Sasori Doubts His Life

Inside the underground laboratory.

As Lan channeled his Tenseigan, his right hand became enveloped in green chakra, which he then extended toward the Kaguya clan member standing before him.

The next moment, the Kaguya member's chakra surged out of his body like a tide, only to be drawn into Lan's palm.

In just a few breaths, the majority of the Kaguya member's chakra had been drained, coalescing into a golden sphere of chakra in the palm of Lan's hand.

Noticing the surface of the light sphere containing the sealed Kaguya chakra beginning to warp and bulge, Lan knew he had reached the limit of his containment. If he continued to absorb more, he would be forced to discharge this power, which clearly went against his intentions.

Although the Tenseigan's ability to absorb chakra was potent, it did not function like the Rinnegan, which could use the power of Shinra Tensei to convert extracted chakra into one's own.

The Tenseigan's chakra extraction was primarily a means of pulling an enemy's chakra out of their body to seal it; once the storage limit was reached, it had to be released as soon as possible.

In the original timeline, after Toneri drained Naruto's chakra, he simply threw that energy right back at him.

This was the fundamental difference between the two eyes: the Tenseigan's extraction ability was far superior to the Rinnegan's in terms of offensive potential, but it offered no help with sustainability. It was, after all, a Sage Eye biased toward aggression.

Lan did not dwell on these minor details; he had more important tasks at hand.

Upon realizing he had reached the limit of what he could stably control, Lan ceased the extraction from the Kaguya member and began attempting to fuse his own chakra with the Kaguya clan's energy held in his hand.

This time, the Kaguya chakra was vastly superior in both quality and quantity compared to before. He believed that once his Tenseigan absorbed this newly fused chakra, it would surely cross that threshold.

Calling it a fusion was perhaps less accurate than calling it an evolution through consumption. Even with such a massive amount of Kaguya chakra concentrated together, there was still a gap in quality compared to his Tenseigan chakra.

It was precisely because of this gap that Lan's fusion of the Kaguya chakra progressed rapidly.

The new chakra, born from the fusion of the Hyuga Byakugan and the Kaguya clan's Shikotsumyaku, began to manifest within Lan's body, only to be swiftly devoured by his hungry Tenseigan.

As the Tenseigan's absorption of this chakra reached a certain level, his nearly stagnant ocular power began to grow once more.

This continued for several days.

Thump!

Through the relentless, grinding effort of his training, Lan's Tenseigan—which had already been on the verge of awakening a new ocular technique—suddenly gave off a sensation like a fetal movement.

"Ugh..."

In an instant, his eyes began to stir as if they possessed a life of their own. A piercing pain, like needles stabbing into his brain, followed, forcing Lan to cover his eyes and cry out in agony.

Though the pain was unbearable, the heightened sense of space told Lan that his body's transformation was definitely moving in a positive direction. He just needed to endure this moment.

As his perception of space-time power deepened, information regarding a new ocular technique flooded into Lan's mind, and the sharp pain receded as quickly as a tide.

In just a short time, the sweat he had broken out in had soaked his entire body, and the light, airy sensation he felt made Lan realize that the awakening of this ocular technique had also brought about changes to his physical form.

From the excitement on Lan's face, it was clear that the new ocular technique of the Tenseigan was, as expected, a space-time ability.

However, before he could fully grasp the details of the new technique, his heightened perception—brought on by the increase in ocular power—revealed that a large number of his puppets had been destroyed in a short span of time.

Those puppets were not particularly strong, so losses were inevitable, but when he learned the identity of the enemies through the chakra information recovered from the wreckage, Lan's expression turned strange.

How could it be them?

What were these people doing in the Land of Water?

Could it be that a major upheaval was about to strike Kirigakure?

Unsure of what he had discovered, Lan's brow furrowed as he began to search the deepest recesses of his memory for clues.

Soon, Lan's eyes lit up, as if he had realized something.

Perhaps this was a good opportunity to fish in troubled waters. With his new ocular technique, no matter how great the upheaval in Kirigakure might be, he would at least be safe.

Deciding to intervene in the coming events at Kirigakure, Lan began to clean up the laboratory, stopping only after he had erased every trace that could potentially expose information.

Whoosh...

As he walked toward the exit, Lan casually pulled out a black robe and draped it over his shoulders.

Arriving on the surface, he looked up at the long-lost sunlight, then pulled out that custom-made mask once more and donned it...

In a dense forest not far from Kirigakure.

"How much longer are you going to fiddle with that junk? No matter how you look at it, these are just ordinary puppets. The problem isn't with these things."

There stood two figures wearing cloaks patterned with blood-red clouds. On the ground before them lay the shattered remains of many puppets.

A young man with red hair was rummaging through the debris, seemingly searching for the secrets behind these puppets.

If Lan were to appear here, he would recognize these two as members of the Akatsuki: Kakuzu and Sasori.

It was Kakuzu who had finally spoken up, unable to watch any longer as Sasori repeatedly toyed with the puppet remains, seemingly unwilling to give up until he found their secrets.

Just moments ago, the two of them, acting under orders from their leader to lurk in the forest, had suddenly encountered a group of strange figures in black robes entering the woods.

Thinking the intruders were members of Kirigakure, they had chosen to strike decisively to avoid revealing their presence.

For Kage-level powerhouses like Kakuzu and Sasori, the enemies they engaged were unexpectedly weak.

But after defeating them and discovering that the enemies were merely a group of puppets, even the experienced pair couldn't help but be shocked.

After searching the surrounding area for quite a while without finding the puppeteer who must have been controlling them, Sasori had turned his attention to the remains of the puppets.

What Sasori couldn't fathom, however, was that no matter how he examined them, the final result always showed that the puppets on the ground were nothing more than a pile of ordinary constructs.

Even for a genius puppeteer like him, these puppets could only be described as crude and shoddy, inferior even to the toys he had crafted as a child.

Yet, these pieces of trash were capable of moving on their own and attacking enemies, displaying abilities he had never seen before.

Unlike Kakuzu, he was a master of puppetry and knew full well that throughout the recent battle, he had never detected the chakra threads that normal puppeteers used to control their puppets.

Could the person behind these puppets truly have mastered the art of wireless puppet control?

Could such an ability really exist?

This discovery made him almost doubt everything he knew; Sasori prided himself on being the undisputed number one in the field of puppetry, but if even he could not achieve wireless control, how could anyone else?

"Impossible, this is impossible. No puppeteer can do such a thing. What on earth is going on?"

Watching Sasori mutter to himself, unable to accept reality, Kakuzu said indifferently, "So what if you admit someone is better than you at puppetry? Just find them. They are right here in Kirigakure; they can't run."

The speaker meant nothing by it, but the listener took it to heart. Kakuzu's words snapped Sasori out of his existential crisis.

That was right—as long as he found the person and eliminated them, he would remain the strongest puppeteer in the Ninja World!