It was like being plunged ten thousand meters into the deep sea and then abruptly dragged back to the surface… a sensation of separation mixed with gravity pulling his consciousness back into his body.
Menma's eyes snapped open.
The scarlet Three-Tomoe Sharingan of his left eye and the Akaigan of his right eye simultaneously focused.
Inside Hamura Shrine, shattered fragments of golden tracks hung suspended in the air, every speck of metallic dust frozen mid-explosion.
Kanon was locked in a pose with her Adamantine Sealing Chains vibrating violently. The Susanoo's arm extended by Hikari was rigidly fixed in place. Hizashi's tear of blood, streaming from his eye socket, and the trembling pupils of his Byakugan, strained from overuse, were all motionless.
Even the dark red cracks dancing across the surface of the Giant Tenseigan seemed to have been paused.
Then, the flow of time abruptly returned to normal.
The suspended metallic debris fell.
The faint cracking sounds from the depths of the shrine resumed, connecting into a continuous series.
Hikari snapped back to awareness instantly. The extended claw of her Susanoo almost instinctively closed forward, seeking to shield Menma's figure within its palm.
"No need."
Menma's voice cut through the howling energy storm, calm as a stone dropping into water.
He didn't even turn his head, only tilting his chin back slightly in a minuscule, almost imperceptible gesture.
The Susanoo's giant claw halted in the air half a step behind Menma. The boiling Chakra gradually calmed. The bloody light of the Mangekyo Sharingan in Hikari's eyes dimmed, but her gaze locked even more tightly onto Menma's back.
The outline of her Susanoo remained in a semi-solid state, poised and ready.
"What was that just now?" Her voice carried a trace of tightly controlled tension.
The residual energy vortices within the shrine still tore at space. The sensation of that abruptly descending and vanishing white light, the feeling of being devoured, was intense enough to leave a mark on the spiritual level.
It was a power she had never seen, never even heard of!
"Nothing much." Menma's voice came through his mask, his gaze falling upon the Giant Tenseigan, its core light flickering unsteadily, covered in dark red cracks, "Just took a trip to the Pure Land and had a chat with Otsutsuki Hamura about some old matters."
The air instantly solidified.
Shuto, pinned tightly to the metal pillar by Adamantine Sealing Chains and black rod, jerked his head up!
"Ab-absurd!" Shuto's roar was rendered hoarse and distorted by the black rod piercing his shoulder blade. His body struggled violently within the chains, the metal pillar emitting a screeching friction sound!
"Hamura-sama's Pure Land, his resting place... How could someone like you-!"
Menma did not turn around. He merely raised the index finger of his right hand, with extreme casualness, in Shuto's direction.
Hum-!
An invisible, terrifying force of repulsion instantly descended!
"Guh-!" Shuto's furious roar was forcibly choked back in his throat!
The space around his bound body seemed to instantly solidify into a prison a thousand times harder than metal!
The Adamantine Sealing Chains snapped taut to their absolute limit!
The black rods piercing his shoulder blades hummed and vibrated, forcibly disrupting the flow of his remaining chakra!
An immense pressure crushed down on his entire skeletal structure. All struggle, all roar, all will to resist was utterly extinguished before the mountain-shattering willpower carried by that single finger.
"How is this possible... How can you... control this power-" Shuto's body convulsed violently, uncontrollably. Deep within his chest, his breathing sounded like a broken bellows.
"Twisted, fallen, utterly foolish." Menma's voice remained icy and steady, each word piercing clearly through the chaotic energy currents, nailing into the core of Shuto's spirit, which is on the verge of collapse.
"The mission of the Otsutsuki bloodline on the moon has only two tenets: protect the Ninja World and protect the seal." He paused slightly. His gaze, from behind the mask, seemed to pierce through the Giant Tenseigan, as if seeing a deeper secret.
"You couldn't even fulfill the most basic duty of guarding the Gedo Statue! Yet you arrogantly seek to purify the Ninja World? Administering divine punishment with your filthy bloodline, relying on this incomplete 'eye'?"
The cold sarcasm was like a blade's edge, "Otsutsuki Shuto, which of your actions, and those of your twisted ancestors, followed Hamura's will? Which one did not defile and trample upon the beliefs he passed down through his bloodline?"
Shuto's body trembled violently.
'He knows... How does he know everything?!'
Within his body, bound by the Adamantine Sealing Chains and black rod, the last pillar of belief supporting him crumbled completely.
Within his body, bound by the Adamantine Sealing Chains and black rod, the last pillar of belief supporting him crumbled completely.
"The Gedo… Gedo Statue-" Shuto's cracked lips moved soundlessly. His empty eye sockets 'looked' in Menma's direction, filled only with bewilderment.
"It was lost decades ago... I even secretly set foot in the Ninja World to search for it, but found nothing…" His voice grew lower and lower, carrying a vast sense of emptiness, the feeling of a millennia-old fantasy being utterly punctured.
"He has been missing for decades. I once secretly set foot in the ninja world to look for him, but found nothing—" His voice became increasingly low, with a huge sense of emptiness after a thousand-year-old dream was completely shattered.
"As for that legendary seal… I… didn't mean to..." Shuto's words of explanation were pale and feeble.
In the face of Menma's precise and accurate accusations regarding their clan's secrets, the seal, and the Gedo Statue, all justifications seemed absurd and laughable.
"You certainly didn't mean to." Menma stepped forward, the soles of his boots crunching over the cold, shattered metal tracks with crisp sounds.
He walked towards the immobilized Shuto, his voice like the pronouncement of a final judgment: "You were merely incompetent. So incompetent that you couldn't even uphold the most basic mission bestowed upon your bloodline by your ancestors. So incompetent that your vision was blinded by narrow-minded arrogance, twisting protection into destruction. The Ninja World does not need purification. It only needs an executioner."
Menma stopped before Shuto, looking down from a height.
He did not touch Shuto, but the immense pressure emanating from the Nine-Tails' Chakra, mixed with his own will, descended like an intangible mountain, heavily pressing down upon every inch of Shuto's restrained body.
"I will end the meaningless conflicts of the Ninja World. I will erase the millennia of turmoil you, the descendants of this bloodline, have personally created." Menma's voice held no emotional fluctuations, only a god-like indifference, overlooking the fate of ants.
"The future of this Ninja World and this moon, whether you wish it or not-"
He raised his right hand, fingers spread, resonating with the Giant Tenseigan.
"Will all fall under my control."
Thud.
A soft sound echoed through the dead-silent shrine.
Shuto's body slowly slid down, his knees finally hitting the cold, crystal-dust-covered ground with a heavy thud.
He made no further sound. His entire head hung limply against his chest, his pale white hair disheveled, covering his empty eye sockets.
His body, pierced by chains and black rods, merely maintained its kneeling posture, like a broken stone statue stripped of all soul.
All struggle, all roars, all pride, all schemes… ultimately turned to dust.
Silence, like a cold tide, drowned Shuto.
Nearby, Toneri, watching his helpless father, felt the factional ideology instilled in him begin to crumble.
The dark red cracks on the surface of the Giant Tenseigan still pulsed faintly, its pale golden glow flickering unsteadily.
Shisui and Hizashi stood at the position closest to the core of the luminous sphere, silently observing this Giant Tenseigan that not long ago had radiated world-ending divine power, but was now covered in cracks.
The air was still permeated with the not-yet-dissipated Tailed Beast Chakra.
Shisui's Three-Tomoe Sharingan rotated cautiously, observing the six-petaled flower at the core of the luminous sphere. Each dimming and faintly brightening flicker made his heartstrings tighten.
The shattered edges silently spoke of the residual power from the collision between Menma's chakra and the Giant Tenseigan.
In the visual field of Hizashi's Byakugan, everything was more microscopic and clear.
He could 'see' the complex energy network inside the Giant Tenseigan, the intricate structure composed of pure Byakugan's Ocular Power.
Now, it was like a spiderweb forcibly torn apart. Vast amounts of incredibly pure pupil power were seeping out, thread by thread, from those cracks, dissipating and dissolving.
With each pulse, the cracks seemed to widen slightly.
A fierce contradiction tore at his heart.
'This was the power of the Byakugan's ultimate evolved form… the [Tenseigan]!'
"So the Byakugan can also evolve, like the Sharingan-" A greatness surpassing all imagination was displayed before Hizashi's eyes!
And now, this eye was crumbling before them, continuously!
"Shura-sama…" Hizashi's voice held a barely perceptible dryness. He struggled to tear his gaze away from the dizzying cracks and turned towards the black-robed figure.
"This Tenseigan... should we attempt to repair it?" His peripheral vision uncontrollably swept over Kimimaro nearby.
The Byakugan, transplanted from a Hyuga Clan's elder, now glowed faintly and bulged with veins due to sensing the homologous power. A chill crawled up Hizashi's spine.
Menma's gaze swept over Shuto, kneeling like a dead thing, and landed on the divine eye standing tall amidst the wreckage.
He slowly raised his right hand, wrapped in dark red Tailed Beast Chakra. This time, it was not an aggressive extension.
Hum-
After an extremely faint but unmistakably clear resonance, strands of deep blue, starlight-like Chakra Threads began to flow backwards along the dark red light emanating from Menma's fingertips, returning into his body.
It was not absorption, but rather an exchange and confirmation of some kind of information.
"Hagoromo and Hamura are both blood descendants of Otsutsuki Kaguya." Menma stated calmly, "Though their bloodlines differ, they share the same origin, the same flow."
The dark red Chakra at his fingertips was like living tendrils, gently coiling around the edge of a small crack.
"My chakra, to this 'eye' refined from the countless Byakugan of Hamura's descendants, is both a foreign object and an energy source." His gaze fell upon his fingertips, where faint blue starlight pulsed within the dark red glow.
"Ocular Power, in the end, is the ultimate manifestation of spiritual power. Just as Chakra is refined from physical energy and spiritual energy, so too is Ocular Power refined."
"The highest authority of this Giant Tenseigan... perhaps it also carries Hamura's acknowledgment. Who knows."
[Authority]
This word struck Hizashi and Shisui's hearts like a silent clap of thunder.
They snapped their gazes towards the core of the Tenseigan, towards that six-petaled floral symbol that had seemed utterly withered just moments before!
Now, at the edges of its pale golden glow, an extremely faint ring of pale red ripples was quietly spreading, covering it!
Menma withdrew his hand, and the starlight threads at his fingertips vanished.
His gaze turned to Hizashi. Through the eyeholes of the mask, it felt as if he could directly pierce through the struggle within Hizashi's heart.
"Repairing this giant Tenseigan is not an unattainable goal." Menma's voice was not loud, "Since its foundational building blocks are 'countless Byakugan', then-" He slowly raised his left hand, palm facing upward, as if holding an intangible model, "We shall use new 'building blocks' to mend the old cracks."
An indifference stemming from the very essence of life instantly enveloped Hizashi!
'Is he going to…' Hizashi remembered his initial fear.
But the next sentence dispelled Hizashi's worries.
"Cloning technology can already mass-produce Sharingan. Mass production of the Byakugan has also seen breakthrough progress. Repairing this Giant Tenseigan is only a matter of time." Menma turned, his back to Hizashi and Shisui.
'Mass production... of the Byakugan?!'
Hizashi seemed to see the scene sketched by these simple words.
Countless identical white eyeballs, growing in cold containers, being harvested, then fed into the core of this Giant Tenseigan!
"His eyes are also clones." Menma said with a slight tilt of his head towards Shisui.
Hizashi looked at Shisui in disbelief.
Shisui did not deny it, only giving a heavy nod. The shock in Hizashi's heart intensified.
"Kanon, Hikari." Menma suddenly addressed Kanon and Hikari, "You will take over the castle and the main control room of the lunar ecosystem. Take Shuto and Toneri to the central core. Gather all intelligence regarding seals, control matrices, and the secret techniques of the Otsutsuki Clan."
His gaze swept over Kanon, "After analysis is complete, attempt to relocate the main anchor point of the lunar spatial channel to within the borders of the Land of Stars."
"Yes!" Kanon gave a slight bow.
She released several of the chains binding Toneri and Shuto.
Simultaneously, Menma spread the fingers of his right hand, recalling the black rod piercing Shuto's shoulders.
Having lost his authority over the Giant Tenseigan and any will to resist, Shuto no longer posed any threat.
Hikari stepped forward silently without a word, standing at Kanon's side.
Her dark combat outfit made her face appear even paler under the shrine's gloomy light, and even colder.
She did not look at the captured Shuto and his son, her gaze instead fixed on the open arched door.
Soon, only four people remained in the center of the shattered Hamura Shrine.
Menma stood alone in the faint light, enveloped by the vast, swaying shadow cast by the Giant Tenseigan.
The flickering golden light flowed over his dark red Tailed Beast's Chakra Cloak, projecting twisted, demonic patterns dancing wildly on the black floor and walls.
"Let's go. There's nothing more here for now." Repairing the Giant Tenseigan wasn't something that could be done quickly. Menma also prepared to leave the Hamura Shrine.
Buzz-!
Suddenly, an extremely faint resonant frequency spread from Menma's left eye!
The sudden, strange pain made Menma raise his hand to press against his mask. The three tomoes of the Sharingan in his left eye seemed to be rotating.
The three tomoes gradually formed an ouroboros-like ring, flashing deep within the pupil before vanishing.
"Shura-sama!" Kimimaro was the first to notice Menma's abnormality and hurried forward, simultaneously growing wary of Shisui and Hizashi.
"I'm fine." Menma pressed down on his mask. When he looked up again, he had returned to normal.
'Strange, there was no intense emotional stimulus, yet the Sharingan evolved? Could it be the influence of Ocular Power?' Feeling the change in his left eye, Menma guessed it might be due to his refined control over spiritual power and pupil refinement after mastering Yin-Yang Release.
After all, according to the bloodline theory in this world, as long as the bloodline is pure enough and one's strength reaches a certain level, directly awakening a higher-level Dojutsu seemed quite reasonable.
For example, Madara gradually awakened the Rinnegan after integrating Hashirama's cells.
Or Toneri, who gradually awakened the Tenseigan after transplanting Hanabi's eyes.
Shisui and Hizashi halted their steps. The Three-Tomoe Sharingan and the Byakugan turned towards him, sensing that beneath the white three-eyed fox mask, an even vaster power seemed to be brewing!
'Is that—the Mangekyo-?' Shock appeared on Shisui's face because this power was all too familiar to him.