Traversing the Warring States Era

Yue stared at the miniature spacetime rift, a flash of ecstasy crossing his eyes.

However, this ecstasy hadn't even lasted half a second before a bone-deep, piercing agony surged violently from his left eye!

"Urgh!"

Yue let out a muffled groan, clutching his left eye as his body involuntarily dropped to one knee. Bright red blood gushed from between his fingers like an unstoppable stream, dripping onto the cold floor.

When he opened his left eye again, the world before him had become a blur of overlapping shadows.

"The price... has finally come."

Yue panted heavily, shaking his head with a bitter smile.

Over the past few months, in order to rapidly decipher the mysteries of the Dragon Vein and deduce the formula for spacetime travel, he had frequently used Yagokoro Omoikane to alter probabilities, minimizing the costs of trial and error.

But the price for rewriting fate was exorbitantly high.

The ocular power of his left eye had been squeezed to the critical breaking point.

His vision in that eye had now degraded to the point where he could only distinguish light and shadow; he was but a single step away from total blindness.

His right eye could barely maintain his combat capability, but it, too, had become blurred.

As for replenishing his ocular power, he had certainly considered it.

In the original lore, there were two ways: Hashirama cells and the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan.

But he had discarded both options.

Having traveled through time too early, research into Hashirama cells was still in its infancy; Orochimaru and Danzo had not yet dared to conduct large-scale human experiments.

Furthermore, the ocular power required for the left eye's Yagokoro Omoikane to control probabilities beyond his own strength level increased exponentially. In other words, even if Yue obtained Hashirama cells, he lacked the ocular power to experiment with them.

Unless he were a powerhouse on the level of Hashirama or Madara.

And if he reached that level, he wouldn't need Hashirama cells anymore.

It was a dead end from both directions.

As for the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan, he had no close kin from whom to awaken it.

His only hope now was the Dragon Vein, and through it, to travel to an era that possessed the means to replenish his ocular power.

"Time is running out. If my left eye goes completely blind, I will lose my final trump card for surviving the turbulence of spacetime."

Yue slowly stood up and used bandages to wrap his bleeding left eye, leaving only his right eye exposed.

His research had reached a milestone.

He had mastered how to envelop himself in a gravitational field and had found the method to utilize the specific frequency of the Dragon Vein to open a "Gate of Spacetime."

Although he couldn't pinpoint a specific day decades into the future like the future Urashiki Otsutsuki, he had achieved theoretical feasibility for an initial "spacetime jump."

And he had deliberately reserved a final reserve of ocular power for his left eye—the kind that would leave him blind once exhausted.

It was the price of his life.

A few hours later, the Rōran Royal Palace.

"These are the blueprints for the third-stage urban defense system, as well as the design schematics for geothermal-powered steam bearings."

Yue Uchiha placed the final thick stack of scrolls onto Sara's desk.

He had changed into a lighter black combat suit today, with the reforged straight sword, infused with chakra-conductive metal, strapped to his back.

Sara looked at Yue's left eye, wrapped in white bandages, and her heart tightened.

"Lord Yue, your eye..."

"A small price for an experiment. It's nothing."

Yue interrupted her, his tone as calm as if he were discussing the weather.

"Everything I need to teach is written in these scrolls. The foundation of Rōran is stable. As long as you don't do anything reckless like provoking the Five Great Nations, this city is more than capable of protecting itself in the desert."

Sara keenly sensed the note of farewell in Yue's words and stood up abruptly: "Are you leaving?"

"To be precise, I am going on a long journey. Or rather... a 'trip' that transcends the dimensions you understand."

Yue walked to the window, his right eye watching the steel oasis below, where the windmills had begun to turn, full of vitality and life.

"I may be gone for a long time. By your measure of time, it might be an instant, perhaps a few years, or even decades."

Yue turned around.

"While I am away, watch over the seal of the Dragon Vein. It belongs to me; do not let anyone near it."

"I understand!" Sara took a deep breath, suppressing the reluctance in her heart, and bowed solemnly. "Rōran will guard this home for you forever. I wish you... great success in your endeavors."

"A home, is it?"

Yue said no more. With a slight nod, his figure transformed into a black whirlwind and vanished from the spot.

Deepest underground, at the heart of the Dragon Vein.

The sea of purple chakra beneath the seal continued to emit a low, rumbling roar, like a sleeping behemoth.

Yue Uchiha stood on the high platform of the central hub, his hands beginning to weave seals at a dizzying speed.

As he injected his chakra, the outer seal set by Sara was temporarily torn open, creating a gap.

"BOOM!"

The violent Dragon Vein chakra, as if having found a vent, instantly transformed into a pillar of purple light that shot into the sky.

Yue stood before the pillar, his right eye's Amenominakanushi fully activated. A massive gravitational field was instantly released, forcibly gathering and compressing the purple light that was attempting to run wild.

Under the distortion of absolute gravity, a rotating, bottomless spatial vortex gradually appeared in the center of the purple pillar.

The aura emanating from that vortex belonged neither to the past nor the future; it was pure, chaotic spacetime turbulence.

Looking at the terrifying vortex capable of grinding steel into atomic states in an instant, Yue tore the bandage off his left eye.

In that nearly blinded left eye, the Mangekyo pattern burned for the final, and most frenzied, time!

"The survival rate for spacetime jumping... is less than one-tenth."

Feeling the destructive tearing force coming from the vortex, a fearless, wild laugh emerged at the corners of Yue's mouth.

"But... this final ocular power was prepared for this very moment!"

"Yagokoro Omoikane! Increase the probability of this traversal being an extremely fortunate event for me to 100%!"

"CRACK!"

It felt as if something had shattered deep within his soul.

His left eye's vision plunged into eternal darkness in that instant, and a massive amount of blood-tears gushed out. However, an invisible force of causality, representing "Absolute Fate," wrapped around Yue's entire body like the most indestructible armor.

Without a moment's hesitation, Yue Uchiha leaped, throwing himself directly into the violent purple spacetime vortex.

The purple vortex shrank inward abruptly, then completely exploded into a sky full of light spots, and Yue Uchiha had already vanished.

The underground hub returned to a deathly silence, and the seal closed once more.

The spacetime turbulence felt like ten thousand invisible giant hands, crazily tearing at Yue Uchiha's body.

Even with Yagokoro Omoikane forcibly locking the luck rate at 100%, the dizziness and excruciating pain of having his soul tossed into a tumble dryer still brought him to the brink of fainting several times.

He did not know how much time had passed; perhaps an instant, perhaps a century.

"THUD!"

A dull, heavy sound echoed.

Yue Uchiha's body was tossed like discarded trash, falling heavily from mid-air and slamming into a muddy, rotting-smelling swamp.

"Cough, cough... cough, cough, cough!!"

The violent coughing broke the surrounding deathly silence.

Yue struggled to roll over, gasping for air, his bones feeling as if they were about to fall apart.

He subconsciously reached out to touch his left eye.

The sensation was empty; there was no pain, only a dead, silent void.

Although the eye was still in its socket, the optic nerve had been completely burned away, leaving only endless darkness.

"The price... is this the admission fee for forcibly traversing time and space?"

Yue gave a bitter laugh, covering his left eye with a mud-stained right hand. Although his left eye was blind, he hadn't died, and aside from the impact injuries and chakra exhaustion, he was not missing any limbs.

"As long as I am alive, there is hope for a comeback."

Yue gritted his teeth, enduring the intense pain, and slowly opened his only remaining right eye.

What met his gaze was no longer the metal-punk style dungeon of Rōran, nor the boundless yellow sands of the Land of Wind.

This was a dark, damp, primeval forest.

The sky was shrouded in thick, lead-gray clouds, and cold rain fell in a drizzle, mixing the scent of soil with a much stronger, more pungent odor.

The smell of blood.

"Is this place extremely fortunate for me?"

He looked down at the mud beneath his feet.

Not far from him, several corpses lay scattered in a jumble.

These bodies wore simple yet heavy layered armor, rather than the lightweight ninja vests of the future.

The weapons in their hands were not kunai, but spears, broadswords, and massive shuriken.

More importantly, there were no forehead protectors on them.

It seemed that in this era, the concept of ninja villages had not yet been born.

"No forehead protectors, mixed family crests, plus this ancient armor... this is the Warring States period."