Hyuga Yu had, in all likelihood, gone mad.
However, he had not gone mad at this exact moment—the moment he truly became a Tennen and resonated with the Giant Tenseigan on the moon.
No, it was much earlier than that. Before he chose to walk out of the village and face a dark, lightless future; before he stepped onto a battlefield as a mere genin where even jonin could die at any moment; before he chose to transplant a pair of Byakugan from Hyuga Genko of the Main House into his own eye sockets—before all of that, he had already gone mad!
Having adopted the "Three Metamorphoses of the Spirit" created by the mad philosopher Nietzsche as his creed for life, Hyuga Yu had, from the very beginning, fallen into a state of absolute rationality, an absolutely calm madness.
It was a state of mind that viewed all unexpected events as logical.
It viewed all dangers as opportunities.
It treated extreme situations, like walking on the edge of a blade, as daily routine. Guided by absolute rationality, he would break down these dangers, madly plunge into perilous traps, and headheadedly force a path of survival out of situations where death seemed absolute.
To put it simply, it was an ultimate posture of arrogance—one far more conceited than the absolute rationality of "using any means necessary to achieve an end."
Rather than saying the Giant Tenseigan on the moon was influencing Hyuga Yu with its massive Yin Release chakra, guiding him toward madness, it was more accurate to say...
It was pulling the already-mad Hyuga Yu back onto a "normal track."
It allowed Hyuga Yu to regain the extremism, obstinacy, ostentation, and the deeply hidden, hard-to-admit... tsundere nature that a normal person should have.
Like a child who gets a new toy and absolutely has to show it off.
Earlier, when he had completely controlled the battlefield and could have ended the fight instantly, Hyuga Yu had still lied to himself with the excuse that he "wanted to test his limits." He did this just to satisfy a sudden, subtle urge to "show off in front of people"—an urge he hadn't even noticed himself.
That was the most direct proof.
But clearly, that was not the real Hyuga Yu.
When this "obsessive madness" acted upon Hyuga Yu—who was already trapped in a "calm madness"—it produced a twisted effect. As he constantly pushed forward the plans made by his "calmly mad self," he simultaneously displayed a hesitant, thrill-seeking logic of action, as if he were a "normal person" manufactured by his "obsessively mad self."
Hyuga Yu had noticed this deviation in his behavioral logic, but he had previously viewed it as a price or side effect of the Byakugan itself, similar to the Sharingan.
But it wasn't. It wasn't until this very moment—the moment he connected with the Giant Tenseigan, the moment he perceived the truth.
Only now did Hyuga Yu finally confirm that he was sick.
From a medical ninja's perspective, this was undoubtedly a pathology.
The Byakugan itself had no inherent differences; it was purely an organ. The Byakugan of the Main House and the Branch House were essentially identical. What made a difference was the Caged Bird chakra, which was stimulated and brought forth after transplanting Hyuga Genko's Byakugan, altering the nature of Hyuga Yu's chakra.
The Byakugan acted as a "signal receiver." Boosted by Hyuga Yu's increasingly powerful Caged Bird chakra, it continuously received the "memetic virus" rooted within the Giant Tenseigan, beamed down directly from the moon!
This virus wasn't fatal. However, it acted directly on the physiological systems that generated Hyuga Yu's emotions. It altered the mechanisms of the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, hypothalamus, and other emotion-producing systems that generate feelings and manufacture "spiritual energy." This caused the virus-laden spiritual energy to blend into his green chakra, further "infecting" Hyuga Yu continuously.
It automatically caused Hyuga Yu's emotions to align with the same frequency as the mad spiritual domain of the countless dead Otsutsuki clan members within the Giant Tenseigan. Externally, this manifested as making the "Hyuga Tennen" more and more insane.
In theory, however, Hyuga Yu had gone mad long ago. Even the Giant Tenseigan couldn't suddenly make a person who was already insane go mad all over again.
Thus, these two forms of "madness" clashed within Hyuga Yu's body. It made him act like an all-calculating superman one moment, a playful child the next, and a reckless lunatic who ignored all consequences the moment after...
For instance, during the Mist Village Collapse Project, his choice to unseal the Six-Tails to destroy the Hidden Mist before their civil war had even concluded stemmed from a twisted, mad mindset: "If everyone dies early, who's left to watch me perform?"
This "absolutely obsessive madness" grew steadily within Hyuga Yu's behavioral logic, continuously warping his actions. At this exact moment, when Hyuga Yu successfully resonated with the Giant Tenseigan, the infectious power of this mental virus finally reached its peak!
If left to develop further, Hyuga Yu instantly diagnosed that he would lose his sense of self.
The "absolutely obsessive madness" would overwhelm the "calmly mad" will that originally belonged to Hyuga Yu. It would completely assimilate him into the will of the Giant Tenseigan, turning him into a lunatic who killed as easily as drinking water, constantly playing out a script of total lawlessness.
The mere thought of turning into a brainless idiot who could only chuckle darkly every day and create mountains of corpses and seas of blood over the slightest disagreement made Hyuga Yu shudder!
That would make him suffer more than being killed outright!
Fortunately, right now—
The "mental illness" inherent to Hyuga Yu bought him a fleeting moment to breathe the instant he resonated with the Giant Tenseigan, giving his intellect a chance to reclaim the high ground.
Immediately after, his unhesitating action of gouging out and crushing Hyuga Genko's pair of Byakugan directly smashed the "signal receiver," halting the further spread of the Giant Tenseigan's memetic virus.
However, the resonance had already begun. A form of intangible, invisible connection—as if existing only in the quantum realm—had already formed between Hyuga Yu and the Giant Tenseigan. The Giant Tenseigan would show no mercy to Hyuga Yu. It continued to passively project a massive amount of spiritual energy into him, which, to some extent, formed a continuous Yin Release jutsu designed to drive the target utterly insane.
It felt as though countless voices were whispering in Hyuga Yu's ears, or like hundreds of millions of flies buzzing frantically around his head. Countless foul words, mad battle cries, urges to move forward, and sobbing laments... came flooding toward Hyuga Yu at this very moment!
And at this moment, blind, with blood continuously pouring from his eye sockets and a distorted, monstrous expression on his face, Hyuga Yu suddenly calmed down.
His ferocious expression became extremely serene.
Around him, countless people felt their hearts skip a beat when they witnessed this face-changing act worthy of a theatrical performance.
Compared to a fiercely raging Hyuga Yu, this utterly indifferent Hyuga Yu somehow filled them with even greater dread.
With the former, they could at least predict his next move from his expression. But the current Hyuga Yu had suddenly become like a bottomless pool of freezing spring water. His entire being radiated a unique aura that was simultaneously calm and mad, leaving everyone completely unable to guess what he wanted to do next.
Right then, Hyuga Yu suddenly raised his hand again. The onlookers widened their eyes in unison, their bodies tensing up as they stared warily at the bleeding, dark-haired youth in the center of the battlefield.
With a face that had turned incomparably calm and indifferent, Hyuga Yu slowly raised his head. A flash of wild ecstasy crossed his face as he reached out and clenched his palm. "Come!"
Following the connection established with the Giant Tenseigan on the moon, Hyuga Yu attempted to invoke the authority granted to him by the Giant Tenseigan for the very first time—
[Authority One: Clairvoyance]!
But...
It seemed as though nothing had happened.
The ninjas present exchanged bewildered glances. No one dared to gamble on whether a blinded Hyuga Yu could still pinpoint their locations, nor did they dare to test whether Hyuga Yu, who was still enveloped in the green flames of the Tenseigan Chakra Mode, possessed the power to slaughter everyone present. They could only force themselves to remain silent and watch.
Until—
One second, two seconds, three seconds passed. Suddenly, a sharp-eyed ninja noticed that the surface of the basin they were in was growing brighter and brighter!
The first to notice this, a Rain Ninja, abruptly looked up toward the source of the light. His eyes widened in shock, the expression on his face freezing instantly as he cried out losing his voice, "Look... look! The sky, the sky..."
"What's wrong with the sky?" a Hidden Stone ninja asked instinctively as he tilted his head back. Then, his eyes also snapped wide, his entire body trembling violently.
"This... this..."
Witnessing this bizarre scene, the crowd looked up in astonishment one after another. Every single one of them wore the exact same expression.
Rōshi, who stood closest to Hyuga Yu, was utterly dumbfounded, looking as if he had been struck over the head with a club.
"How... how is this possible?!"
He stared at the sky. Above the basin, the cloud layer stretching for hundreds of kilometers was violently pushed aside by something, revealing the massive, tranquil, and unbelievably huge entity behind it!
It was a golden full moon!
Though it was mid-afternoon, both the moon and the sun hung in the sky simultaneously. What was even more bizarre was that this moon was different from the one seen on ordinary nights; it was so massive that it nearly filled the entire human field of vision. It intermittently flashed with a light even more brilliant than the sun!
It was almost as if that moon was blinking!
In the center of the field, Hyuga Yu slowly lowered his palm. By this time, a massive blue planet gradually appeared before his "vision," despite having lost his eyes. It felt as though he were standing on the moon, looking down at Earth from a distance of 460,000 meters.
Then, the planet zoomed in at extreme speed, and Hyuga Yu's field of vision expanded infinitely in this instant. It exploded from his previous limit of just twenty kilometers to an astronomical four million square kilometers in the blink of an eye!
Everything within this range was reflected in Hyuga Yu's eyes. He could clearly see the mountains, rivers, villages, and towns within this expanse, the face of every single person living on this land, and even the shape of every single blade of grass on the ground!
A massive torrent of information rushed in frantically. Yet, at this moment, Hyuga Yu did not experience the agonizing headache and side effects he felt when he previously activated his ocular jutsu, Shifang. He felt like a true deity, occupying a god-eye view, looking down simultaneously at every person living across these four million square kilometers and every event taking place. The observed data did not pass directly through his brain; instead, it was uploaded straight to the Giant Tenseigan on the moon, stored within a "black box" composed of specialized, massive meridians inside the eyeball structure formed by immense Yin Release chakra.
Whenever he wanted to know something, his "gaze" would rapidly shift to the corresponding location and retrieve the previously observed information for his review. Of course, even if the scope narrowed, this was still an incredibly massive torrent of information that no ordinary person could receive.
Just like right now—
From his god-eye perspective, Hyuga Yu saw himself.
But he didn't just see himself; he saw the entire basin, every single person standing within it. His gaze pierced through every individual, through each person's chakra, observing the movement of every muscle myofibril in their bodies, seeing the countless cellular structures making up those myofibrils, and passing right through those cells to clearly perceive every single atom that composed the cellular molecules!
This was, without a doubt, the most perfect surgical field of vision!
Hyuga Yu nodded with satisfaction. Then, without a shred of hesitation, he casually wiped the blood from his face. With his eyes closed, he brought his hands together. Amidst the countless screeching, roaring, laughing, and sinisterly coaxing voices swirling around his ears, he expressionlessly drew a chakra scalpel.
A teal-colored, eighty-centimeter-long Wind Release Chakra Scalpel!
Then: "Brain organ excision, replacement, and total systemic response blockade under stress surgery—begin!"
"Time: February 14, Year 50 of Konoha, 15:25 PM."
Just like back then when Hyuga Sosuke had slashed himself three times to forcefully open the Eight Inner Gates to fight off the Hidden Mist and save Hyuga Natsu, Hyuga Yu brought the blade down toward his own brain without a single ripple of emotion on his face!
The first cut: aimed at the amygdala!
He severed the microscopic meridians within the amygdala that triggered the "threat assessment" and perceived subsequent fear and anxiety responses along with physical changes. He performed a clean, sweeping cut on his own emotional perception capabilities!
This ensured Hyuga Yu could no longer feel "fear" or "anxiety."
The second cut: aimed at the prefrontal cortex!
He sliced through the tissues that suppressed the energy supply to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
The ventromedial prefrontal cortex was responsible for higher cognitive functions, such as rational analysis, risk assessment, decision-making, and regulating amygdala responses. This cut severed the tissue that triggered the amygdala whenever Hyuga Yu felt anxious.
This ensured Hyuga Yu would remain "permanently calm."
The third cut: aimed at the hippocampus!
He altered the generation conditions of Hyuga Yu's "trauma trigger mechanism."
The fourth cut: aimed at the hypothalamus and the sympathetic nervous system!
This directly suppressed any possibility of Hyuga Yu losing emotional control during battle from the very source. At the same time, Hyuga Yu would no longer experience an accelerated heart rate, elevated blood pressure, rapid breathing, muscle tension, or sweating... All of these functions were shifted to "manual control" by Hyuga Yu.
The fifth cut: aimed at the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis!
He directly set a hard ceiling on cortisol and adrenaline—the hormones that caused tension, anxiety, and stress—preventing them from ever reaching abnormal levels!
The sixth cut: the heart! Hyuga Yu would never feel palpitations or panic again.
The seventh cut: the respiratory system! He severed the capacity to feel chest tightness, shortness of breath, or hyperventilation under pressure.
The eighth cut: the digestive system!
The ninth cut: the muscles!
The tenth cut: the skin's sweat glands...
The eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth cuts...
Through Hyuga Yu's dazzling and intricate scalpel techniques, he commenced a surgery that belonged solely to madmen and lunatics!
Utilizing chakra control and surgical skills that far surpassed the medical ninjutsu standards of the shinobi world, he continuously adjusted the functions of various body parts. He directly excised organs capable of feeling "stress," replacing them with temporary prosthetic constructs formed by his Wind Release Chakra Scalpel, or simply shifting them to manual operation. He blocked the Giant Tenseigan from causing stress and influence through this Yin Release jutsu right from the source!
The objective of Hyuga Yu's surgery was incredibly simple—
As long as I cannot feel 'stress,' then absolutely no one can pressure me!
The authority of the Giant Tenseigan? Hyuga Yu wanted it!
But the side effects of the Giant Tenseigan, and those pointless voices attempting to alter Hyuga Yu's will? Goodbye to all of that~
As for Hyuga Yu...
He had always been the type of person who wanted to have his cake and eat it too!
After all, only children make choices; rational adults make decisions. But a madman? A madman doesn't need to choose.
Meanwhile, just as Hyuga Yu was invoking the Giant Tenseigan's authority to activate [Clairvoyance] to aid him in completing the full-body surgery to isolate the Giant Tenseigan's Yin Release...
On the other side, deep within the moon, inside the Otsutsuki Temple.
The Giant Tenseigan began to rumble and spin violently in response to Hyuga Yu's resonance. Massive waves of chakra howled and vibrated throughout the interior of the temple!
Very quickly, this abnormal fluctuation triggered a screening condition that had been set inside the Giant Tenseigan in advance, causing the surrounding barrier to sound an alarm!
In the next instant, bang!
A tall, hollow-faced figure with a numb expression violently threw open the temple doors. Upon seeing the bizarre spectacle inside the temple, shill!
The dry-haired man's vacant expression instantly shifted, twisting into a hideous, grim, and hateful expression that looked ready to devour someone alive!
"So it is... it really is..."
"My senses that day were not mistaken!"
"The shinobi world has indeed given rise to another thief attempting to steal the power of the Tenseigan!"
"And now, this scoundrel actually dares to brazenly plunder our clan's treasure!"
"This is... utterly outrageous!!!"
"I will kill him!!!"
Right then, his expression shifted drastically once more, looking as though he had instantly transformed into a completely different person, displaying a feminine, sinister smile. "Oh~ Kill who? Grandfather."
"Ah, yes, kill... This is an opportunity. By using this two-way anchor, we can directly lock onto his location, and then..."
The dry-haired man's expression changed yet again, turning incredibly cold and indifferent, resembling a powerful ruler of high status. A snort escaped his nostrils as he scoffed coldly:
"Dispense divine punishment upon him!"
At that moment, in a corner of the temple, the young, helpless, and white-haired Otsutsuki Toneri huddled tightly behind a pillar. Terrified, he used his eyeless, pitch-black sockets to "stare" at his clansmen walking toward the massive, golden, and radiant eye in the center of the hall...
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