Although Konoha had many other mid-sized clans, such as the Akimichi Clan, the Sarutobi Clan, and the Uzumaki Clan, none of them could contend with the Four Great Clans in terms of strength and foundations.
Moreover, aside from the Hatake Clan, which relied on the efforts of every clan member and the immense power accumulated through their exceptionally fine bloodline, the other three great clans had all risen through Kekkei Genkai.
Talent was often unstable. Countless geniuses had never shown any promise again after the age of thirteen. Kekkei Genkai, however, was something tangible. After the Senju Clan successively lost their strongest leader, Hashirama Senju, they lost their top-tier combat strength and had no choice but to begin considering how to cultivate the next generation of powerful fighters.
That was when they considered bloodline fusion. Back then, they forcibly demanded ten main-family men from the Hyuga Clan. This "demand" was not some diplomatic negotiation—it was outright plunder. The Senju Clan had practically dispatched all of its core forces to storm into the Hyuga Clan compound, seize the men, and flee.
The Hyuga Clan members were frantic. They initially believed that the Senju Clan wanted to study the secrets of the Byakugan. If those taken had been branch-family members, they could simply activate the Caged Bird and kill those branch-family descendants with ease. But the people taken were main-family descendants. The main family had never been branded with the Caged Bird.
When the Hyuga Clan gathered a large force the next day to demand an explanation from the Senju Clan, they never expected the Hyuga Clan to directly hand over the people they had taken.
However, those ten men were so changed that not even their own mothers could have recognized them. They had practically been drained into human husks!
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