Timing mattered. If you understood the timing of events, you could figure out what must have happened in between.
"Did Sasuke awaken his eye back then?" Uchiha Itachi frowned. He hadn't noticed anything at the time. That night was a trauma for Sasuke, but the truth was, it was a trauma for him too.
Sasuke didn't want to remember. And neither did he.
Some parts of that night were burned into memory forever, while others had already begun to blur. Whether Sasuke had really awakened the Sharingan that night had always been a mystery.
But right now, Itachi's attention wasn't on that. It was on the diary mentioning Indra again. That word seemed paired with Ashura, two figures in some kind of mirrored cycle.
And they were described as generations.
From Kaede Kitahara's earlier entries, the current Indra was Uchiha Sasuke and the current Ashura was Uzumaki Naruto.
The previous Indra was Uchiha Madara, which meant the previous Ashura should have been Madara's rival…
The First Hokage, Senju Hashirama.
But if that was how it worked, then Indra and Ashura weren't passed down strictly through bloodlines. Why were there decades of gaps between them? What determined each generation's successor?
Itachi felt that Indra and Ashura were the key to everything, but the clues in Kaede's diary were still too fragmented to form the full picture.
Even so, if Madara was the standard for an Indra, then Sasuke's future talent and achievements were likely far beyond what ordinary people could imagine.
Otherwise, he wouldn't keep appearing in Kaede's diary. And Kaede wouldn't be subtly comparing him to Uchiha Madara.
Most people, after decades of time and fading legends, had no idea how terrifying Madara and the First Hokage had truly been. They thought those two were only a little stronger than an average Kage.
They had no concept of the truth.
Even so, those two were enough to stand at the very top of history.
[For someone with three tomoe, Sasuke's eye power is insane. He could even see the Nine-Tails. That alone is ridiculous. No wonder White Robe Sasuke was when his Pretend Release was at its peak. He basically never took a loss.
Not like the later Mangekyo era, when he went full Sunny Sasuke and officially joined the Uchiha Laughing Four.]
"He could see the Nine-Tails with three tomoe?" Hatake Kakashi's eyes widened.
He had three tomoe too, but even he couldn't literally see the Nine-Tails inside Naruto.
He only knew it was there. He could sense Naruto's chakra was around a hundred times stronger than his own, but that was it. His eye power wasn't anywhere near strong enough to actually see the Nine-Tails itself.
Which meant the Sasuke from three years later had terrifying ocular strength. No wonder Kaede wanted to compare eye power with him.
"White Robe Sasuke… Mangekyo Sasuke…" Itachi mentally noted the labels. They clearly represented different periods of Sasuke's life.
They looked meaningless at first glance, but they were actually invaluable for mapping out the timeline.
This should be the Sasuke who had reached three tomoe but not yet awakened the Mangekyo. His strength wouldn't surpass what he achieved after gaining the Mangekyo.
Itachi knew better than anyone how explosively a Sharingan user's power jumped after awakening the Mangekyo. The growth was absurd.
But Kaede's notes implied that this pre-Mangekyo Sasuke rarely lost.
Earlier, Kaede had complained that Mangekyo Sasuke fought sloppily. No finesse, barely any tactics, just brute-force confidence.
He learned some strategies later, but nowhere near the level Itachi had hoped for.
And then there was that phrase again… the Uchiha Laughing Four.
He'd seen it once before.
If Sasuke was one of them… did that mean he was too?
Itachi felt his head throb. At present, the entire world only had three living Uchihas. Add Kaede Kitahara and that made four.
Knowing Kaede's personality, the Uchiha Laughing Four was absolutely not a compliment.
A moment later, a video appeared in the diary. The three of them opened it immediately.
The recording began with Uzumaki Naruto struggling out of a tunnel. As he reached the exit and looked up, he froze.
On the cliff above stood a handsome boy in white clothes and blue pants, one hand on his hip, staring down at Naruto with cold indifference.
"That's me… three years later?" Sasuke stared at his future self. Compared to now, he looked sharper, more mature, with a quiet confidence that bordered on arrogance.
Not a bad look.
His eyes drifted to Naruto in the video. Older, different, but unmistakably Naruto.
"Naruto?" Sasuke murmured. "So you're here too. Does that mean Kakashi came?"
"No. Kakashi didn't come. I'm filling in." Yamato stepped forward. "Team Kakashi's mission is to bring you back to the village."
Sasuke gave the group below a calm glance. "Team Kakashi…"
There was a faint complexity in his tone. After all, he had once been part of that team.
Just then, Sai drew the sword on his back and took a fighting stance.
"Sai, you…" Sakura stared at him in shock.
"So this guy is my replacement?" Sasuke said quietly. "Another naive kid, talking big about protecting the bond between me and Naruto."
At that, Sakura turned to Sai in disbelief. "Sai, your mission was to kill Sasuke…"
"My classified mission was indeed to assassinate Sasuke," Sai said. "But the mission no longer matters. I want to act on my own will now. Naruto helped me remember something… a feeling I used to have. Something precious.
I don't know you well, but Naruto and Sakura risked their lives to chase you. There must be a reason. They refuse to abandon their bond with you and are desperate to protect it. I can't fully understand it yet… but Sasuke, I think you can."