.
"Don't run."
Konome Taketori stopped her. She turned slightly, looking at the old ape now standing atop a treetop, pressure rolling off him like a storm.
"Hiruzen-sensei," she said calmly, "long time no see."
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