Various Ninjutsu for Breaking the Caged Bird Seal

It was strange. It shouldn't have been like this.

Could her luck at gambling really have failed her?

As she thought about it, Tsunade still didn't choose the method Hane had suggested.

"We'll save that novel wager for another time. I doubt you've ever played dice, so let's try something simple first. One die: four or higher is high, anything lower is low. You go first."

Hyuга Hane glanced at the dice cup and the die but didn't move.

"There's no point in betting that way. Whether I win or lose depends entirely on whether I want to."

"Quite confident, aren't you?" Tsunade raised an eyebrow.

"You've certainly piqued my interest. Tell me why you came. I don't mind listening. After that, you can gamble a few rounds with me."

It was probably about the Medical Corps, anyway...

"You've already figured out how to break the Caged Bird Seal, haven't you?"

Tsunade's pupils constricted, and she sprang to her feet.

"How did you know?"

Only the Third, she, and the current Hokage, Namikaze Minato, knew about this. Why would Hyuga Hane know?

All sorts of suspicions surfaced at once, making Tsunade's expression shift repeatedly.

"Please be mindful of the people around us." Hane sighed and gestured to their surroundings.

Noticing the Konoha residents looking their way, Tsunade sat back down stiffly and glared at Hane. "Don't change the subject. This isn't something you should know about."

"Lord Hokage wants me to stay in the village and assist the advisors in governing it."

Hane watched as Tsunade's frown gradually eased. "That isn't an assignment suited to the Shadow Guard, nor is it an assignment suited to a member of the Hyuga Branch Family."

Unless... Minato was confident he could let Hane live without being treated as a member of the Branch Family.

"I see. So you suspected me because I'd been researching the Caged Bird Seal?"

Tsunade leaned back in her chair and studied Hane's calm expression. "You're a clever kid, but a clever person shouldn't come asking about something like this."

"I wanted to confirm it." Hane lowered his eyes. "Then I can think carefully about Lord Hokage's proposal."

Tsunade poured herself another drink and shook her head. "I did find a way, but strictly speaking, it isn't a method that can be applied to everyone."

I knew it wouldn't be that easy. If there were a way to break the Caged Bird Seal that worked for everyone, I wouldn't have used you to find it.

Hane's gaze grew deep.

Although he hadn't set out to study ways of breaking the Caged Bird Seal, years of research into ninjutsu and forbidden techniques had given him plenty of ideas.

He'd even found some ways to counter the Caged Bird Seal while studying ocular techniques and forbidden soul techniques.

Some could counter it temporarily; others could remove it completely.

But they all had flaws, and none could be applied to everyone.

For example—Izanagi!

He knew the Transcription Seal. How could he pass up this Uchiha bug of a technique?

At the Mist Village Battlefield, obtaining a pair of Three-Tomoe Sharingan hadn't been difficult for someone whose Byakugan gave him a two-kilometer field of vision.

As for Izanagi... Orochimaru had learned it while researching the powers of the Senju and the Uchiha. To better understand the Sharingan, he'd even dug up the Uchiha graves...

Yes, Madara Uchiha's father's grave... Hane had no idea where Orochimaru had found it.

He'd learned both Izanagi and the Transcription Seal from the Impure World Reincarnation of that Uchiha Clan Head.

Without that, he couldn't have completed White Prison, a sealing technique that absorbed ocular power in reverse.

After obtaining the Three-Tomoe Sharingan on the battlefield, he'd used White Prison to inscribe Izanagi directly into both eyes.

He could now use Izanagi twice. But this transcribed ocular technique wasn't as powerful as when an Uchiha used it. He couldn't delay its activation like Madara; it could only serve as a temporary way to counter the Caged Bird Seal.

Just as the Amaterasu Itachi transcribed for Sasuke could only burn Obito, an eye that wasn't his and an ocular technique that wasn't his came with too many limitations.

The price was that the Three-Tomoe Sharingan's ocular power was exhausted, and the eyes crumbled to ash.

Another temporary solution was Sealing Jutsu: use it to cut off the connection between the Main Branch and the Caged Bird Seal!

The Caged Bird Seal was difficult to remove, but it was comparatively easy to prevent it from receiving activation commands from outside. All he had to do was create a sealing technique specifically for that purpose.

The drawback: the Sealing Jutsu left obvious marks, and the chakra flow in the sealed area became abnormal. Anyone with the Byakugan could easily detect it, so after using it, he'd have to be ready to defect.

Among the ways to remove the seal completely, the best one he'd found so far was the Soul Reincarnation Technique, which he'd developed based on the Spirit Transformation Technique and the unique properties of his soul.

It could break the Caged Bird Seal, but Hane didn't want to use it.

He was a Taijutsu ninja, one whose strength was built on the Gentle Fist and the Byakugan. Using that technique would be like abandoning all of his abilities.

And now he'd found an even more effective method—Ranmaru.

His Red Eye let him transfer his life force. It was an ocular technique similar to Chiyo's One's Own Life Reincarnation, with the requirement that the target still have vital energy and that their soul remain inside their body.

For him, those requirements were practically irrelevant.

And even dying and coming back to life would let him escape the Caged Bird Seal.

But that, too, wasn't a method that could be applied to everyone.

As Hane remembered Ranmaru's story, the boy had nearly died after using the technique to revive Raiga Kurosuki. Somehow, he'd recovered afterward.

But it was impossible to use an ocular technique like that twice. Once might be all right, but if Ranmaru used it twice, the boy would certainly die.

Among the people in Konoha, only Tsunade could currently help every member of the Hyuga Branch Family break the Caged Bird Seal.

Or rather... the Slug Sage could!

A thousand years of accumulated knowledge gave her far greater insight and ability than an ordinary ninja.

Perhaps the other two Sages could do it as well, but the Slug Sage was the gentlest and the most likely to help. That was why the Third, Orochimaru, and Hane had all placed such high hopes in Tsunade.

With that in mind, Hane feigned confusion and asked, "Is the method related to Medical Ninjutsu?"

As expected, it was that technique.

"There's no point in telling you. It's not something an ordinary person can do."

Tsunade's gaze turned complicated as she casually set up a small barrier to keep their voices from carrying.

"It's an A-rank ninjutsu that only one person in the history of the Shinobi World has ever mastered—fission!"

Not a clone, but fission.

It was a technique used by the Second Tsuchikage Mu, one that split the user in two, with both halves being the original!

And besides Mu, there was another being that could use the technique: the Slug Sage, one of the Three Great Sage Regions!

Her mastery of fission was even more frightening. She could divide into countless parts, large or small.

"The Caged Bird is ultimately a Cursed Seal, not part of the body. Just as your clone wouldn't suffer when the Main Branch activated the seal in the past, even though your real body did, the clone had no seal on it."

"A fissioned body is similar to a clone, but it isn't the same. Even if the original body dies, the fissioned body can survive. The Caged Bird isn't part of the body, after all. As long as you perfectly split off another you, you can remove it completely!"

The newly fissioned body wouldn't have the Caged Bird, but the original body still would. So if someone activated the seal, the original body would die, while the fissioned one would survive.

The cost was that both their strength and Chakra would be permanently halved.

But through her discussions with the Slug Sage, Tsunade knew that this loss of strength could be recovered through training.

The Second Tsuchikage Mu could use fission because he had once met the Slug Sage and gained inspiration from her. No one understood the technique better than Katsuyu.

Mu had used the technique several times to survive danger, and each time, he gradually regained his strength afterward.

That was the best solution Tsunade could currently offer.

Hane considered it, then nodded.

Tsunade's reasoning matched his own.

The simplest, most brutal way to deal with the Caged Bird was to die once!

The Caged Bird vanished when its bearer died. Hizashi still had the Caged Bird when he was brought back through Impure World Reincarnation, but that was only because the seal's Chakra had lingered for years, making it a remnant similar to Nagato's Rinnegan.

It wasn't as if Hane had never seen a Branch Family ninja die. After their eyes and the nerves in their brains were destroyed, the Caged Bird Seal disappeared.

So as long as you could keep living after you died, you could break the Caged Bird Seal!

Fission was an unusual solution: the original body died in your place, while the fissioned body survived.

Besides that, Izanagi—as Madara had used it, delayed until after death—could do the same. After all, it restored the body after death, by which point the Caged Bird Seal had already disappeared.

Various reincarnation techniques and similar ocular techniques could also solve the problem. That meant Ranmaru, Chiyo, and others could do it. So could Ryuzetsu, who knew Dragon Life Reincarnation, and anyone with the Rinnegan.

In fact, according to the original course of events, the entire Hyuga Branch Family would have had one chance to break the Caged Bird Seal.

—The Pain assault, when he carried Konoha!

That Super Shinra Tensei had definitely reached the Hyuga Compound. The Caged Bird Seal would disappear from the dead ninjas, and Nagato would later revive them.

What a perfect opportunity. But it seemed the Branch Family hadn't seized it. They might even have willingly accepted the Caged Bird Seal, just as they had with the new seal.