In his heart, Hyuga Kagami had already steeled himself for what was to come.
From the conversation between Mitsui Chuichi and Anko just now, he could roughly infer that the so-called “special missions” Mitsui Chuichi had assigned to Oda and Anko were most likely missions to make contact with spies the village had planted among the Sand shinobi.
But for a secret mission like that, how could the village possibly send two chunin who were still under investigation?
No matter how he looked at it, it simply didn’t make sense.
So Anko’s intuition had been right.
This so-called “special mission” was a trap.
Perhaps the village really had abandoned them—Orochimaru’s former subordinates—and intended to eliminate them one by one through seemingly legitimate means.
“Was it Danzo?
The Third?
Or the Fourth?”
The first person Hyuga Kagami suspected was Danzo.
There were far too many hidden circumstances surrounding Orochimaru’s premature defection this time.
Hyuga Kagami had no way of determining exactly what role Danzo had played behind the scenes, but there was no doubt that Danzo had benefited the most from Orochimaru’s defection.
Going by the logic that whoever benefited most was the likeliest mastermind, Danzo was very likely the culprit who had pushed Orochimaru into defecting ahead of schedule.
If that was the case, then Danzo and Orochimaru had most likely already fallen out completely.
In that light, it would make perfect sense for Danzo to eliminate Orochimaru’s former subordinates who had refused to join Root.
The Third couldn’t be ruled out either.
After all, the Third was the sort of person who, for the sake of so-called “stability,” was genuinely capable of doing all kinds of incomprehensible and foolish things.
There was plenty of evidence for that: standing by as the White Fang was driven to suicide; later, in order to avoid worsening relations with Kumogakure, putting pressure on the Hyuga clan despite them having acted in legitimate self-defense, ultimately forcing Hyuga Hizashi to his death; allowing Naruto, the orphaned son of the Fourth, to grow up amid the discrimination and abuse of the entire village; and so on.
As for the Fourth, Hyuga Kagami didn’t think he was responsible.
It wasn’t because Kagami had blind faith in the Fourth’s character.
Rather, as a ninja born from a civilian background, the Fourth had no clan of his own backing him, while the Third had yet to fully relinquish his authority.
At present, the Fourth probably didn’t possess enough influence to arrange something like this.
At the same time, given the Fourth’s young age, there was no need for him to be in such a hurry to purge political opponents within the village.
In any case, no matter who was orchestrating this purge from behind the scenes, Hyuga Kagami had already become one of their targets.
He knew that danger was already hanging over his head and could descend upon him at any moment.
Days passed one after another.
A week after Anko was ambushed, Hyuga Kagami finally made it safely through the Tenseigan’s adaptation period.
The dizziness and stabbing pain disappeared completely. This chapter was taken from novelping.com without permission.
And what followed was a comprehensive enhancement of his vision.
The Tenseigan possessed some of the Byakugan’s abilities, and when it came to perceiving minute details, it far surpassed the Byakugan.
Through ordinary observation alone, Hyuga Kagami could roughly predict his opponent’s next move by observing the flow of chakra within their body, as well as the subtle contractions and expansions of their muscles.
Aside from his enhanced perception, the greatest change was the amount of chakra he possessed.
By Hyuga Kagami’s conservative estimate, his current chakra reserves were somewhere between forty and fifty times greater than they had been before he injected the genetic fluid, already surpassing those of an ordinary jonin.
In addition, he could vaguely sense that his body had awakened several other abilities.
However, while he remained at the outpost, his every move was being monitored by Captain Mitsui Chuichi, making it inconvenient to test them one by one.
Suppressing his excitement, Hyuga Kagami finally got an opportunity a few days later to head out on patrol alone.
“Hah!”
With a low shout, the yellow sand in the distance surged toward Hyuga Kagami’s outstretched right hand like floodwaters bursting through a broken dam!
With a mere thought, the torrent of sand rushing toward him was suddenly blasted away, as though it had slammed headfirst into a raging hurricane!
Gazing at the yellow sand filling the sky, coming at his summons and scattering at his command, Hyuga Kagami stood alone in the remote desert, the corners of his lips curling into a faint smile.
This technique combined the principles behind Pain’s Shinra Tensei and Bansho Ten’in, operating through the same forces of attraction and repulsion.
In Hyuga Kagami’s vague memories of his previous life, Otsutsuki Toneri on the Moon had also used a similar technique.
“Since it’s an ability of the Tenseigan, I’ll call this technique ‘Wheel of Will’!”
After testing Wheel of Will several more times, Hyuga Kagami’s initial excitement gradually faded, and he began to notice its shortcomings.
Its effective range was only around fifteen meters, and the farther away the target was, the weaker its effect became.
Hyuga Kagami frowned as he caught his breath.
Most offensive ninjutsu ranked C-class or higher had an effective range exceeding twenty meters, with some even reaching fifty meters.
Meanwhile, in the hands of a skilled thrower, projectile weapons such as kunai and shuriken could also easily maintain their lethality beyond twenty meters.
In other words, once an enemy created enough distance between them, Hyuga Kagami’s current Wheel of Will could only serve as a defensive or disruptive technique.
Setting aside the problem of its limited range for the moment, Hyuga Kagami, still breathing heavily, discovered another weakness.
And that weakness was precisely the chakra reserves that had delighted him so much before.
The forty-to-fiftyfold increase in his chakra reserves had initially left Hyuga Kagami extremely excited.
Yet after repeatedly using Wheel of Will several times in succession, he was shocked to discover that his chakra was already running low.
Only now did Hyuga Kagami belatedly realize something.
The forty-to-fiftyfold increase in his chakra had interfered with his objective judgment, causing him to vastly overestimate just how much chakra he actually possessed.
In truth, his previous chakra reserves had only been at the level of a standard genin. The source of this chapter is g.com.
They had simply been far too mediocre to begin with.
So even after increasing by forty or fifty times, the total amount was nowhere near as outrageous as he had imagined.
It had merely surpassed the level of an ordinary jonin.
That was a far cry from the limitless freedom he had imagined, where he could throw ninjutsu around as he pleased.
And compared to Otsutsuki Toneri, who likewise possessed the Tenseigan yet could practically treat the Moon like a toy, there was simply no comparison.
Yet Hyuga Kagami had always used Otsutsuki Toneri as his benchmark.
Reality had just dealt him a crushing blow.
“Why is this happening?”
“Where exactly did I go wrong?”
“Could the method I used to evolve the Tenseigan have been flawed?”
Question after question flooded Hyuga Kagami’s mind.
He remained trapped in confusion, anxiety, and even panic for quite some time before finally calming himself down.
Once he approached the problem from a different angle and thought it through carefully, however, all of his previous doubts suddenly fell into place.
In his memories of his previous life, Otsutsuki Toneri had been the only person to possess the Tenseigan.
Because of that, Hyuga Kagami had subconsciously assumed that as long as he obtained the Tenseigan, he would naturally possess the same level of power as Otsutsuki Toneri.
But thinking about it again, even kekkei genkai varied from person to person!
Even with the same Byakugan, there were plenty of people in the Hyuga clan around Hyuga Kagami’s age who were stronger than him.
And even among those who possessed the Sharingan, the vast majority of Uchiha were little more than small fry compared to Madara.
Otsutsuki Toneri was the sole surviving descendant of the branch of the Otsutsuki clan that had settled on the Moon—a genuine genius who had inherited the entirety of Otsutsuki Hamura’s legacy there.
Even before awakening the Tenseigan, Toneri had already possessed Kage-level strength!
Someone like that simply wasn’t comparable to Hyuga Kagami, whose strength had only been at the level of a genin.
After obtaining the Tenseigan, it was only natural that Otsutsuki Toneri would immediately rise to the level of a super-Kage.
Hyuga Kagami, on the other hand, hadn’t even started from the same starting line.
Expecting to catch up to Otsutsuki Toneri’s super-Kage level solely by relying on a pair of Tenseigan was simply unrealistic.
After coming to this realization, Hyuga Kagami tried several other Tenseigan techniques that he remembered Otsutsuki Toneri using.
Sure enough, he discovered that he was unable to enter Tenseigan Chakra Mode.
As for the technique Toneri had used to slice the Moon apart, or abilities such as the Truth-Seeking Balls that combined offense and defense into one, those were even further beyond his reach.
“Huh?
Could it be that entering Tenseigan Chakra Mode requires hand seals?”