The wooden ceiling, bloodstained tatami mats, and bright moonlight filtering through the thin paper windows lent a faint glimmer to the dim room.
"Cough... cough..."
Sasuke struggled to open his eyes. His head felt as though it were splitting apart, and even the slightest movement sent pain shooting through his entire body. It was difficult just to move, so he slowly rolled his eyes and surveyed his surroundings.
A wooden ceiling, dim moonlight, a thick and lingering stench of blood at the tip of his nose, and the faint sound of footsteps receding across the wooden floor beyond the door behind him.
This is the best-case scenario.
Obito should be on some distant rooftop right now, and Uchiha Itachi has already cleared out the area around this room.
This is my best opportunity!
In his previous life, whether in the anime, manga, or official novels, the Night of the Massacre had been brought up again and again. Out of the anime's 720 episodes, perhaps twenty had been spent padding out this arc.
Compared to such blatant, utterly shameless recap padding, webnovel authors were practically amateurs.
Still, padding was padding. When depicting the Night of the Massacre, the overall main storyline remained consistent, though certain details differed. For instance, the death of Uchiha Itachi's lover, Uchiha Izumi, varied between the anime, manga, novels, and side stories.
There was also the version where Sasuke fled in terror after being hit by Tsukuyomi in the room, only for Uchiha Itachi to catch up with him and beat him down again. That scene never showed Sasuke awakening the Sharingan before the flashback ended.
In another version, Sasuke fell unconscious after being hit by Tsukuyomi, and Uchiha Itachi left immediately. Sasuke then woke up and chased after him, having activated his Sharingan, only to be beaten down again before the flashback ended.
After entering this room, Sasuke had deliberately guided events toward the latter scenario.
His thoughts raced like lightning as he slowly pushed himself to his feet. He did not have much time. The door behind him had already closed, and this was his only chance to obtain the Mangekyō.
He knew Uchiha Itachi had held back. Otherwise, he would never have awakened now. According to what was supposed to happen next, he should wake up within a few minutes, chase after his brother, and help him play out the prearranged script.
There's no sense of anyone watching me.
He made his way to the tatami with difficulty. Waves of blood stench assaulted his nostrils. Looking at the two corpses lying on the floor, Sasuke felt as if his heart were being carved apart. His breath caught, and intense pain surged from his eye sockets into his brain.
His head hurt even worse. Tears mixed with faintly crimson bloody tears dripped down the boy's face, falling onto his neck and collar.
Sasuke wanted to control himself, but he found that he simply could not. With a silent sigh, he let it happen.
He opened a scroll, took out a katana and a bottle of saline solution, then put on a pair of transparent gloves. As he looked at the two faces on the ground, calm and seemingly free of pain or resentment, a sharp pang stabbed through his heart, and the hands he raised trembled slightly.
I can't delay any longer!
Sasuke gritted his teeth, hardened his heart, and reached into their eye sockets.
Squelch!
More bloody tears flowed down Sasuke's face, even showing signs of darkening to black. At some point, his originally deep black eyes had already become scarlet, sinister Three Tomoe Sharingan. Yet the boy ignored the pain and changes in his eyes, merely gritting his teeth as he completed what he had to do.
He placed his parents' Sharingan into the storage scroll and destroyed the transparent gloves, forcing himself not to look at the corpses on the floor.
The transparent gloves should not have left any fingerprints. He had six storage scrolls on him, each with ten item slots. Twenty-three slots were empty, while thirty-seven already held various ninja tools, such as Fuma Shuriken, kunai, wire, and katanas.
If someone suspected him, found that katana among those thirty-seven items, and saw through his disguise on its hilt, then he could only accept his fate.
This was already the best job he could do. But who would suspect that a boy who had just suffered the calamity of his family's extermination would do something like this under such circumstances, and even set up multiple layers of concealment?
After finishing everything, he pulled out a strand of hair and tucked it into the opening of the scroll. If anyone opened the scroll, he would know.
Sasuke let out a heavy breath. A minute and a half had already passed. Next, he still had to cooperate with his brother and finish the unfinished act.
When he reached the door, Sasuke could not help turning back for one last look at the corpses on the floor, sighing inwardly.
Perhaps, after losing their Sharingan, their corpses had escaped the desecration of being turned into experimental materials. But was what he had just done not another form of desecration?
I'm sorry...
But to become stronger, I have to do this.
Then he ran out without looking back.
Pulling his mind back from the memory, Sasuke looked at the bottles of saline solution containing two pairs of Sharingan in the dim room. His emotions gradually settled, and he slowly regained his calm.
After spending so much thought and effort to finally obtain one of this world's greatest treasures, his mind had just gone blank for a moment, and he had lost control of his emotions.
Sasuke frowned. He was not someone impulsive in his actions or easily swayed by emotion, yet after returning home and sensing that no one had been watching him, he had immediately and impatiently opened the scroll to confirm the state of the Mangekyō Sharingan.
After confirming that everything was correct, he had even let out that strange, wild laugh.
Was he still being influenced by this body's personality?
Or was this some peculiar flaw unique to the Uchiha clan?
As he pondered, Sasuke calmly put the items back into the scroll. These two things would be of tremendous help to him in the future; they might even determine whether he could stand at the pinnacle of this world.
After all, these were his parents' Sharingan, necessities for his future advancement to the Eternal Mangekyo. To a certain extent, the blood relationship between parent and child was even closer than that between siblings.
If two pairs of Mangekyo could fuse into the Eternal Mangekyo, then what about three pairs?
Or even four?
Could they evolve into the Rinnegan?
Or perhaps into a super Sharingan no weaker than the Rinnegan?
His mother's Sharingan had only been Three Tomoe, but the Shinobi World was filled with so many strange things that it might not be impossible for them to evolve into Mangekyo in the future.
Then, once he awakened Mangekyo as well, he would possess three pairs of Mangekyo.
However, there were two points that needed consideration. Could three pairs of Mangekyo be fused?
After all, the original work had only ever shown two pairs of Mangekyo being fused. Three pairs had never appeared, so he did not know whether it was possible.
There was another issue. Whether it was his mother's Sharingan or his father's Sharingan, both were blood relatives of Sasuke.
But his mother and father were not blood relatives. Though they were husband and wife and members of the same clan, they were not close blood relatives.
Sasuke should be able to fuse the Sharingan of either one of them, but the two of them could not fuse their Sharingan with each other.
Could he use himself as the medium to fuse their Sharingan?
That remained to be verified.
As for the fourth pair of Mangekyo...
At the thought of Uchiha Itachi, Sasuke's eyes flickered slightly.
Before you continue