A Terrifying Idea Born from an Unexpected Turn

Seeing the person before her use the First's Wood Release, Hanabi's face remained utterly calm.

She even felt a strange sense that he trusted her completely.

She quietly watched as the Wood Clones took their places in the various small Eight Trigrams Sealing arrays.

Qiuyang's real body sat cross-legged in the largest array in the middle and swallowed hard.

He remembered that when Kakashi had used the Evil Sealing Method to seal Sasuke's Cursed Seal in the original story, Sasuke had been in so much pain that he'd passed out on the spot.

Now Qiuyang had to seal far more than Sasuke had. Would the pain make him roll around on the ground? Wouldn't that be horribly embarrassing in front of the little girl?

I wonder if I can take it?

"Hey, real me, don't let the pain scare you. Remember, you can definitely do this."

The Wood Clone beside Qiuyang seemed to notice how uneasy he was. It patted him on the shoulder and offered some encouragement.

Qiuyang retorted irritably, "You're not the one who has to feel the pain. Easy for you to say."

"Aw :-(, that's not right. What do you mean, I'm not the one who has to feel the pain? I'm you, and you're me. If you feel pain, then so do I."

After saying this with great seriousness, the Wood Clone turned to Hanabi and added, "Right, little Hanabi?"

Hanabi: "..."

Seriously, were Qiuyang and his clones always this long-winded?

Couldn't they act serious for once, given how serious this was?

Qiuyang gritted his teeth. "Come on. Let's start!"

All the clones who'd been watching perked up at once. The clone stationed at the One-Tail's section quickly formed an extremely complex series of Hand Seals. When it was done, it slapped its hand against the ground.

The black seals on the ground seemed to come alive. They wrapped around Shukaku's tail at the center of the small Eight Trigrams Sealing array, then surged madly toward Qiuyang in the middle...

As expected, an Eight Trigrams Seal containing something was far more painful than the empty one Jiraiya had implanted in him back then.

Qiuyang glanced at Hanabi, who was carefully watching the seals on the ground, and decided to keep quiet.

The clone standing beside him scoffed.

It nearly made Qiuyang, who was already enduring the pain, lose his composure.

By the time the first seal had completely entered his body, Qiuyang was drenched in sweat. When he thought of the nine more seals awaiting him, he wanted to cry.

He should've considered sealing them one at a time, with breaks in between. Why had he insisted on doing them all at once?

Well, now he was committed and couldn't back out!

It seemed that besides the powerful constitution he'd inherited from the Uzumaki Clan, Minato must have used some secret method to transfer most of the side effects when he sealed the Nine-Tails in Naruto as a baby. Otherwise, no infant could have survived it.

Even an adult like Qiuyang could barely endure it, let alone a newborn child.

When the first seal was complete, Qiuyang's Wood Clone ran out of chakra and turned into a tree on the spot.

There was no helping it. Sealing consumed too much chakra, and he also had to save some in case anything went wrong. He had to calculate his chakra use precisely.

Qiuyang nodded to the clone at the second position. It understood and began forming Hand Seals... Since this section didn't contain any part of a Tailed Beast, the pain of sealing it was considerably less.

Three hours passed in the blink of an eye.

No matter how much pain Qiuyang had endured during that time, the nine small Eight Trigrams Sealing arrays had finally formed around the center of his abdomen.

Now all that remained was to place the miniature Demonic Statue of the Outer Path at the very center of his abdomen.

"Qiuyang..."

Hanabi had noticed something was wrong when he was sealing the third section. Now she watched the man tremble faintly, filled with worry, wondering whether she should urge him to stop.

Qiuyang forced a faint smile that said, "I'm fine," then nodded to the clone watching him just as solemnly.

"There's no turning back now. Let's do it!"

"Okay, real me. Hang in there."

Qiuyang had given the Wood Clone responsible for the final step the most chakra. Hearing that he wanted to continue, it stopped hesitating. After forming Hand Seals, it pressed its hand against Qiuyang's stomach.

The contact would allow the final, main seal to resonate with the other small Eight Trigrams Sealing arrays and establish a connection.

Qiuyang had already endured more pain than most people could bear, but this time he couldn't hold it in. A sound of intense pain escaped him: "Aah..."

The little girl bit her lip at his cry but said nothing. She simply watched him with concern, silently urging him to hold on.

"Roar..."

But just as the jar was about to enter, compressed by the Cursed Seal, something unexpected happened. The miniature Demonic Statue of the Outer Path inside suddenly roared and began to struggle.

No... This is bad... This thing really isn't dead.

Qiuyang was at his wit's end. He felt as if he were about to fall apart.

He hadn't expected something to go wrong at the final step. And now neither he nor the Wood Clone could move; they had almost no chakra left to use.

Hanabi had noticed it with her Byakugan, of course. Gritting her teeth, she stepped behind Qiuyang and transferred her meager chakra to him through her palm.

Strangely, as Hanabi's chakra mixed with the seal suppressing the miniature Demonic Statue of the Outer Path, the statue abruptly stopped struggling and obediently sealed itself inside him.

Qiuyang had no time to think about why. He focused entirely on completing the seal...

When he entered his mental space again, he saw a huge sealing array floating above him, with nine smaller arrays surrounding him.

It worked! I did it, hahaha!

But I couldn't use it just yet. I'd have to wait until I'd gathered the parts of the Two-Tails, Four-Tails, and Nine-Tails!

Qiuyang left his mental space. Ignoring his exhaustion, he turned and ruffled the little girl's hair like a cat, showing how happy he was.

"I told you it was right to bring you along, Hanabi. I've decided that from now on, I'm your teacher. Well..."

Hanabi looked happy to hear that, but she also felt she might have gotten the short end of the stick. She'd already been able to switch between calling him "Qiuyang-gege" and "teacher" whenever she wanted!

But seeing how happy he was, the little girl stopped dwelling on it and smiled along with him.

It was already night when Qiuyang escorted Hanabi back to the Hyuga Clan Compound. He'd planned to talk to Hiashi about Hanabi's future studies.

But when he saw Hiashi's stern expression, he quickly gave Hanabi a look and left.

Even if Hiashi, as her parent, refused, Qiuyang had plenty of ways to make him agree.

That night, as Qiuyang lay resting in bed at home, he carefully considered the strange reaction caused by Hanabi transferring her chakra into him. His deduction made him break out in a cold sweat:

Before Madara and Nagato summoned the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path, it had been kept on the moon. He guessed that Hamura Otsutsuki's chakra naturally had a suppressive effect on it.

But that tiny amount of chakra shouldn't have been enough to make it completely docile. There had to be another, more important reason...

Perhaps when the chakra of Hagoromo Otsutsuki's and Hamura Otsutsuki's descendants mixed, it produced a new kind of change—one capable of suppressing things related to the Tailed Beasts.

At the thought, Qiuyang sat up at once. The Byakugan that could see the future, belonging to Pineapple Head, suddenly appeared in his mind.

If that was true, then perhaps if he took Hanabi's Byakugan, which had the potential to evolve into a Tenseigan, and... put it in his own eyes, it might undergo an even more extraordinary transformation.

The terrifying idea gave Qiuyang a fright. He hurriedly repeated to himself that Hanabi was his student and that he couldn't do anything reckless...

His current task was to gather the remaining parts of the Tailed Beasts!

But just a few days later, when Qiuyang was about to leave Konoha to get the remaining Tailed Beast parts before Akatsuki could capture them, the Anbu wearing the mole mask found him again.

"Lord Qiuyang, Lady Tsunade and Lord Jiraiya wish to speak with you. Please come to the Hokage Office."

Qiuyang's brow twitched. He had a feeling this wouldn't be good.