Space-Time Dojutsu!

In the underground training ground, Hyuga Hane's pale eyes turned blue-white.

His eye power was active.

Furrowing his brow slightly, he raised his hand and thrust his palm forward with a swift motion.

With a bang, no shock wave appeared, yet the wooden post a hundred meters ahead exploded!

From Hyuga Hane's perspective, it was as if space had shifted. His outstretched right hand was suddenly right in front of the wooden post.

"Space manipulation from the Tenseigan?"

The Tenseigan had displayed six abilities: Tenseigan Chakra Mode, control over attraction and repulsion, Chakra absorption, summoning the Hamura Statue, controlling puppets, and manipulating space.

Space manipulation was a dojutsu that could directly create spatial passages.

He had just created a small spatial passage and pressed his palm against the wooden post.

Now, there was a vortex just large enough for his palm to pass through both in front of him and a hundred meters away.

"So this counts as a dojutsu unique to me, right?"

Hyuga Hane thought.

After absorbing enough Byakugan to trigger an evolution, he hadn't continued to target the Byakugan for two reasons.

One was that the Third had stepped down and offered his apology, making it an inappropriate time to continue.

The other was that the Byakugan's eye power was undergoing a transformation.

When the Byakugan had first evolved, his eyes had uncontrollably taken on a hint of sky blue. That had been a sign that his eye power was surging and changing.

At the time, he hadn't known what the change meant. As time passed, he'd learned to control the Byakugan's eye power and keep the blue from showing, but nothing else had happened.

Then, a few days ago, the change had finally occurred. A dojutsu belonging solely to him had gradually begun to take shape.

Hyuga Hane thought as he drew back his hand. He created several more spatial passages that he could pass through, each at a different distance and angle, and carefully sensed how much eye power they consumed.

"The eye power needed to create a spatial passage has nothing to do with distance. It depends only on its size, but it has to be within the Byakugan's field of vision."

"The eye power I use can recover, and spending it this way doesn't strain my eyesight. It takes less than a Mangekyo dojutsu, but doesn't have the Mangekyo's drawbacks."

As always, it was consistent with the Byakugan's stability.

"No, I should say that it's precisely the Byakugan's stable nature that makes it difficult for dojutsu to develop."

Hyuga Hane's thoughts shifted, and he found a possible explanation.

"The Byakugan itself resists change. But recently, my training in the Flying Thunder God, a space-time ninjutsu, and the feedback from my Chakra and Shadow Clones have encouraged its transformation. That's why I awakened a space-time dojutsu similar to the Tenseigan's..."

"No, wait. Why did I assume that all six of those dojutsu belonged to the Tenseigan stage?"

Hyuga Hane suddenly realized.

Because the Tenseigan had appeared fully formed, with no intermediate stages of evolution, he'd fallen into a misconception.

For example, if the only Rinnegan anyone knew of was the Sage of Six Paths', and no one had ever seen the Mangekyo, how would they view Susanoo?

They'd think it was a dojutsu unique to the Rinnegan!

Exactly. If no one had ever seen someone use Susanoo without the Rinnegan, everyone would assume that.

The Tenseigan had developed all at once, with none of the intermediate changes, so he'd naturally assumed those dojutsu were all unique to the Tenseigan and had appeared at the Tenseigan stage.

But that might not be the case.

As the Byakugan's final evolution, the Tenseigan should also be stable by nature. Its dojutsu wouldn't be as varied as those of the Mangekyo and Rinnegan.

The abilities displayed by the Giant Tenseigan and Toneri's Tenseigan clearly had a lot of overlap.

Aside from the four abilities obviously associated with the Tenseigan, the other two—puppet control and space manipulation—might have been dojutsu carried over from earlier stages in the Byakugan's evolution.

Just like Susanoo with the Rinnegan.

"If that's the case, then my Byakugan should have another stage before it evolves into the Tenseigan. But it's still just a guess. I don't have anything to compare it to..."

Hyuga Hane narrowed his eyes and took a Flying Thunder God Kunai with a special rune on its handle from his ninja pouch. He threw it ahead.

Whoosh...

With a sharp whistle, Hyuga Hane appeared beside the Kunai and smiled faintly.

"Training in the Flying Thunder God helps refine my dojutsu, and my dojutsu helps me master the Flying Thunder God. They really do... complement each other."

"So this is one of Konoha's Jonin. Even just one Shadow Clone is this strong..."

In the forest, Ebisu watched Hyuga Hane's Shadow Clone effortlessly kill a Mist Village Ninja who had infiltrated the area. He couldn't help admiring him.

"Hane's really strong." Guy gave a thumbs-up and flashed a brilliant smile. "So we can't lose either. Let's wipe out all these Mist Village Ninjas!"

With that, he charged toward the nearest Mist Village Ninja.

"Good luck with that." Ebisu rolled his eyes.

They were on patrol.

Their original teammate, Shiranui Genma, had wanted to take the Jonin exam, so he'd requested to leave the team and joined two other classmates to form a temporary team for quickly completing missions and improving his record before the exam.

As a result, their team now had only two members, and without a Jonin leading them, there were some missions they couldn't take. His teammate, Guy, had found someone he knew to help them out.

Though it was only a Shadow Clone, a Jonin's Shadow Clone was no ordinary thing.

Even when their patrol had run into Mist Village Ninjas who had somehow snuck in, the ones who had to flee were the enemy.

But Ebisu couldn't bring himself to feel happy about it.

They'd been teammates for a long time, and he didn't dislike Guy. But he hated being alone with him.

Whenever he thought about that bastard Shiranui Genma finishing the Jonin exam and still not returning to the team, leaving him alone with Guy, the future seemed hopeless.

"Ebisu, Guy, stop!"

The sharp shout brought Ebisu back to his senses. He turned toward Hyuga Hane's Shadow Clone on a tree branch ahead.

The clone stared gravely into the distance and said in a stern voice, "Head back at once. Once you're far away, fire a signal flare to warn the other patrols to leave."

"There are Jonin from the Mist Village deep in this area. Seven in total! They're the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist!"

A chill that seemed to freeze their blood enveloped Ebisu and Guy. The two stared at Hyuga Hane in disbelief, but all they saw was his retreating figure.

"This Shadow Clone will do what it can to draw them away. Hurry!"

From the front, which the two couldn't see, Hyuga Hane's Shadow Clone remained calm.

He'd come along as insurance, to keep Guy from running into the Seven Ninja Swordsmen as he had in the original story.

Dai's selfless teaching had given him the foundation he needed to survive in the Shinobi World. He had never forgotten that debt. Even with Minato gone, he would make sure the Seven Ninja Swordsmen never made it back!

"How easy. They let us sneak this close to Konoha. Looks like that so-called Yellow Flash isn't much to worry about. Becoming Hokage has made him careless."

The owner of Nuibari, Kushimaru Kuriarare, crouched on a tree. He had spiky yellow hair and bandages wrapped around his face, and he sneered.

"He's called the fastest in the Shinobi World. I'd like to see whether he can escape us."

The owner of the Blastsword, Munashi Jinpachi, kicked aside the corpse of a Konoha Ninja at his feet and laughed arrogantly. "All seven of us came together. Even that old Third Mizukage wasn't a match for us, let alone some rising star who's only emerged in recent years."