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"How do you know about the Tenseigan??"
The Branch patriarch's pupils shrank to pinpricks. His weathered face was a canvas of pure disbelief, eyes locked on Manji's calm, unhurried expression, voice cracking with shock.
"Wait!! Your eyes... are those??"
His gaze snagged on Manji's irises and wouldn't let go.
"Those are!!"
The Main patriarch went rigid beside him.
Both elders stopped breathing at the same time. Chests heaving, pulse hammering, composure crumbling like wet sand.
"Could those be... the Rinnegan?"
The Main patriarch's voice was barely a whisper. His fingers trembled visibly.
These two men were the oldest, most well-read members of their respective factions. They'd spent decades poring over every scrap of ancestral text that had survived the centuries. Crumbling bamboo scrolls. Faded ink on disintegrating parchment. Most of it fragmentary. Most of it useless.
But one line, written in Hamura's own hand, had been preserved with perfect clarity.
"My brother's eyes are called the Rinnegan."
That was all they knew. One sentence. No description of its abilities. No context for its power. Just a name and a family connection.
But "Hamura's brother" was enough.
Anyone carrying those eyes was connected to that man... And that connection alone was enough to turn both patriarchs' blood to ice.
The Sage of Six Paths might be real. But he's supposed to be a myth. A story. Something that existed a thousand years ago and turned to dust.
And yet this man is standing right here with those eyes in his skull.
Manji lifted his gaze slightly. The Rinnegan's violet rings caught the Tenseigan's gold-white glow and reflected it back without a ripple.
"Gentlemen. You share the same roots. Must you burn each other?"
One sentence. Both patriarchs flinched from it in different directions. The Branch patriarch's face darkened with suspicion. The Main patriarch's expression shifted to something complicated and cautiously hopeful.
Manji didn't wait for their responses. His attention turned directly to the Branch patriarch.
"Your Tenseigan cost your entire faction's eyesight. It's a remarkable achievement. Truly."
"But you can't control it."
"Rather than letting it lead you down a road that ends in catastrophe, it would be wiser to entrust it to someone who can handle it properly. Keep it from falling into the wrong hands."
Manji's eyes were perfectly clear as he spoke. No hunger. No scheming. Just the measured concern of someone who'd seen what happens when power exceeds the wisdom of the person holding it.
The Branch patriarch saw right through the packaging and went straight for the contents.
'He wants my Tenseigan.'
All that talk about "protecting the world" was window dressing. This stranger had shown up the moment the Tenseigan activated, neutralized its most powerful attack without blinking, and was now politely asking for it.
"I can't control it?"
The Branch patriarch's laugh was sharp and humorless. His aura spiked.
"Old man. I respect your power. Those eyes of yours scare me. I'll admit that freely. But the Tenseigan is MINE. I sacrificed everything for it. My people gave their sight for it. It's not something I hand over because a stranger asks nicely."
"I've spent decades studying this power. Controlling it is well within my capability!"
His voice rang with the conviction of a man who would rather die than surrender the one card keeping him in the game.
"Heh."
Manji was unsurprised. The Tenseigan was the Branch patriarch's entire political foundation. The instrument of his coup. His nuclear deterrent. Asking him to give it up was like asking him to carve out his own spine.
"Is that so? How many years have you been alive, exactly?"
Manji's smile carried the gentle condescension of someone holding a conversation with a particularly confident toddler.
"You say you can handle it? Then prove it."
Before the words finished settling, Manji was already moving. He stepped toward the massive floating Tenseigan and reached out with one hand.
The Branch patriarch's face contorted. He lunged forward to intercept—
But it was already done.
The moment Manji's fingertips brushed the Tenseigan's surface, the enormous sphere began collapsing inward. Shrinking. Compressing. The devastating pressure that had been pressing down on the entire battlefield contracted with it, folding in on itself like a star going supernova in reverse.
Within seconds, the building-sized eye had become a single, luminous orb resting in Manji's palm. Small enough to fit in an eye socket. Still pulsing with enough latent power to crack the moon in half.
Docile as a sleeping cat.
Then Manji extended his palm toward the Branch patriarch.
"Here. Show me what you've got."
Both patriarchs stared.
The Main patriarch's brow furrowed in confusion.
The Branch patriarch's expression cycled through disbelief, suspicion, and something approaching paranoia in rapid succession. His eyes darted between Manji's face and the Tenseigan sitting innocently in his outstretched hand.
'Is this a trap? Did he replace it with an explosive tag? Is this thing going to detonate the second I put it in?'
Manji watched the hesitation play out with the patience of someone who had centuries of practice watching people talk themselves in circles.
Seconds ticked past. The Branch patriarch didn't move.
Manji's brow creased. His voice dropped a register.
"Take it."
"Ah—!"
The Branch patriarch jumped. Actually jumped. The tone brooked zero negotiation.
The Main patriarch's mouth twitched.
The Branch patriarch shot Manji a venomous look, snatched the Tenseigan from his palm, and pressed it into his eye socket.
The reaction was instantaneous.
Power erupted from the Branch patriarch's body like a dam breaking. His aura doubled, tripled, kept climbing. Decades of accumulated frailty seemed to burn away in a single breath, replaced by a vitality that bordered on the obscene.
"Well?"
Manji asked mildly.
He'd done this deliberately. The Tenseigan was an unprecedented artifact—forged from hundreds of sacrificed Byakugan, condensed into a single eye, never tested by an individual wielder in canon. Manji had no data on what a solo implantation would do to the host's body. The safest way to find out was to let the person who'd built it serve as the test subject.
Why risk someone else when the volunteer was standing right there?
"This is INCREDIBLE!"
The Branch patriarch's face split into a manic grin, chakra boiling off him in visible waves.
"I feel thirty years younger! This power... it's beyond anything I imagined!"
"Interesting."
Manji nodded, satisfied. His Rinnegan had been scanning the Branch patriarch's physiology throughout the entire process. The data was promising. A single Tenseigan, despite being only half the hypothetical pair, packed enormous potential. With training, it could likely access the Tenseigan Chakra Mode. And if Manji combined it with his own Sage energy...
Sage Art Tenseigan Chakra Mode.
The possibilities were intriguing.
"I've mastered it. You can leave now."
The Branch patriarch turned toward Manji, voice cooling several degrees. With the Tenseigan implanted and functional, his confidence had returned. He had leverage again.
Manji shook his head with a soft chuckle.
"Not quite, young man."
"You haven't mastered anything yet. You've only put it on. Let me see if you can actually keep it."
The Branch patriarch's eyes flew wide. The subtext hit him like a slap.
He's going to take it. He was always going to take it. He let me put it in just to test what it does, and now—
Every hair on his body stood straight up.
Manji was smiling. That same warm, grandfatherly smile he'd been wearing since he appeared. But something behind it had shifted. Something cold and very old was looking out through those violet rings.
"Well then. Let me see what the Tenseigan can really do." Manji pressed his palms together with a polite half-bow. The courtesy lasted exactly one second.
Then he attacked.
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