Sasuke's gaze shifted toward the mouth of the valley. Before long, a middle-aged man appeared at the entrance, his hair a faded grey-white, dressed in a richly patterned robe that made him look far more like a merchant than a ninja.
When the man saw Sasuke, he visibly paused. After a long silence he spoke. "You're Uchiha Sasuke. Why have you come here?"
Oh?
Something stirred in Sasuke's mind. He studied the man's face and clothing with a measured look, then said calmly. "The clan's records mentioned this place. I was passing through and came to have a look."
Hell Valley sat on the border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Hot Water, and the Land of Hot Water bordered the Land of Rice Fields, home to Orochimaru's headquarters in the Hidden Sound Village.
More than ten days ago, after leaving Konoha, Sasuke had planned to spend time studying the Scroll of Seals before heading into the Land of Rice Fields to do a little snake hunting.
The clan's records had mentioned that the Chinoike clan's Blood Dragon Eye shared a significant history with the Uchiha's Sharingan. Passing through this area and thinking of the exiled clan confined here, it was only natural for Sasuke to stop and take a look.
After arriving, he had found no trace of any living clan members. The valley held only drifting pale-red mist and pools of deep crimson water winding through the ravines, every one of those pools filled with white bones.
No survivors, but Sasuke hadn't left immediately. He decided to use the valley as a place to train for a while, and to quietly work out how best to kill the snake with the least possible risk.
The environment was harsh, but it was secluded. He had been here for nearly half a month. He hadn't expected anyone to show up today.
The middle-aged man's expression remained perfectly composed. "I don't know what you read in your clan's records, Uchiha boy, and I don't care what your reasons are for coming here. But I'll tell you plainly: there is nothing here for you. Leave."
"You're from the Chinoike Clan. Interesting." Sasuke gave a quiet laugh. "You recognized me as a descendant of the Uchiha, the very clan that exiled your people to this place, and yet you don't have a single trace of killing intent. I expected a fight the moment we laid eyes on each other."
The Chinoike Clan had been exiled on fabricated charges, accused of crimes they had never committed.
According to the records, they had tried to plead their case to the Uchiha, but the Uchiha had given them no opportunity to speak.
Hell Valley was a place like purgatory made real.
Crimson scalding water everywhere, noxious fumes rising constantly from the ground, sheer cliff walls on every side, and almost no animals or plants to speak of for food.
To survive at all, the clan had been reduced to eating bark and grass, small lizards from underground crevices, whatever birds passed overhead.
In that kind of barely-survivable hell, within a few short decades, a great clan that had once been spoken of alongside the Uchiha was wiped out entirely.
A grudge born from a clan's extermination and a century of imprisonment was the kind of hatred that went beyond any ordinary reckoning.
The middle-aged man's eyes narrowed slightly. "The Uchiha clan has already paid its price. I have no interest in doing anything about an old hatred."
"Fair enough. What goes around comes around, I suppose. The Uchiha, who once persecuted others without cause, ended up paying heavily for it." Sasuke nodded and started to ask something. "In that case, you've saved me some trouble. Let me ask you..."
"You talk too much, Uchiha boy." The man's face went suddenly cold. "I'll give you one last chance. Leave, or don't blame me for what follows."
"That won't work for me." Sasuke smiled calmly. "I still need this place for a while longer. There are things here I need to understand."
"Then you're determined to die."
The man's pale blue eyes shifted. The whites turned crimson, and the pupils narrowed into a thin horizontal slit, fixing on Sasuke with absolute focus.
The Blood Dragon Eye.
"Hmm?" The moment the Blood Dragon Eye activated, Sasuke felt the blood in his body begin to pulse rapidly, faster and faster, as though it were trying to break free of him.
... Controlling a person's blood and detonating it. So that's the Blood Dragon Eye's ability.
Sasuke took stock of what his body was feeling, then looked at the middle-aged man with a slight smile. "Quite something, for a man who killed his entire clan. Your Blood Dragon Eye's power is almost on par with the Mangekyou Sharingan."
The man paused, asking without thinking. "How do you know about that?"
"I'll answer in a moment."
As he spoke, Sasuke activated the Eternal Mangekyou. The patterns in his eyes began to turn slowly.
"Is that the Mangekyou Sharingan?" The man's eyes widened slightly. In the next instant, a surge of searing pain tore through his body. His veins bulged and pulsed visibly, the skin around them turning a livid blue-purple.
Genjutsu: Mirror!
A Sharingan genjutsu that dispels any illusion cast upon the user and reflects its full effect back onto the caster.
The dojutsu power in the man's eyes already surpassed an ordinary three-tomoe Sharingan, but it fell just short of the Mangekyou level, not quite enough to achieve a qualitative shift.
Sasuke's eyes were now Eternal Mangekyou, with dojutsu power far beyond any ordinary Mangekyou. In a direct clash of ocular power, rendering him helpless was a simple matter.
The man crumpled to the ground, unable to move.
"Kill me then."
Sasuke shook his head. "I told you, I have no interest in making you an enemy. I only want to ask about a few things. And you have a young daughter. Dying here is no way for a responsible father to go."
The man before him was named Oyashiro En. His wife had been hounded to death by members of their own clan, and he had slaughtered the entire clan to avenge her.
He had a daughter named Chino. Her talent was extraordinary.
In the original timeline, at only eleven or twelve years old, Chino had held her own in an exchange with Sasuke after the Fourth Great Ninja War.
Even accounting for Sasuke holding back, trading blows even briefly with someone carrying the Six Tomoe Rinnegan said everything about her ability.
Thinking about this, Sasuke found it a little strange. It seemed as though every clan on the verge of extinction or severe decline produced descendants with exceptional talent.
Himself, Naruto of the Uzumaki, Nagato and Karin, Kurama Yakumo, Kaguya's son Hagoromo's descendant Otsutsuki Toneri, the Otsutsuki on the moon.
"You even know about that?" Oyashiro's expression shifted with surprise. He was quiet for a moment, then said. "Ask what you want to know."
The thought of his daughter, and the sense that this boy was different from the Uchiha he had known, was enough to make Oyashiro yield.
"This is much better. There was no need for all of that." Sasuke smiled faintly. He let the Eternal Mangekyou turn once and return to its three-tomoe state, releasing the hold on Oyashiro.
"When did you leave this place with your daughter?"
"About five years ago." Oyashiro answered.
"I see."
Sasuke gave a small nod. That time coincided roughly with the Uchiha massacre. In the original timeline, Chino had appeared about six years later. She had been around eleven or twelve then, meaning she had been an infant when they left this place. She would have no memory of it. That matched what Oyashiro had said.
"Why didn't your clan escape sooner?" Sasuke asked with genuine curiosity. "As I recall, the Uchiha didn't post guards here. The terrain is harsh and the cliffs are steep, but that shouldn't have stopped your people."
"You don't know?" Oyashiro paused. Seeing Sasuke shake his head, he answered. "The Uchiha may not have stationed anyone here, but they placed a barrier. Your clan's barrier."
A barrier?
The clan's records had said nothing about this. What kind of barrier could confine a bloodline clan for nearly a hundred years?
The Chinoike Clan had been a clan that, during the Warring States era, could be spoken of in the same breath as the Uchiha. The Uchiha of that time had been so confident in their barrier that they hadn't even bothered to post guards?
And no matter how powerful a barrier was, trapping a clan for a generation was one thing. Holding them for a century was another entirely.
Even a technique like the Four Red Yang Formation required people constantly feeding it chakra to sustain it.
"What kind of barrier was it?"
The curiosity had taken hold. The Uchiha had possessed a barrier this formidable, and yet there had been no record of it anywhere in the original story or in the clan's own documents. Why?
"I don't know exactly what it was called. Only that it was a double barrier." Oyashiro shook his head and continued. "When you came here, you must have seen the gate at the entrance to the valley."
"Yes."
A faint, bitter smile crossed Oyashiro's face. "That was the only way out of Hell Valley. That gate was extraordinarily hard. It possessed the nature of all things. It could defend against any physical attack. No matter what nature transformation we used against it, the gate would shift its own nature in response to match and nullify ours."
Hmm.
At those words, something shifted in Sasuke's eyes. A thought surfaced, though he said nothing and pressed on. "The gate is certainly the most direct way out, but it isn't the only one in a strict sense. Did you not try other methods? Channeling chakra into the cliff walls and climbing out, perhaps, or using Earth Release to tunnel through?"
"We tried that as well." Oyashiro's gaze moved to the crimson pools and the white bones scattered throughout them. "See those? Those are the ones who tried."
"Everyone who attempted to escape that way fell into a state of unconsciousness. Like being trapped in a waking dream. Then within days, their bodies would collapse. And they would dissolve into the red water."
"But about five years ago, both barriers disappeared on their own. That was when I was finally able to take Chino and leave."
The Yata Mirror.
The Totsuka Sword.
The moment Oyashiro finished speaking, Sasuke immediately recognized both divine treasures.
The Yata Mirror possessed the nature of all things. It could defend against any physical attack and shift its own nature to nullify whatever came against it.
The Totsuka Sword could plunge whatever it pierced into an eternal dream-like genjutsu, sealing them away permanently. As for dissolving into blood, that part was easy enough to understand.
In the original timeline, when Orochimaru and Nagato were struck by the Totsuka Sword, they first crumbled into something like fragments before being drawn into the blade's seal.
So that was it.
Sasuke finally understood why the Uchiha hadn't been the least bit concerned about the Chinoike Clan escaping. They had placed two of the clan's divine treasures here to keep them contained.
And he now understood where Itachi had obtained those two artifacts.
Shortly after the massacre, Itachi had come to Hell Valley and dismantled the barrier array formed by the Totsuka Sword and the Yata Mirror, releasing the Chichi no Ike clan that the Uchiha ancestors had persecuted for a century.
Of course. Only those in the same trade could harbor that kind of naked, unfiltered hatred.
The Chinoike Clan and the Uchiha clan both possessed eyes capable of hypnotic genjutsu. The Chinoike Clan's reputation may not have quite reached the Uchiha's level, but there were those who had compared the two and suggested they were worth measuring against each other.
That had been more than enough to offend the Uchiha's deeply ingrained pride. So when the Chinoike Clan had appealed to them, the Uchiha had refused to listen.
Instead, they had crushed them as an example to others. Two divine treasures used to imprison a single clan, all to establish beyond question that the Uchiha stood alone as the foremost clan of hypnotic genjutsu eyes.
And if not for Hashirama Senju and Uchiha Madara rising to reshape the world in the generations that followed, the Totsuka Sword and the Yata Mirror would likely still be holding the Chinoike Clan in place.
... The Uchiha's next target had probably been the Hyuga clan, hadn't it.
___
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