Yue looked at the tiny rift in space-time, a flash of delight in his eyes.
But the delight had barely lasted half a second when a searing pain tore through his left eye!
"Urgh!"
Yue groaned, clutched his left eye, and dropped to one knee, his body beyond his control. Bright
red blood poured between his fingers like an unstoppable stream, dripping onto the cold floor.
When he opened his left eye again, the world before him had grown blurry, doubled images overlapping everywhere.
"The price... has finally come due."
Yue panted, then gave a bitter smile and shook his head.
Over the past few months, to quickly unravel the secrets of the Dragon Vein and derive the formula for traveling through space-time, he had repeatedly used "Yagokoro Omoikane" to alter probabilities and bypass the cost of trial and error.
But the price of altering Fate was exorbitant.
He had drained the ocular power in his left eye to its limit.
His left eye could now barely make out light and shadow. He was only one step away from total blindness.
His right eye could still just about maintain his combat strength, but its vision had grown blurry too.
As for replenishing his ocular power, he had considered it.
There were two methods in the original story: Hashirama Cells and the Eternal Mangekyo.
But he had abandoned both options.
He had traveled back too early. Research into Hashirama Cells was still very primitive, and Orochimaru and Danzo had yet to dare conduct human experiments on a large scale.
Besides, the ocular power required by his left eye's Yagokoro Omoikane to control probabilities beyond his abilities increased exponentially. In other words, even if Yue got his hands on Hashirama Cells, he wouldn't have the ocular power to experiment with them.
Unless he became as powerful as Hashirama and Madara.
But once he reached their level, he wouldn't need Hashirama Cells.
He'd be caught between a rock and a hard place.
As for the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan, he had no close relative who had awakened the Mangekyo.
His only hope now was the Dragon Vein. He would use it to travel to an era where he could replenish his ocular power.
"There's not much time. If my left eye goes completely blind, I'll lose my last trump card for surviving the space-time turbulence."
Yue slowly got to his feet and casually bandaged his bleeding left eye, leaving only his right eye exposed.
His research had reached a milestone.
He had figured out how to surround himself with a gravitational field and discovered how to use the Dragon Vein's specific frequency to open the "Gate of Time and Space."
He couldn't pinpoint a specific day decades in the future as precisely as the future Urashiki Otsutsuki could, but making an initial "time-space leap" was now theoretically possible.
He had also deliberately saved the last bit of ocular power in his left eye for this. Once he used it, the eye would go blind.
It was the price of staying alive.
A few hours later, at the Rōran Palace.
"These are the plans for the city's third-stage defense system, along with designs for steam-driven bearings powered by geothermal energy."
Yue placed the last thick stack of scrolls on Sara's desk.
Today, he wore a lighter black combat outfit. The straight sword on his back had been reforged with Chakra-Conductive Metal mixed into it.
Sara's heart clenched when she saw the white bandage wrapped around Yue's left eye.
"Lord Yue, your eye..."
"It's a small price for an experiment. It's nothing."
Yue cut her off, his tone as calm as if he were discussing the weather.
"I've written down everything you need to know in the scrolls. Rōran's foundations are secure. As long as you don't do anything foolish, like picking a fight with the Five Great Nations, this city can protect itself in the desert with ease."
Sara sensed the note of farewell in Yue's words and sprang to her feet. "Are you leaving?"
"More precisely, I'm going on a long journey. Or... a 'trip' beyond the dimensions you can understand."
Yue walked to the window and looked down at the Steel Oasis, where windmills had begun turning and life was returning.
"I may be gone for a long time. By your reckoning, it could be an instant, or it could be years—even decades."
Yue turned around.
"While I'm gone, keep a close watch on the Dragon Vein's seal. It belongs to me. Don't let anyone near it."
"I understand!" Sara drew a deep breath, fighting back her reluctance, and bowed solemnly. "Rōran will protect this home for you, always. I wish you... victory in battle."
"Home?"
Yue said nothing more. He gave a slight nod, then vanished in a whirlwind of black.
Deep beneath the city, at the Dragon Vein's core.
The purple sea of chakra still rumbled beneath the seal like a slumbering beast.
Uchiha Yue stood on the raised platform at the core, his hands forming Hand Seals at a dizzying speed.
As he poured in his chakra, a gap temporarily tore open in the outer seal Sara had placed.
"Rumble!"
The raging Dragon Vein chakra found an outlet and instantly erupted into a pillar of purple light.
Yue stood before the pillar and activated "Amenominakanushi" with his right eye at full power. A colossal gravitational field burst forth, forcibly gathering and compressing the purple light as it threatened to run wild.
Under the distortion of absolute gravity, a spinning, bottomless space-time vortex gradually appeared at the center of the purple pillar.
The aura radiating from the vortex belonged neither to the past nor the future. It was pure, chaotic space-time turbulence.
Looking at the terrifying vortex, powerful enough to grind steel into atoms in an instant, Yue tore off the bandage over his left eye.
In the nearly blind eye, the Mangekyo pattern blazed one last time, more fiercely than ever!
"The survival rate of a time-space leap... is less than ten percent."
Feeling the destructive force tearing at him from the vortex, Yue nevertheless grinned fearlessly.
"But... I saved this last bit of ocular power for this very moment!"
"Yagokoro Omoikane! Raise the probability that this journey will be extremely fortunate for me to 100%!"
"Crack!"
It was as if something had shattered deep within his soul.
His left eye plunged into eternal darkness, blood and tears pouring from it. Yet an invisible force representing "absolute Fate" wrapped around Yue like the most indestructible armor.
Without hesitation, Uchiha Yue leaped into the raging purple space-time vortex.
The purple vortex suddenly contracted inward, then burst into countless points of light. Uchiha Yue had vanished.
Silence returned to the underground core. The seal closed again.
The space-time turbulence was like ten thousand invisible hands, violently tearing at Uchiha Yue's body.
Even with "Yagokoro Omoikane" forcing his luck to 100%, the dizziness and agony of having his soul tossed around in a washing machine still brought him to the brink of unconsciousness several times.
He had no idea how much time had passed. Perhaps it was an instant; perhaps a century.
"Thud!"
A muffled crash rang out.
Uchiha Yue's body fell from midair like discarded trash, slamming into a muddy swamp reeking of decay.
"Cough, cough... cough, cough!"
His violent coughing broke the silence around him.
Yue struggled to roll onto his back and gasped for air. Every bone in his body felt as though it were about to break apart.
He instinctively reached for his left eye.
There was nothing but emptiness, no pain—only a silent void.
The eye was still in its socket, but its optic nerve had been completely burned out, leaving nothing but endless darkness.
"The price... so this is the toll for forcing my way through space-time?"
Yue gave a bitter smile and covered his left eye with his mud-smeared right hand. His left eye was blind, but he hadn't died. Aside from his injuries and chakra depletion, he hadn't even lost a limb.
"As long as I'm alive, there's still hope of turning things around."
Yue gritted his teeth, endured the pain, and slowly opened his one remaining eye.
What he saw was no longer the metal-punk Dungeon of Rōran, nor the endless yellow sands of the Land of Wind.
He was in a dark, damp primeval forest.
Heavy, leaden-gray clouds covered the sky. Cold rain pattered down, mingling with the stench of earth and a far stronger, more pungent smell.
The smell of blood.
"Is this really an extremely fortunate place for me?"
He looked down at the ground beneath his feet.
Several bodies lay strewn nearby.
They wore simple but heavy layered armor, not the lightweight flak jackets of the future.
And the weapons in their hands weren't Kunai, but spears, greatswords, and oversized Shuriken.
More importantly, none of them wore Forehead Protectors.
It seemed the concept of the ninja village hadn't yet come into existence in this era.
"No Forehead Protectors, mixed family crests, and ancient armor... This is the Warring States Period."
Before you continue