In the underground laboratory.
As Lan activated the Tenseigan, green chakra enveloped his right hand, and he reached toward the Kaguya Clan member in front of him.
The next moment, the man's chakra surged out of his body like a tide and flowed into Lan's palm.
In only a few breaths, Lan had absorbed most of the man's chakra, turning it into a golden chakra orb in his palm.
When he noticed the surface of the orb, which contained the Kaguya Clan member's chakra, beginning to bulge and cave in, Lan knew he had reached the limit of how much he could stably contain. If he absorbed any more, he would have to release that power. Clearly, that wasn't what he wanted.
The Tenseigan was powerful at absorbing chakra, but unlike the Rinnegan, it couldn't use Shinra Tensei to convert the chakra it extracted from others into its user's own chakra.
The Tenseigan's chakra extraction was more about pulling an enemy's chakra out of their body and storing it. Once it reached its storage limit, it had to be released as soon as possible.
In the original timeline, after Toneri drained Naruto's chakra, he simply threw it back at him.
That was another difference between the two eyes. The Tenseigan's chakra extraction was clearly more effective in combat than the Rinnegan's, but it did nothing to help with endurance. It truly was a Sage Eye geared toward offense.
Lan didn't dwell on such minor details. He had more important things to do.
Once he realized he had reached the limit of what he could stably control, Lan stopped extracting chakra from the Kaguya Clan member and instead tried to fuse his own chakra with the Kaguya Clan chakra in his hand.
This time, the Kaguya Clan chakra was a great deal stronger than before, both in quality and quantity. He was sure that once his Tenseigan absorbed the new, fused chakra, it would cross that threshold.
Calling it a fusion of chakra was perhaps inaccurate. It was more like an evolution brought about by consumption. Even with such a vast amount of Kaguya Clan chakra compressed together, its quality still fell short of the chakra produced by his Tenseigan.
That very gap allowed Lan to fuse with the Kaguya Clan chakra quickly.
The new chakra, formed by combining the Hyuga Byakugan and the Kaguya Clan's Shikotsumyaku chakra, began to appear inside Lan's body. His hungry Tenseigan swiftly absorbed it.
As the Tenseigan absorbed more and more of this chakra, its nearly stalled Dojutsu Power began to grow again.
This continued for several days.
Thump!
After days of patient effort, Lan's Tenseigan, which had already been just a hair's breadth from awakening a new Dojutsu, suddenly gave a sensation like a heartbeat.
"Ugh..."
In an instant, his eyes seemed to come alive, stirring restlessly. Then came a pain like needles piercing his brain, and Lan couldn't help clutching his eyes and crying out.
Lan was in unbearable pain, but the heightened perception of space told him that the changes in his body were definitely for the better. He only had to endure this moment.
As his perception of space-time deepened, information about a new Dojutsu entered Lan's mind, and the pain quickly ebbed like a tide.
In just a moment, sweat had soaked him through. The lightness he felt in his body made him realize that the awakening had also changed him physically.
The excitement on Lan's face made it clear that, as expected, the Tenseigan's new Dojutsu was a space-time ability.
But before he could properly examine the information about his new Dojutsu, the increase in his Dojutsu Power heightened his perception, alerting him that a large number of his puppets had been destroyed in a short time.
The puppets weren't very strong, so losses were inevitable. But the chakra data recovered from their destruction revealed the identities of the enemies they had encountered, and Lan's expression turned strange.
Why them?
What were they doing in the Land of Water?
Was something major about to happen in Kirigakure?
As if he had noticed something, Lan furrowed his brows and began searching through his deeper memories for clues.
Soon, Lan's eyes lit up. He seemed to have thought of something.
Perhaps this was a good opportunity to fish in troubled waters. With his new Dojutsu, he could at least protect himself, no matter how serious the upheaval in Kirigakure became.
Having decided to get involved in Kirigakure's coming upheaval, Lan began cleaning out the laboratory. He only stopped after removing every trace that might reveal information about him.
Whoosh...
As he walked out, Lan casually took out a black robe and draped it over his shoulders.
When he reached the surface, he looked up at the long-missed sunlight, then pulled out the distinctive mask and put it on...
In a forest not far from Kirigakure.
"How long are you going to keep fiddling with that junk? These are obviously just ordinary puppets. The problem isn't with the puppets."
Two figures in Blood-Red Cloud Robes stood there, with the shattered remains of many puppets lying on the ground before them.
A young red-haired man kept poking through the debris, seemingly investigating the puppets' secrets.
If Lan had been there, he would have recognized them as Akatsuki members Kakuzu and Sasori.
Kakuzu had finally lost patience watching Sasori repeatedly fiddle with the puppet remains, as though he wouldn't stop until he uncovered their secret, and tried to talk him out of it.
Just moments ago, the two of them had been lying in wait in the forest on the leader's orders when a group of strange figures in black robes suddenly appeared.
They had initially assumed the newcomers were from Kirigakure. To avoid revealing their own whereabouts, they had attacked without hesitation.
For Kage Level powerhouses like Kakuzu and Sasori, their opponents had been unexpectedly weak.
But after knocking them down and discovering that they were only puppets, even the two experienced shinobi couldn't help being stunned.
They searched the surrounding area for quite a while, but still couldn't find the puppet master who might be hiding nearby. So Sasori turned his attention to the remains.
What baffled Sasori was that no matter how thoroughly he examined them, the results showed that the puppets on the ground were nothing more than ordinary puppets.
To a genius puppeteer like him, they were so shoddily made that even the toys he had built as a child were better.
And yet these pieces of junk could move and attack on their own, using abilities he had never seen before.
Unlike Kakuzu, Sasori was an expert in the Puppet Technique. He knew full well that throughout the battle, he hadn't once spotted the Chakra Threads a normal puppeteer used to control their puppets.
Could the person behind these puppets really have mastered a way to control them wirelessly?
Could such an ability actually exist?
The discovery nearly made him question everything he knew about life. Sasori was so confident in his Puppet Technique that he believed no one else could claim the top spot. Yet even he couldn't control puppets wirelessly. How could anyone else manage it?
"Impossible. No puppeteer can do that. What's going on?"
Watching Sasori mutter to himself, unable to accept reality, Kakuzu replied indifferently,
"So what if someone's better than you at the Puppet Technique? Just find him. He's somewhere in Kirigakure, so he can't get away."
Kakuzu's words had been casual, but they struck home. Sasori, who had been questioning everything he knew, suddenly snapped out of it.
That was right. As long as he found the other person and dealt with him, he'd still be the strongest puppeteer in the Ninja World!