Obito's facial muscles twitched violently beneath the grotesque half of his face covered by the Spiral Zetsu exoskeleton.
He desperately wanted to shout her name. He wanted to greet her with his signature, goofy smile in the most familiar, comforting way possible.
But his throat felt exactly as if a jagged rock was blocking his vocal cords.
He had collapsed backward into the thorny bushes, wet mud and broken leaves sticking pathetically to his heavy black cloak.
That sudden kick from Rin hadn't actually been physically heavy. With the monstrous durability of the White Zetsu armor, it felt like a light tap.
What Obito found infinitely, agonizingly harder to accept was the absolute, cold unfamiliarity and terrified hostility burning in Rin's beautiful eyes.
"CAREFUL! ANOTHER FREAK HAS ARRIVED!"
Among the surrounding Kirigakure perimeter, a sensor ninja screamed a panicked warning.
Several masked Kirigakure ANBU immediately broke formation, rapidly adjusting their positions to encircle Kiyohara, Kakashi, and Rin in a tighter, lethal ring, while vigilantly locking their weapons onto the suddenly materialized Obito.
"What the hell is that abomination? Is it a Konoha reinforcement?" A Kirigakure Jonin asked, his brow furrowing in disgust.
"No. I've never seen a genetic mutation like this in the Bingo Books... pale skin, a face that looks like a hollow spiral. Perhaps it's an artificial ninja engineered by the Land of Grass?" another operative theorized nervously.
"But since it was immediately, violently attacked by the Konoha medic, it shouldn't logically be allied with Konoha. It must be an independent rogue, or related to the Hidden Grass Village!" the Kirigakure ANBU whispered rapidly among themselves, treating Obito as a hostile variable.
Rin also watched Obito with absolute, terrified vigilance, her kunai raised.
"What exactly is that thing?" Kakashi frowned, his lone Sharingan spinning to analyze the chakra signature.
Although the bizarre entity was shrouded in a heavy cloak, Kakashi's ocular vision could clearly see that the creature's exposed neck, face, hands, and feet were entirely composed of a sickening, pale white biomass.
"I'm... I'm not..."
Obito struggled pathetically to stand up from the muddy bushes. His true Sharingan, exposed through the single eye-hole in the Spiral Zetsu's flesh, was trembling violently with unshed tears.
"I'm not a monster... I am..."
He looked desperately at Rin.
Rin had her defensive back turned to him now. Her red over-the-knee socks were stained heavily with mud, and her short brown hair was messy from the brutal battle.
That was the exact, beautiful back he had dreamed of every single night. The person he had sworn a blood oath to protect with his life.
For grueling, agonizing months, he had endured the absolute hell of physical cellular reconstruction in that dark underground tunnel, the solitary, burning belief supporting his sanity being his triumphant return to Rin's side.
He had visualized the scene of their glorious reunion countless times; Rin would call his name in absolute shock, weep tears of joy, be amazed by his physical growth, and then they would flawlessly fight side-by-side, just like before the bridge.
Or perhaps he would arrive exactly at the climax, saving her in a heroic, blinding flash.
He just never, in his darkest nightmares, imagined this kind of reunion.
She had physically kicked him away in terror, looking at him with eyes that treated him like a demonic enemy.
Neither Kakashi nor Rin had recognized his chakra. They hadn't recognized his posture.
They had completely, utterly forgotten him.
If they had truly loved him, if they had truly remembered his soul... how could they fail to recognize him, even with just a few minor physical changes?
Kiyohara stood calmly, his sword drawn, looking at Obito frozen in the mud. He accurately mapped exactly what Obito was currently thinking.
The idiot was likely having a psychological breakdown because Rin and Kakashi hadn't magically recognized him through a biological disguise.
This was completely normal for his psychological profile.
The Obito in the original canon timeline possessed the exact same, delusional line of logic.
He wore a thick mask. His vocal cords had biologically changed. His physical fighting style had completely changed into space-time jutsu. He then proceeded to launch an apocalyptic night attack on Konoha, released the Nine-Tails to slaughter civilians, and directly caused Kushina Uzumaki's death.
And finally, the sociopath actually blamed Minato Namikaze for failing to recognize him through the mask, despite Minato being his former teacher.
The current Obito in the bushes likely harbored the exact same, deeply entitled mentality.
Looking at the trembling white freak, who was completely, fundamentally different from the sunny and happy boy of the past, Kiyohara really felt that this specific train of logic was entirely too stereotypical for an "Uchiha."
The next microsecond, Obito's tragic arrival only caused this chaotic battlefield to fall into a brief, three-second calm before violence erupted again.
The elite Hozuki Clan assassin in front of Kiyohara seized the distraction and attacked him directly. The two immediately clashed in a blur of sparks.
"Rin..." Obito's voice was hoarse and broken, desperately trying to force his true voice through the Zetsu vocal cords.
"It's... me..."
Rin seemed to hear a strange frequency and turned her head slightly, but her terrified gaze did not linger on the white monster. Instead, it quickly snapped back toward Kiyohara's direction in a panic.
"KIYOHARA, BE CAREFUL OF HIS FLANK!" Rin shouted, her voice full of absolute, desperate concern for the boy's life.
That concern was undeniably, entirely not for him.
The pale face beneath Obito's spiral mask twisted in agony.
A scorching, suffocating heat—violently mixed with profound grievance, blinding anger, and absolute despair—exploded like a bomb in his chest.
The Two Tomoe in his active Sharingan spun wildly, blurring into a red ring; deep within the blood-colored pupils, something dark and apocalyptic seemed to be biologically brewing, violently struggling to break out of its genetic cocoon.
He could physically feel his optic nerves heating up to the point of melting. The chaotic world in his vision became terrifyingly clearer. The supersonic movements of everyone on the battlefield seemingly slowed down to a sluggish crawl.
But it wasn't enough... the mutation was still a tiny bit short...
Short of what?
He didn't know.
He just instinctively, biologically felt that if he could just possess greater, absolute power... if he could just violently prove himself to them... if he could just...
"Oh, Obito."
At this exact moment, sitting safely in the dark underground miles away in the Mountain's Graveyard, Madara Uchiha formed a single, precise hand seal with his withered hand. A cold, victorious arc curled at the corner of his ancient mouth.
"The emotional pain simply isn't deep enough to shatter the psyche yet. Let your ancestor give you a helping hand."
His fingers shifted flawlessly, and an invisible pulse of dominant chakra was transmitted instantly through the subterranean White Zetsu root network. It violently activated the Forbidden Individual Curse Tag surgically buried deep within Rin Nohara's heart.
In the center of the bloody battlefield, Rin suddenly let out a strangled groan. She violently clutched her chest, collapsing to her knees in the mud.
"RIN!" Kakashi instantly noticed Rin's physical abnormality. After brutally kicking back the Kirigakure operative in front of him, he turned to sprint toward her.
"I... I'm fine..." Rin gritted her teeth in agony, cold sweat seeping rapidly from her pale forehead.
But the exact next second, her human pupils suddenly, violently constricted, tearing open into the vertical, predatory slit-pupils of a demonic beast.
A violent, apocalyptic, hate-filled mass of dense chakra exploded outward from her heart, instantly flooding her fragile meridian system with toxic radiation.
Thick, heavy scarlet chakra violently escaped from her pores, bubbling around her skin like boiling, corrosive blood.
The first massive, ethereal tail formed violently behind her. Then the second. Those dense scarlet tails, made entirely of pure, weaponized chakra, slapped the ground, instantly cracking the solid bedrock beneath the mud.
"This is..." The Hozuki Clan assassin, Kugetsu Hozuki, narrowed his eyes, sensing the apocalyptic pressure.
"The Three-Tails' raw chakra is running completely wild... It seems the Sealing formula isn't structurally stable yet."
This massive, radioactive fluctuation of demonic chakra naturally caught Kiyohara's immediate attention. He parried a wire strike and looked back.
Rin slowly, unnaturally stood up.
She opened her mouth, but what violently tore out of her throat was not her own gentle voice, but the deep, demonic, deafening low growl of a Kaiju.
"Leave... get... away from me..."
The tiny, remaining fraction of her human consciousness made her struggle agonizingly to force those words out to protect them, but her biology was already completely out of her control.
The massive chakra tails swept across the forest floor violently, snapping ancient trees like twigs!
"CAREFUL!" Kakashi screamed a warning.
But the kinetic speed of the Tailed Beast chakra's eruption was far beyond normal human imagination.
Rin Nohara—or rather, the violently out-of-control Jinchuriki—began an immediate, indiscriminate attack on the nearest thermal signatures.
Her tiny fist, completely wrapped in a heavy gauntlet of boiling scarlet chakra, smashed down fiercely!
Kakashi only had a microsecond to desperately cross his arms in an 'X' guard to block the impact.
BANG!
The deafening, sickening sound of Kakashi's forearm bones physically cracking was clearly audible over the rain.
Kakashi flew backward like an artillery shell, crashing violently into a massive tree trunk and leaving a deep physical indentation before falling heavily into the mud. He violently spat out a massive mouthful of arterial blood, his face beneath the black mask turning instantly pale as death.
And the Jinchuriki had already pivoted blindly to her next thermal target: that strange, spiral-faced white monster who had just stood up in the bushes.
Because Obito had been staring blankly, obsessively at Rin, he had directly drawn the beast's predatory attention.
Obito stared in absolute, paralyzed shock at Rin rushing violently toward him.
There was absolutely no gentleness left on her beautiful face; the bubbling, corrosive scarlet "Tailed Beast Cloak" made her look both entirely unfamiliar and apocalyptically terrifying.
"Rin..."
Obito didn't raise his hands to defend himself. He reached out his arms, desperately trying to embrace her.
"It's me... Obito..."
Answering his pathetic confession was a devastating, heavy punch wrapped entirely in dense Tailed Beast Chakra!
BOOM!
Obito was blasted backward directly, his spine hitting a tree trunk with bone-shattering force.
If not for the Spiral Zetsu exoskeleton providing extraordinary, inhuman resistance to blunt-force trauma, this single blow would have been enough to shatter his ribcage exactly like Kakashi's arms.
Even with the armor, Obito felt as if his internal organs had been violently displaced by a sledgehammer. He vomited bile inside his mask.
"CONTROL THE VESSEL!" Kugetsu Hozuki roared a command.
"Before she fully transitions into a Tailed Beast state and releases a Tailed Beast Ball to vaporize this grid, reinforce the Seal!"
Several elite Kirigakure Jonin acted immediately, their training kicking in.
They clearly had a pre-established contingency plan in place for this exact catastrophic scenario. Four Jonin sprinted to surround Rin in a perfect square, forming complex hand seals completely simultaneously.
"Water Release: Water Prison Jutsu!"
"Sealing Jutsu: Water Image Chains!"
Massive volumes of heavy water surged violently from the ground, instantly forming a highly pressurized, hemispherical water prison to trap Rin inside. Simultaneously, four massive, glowing chains made entirely of sealing chakra wound tightly around her limbs from four directions, anchoring her to the bedrock.
Inside the prison, Rin's second chakra tail lashed out wildly. The water prison vibrated violently from the kinetic pressure, and the glowing sealing chains immediately began to show micro-cracks.
"I can't hold the anchor for long!" A Kirigakure Jonin gritted his teeth, his arms shaking violently under the Tailed Beast's pressure. "Lord Hozuki, please hurry the reinforcement sequence!"
Kugetsu nodded grimly. He abandoned Kiyohara entirely, his hands beginning to rapidly form a highly complex, 40-step sequence of Sealing jutsu.
"Their goal is to regain control over Rin's chakra network," Kakashi analyzed, struggling agonizingly to crawl up from the mud, his broken arms hanging limply.
"The surgical operation at the camp was merely to force the Tailed Beast inside her... and now they want to violently reinforce the psychological Seal to permanently make Rin a controllable, obedient biological weapon..."
"We absolutely cannot let them finish that sequence." Kakashi endured the blinding pain, desperately gathering his remaining dregs of Lightning Release chakra into his right hand.
Kiyohara nodded coldly, assessing the apocalyptic math.
If Rin continued to physically mutate and successfully unleashed a Tailed Beast Ball—an attack capable of vaporizing entire mountain ranges—his Steel Release armor probably wouldn't be dense enough to physically withstand nuclear annihilation.
The two Konoha shinobi exchanged a single, silent glance and moved simultaneously.
Kakashi rushed desperately toward the four Kirigakure Jonin maintaining the Water Prison anchors. He formed a single hand seal with his good, shaking hand.
"Chidori!"
Holding blinding, volatile arcs of electricity, he charged to interrupt the anchor operators and collapse the prison.
Kiyohara Body-Flickered straight for Kugetsu Hozuki to assassinate the primary Sealer.
"Don't even think about it, brat," Kugetsu didn't even look back.
His left hand flawlessly continued to weave the complex Sealing sequence, while his right hand waved elegantly behind his back. Several dozen translucent, nearly invisible threads shot out violently from his sleeve like a shotgun blast.
Kiyohara swung his heavy black blade to sever the incoming threads, but they seemed endless and were absurdly tough. The steel blade merely bounced off them.
"Water Release: Water Transformation Threads!"
Kugetsu finally completed the first critical stage of the Sealing sequence, and only then did he have the luxury to glance over his shoulder at Kiyohara with a smug sneer.
"My proprietary Hozuki secret technique allows me to condense and pressurize Water-style chakra into liquid threads physically tougher than industrial steel cables. Kid, you do possess some impressive, raw kinetic skill... but this is the end of the line for you."
He raised his left hand, and the translucent threads suddenly multiplied exponentially, weaving into a massive, lethal spiderweb that completely blocked all of Kiyohara's physical paths forward.
Kiyohara instantly materialized a massive, dense wall made of iron sand to block the lethal threads, grinding to a halt while rapidly analyzing the variables.
The current situation was undeniably catastrophic.
Rin was mutating into a Kaiju. Kakashi was severely injured with broken bones. Their combined chakra reserves were critically insufficient.
The enemy possessed superior numbers and a flawlessly executed tactical objective.
Once Kugetsu completed the final Sealing sequence, Rin would be permanently, psychologically reduced to an obedient, weaponized tool for the Hidden Mist. Furthermore, a prolonged, forced Tailed Beast transformation would eventually cause irreversible biological organ failure for a fragile human host.
'Madara's core psychological objective is to force Obito to experience a mental breakdown and turn evil,' Kiyohara's hyper-analytical brain raced.
'The absolute simplest, most effective method to achieve that... is to let someone Obito deeply loves die violently right in front of him, forcing Obito to fundamentally doubt the rationality of the Ninja World's system.'
According to Kiyohara's canon knowledge, the exact second Obito saw Rin's heart violently pierced by Kakashi's Chidori—even before she had stopped breathing—that intense, apocalyptic grief completely shattered his spirit, triggering the biological mutation that awakened his Mangekyō Sharingan.
'I can completely hijack this script. With my advanced anatomical knowledge, I can physically execute the assassination myself to destroy the Curse Tag... but surgically avoid the actual heart muscle entirely.' Kiyohara formed a dark, brilliant hypothesis.
Both Obito and Rin had been secretly, surgically implanted with a "Forbidden Individual Curse Tag" directly on their heart tissue by Madara Uchiha, which prevented them from committing suicide or removing it themselves.
That was the exact, horrifying reason why Rin had later actively chosen to throw herself onto Kakashi's lethal Chidori. She was utilizing an allied attack to destroy the heart tag she couldn't touch.
As for why Obito did not surgically remove his own Curse Tag from the very beginning of his defection? It was because Obito knew that Black Zetsu was a manifestation of Madara's will, and since the Infinite Tsukuyomi plan was not yet fully complete and might require Madara's resurrection, he chose not to remove the failsafe yet to maintain the alliance.
"My future self," Kiyohara called out sharply in his mental space, tapping his finger against the Uchiha Urn.
"I am here," the ghost of Uchiha Kiyohara responded smoothly, emerging from the ceramic.
The ghost took a rapid, clinical look around the battlefield through Kiyohara's optic nerves and instantly understood the catastrophic tactical situation.
"The surgical Curse Tag located directly on Rin's heart muscle must be physically destroyed to free her. But it must be done without inflicting lethal damage to the heart itself," Kiyohara strategized. "My theoretical medical knowledge is sufficient to surgically avoid the fatal arteries... but executing such a flawless, microscopic operation in a chaotic combat environment requires activating the dynamic vision of the Sharingan. And maintaining that requires a massive, unbroken supply of chakra."
Kiyohara stared coldly at Rin, who was trapped in the shaking water prison; her dense, corrosive crimson chakra was clashing violently with the glowing sealing chains.
"You want me to physically possess your coils to help actively refine chakra from your cells, and simultaneously use my Sharingan's insight—combined with your Medical Ninjutsu—to execute a flawless, mid-combat open-heart surgery?" the ghost asked, intrigued.
"That is exactly right. But before I can execute the surgery, I also need to slaughter these remaining enemies guarding the perimeter," Kiyohara stated coldly.
Uchiha Kiyohara could help him continuously, aggressively refine raw chakra. In this symbiotic state, the biological duration of Kiyohara's active Sharingan deployment would be exponentially longer.
Systematically slaughtering these elite assassins required the dynamic vision of the Sharingan, and utilizing the X-ray ability to see through flesh and isolate the exact chakra flow of the "Forbidden Curse Tag" also strictly required the Sharingan.
After all, the microscopic tag was fundamentally driven by complex chakra networks.
"...Very well," Uchiha Kiyohara's spirit was silent for a brief moment, then smiled with dark approval.
This violent, pragmatic development was actually completely different from the tragic timeline his own future had suffered.
The exact next microsecond, Kiyohara physically felt his depleted chakra reserves violently surging back to life. The biological function of his stomach was also heavily enhanced by the ghost's Yang manipulation.
He hurriedly reached into his tactical pouch, pulled out a highly concentrated, military-grade ration bar, and shoved it directly into his mouth to rapidly provide the raw biological calories required for the massive chakra refinement.
Subsequently, a touch of absolute, blinding crimson appeared in Kiyohara's jet-black eyes.
A single, pitch-black tomoe slowly, violently squeezed out from the red sea within his pupils.
"!!"
Kakashi, who was sprinting nearby, noticed the sudden flash of red in Kiyohara's eyes and immediately stumbled, his expression twisting exactly as if he had just seen a mythological ghost.
KIYOHARA ALSO POSSESSED A SHARINGAN?!
Where the absolute hell did that biological mutation come from?! Why had he never, ever known?!
"Oh?"
Kugetsu Hozuki paused his Sealing sequence, noticing the massive chakra spike emanating from Kiyohara, and especially locking onto that pair of glowing, crimson eyes.
"So... you're actually a bastard brat from the Uchiha Clan," Kugetsu sneered. "No, wait... the Bingo Book intelligence files on you absolutely do not record a Dojutsu mutation, nor do they state you were born into the Uchiha lineage... Have you been hiding your true genetic strength all this time?!"
The crimson single tomoe slowly, methodically rotated in Kiyohara's eyes, and everything in his tactical field of vision became fundamentally different.
The hyper-lethal water threads wielded by Kugetsu, whose aerodynamic trajectories were originally a chaotic blur to the naked eye, were now—under the dynamic vision of the Sharingan—as perfectly, predictably clear as the lines on Kiyohara's own palm.
More crucially, the X-ray insight allowed him to physically see the microscopic contraction of Kugetsu's shoulder muscles and calculate the exact mathematical angle at which the assassin's wrist was about to rotate, allowing Kiyohara to perfectly predict the vector of the next lethal strike before it was even executed.
"Magnet Release... Rotation!"
The invisible, highly pressurized magnetic field surrounding his physical body instantly exploded violently outward in a 360-degree sphere, generating a massive, localized reverse thrust.
This kinetic force acted directly upon his own physical mass. Combined flawlessly with a massive burst of Wind chakra channeled into his legs, his physical velocity suddenly, violently increased by an entire, apocalyptic order of magnitude!
"WHAT?!"
Kugetsu Hozuki's pupils constricted sharply in absolute, mortal terror.
This physical speed was more than a full notch faster than the boy's previous supersonic baseline!
He was forced to desperately interrupt the complex sealing technique he was performing and instantly activate his clan's Hydrification Technique, physically turning his entire body into liquid water to avoid decapitation.
PUCHI!
Kiyohara's black ninja sword swept violently past, physically slicing completely through Kugetsu's neck, but bringing up only a harmless splash of severed water.
Kugetsu instantly materialized a few steps away, re-condensing his physical biology with an incredibly ugly, terrified expression.
He looked at Kiyohara's glowing crimson eyes. The Sharingan... it truly was an absolutely, terrifyingly troublesome Bloodline Limit!
At the exact same time.
More than ten miles away, deep within the subterranean Mountain's Graveyard.
Madara Uchiha sat heavily on his wooden throne, watching the chaos unfold on the battlefield flawlessly through the telepathic vision shared by the White Zetsu clone network.
His ancient, scarred expression was completely cold and calm, even carrying a trace of arrogant indifference, exactly like a wealthy aristocrat watching a predictable stage play.
"Obito's psychological and emotional fluctuations are currently incredibly intense... Very good. However, that Konoha brat named Kiyohara's performance is actually... highly unexpected," Madara stated clinically to the White Zetsu standing beside him.
These White Zetsu drones—there were a massive legion of them hibernating in the underground tunnels.
"To be able to physically hold out for so long under the coordinated siege of elite Hozuki Clan assassins, Hidden Mist Jonin, and veteran ANBU—and even flawlessly find micro-openings to launch lethal counterattacks—this level of raw combat talent can confidently be considered 'excellent' even by the brutal standards of my era," Madara admitted grudgingly.
White Zetsu replied in its typical, highly exaggerated, mocking tone:
"He looks even stronger than the famous 'Genius' Kakashi!"
Madara nodded slightly, analyzing the data.
"Kakashi possesses decent, functional talent. But his psychological Heart-Nature is severely lacking; he emotionally carries entirely too many unnecessary, pathetic burdens. Whereas this Kiyohara boy... his tactical goals are absolute, his execution methods are brutally direct, and he perfectly understands how to flawlessly utilize the terrain and all of his own genetic advantages."
"Solely in terms of potential utility as a 'tool,' he might indeed be vastly superior to Obito... but unfortunately..." Madara shook his head in disappointment.
It always came back to the exact same, absolute biological point: No matter how brilliant a shinobi was, without possessing the sacred Uchiha Bloodline and the ocular power of the Sharingan, they fundamentally possessed zero qualification to carry out the Infinite Tsukuyomi plan.
Kiyohara was merely a temporary variable that might be worth noting slightly, but he need not be concerned about in the grand design.
Madara was just preparing to dismiss the boy and return the entirety of his focus to Obito's suffering.
Just at this exact, historical moment.
Through the high-definition telepathic vision shared by the Zetsu drone, Madara suddenly saw a visual anomaly that genuinely, profoundly stunned his ancient brain.
He saw clearly that not long after Rin went violently berserk... Kiyohara's jet-black eyes suddenly, violently shifted to a glowing crimson, and a distinct, pitch-black tomoe physically emerged in his pupils!
Madara's half-closed, tired eyes suddenly snapped completely, violently wide open, and his white eyebrows raised significantly in absolute, unadulterated shock.
For the absolute first time in decades, his scarred expression showed a genuine, profound emotional fluctuation; it was raw surprise completely beyond expectation.
"...Sharingan?!"
Madara's raspy voice rang out loudly in the empty, silent cave, echoing off the stone walls.
White Zetsu also made a confused "Eh?" sound, having just processed this impossible biometric information through the hive-mind network.
"It really is... it's a biologically functional Sharingan. One active tomoe. How the absolute hell could a civilian boy possess..." White Zetsu muttered in shock.
Madara was completely silent for a long, heavy moment. The initial shock in his eyes was quickly, ruthlessly replaced by deep, rapid tactical contemplation.
Awakening the genetic mutation of the Sharingan strictly requires intense, traumatic emotional stimulation, usually directly related to the violent misfortune of those closest to the user. Therefore, the more emotionally unstable and loving an Uchiha is, the easier it is to trigger this ocular power.
"He actually possesses the Uchiha Bloodline... does he?" Madara muttered to himself, his massive intellect running through countless historical and genetic possibilities.
"Is it the bastard bloodline left outside the village by some pathetic junior in the clan who couldn't control their urges? Or... is it an ancient, dormant offshoot left behind even earlier during the violent migrations and wanderings of the Uchiha Clan during the Warring States period?"
Madara fell into deep, historical thought.
The Uchiha Clan did not always peacefully settle in the lush Land of Fire.
In the brutal Sengoku era and earlier centuries, they had operated as violent mercenaries, serving different feudal lords and constantly moving their camps from province to province to survive.
Madara clearly remembered reading the ancient Family archives; the Uchiha vanguard had once been permanently stationed in the freezing Land of Lightning for a long period, and were even politically responsible for guarding the exiled Chinoike Clan (possessors of the Ketsuryugan), who had offended the Daimyo.
In those turbulent, bloody times when the Family's sphere of geopolitical influence was constantly shifting, it was completely possible for isolated clansmen to be left wandering outside the main force, or to unknowingly leave bastard descendants by procreating with civilian outsiders.
After all, even strictly within the purebred Uchiha Clan, only a tiny fraction of elites could ever biologically awaken the eyes. The vast majority of clansmen would never awaken the Sharingan in their entire, mundane lives. Naturally, there was no way to confirm whether a civilian possessed the dormant genetic marker or not; they could only logically infer it from possessing the 'Uchiha' surname.
It was just that decades later, when the Hidden Village system was built, Madara had personally led all the purebred clansmen he knew at the time to create Konoha. And these old, messy historical matters of lost bloodlines were gradually forgotten by history.
"And there is also the fact that he spontaneously developed the Magnet Release Bloodline Limit mutation..." Madara suddenly felt this variable was becoming incredibly, delightfully interesting.
In the entire, bloody history of the Sengoku era, Madara had never once encountered an Uchiha who possessed the genetic capacity to express a secondary, non-ocular Bloodline Limit.
Watching Kiyohara in the telepathic field of vision—whose physical speed and kinetic insight had skyrocketed astronomically after activating the Sharingan, and who was now beginning to truly, effortlessly suppress the elite Hozuki assassin—a dark, genuinely amused smile appeared on Madara's lips again.
"Originally, I dismissed him as just an insignificant, temporary pawn on the board..."
"But now... he is absolutely worth re-evaluating as a candidate."
Madara's ancient gaze swept once more over Obito—who was currently struggling pathetically in the mud, weeping while his Sharingan hovered on the verge of emotional transformation—and then looked back at the sharp, brilliant, cold perfection of Kiyohara slaughtering enemies on the field.
Madara genuinely began wondering if he had chosen the wrong teenager to inherit his legacy.
"No... it ultimately still depends strictly on exactly what specific Mangekyō Dojutsu Obito will awaken tonight," Madara rubbed his scarred chin.
After discovering the shock that Kiyohara had actually awakened a Sharingan, Madara became infinitely more heavily invested in the climax of this stage play than before.
Every single Uchiha who successfully survives the trauma to awaken the Mangekyō Sharingan will physically possess two unique, god-tier Dojutsu abilities.
The Sharingan is literally the eye that reflects the soul, biologically responding to the deepest, most desperate psychological desires hidden in the holder's heart at the exact moment of awakening. The physical manifestation of the Dojutsu is always intimately related to the holder's agonizing state of mind.
'Obito... what kind of absolute, apocalyptic Dojutsu will you manifest from this despair?'
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