(Sorry, messed up chapter numbers lol, this is 154)
Takuno let out a low, clear sneer. The sound echoed across the empty desert, brimming with mockery toward Rasa's bluster, which barely concealed his inner weakness.
He wasn't interested in meaningless slaughter, and his disdain for Rasa wasn't worth the extra effort of lifting a finger.
"Well then... until we meet again." Before the words had fully faded, the blinding lightning surrounding him flashed suddenly, and his figure vanished like a ghost, leaving only the playful echo of his voice exploding clearly in Rasa's ears.
"Next time we meet, I hope Lord Kazekage doesn't mistake me for a member of the Cloud Village again! Hahaha..."
The mocking laughter was like a poison sting, stabbing deep into Rasa's eardrums and heart.
He stood there, his body trembling violently from extreme humiliation and unventable rage. The air seemed frozen for a long time before he managed to suppress the violent aura nearly bursting from his chest back down into his heart.
When his gaze turned toward the unconscious Gaara nearby, his suppressed anger instantly found a new outlet, transforming into an even more intense, bone-chilling loathing and resentment.
"Useless! Not only are you personally worthless, but even your value as a vessel has been greatly compromised! Now I have to waste my power to re-strengthen the seal to prevent Shukaku from going on another rampage... a complete and utter burden!"
However, no matter how much he detested him, the strategic significance of the One-Tail to Suna was, in the end, irreplaceable.
Enduring his disgust, Rasa gritted his teeth and walked step by step toward Gaara, beginning to set up the technique to re-seal Shukaku.
......
Takuno's figure reappeared in the familiar, cold experimental base.
His gaze slowly swept across the row of special containers lined up before him.
Inside the containers were sealed spheres of chakra light of different colors and forms. They surged violently, gloomily, or silently; these were precisely the six types of Tailed Beast chakra he had painstakingly collected.
A faint trace of satisfaction quietly flickered through his eyes.
The scene before him clearly marked the progress: only the three containers in the middle remained empty, representing the chakra of the Four-Tails, Five-Tails, and Six-Tails.
However, Takuno was in no hurry to make his next move.
He did not intend to set out immediately to seize the remaining three powers.
In fact, even this trip to the Land of Wind to seize the One-Tail Shukaku's chakra had not been a pre-planned step.
It was more like an unexpected harvest. The rampage of the One-Tail Shukaku provided a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and naturally, he wouldn't let it pass.
Even if Sunagakure no longer posed any real resistance to him, it was always better to have things easy; rather than going through the trouble later, it was better to plan ahead.
Initially, he was somewhat puzzled as to why the One-Tail had suddenly lost control.
But after entering the Land of Wind and placing himself at the center of that violent dust, the truth was revealed like a giant rock emerging from a sandstorm.
Today was that fated day—the point in time when the Kazekage, Rasa, forcibly assigned Yashamaru to assassinate his own son, Gaara.
He understood that this day, like a bottomless canyon, had severed Gaara's life cleanly in two.
From this moment on, until his biological father Rasa reached the end of his life, this red-haired youth would fall completely into a bottomless abyss of nightmares.
Fear acted as the heaviest shackle, coming not only from enemies but from his own flesh and blood.
His sister Temari and brother Kankuro—their undisguisable looks of terror and their subconscious habit of keeping their distance—had long since severed the familial bonds between them.
A child feared by his closest kin, raised by his father as a killing weapon, and viewed by the entire village as a monster, struggling in eternal loneliness and insomnia...
Takuno slightly closed his eyes as the scene surfaced in his mind; it truly carried a suffocating sense of tragedy.
A faint, imperceptible sigh seemed to dissipate into the cold air.
Takuno shook his head, dispersing this momentary ripple of emotion.
If Gaara were just an ordinary, helpless orphan, perhaps he would have brought him back to the orphanage in the Land of Snow and entrusted him to Nonō Yakushi's care.
But who was Gaara? He was the Jinchūriki of the One-Tail Shukaku.
This identity itself predestined his tragic value.
More importantly, Gaara's existence was like a key piece on a chessboard, placed in the delicate position of Sunagakure, which was useful to Takuno.
Takuno's thinking quickly returned to a cold and pragmatic track.
There was no connection between him and this "weapon" of Suna to begin with, and there was no reason worth breaking his plans to offer extra help.
Sympathy was, in the end, just a momentary ripple, unworthy of mention in the face of his own goals.
Takuno's gaze slowly fell upon the container occupying the vast majority of the laboratory space, where the Mini-Ten-Tails—which had already evolved into the original form of the Gedo Statue—resided.
Compared to the towering Gedo Statue controlled by Nagato, this creation appeared quite small, its size not even one-tenth of the true original.
According to common logic, injecting the Mini-Ten-Tails with the corresponding proportion of Tailed Beast chakra—namely 10%—should have been the most stable plan.
Once upon a time, he also believed that a "Mini Ten-Tails" possessing 10% of the power would be enough to meet his needs.
What he needed, after all, was the unique primordial mechanism of a Ten-Tails Jinchūriki.
However, as his own strength soared rapidly, a thought became increasingly clear in his mind: 10% power was still too little.
Even if the mechanism it provided was exquisite, it would be like a mantis trying to stop a carriage when faced with an absolute chasm in power.
Just like the world-destroying battle between Kaguya Ōtsutsuki, Six Paths Naruto, and Six Paths Sasuke; it was the cruelest proof. Despite having so many mechanisms, Six Paths Sasuke's performance was far from being as strong as Six Paths Naruto's.
But the problem was, how could he make the Mini-Ten-Tails grow larger? Find Nagato—or rather, the current Akatsuki organization—again and cut off another piece of the Gedo Statue?
The current Nagato and Obito were no longer the green youths they once were; the speed of their strength progression was not even slower than his own.
Against one of them alone, Takuno had the confidence to deal with them, but they had likely already begun their cooperation. If those two joined forces, Takuno would have to temporarily avoid their sharp edge.
Therefore, this path was definitely a dead end.
"In the end... will I have to rely on devouring energy to force growth?" he whispered, his gaze dissecting the Mini-Ten-Tails before him, which looked like a dead object, as if with a scalpel.
Though he always called it the Gedo Statue and it looked like an inanimate object, it was indeed a living organism. Since it was an organism, it could naturally grow over time.
However, making it grow in a short period was not easy. The essence of the Gedo Statue is the God Tree, and the cradle that nurtures the God Tree is precisely natural energy!
Unfortunately, natural energy in this world was as thin as a desert. If he relied solely on slow absorption, it would probably take hundreds of years to cultivate the Mini-Ten-Tails to the ideal state; he couldn't afford the wait.
Another path surfaced: Chakra.
This was originally the primordial power transformed from the condensed fruit of the God Tree. Feeding it back to the juvenile God Tree was theoretically feasible.
But problems followed. Although Takuno's own chakra volume stood at the top of the entire shinobi world, it was just a drop in the bucket for the juvenile God Tree.
Moreover, he had other plans to attend to, and every bit of chakra needed to be used where it mattered most; he couldn't waste it on this.
At this moment, he couldn't help but think of the treasure buried deep within the earth's veins: the Gelel Veins.
The magnitude of energy capable of destroying a continent might be enough to allow the Mini-Ten-Tails to undergo a complete transformation!
However... the Gelel Veins were equally vital to him: through three years of training and tempering with the vein's energy, his physique could already withstand the violent impact of the Sixth Gate of the Eight Inner Gates, leaving only intense fatigue;
Even the Seventh Gate was within a controllable range, though the aftereffects would be more pronounced.
More crucially, the performance of the Chimera Technique still required the support of the veins! Giving up the veins now would be no different from cutting off his own arm.
Thinking this way, Takuno also shook his head.
He had originally thought that since the One-Tail's chakra had been obtained, he could start letting the Mini-Ten-Tails absorb Tailed Beast chakra. Looking at it now, it was still not possible.
The Mini-Ten-Tails had to grow to at least 20% or so; that was the bottom line he could accept.
And the reason he had the thought of letting the Mini-Ten-Tails start absorbing Tailed Beast chakra at this time was due to a point explicitly mentioned in the original story.
The best order for the Ten-Tails to absorb the Tailed Beasts is from the One-Tail to the Nine-Tails, and since he had now obtained the One-Tail's chakra, he could naturally begin this process.
However, it seemed he had to continue waiting for now.
Takuno sighed. Although he didn't know what accidents would occur if he didn't follow this order,
He didn't want to try it either. After all, he only had one Mini-Ten-Tails; it would be a huge problem if he lost it.
Actually, he was a bit skeptical about this condition. Madara Uchiha did indeed follow this order at the end.
But the order in which Obito absorbed them when he became the Ten-Tails Jinchūriki was not necessarily the same.
Although it seemed he started collecting from the One-Tail, there were indeed some issues with certain timelines and scenes.
However, he could only treat those as external errors. If he were to do it himself, he would honestly follow the order of the Tailed Beasts; he would execute every detail to perfection.
The rest would depend on destiny.
Takuno's gaze lingered for a moment on the "Mini-Ten-Tails" container flickering with faint chakra, then he turned decisively and left this dark laboratory housing the core of forbidden power.
The heavy alloy door closed silently behind him, isolating the heart-pounding energy fluctuations within.
He walked steadily through the corridor and arrived at the adjacent experimental area.
In the center, a device with a design leaning toward future technology occupied the most prominent position.
Its surface was densely etched with extremely complex sealing formulas. These ancient incantations were currently flowing with a faint blue-purple chakra glow.
This was precisely the "Eye-Opening Device" he had spent immense effort constructing to assist in breaking through the limits of ocular power.
A cold metallic sensation came as Takuno's palm brushed over the device's smooth casing, his fingertips tracing those profound symbols.
In the past three years, he had personally lain inside this cold container twice.
The first experience could be called smooth; he successfully stimulated the power of the three-tomoe Sharingan, a result completely within his precise calculations.
However, the second attempt brought a strong sense of frustration.
Under the powerful stimulation of the device, he only felt his ocular power increase like a trickling stream, as if he had hit an invisible bottleneck.
That long-dreamed-of realm of the Mangekyō—the symbol of the Sharingan's ultimate evolution—was still out of reach, and he hadn't even caught a glimpse of the crack in the door to opening it.
"Power... needs a stronger impact," Takuno whispered to himself, his eyes sharp.
He meticulously checked every sealing formula on the device, confirming the stability of the energy circuits and ensuring there wasn't even a hint of looseness or deviation.
After confirming everything was correct, he took a deep breath, hesitated no more, created a Shadow Clone, and familiarly lay down inside the cold interior of the device.
The hatch slowly closed, cutting off the light from the outside world and enveloping him in an oppressive glow of deep blue.
This time, he was not unprepared.
An excellent "key" was already in his hand: the life trajectory of the son of the Kazekage, Gaara, filled with tragedy and despair.
Raised as a weapon by his biological father, with a Tailed Beast that brought endless pain sealed inside him, viewed as a monster by his closest kin, struggling to survive amidst endless loneliness, betrayal, and killing...
That marrow-deep pain and madness of being abandoned by the entire world—its intensity and purity were the most ideal "fuel" for stimulating extreme emotions and crashing through the barriers of the Mangekyō.
The humming of the device suddenly intensified, the deep blue light instantly flared, and the complex symbols seemed to come alive, rotating and flowing rapidly, violently pouring the flood of memories carrying Gaara's tragic fate into Takuno's mental world.
......
A cold delivery room; the cry of a newborn still carried the dampness of birth.
'Gaara' opened his eyes, and what met his vision was the paper-white face of a woman whose life was rapidly draining away from her body.
Those eyes gazing at him, however, were filled with a tenderness that could melt ice. As if exhausting her last bit of strength, she trembled and spat out faint but clear syllables: "Mommy... loves you..."
This voice was like a pebble thrown into a dead lake, stirring an indescribable ripple in 'Gaara's' chaotic consciousness.
How could an infant remember this dying whisper so clearly?
From his first toddling steps to his first moments of understanding, all that enveloped him was cold neglect and harsh curses.
His father Rasa's gaze always bypassed him, looking toward more "important" places;
The villagers shouted "monster" in terror when they saw him and threw stones; his own older siblings were like strangers.
Only his uncle, Yashamaru, was the sole warm color in this grey world, taking care of his daily life and teaching him basic ninjutsu.
However, the sense of discord inside 'Gaara' grew stronger by the day.
He vaguely felt that he shouldn't be "Gaara."
An even deeper confusion lay in this: why were the memories of his infancy as clear as if they were happening yesterday, while the subsequent five years of childhood were covered by a thick, swaying veil?
Those faces, voices, and events... all seemed so ethereal and unreal, as if... a meticulously rehearsed fake play.