At 10:05, Hyuga Yu leapt down from the Hokage Rock.
He did two things.
First, he wrapped up the farce that had unfolded within the Hyuga clan.
As it turned out, Hyuga Yu had not been completely oblivious to the outside world while cultivating Senjutsu.
He first went to Training Ground 23 to rescue nearly 1,700 Hyuga clan members who had been stripped of their Byakugan and left stranded inside the venue.
In theory, whenever a Byakugan is on the verge of being stolen, the Caged Bird seal immediately activates—destroying the Byakugan while simultaneously killing every branch family member on the spot who is about to lose their eyes.
However, the eyes of these clan members had been forcibly extracted by the Giant Tenseigan using Tenseigan chakra. During this process, the higher-grade Tenseigan chakra suppressed the Caged Bird chakra that should have triggered, preventing the Byakugan from being destroyed by the curse seal. The underlying principle was identical to how Hyuga Yu had removed the Caged Bird seal upon his return to the village on the 25th.
Or rather, the Caged Bird curse seal itself possessed a built-in backdoor specifically designed to facilitate fusion into the Giant Tenseigan.
According to Yu's calculations, there were three methods to extract the Byakugan:
First, use higher-level Tenseigan chakra to suppress the Caged Bird curse seal during extraction.
Second, have the master of the Caged Bird curse seal personally control it, suppressing its activation while performing the extraction.
Third, perform eye-transplant surgery using Medical Ninjutsu. This required the user to possess top-tier surgical capabilities within the ninja world, making split-second choices and manipulations to extract or swap eyes within the microsecond window when the Caged Bird activated.
(Note: Orochimaru used this third method when acquiring Hyuga Masato's Byakugan. However, he only managed the extraction phase and failed to execute the eye swap in time to trick the Caged Bird. Consequently, after destroying the brain, the curse seal proceeded to destroy the main family Byakugan that had been transplanted into Masato. The key to Yu and Hyuga Natsu's success was that they destroyed their own Byakugan, skipping the extraction step entirely.)
Upon arriving at the venue, Hyuga Yu converted his chakra into controllable Yang Release chakra, creating over 2,600 brand-new Byakugan. He then created Shadow Clones to rapidly perform basic field treatment on the surviving wounded, stopping their bleeding and restoring their mobility.
After leading the survivors out of the venue and settling them in a safe area, Hyuga Yu set out to accomplish his second task:
Dealing with the Giant Tenseigan itself.
After leaving the clan members with Hyuga Natsu, without any small talk or further instructions, Hyuga Yu raised his head. His gaze cut straight through the ten-plus kilometers of residential districts ahead, focusing on the southeastern side of Konoha—
The Forest of Death.
At that moment, with the successful activation of Flying Raijin: Guiding Thunder, the massive purple sphere descended directly above the central tower of the Forest of Death. It looked ready to plummet and be impaled by the structure!
Yet, the tower did not pierce the orb from below; instead, it collapsed and crumbled instantly under the sheer weight of the colossal purple eye!
Immediately after, tempestuous winds swept down as indiscriminate repulsive force surged outward like a tidal wave!
With the center of the Forest of Death as ground zero, trees were uprooted, the earth turned upside down, and pulverized rocks rained down everywhere!
Even the Konoha ninja lurking nearby were hit by the shockwave, losing control of their bodies as they were sent flying backward.
At the heart of the Forest of Death, a massive, muddy brown circle expanded relentlessly under the devastation wrought by 'Tenseigan: Intimidation'—tearing a gaping, ugly scar across the lush greenery!
Suddenly, all sound vanished in a single instant. It was an absolute, eerie silence where even the wind and insect calls disappeared. This quiet was far more terrifying than any noise, as though the entire world had been placed on mute.
Then—
BOOM—!!!
Right beside Hyuga Yu's ear, a singular, pure, unimaginable sound exploded beyond the limits of human hearing!
Following that, violent gusts of wind swept past, whipping his hair back from his forehead and forcing him to narrow his eyes.
In the far distance, he could see a terrifying shockwave pounding downward, forming a solid, 'JL'-shaped pillar of wind.
He could feel the continuous vibrations pulsing through the soles of his feet even more clearly—like a struck bronze bell humming without pause, sending waves of infrasound that threatened to shatter his kneecaps.
"What... what on earth is that?"
"Wait, were we really fighting against that thing just now?"
Everyone present was utterly dumbfounded.
Although they already knew the Giant Tenseigan possessed power far beyond what they could match—and had overestimated it to an extreme degree—seeing it unleash its true power in person still caused their hearts to race and their throats to go dry from sheer horror.
Even Uchiha Fugaku felt a chill run down his spine, his heart growing cold.
Based on instinct alone, he could tell that against a blow of this magnitude, even if he risked his eyesight to summon the second stage of Susanoo, he... probably couldn't block it!
And that brief moment of relief and hesitation he had felt earlier now seemed like an absolute joke in the face of this direct display of strength.
Amid the sudden chorus of gasps, everyone noticed a figure walking against the violent wind. With calm, steady strides, he was heading straight toward that massive column of wind connecting heaven and earth!
It was Hyuga Yu.
Yu simply walked forward at an unhurried pace, yet with every step he took, the air beneath his feet distorted further.
One step, two steps...
By the third step, a transparent 'bowstring' appeared beneath Yu's feet, making his entire body look as though it were resting atop an invisible gravitational slingshot.
As he took his fourth step, the string was drawn to its absolute limit! The air within twenty meters of him twisted into a chaotic mess, refracting light in all directions and making the central figure look like a deity descending!
In the very next instant—
TWANG!
SWOOSH—!
Yu stepped down hard, snapping forward like an arrow under the propelled repulsive force. He streaked through the air as a beam of pale green light, soaring directly over the dense buildings of the residential district below and shooting toward the skies above the Forest of Death!
"Holy crap, it's Lord Tennin!"
"He's flying!"
Unlike Uchiha Fugaku, who had no clear grasp of the situation, Hyuga Yu possessed a crystal-clear understanding of the monstrosity in the center of the Forest of Death.
That thing was no longer something that could be defined within the framework of a ninja.
The Giant Tenseigan and a regular Tenseigan might only differ by a word, but they were vastly different entities—
The Tenseigan, a Six Paths-level artifact, could grant a user like Toneri Ōtsutsuki—possessing pure lineage and equipped with proper eye sockets—a terrifying combat capability at the peak of Super Kage-level.
But that was the limit of it.
Perhaps once the wielder truly stepped into the Six Paths Realm, the Tenseigan could manifest even greater power, but it still had an output threshold. Among the ranks of the Six Paths Realm—where gods walked the earth and techniques like Kekkei Mōra, Six Paths Senjutsu, and Shinjutsu were tossed around casually—the Tenseigan wasn't particularly broken.
The Giant Tenseigan, however, was a qualitative leap born of sheer quantity—a Six Paths-level entity in its own right!
It might rank at the absolute bottom among Six Paths-level existences, but possessing the power to wipe out a planet's surface ecosystem meant its status had undoubtedly reached the Six Paths level.
Though this embryonic Giant Tenseigan—fused from the Byakugan of the Hyuga clan—was still incomplete, it unquestionably possessed power surpassing the Super Kage-level.
Describing it as 'Half-Step Six Paths' was far more accurate.
In short, it was simply not something the current version of Konoha could deal with.
In fact, even back when Hyuga Yu could unleash Golden Wheel Reincarnation Explosion—when the Hashirama cells in his body were still active—his raw numerical output couldn't match this thing.
Before mastering Senjutsu, confronting the Giant Tenseigan head-on would have cost Yu an immense price. He would have been rendered completely incapacitated, forced to rely on medicine to cling to life while praying that Hiruko and the others remained truly loyal, fully developed the Chimera Technique tree to create a Sage Body, and actually handed it over to him...
Rely upon rogue ninja to offer him unyielding loyalty?
Yu didn't buy into that; to him, it sounded like a fairy tale.
So, in a situation where the raw numbers were completely stacked against him, how was he supposed to deal with the Giant Tenseigan?
Yu's answer was: Senjutsu.
Standard Senjutsu alone possessed the mechanical mechanics required to partially suppress the Giant Tenseigan. He didn't need to clash with it head-on; he only had to stall long enough to work with Minato Namikaze, warp it far away, and let it self-destruct.
What Yu hadn't expected, however, was that this period of Senjutsu cultivation would yield unexpected dividends. He hadn't just gained 'Sage' capabilities; he had broadened his path toward ascending to the Six Paths Realm.
Therefore, Yu's goal was no longer merely neutralizing the threat the Giant Tenseigan posed to his newly established foundation.
Now that he possessed far greater abilities, he couldn't help but think:
Is that really all I should settle for?
Danger is just opportunity in disguise!
Can I extract something valuable from this crisis caused by Hyuga Hiashi's stupidity?
With that thought, as he soared over the residential buildings in southeastern Konoha and drew closer to the giant purple monster in the Forest of Death, Yu focused his mind on the gains from his Senjutsu training.
The results of his Senjutsu training were complex, but stripping away the minor, situational utilities, Hyuga Yu had mastered three primary abilities:
[Transformation]: The ability to freely alter the nature of his chakra, most notably completing controllable Yang Release manipulation ahead of time.
[Hyper-Sensing]: By expanding his perception range through natural energy, he gained a massive 'extra-sensory' boost, drastically increasing the volume of information he could process per unit of time.
[Life-Borrowing]: The ability to borrow life force from other living beings, granting his physical body a qualitative leap in strength.
Setting aside the third ability for now due to potential side effects, combining the first and second abilities through Senjutsu might just give him the power to crush the Giant Tenseigan head-on!
Action followed thought!
Yu immediately submerged his consciousness, immersing himself completely into the 'hyper-sensing range' that now extended twenty kilometers outward.
In an instant, his perspective pulled high into the air, switching to a god's-eye view!
Now, Yu saw his full-color vision suddenly expand across a twenty-kilometer radius, centered on his gliding body.
Everything composing this vibrant, colorful world beyond the mundane grayscale was the 'natural energy' he could perceive!
Living organisms accounted for 99.99% of that energy, but even the remaining 0.01% floating in the atmosphere represented a massive reservoir for Yu in his current state.
Right now, roughly 5% of that ambient natural energy continuously flowed in and out of Yu's body every second. Through [Transformation], that 5% was converted into Yang Release chakra and then into pure vitality, sustaining the parts of his body struggling to handle the Tenseigan chakra.
This meant that besides the 5% keeping him alive, Yu could draw upon at least 95% of the atmospheric natural energy to enter Sage Mode or convert it into other chakra natures!
That amount was roughly equivalent to three shots of Golden Wheel Reincarnation Explosion.
Of course, he couldn't just convert all that natural energy and fire it off like missiles. Absorbing too much natural energy to forge Senjutsu chakra would severely deplete the regional energy density, slowing down the conversion rate of the 5% keeping him alive.
Plugging all his sensory values into fluid dynamics formulas, Yu ran a rapid series of mental calculations and determined the optimal balance point to be—
76.85%.
Roughly equal to 2.4 shots of Golden Wheel Reincarnation Explosion.
This ability to instantly convert natural energy into chakra or Senjutsu chakra continuously strengthened as his Senjutsu mastery deepened.
It was essentially an upgraded version of the Yin Seal.
Yet, this was merely the most fundamental aspect of Yu's Sage abilities.
As Yu directed his hyper-sensing capabilities toward the embryonic Tenseigan, the massive influx of data was instantly received and processed by the unique meridian pathways in his brain.
This refined stream of information then poured into the perspective of his extra Dojutsu, [Dojutsu: Shifang]—
HUM!
Countless pieces of information collided, making the present-anchored future grow strikingly clear. The once imprecise Dojutsu: Shifang—which could only peer 1 to 2 seconds into the future and showed multiple branching possibilities—quietly began to undergo a subtle transformation.
Yu felt as though his head had been struck by a massive sledgehammer.
A chaotic ringing echoed in his ears.
In this state, he could no longer observe the battlefield through the god's-eye view. He was restricted to his basic long-range vision, mid-to-close range overhead vision, and the dynamic vision of his physical eyes.
It was as if the god's-eye view had been consumed by the massive stream of data, shifting into a background process constantly running in his mind like a computer program—
A sixth sense.
Yu was briefly startled, finding the thought somewhat amusing.
After all, even if a sixth sense had been proven to exist in his previous life, what did it mean to have one active at all times?
In the very next instant, Yu's pupils shrank!
He suddenly saw a scorpion-tail-like object—resembling a giant purple spear—silently impale his abdomen in the blink of an eye, lifting and thrashing him around!
Yet strangely enough... he felt no pain?
Before Yu could fully process the vision, his body moved entirely on its own!
Thrusting his palm outward mid-glide, he unleashed an Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm! Using the massive recoil, he catapulted his body sharply off to the left!
In the next split second, Yu watched as the exact same purple spear he had just envisioned silently thrust through the space he had occupied moments prior!
Because Yu had propelled himself sideways, that lethal, vicious attack struck nothing but air!
By now, Yu had crossed the Konoha urban district and reached the airspace above the Forest of Death, mere kilometers away from the Giant Tenseigan at its center.
Shaken by what had just occurred, he couldn't help but look back at the giant purple spear, then traced it down to its source below—
At the center of the Forest of Death, the massive purple Tenseigan was tilting upward.
It stared blankly at Yu, who was floating slowly downward in midair miles away—bent at a awkward 90-degree angle after dodging sideways.
Within that colossal eye, a strangely human expression of total, utterly baffled stupefaction surfaced...
————
Supporting me on Pa-treon to gain early access to advanced chapters and enjoy expedited updates. Your support is greatly appreciated.
pat-reon .c-om/Dragonhair
(Just remove the hyphen - and space, to access Pa-treon normally.)