After a moment's thought, Hyuga Yuu took out the scroll containing the three ANBU and released one unconscious operative onto the floor.
Then he reached into his ninja pouch and produced a small vial filled with black hair.
It was hair from the Hyuga jōnin he'd killed earlier.
He hadn't collected blood—blood was messy. And the smell would cling.
"Summoning Technique—Edo Tensei."
Gray-white paper talismans flooded outward, wrapping around the ANBU in the formation.
The pain snapped the man awake. His eyes widened in terror as the paper crawled over his limbs like living skin.
"What is this—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
The paper swallowed his head too.
And from the land of the dead, the Hyuga jōnin returned.
He opened his eyes in confusion. The moment he spotted Yuu standing nearby, he tried to raise his guard—
Only to realize, with a jolt of horror, that he couldn't move at all.
"What did you do to me?!"
"This is the Second Hokage's Edo Tensei," Yuu said lightly. "You're dead. Don't tell me you forgot."
The jōnin stared at his hands—hands webbed with cracks, like dried earth.
"…Dead."
"You can process that later." Yuu stepped closer and pushed a kunai—one with a dangling paper charm—straight into the jōnin's head.
"Now."
"Activate your Byakugan."
The jōnin's fingers rose against his will.
His voice came out through clenched teeth, like he was reading lines carved into his bones.
"Byakugan… activate."
Yuu watched the smooth activation, a glint flashing through his eyes.
Before death, this jōnin's Byakugan ocular power had been completely drained by Yuu's sealing technique.
And yet now, as an Edo Tensei…
He could still open his Byakugan.
Just like reanimated Nagato, like reanimated Uchiha Itachi.
Even without their original eyes, they hadn't lost their dōjutsu or bloodline abilities.
"Interesting," Yuu murmured, amused. "So what's inherited is chakra… not 'blood' itself?"
He smiled faintly.
"And that's why awakening the Tenseigan requires the Hyuga's Byakugan."
The unnamed Hyuga jōnin—forced to maintain the Byakugan—glared at him with naked hatred.
"You brought me back… to take revenge on the Main House?"
"To verify something."
Yuu glanced at him, tone almost cheerful.
"Before you died, I absorbed all of your Byakugan ocular power with a fūinjutsu."
"It's a sealing technique I created using the Uchiha's Transcription Seal as a template—only the opposite. Instead of embedding a technique, it forcibly extracts the target's ocular power."
He leaned in slightly.
"But at the very end, you couldn't even activate the Byakugan."
"And now you can."
"Why?"
The jōnin hadn't even recovered from the question when Yuu answered it himself.
"Because you didn't lose your chakra."
"A shinobi's kekkei genkai doesn't exist because of 'bloodline inheritance' in the simple sense."
"It exists because chakra is inherited."
Yuu's eyes were calm, but his voice carried the weight of a conclusion he'd been walking toward for a long time.
"Every reanimated bloodline user proves it."
"They've lost their flesh. Lost their genes."
And yet they still wield their kekkei genkai.
At that point, a few old riddles snapped into place inside Yuu's mind.
—Why could Nagato still use the Rinnegan after being reanimated?
The answer fit neatly alongside Naruto's own case.
Naruto had whisker-like markings from birth because of the Nine-Tails' chakra.
Because Kushina was his mother, the Nine-Tails' chakra had indirectly seeped into Naruto's inherited chakra from the beginning.
It sounded strange when you phrased it bluntly, but in practice Naruto's "inherited chakra" was Minato + Kushina + the Nine-Tails.
A child of two people and one fox.
And Nagato was similar.
The Rinnegan had been transplanted into him when he was young—turning him into nothing more than a tool to keep the eyes "alive."
Over time, the Rinnegan's overwhelming power stained and reshaped Nagato's chakra—converting it toward the Rinnegan's unique "type."
And the Spirit Transformation Technique suggested something even deeper:
A shinobi's soul wasn't merely "mental energy."
It was made of chakra.
So when Edo Tensei gave Nagato a body, the chakra nature bound to his soul remained.
Which meant the Rinnegan's bloodline power remained too.
But if that was true…
Then did you actually need the Rinnegan itself to use its abilities?
Wouldn't "the right chakra" be enough?
"…What can you even do with that knowledge?"
The Hyuga jōnin spoke cautiously, sensing Yuu's mind drift somewhere dangerous.
Yuu's gaze slid over him like a blade.
The jōnin felt ice flood his veins.
"It lets me push my strength even further."
With that, Yuu waved a hand and sealed the reanimated Hyuga away, leaving him drowning in questions.
Yuu's eyes turned distant as he walked out of the underground training room.
"Byakugan, Sharingan, Rinnegan, Tenseigan…"
"In the end, dōjutsu are organs—no different from lungs or a heart."
"They're simply organs that convert chakra into techniques."
"The truly important thing is the chakra that allows them to exist…"
"…Yin–Yang Release."
Yin and Yang complemented each other.
The pinnacle of Yin: the Eternal Mangekyō.
The pinnacle of Yang: Hashirama's chakra.
The fusion of the two created the Rinnegan.
Obito implanted Hashirama's cells, stabilizing his Mangekyō so it wouldn't go blind—practically an imitation of an "Eternal Eye."
So if the Byakugan was to evolve into the Tenseigan…
Yang chakra might be the missing key.
…
Deep within the Hyuga compound, the clan head and numerous Main House elders had gathered.
"Tonight, another shinobi close to us was killed," one elder snapped, anger boiling over. "That traitor is getting bolder by the day!"
He slammed his palm down.
"Clan Head, what are you hesitating for? If the enemy hides too well to identify, then we interrogate them one by one!"
"I don't believe they can endure the pain of the Caged Bird!"
Danzō had already guessed the killer was likely Branch House.
How could the Hyuga elders—who understood Branch House hatred better than anyone—not reach the same conclusion?
The problem was simple:
It was too hard to investigate.
A knife in the back—combined with the Byakugan's natural advantage—was terrifying.
And because they were all Konoha shinobi, many had fought side by side during the Third Great Ninja War.
The attackers understood Konoha's investigation methods intimately.
Who could appear within Byakugan range without suspicion. Who couldn't.
Which clans had strange tracking methods that found what normal eyes missed.
How to counter them.
They knew it all.
The current Hyuga clan head—Hiashi's father—finally opened his half-lidded eyes. His tone was indifferent.
"You want them to launch a coup?"
The elder's face showed obvious disdain.
The clan head sighed.
"Don't say it's impossible."
"Even sheep, led by a lion… become lethal."
He tapped the floor lightly with a finger, steadying the room.
"Judging by the time of death and the victims' strength, there are quite a few Branch House resisting in secret."
"If we strike first, it will push even more Branch House to their side."
"Because we are enslaving them," he said quietly, "and we intend to enslave them for generations."
No parent wished to see their child live as a slave.
Let alone their grandchildren.
Let alone generation after generation—
…
(to be continued)