The Ancestor You Worship Is Food in My Bowl

The night wind howled through the cracks in the cavern, sweeping up the embers of the campfire and casting clawing shadows across the stone walls.

Xuan sat cross-legged. Before him, the two sealed objects that had once belonged to his left and right eyes had now crossed the distance of three feet and fit together seamlessly.

They were no longer lifeless objects. Like a beating heart, blood mist of the same origin rose from the cracks on their surface like living serpents, intertwining to construct an ancient tableau before Xuan that shook the soul.

Moonlight fell like frost beneath a towering Divine Tree.

A one-eyed warrior clad in ancient armor stood there. He was not particularly large, yet he radiated an aloofness and tyranny powerful enough to overturn heaven and earth.

With one hand alone, he had pinned the legendary Uchiha Clan Progenitor, Indra, the eldest son of the Sage of Six Paths, firmly to the ground.

Indra knelt on one knee, his face holding neither humiliation nor hostility. There was only the frenzied reverence and awe of one gazing upon a god.

This scene completely overturned everything Xuan knew about the history of the Uchiha Clan.

Just as his mind reeled in shock, the system's cold notification rang out explosively in his mind. Every syllable seemed to contain the force of thunder:

"Warning! An ancient memory fragment highly resonant with the host's soul origin has been detected... Parsing..."

"Parsing complete! Core information corrected: 'Xuan' means beginning, origin. The host is not Indra's descendant, but existed before him—the true source of the Uchiha bloodline!"

Not a descendant, but the source!

Xuan's eyes snapped open, a sharp gleam shooting from them.

So that was it. The so-called Progenitor worshipped by the Uchiha Clan had merely been a follower standing beneath the shadow of this body's original owner!

He no longer hesitated. Taking a deep breath, he suppressed his surging emotions.

He would fuse with this right-eye fragment and reclaim the first portion of power that belonged to him.

"System, activate the Basic Cell Regeneration Template and stabilize the neural connections! Activate the Bloodline Suppression Module and block all rejection reactions!"

As the command was issued, a gentle energy instantly enveloped his right eye socket, reinforcing his fragile optic nerves layer upon layer.

At the same time, the bloodline power of the Senju Clan within him was forcibly suppressed and sealed by an invisible force, clearing the way for this ocular power from the "source."

Xuan stretched out his right hand. His fingertips trembled as they touched the cold yet scorching eyeball.

Boom—!

In an instant, an indescribably vast torrent of information crashed through the barriers of his mind like a burst celestial river, brutally flooding the depths of his consciousness.

He "saw" it!

He saw himself once standing upon the earth, fighting the rampaging Divine Tree with flesh and blood, forcibly sealing its massive roots.

He saw himself resolutely split his pair of godly eyes apart, turning them into the cores of the seals in order to suppress the seven most crucial chakra nodes.

He also saw how, during the long years of his slumber, the later Uchiha Clan members, led by Indra, had gradually altered the history carved upon the stone tablet, completely erasing his existence and instead exalting Indra as the supreme Progenitor.

Lies! Betrayal! Theft!

An intense stabbing pain erupted from deep within his right eye socket, as though tens of millions of steel needles were piercing his brain at once.

The capillaries around his eye socket burst one by one, crimson blood winding down his cheek.

Yet something bizarre happened. Before the blood could fall, the powerful suction erupting from the pupil of his newborn right eye tugged it backward and absorbed every drop!

A violent transformation was taking place within that dark pupil.

The original three-tomoe Sharingan spun rapidly, finally condensing into a continuously contracting spiral vortex eye. At the outermost edge of that vortex, a ring of ferocious bone-spike patterns emerged from nowhere, like a thorny crown crowning a king!

A new Mangekyō was born!

[Bone Mirror: Life Severance]!

The ocular ability carried by these eyes had been strengthened beyond anything before.

Within Xuan's field of vision, the preview of an enemy's "death," originally a blurry one-second glimpse, extended to a crystal-clear five full seconds!

Moreover, he could lock onto three targets at once and see in his mind how and from which direction he would kill them within the next five seconds!

And that was not all.

What shocked him even more was that at the very moment his right eye completed its transformation, the left-eye fragment from the undersea tomb reacted briefly as well!

Within the originally empty eye socket, a phantom pupil marked by a single vertical line flashed past, forming a momentary resonance with the "crown" in his right eye!

[Twin-Pupil Vision]!

It lasted only an instant, but Xuan clearly felt his sight break through the limits of the physical dimension.

He could "see through" the chakra flowing through the air, "analyze" the fundamental structure of any ninjutsu, and even "perceive" the slightest emotional fluctuations within Saori and Baba Tesshin's hearts in the distance!

The system notification sounded at just the right moment:

"Mangekyō Sharingan fusion successful! Stability raised to S-rank! Ocular power greatly enhanced! A potential path toward evolution into the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan has been detected. Requirements unknown."

"Phew..." Xuan let out a long breath, and the soul-rending agony slowly receded.

A damp towel carrying a faint fragrance was gently held out before him. At some point, Saori had come to his side and silently wiped away the lingering blood at the corner of his eye.

Her voice was low, yet filled with unprecedented resolve. "Do you believe it now? You were never fighting to claim some so-called legitimate inheritance... because you yourself are the legitimate inheritance."

Xuan slowly opened his eyes.

At that moment, both Saori and Baba Tesshin felt as though they could not breathe.

What kind of eyes were those?

Deep, indifferent, filled with the majesty of one who looked down upon all living things.

It was as if all things beneath their gaze were nothing more than dust in his palm.

"The ancestor they bow and worship is nothing more than scraps I discarded." Xuan's voice was hoarse and cold, every word seeming to rise from the depths of hell. "And I am the source they devoured."

He rose to his feet, walked to the cave entrance, and looked up at the endless stars. A cruel curve lifted at the corner of his mouth.

"Now it's time for me to harvest."

Baba Tesshin stepped forward and reported respectfully, "Lord Xuan, the latest news has come from the direction of the Land of Lightning. Hidden Cloud Village has suddenly strengthened its patrols along the border volcanic region. The number of ninjas has tripled. It seems they have noticed something."

"Noticed?" Xuan gave a disdainful sneer. "Let them investigate. Send everyone out to investigate. I happen to need a stage large enough to announce my return."

He turned around, swept his gaze across the crude cavern, and issued his first command as the "source." "Rebuild this place into the first Xuan Hall. Use iron sand as the beams, branches regenerated through Wood Release as the walls, and carve every ancient rune we brought back from the Naka River Underground Palace upon the lintel!"

A fanatical light shone in Saori's eyes. She walked to a smooth boulder in the center of the cave, used her finger as a pen, gathered chakra, and inscribed their new oath upon it stroke by stroke:

"When the eye opens, the world perishes. When the eye closes, reincarnation ends. Only those who answer Xuan's command may be called king."

That night, Xuan climbed alone to the summit above the cavern.

The night wind howled, whipping his robes.

He slowly closed his left eye and looked down upon the sleeping earth below with only his newborn right eye, marked by its bone-spike crown.

Mangekyō ocular technique—[Soul Devourer]!

An invisible wave of ocular power spread instantly from him like ripples across water, silently scanning the territory within a hundred miles.

In an instant, countless chaotic inner voices filled with negative emotions poured into his mind.

He "heard" them.

He heard Hidden Leaf Village ninjas weary of war, Hidden Sand Village's higher-ups distrusting their allies, and Hidden Rock Village civilians lost and terrified of the future.

These emotions were like the finest nourishment in darkness, feeding the brutality in his heart.

"Peace?" The corner of Xuan's mouth lifted slightly as he murmured, as though proclaiming it to the entire world. "It is nothing more than scraps begged for by the weak kneeling on the ground, pleading for the strong to spare them some."

He slowly raised his right hand, palm facing upward.

In an instant, countless grains of iron sand within the mountain were drawn out by an invisible force and gathered in the night sky above his head, condensing into an enormous phantom eyeball!

Its pattern was identical to that of his right eye: a spiral vortex eye crowned with bone spikes!

The giant eye hovered silently in the night sky for three breaths, like a silent evil god staring down at the land.

Three breaths later, it exploded with a roar!

Billions of iron-sand particles gleaming with metallic light turned into a magnificent yet eerie meteor shower, scattering in every direction before eventually vanishing into nothingness.

This earth-shaking scene did not draw the attention of ordinary people.

But a thousand miles away, in the deepest chamber of the Anbu headquarters in Hidden Leaf Village, a ninja responsible for monitoring chakra flow along the borders of the entire Fire Country suddenly shot up from his seat. He stared fixedly at the crystal ball before him as all color drained from his face.

Pointing at a coordinate on the crystal ball that had suddenly erupted with blinding red light, his voice changed pitch from overwhelming terror:

"S-Southern border! An unidentified, ultra-massive chakra signal has appeared! The signal has vanished, but... but the peak intensity it just released... is suspected... suspected to be Six Paths level!!"

The entire Anbu headquarters fell instantly silent.

Meanwhile, atop that nameless mountain, Xuan lowered his hand. Feeling the aftershock of that grand declaration, his expression did not change in the slightest.

His gaze crossed the borders of the Fire Country and turned toward the farther north.

The sky there seemed already to be gathering heavy leaden clouds, and the air carried a trace of bone-piercing chill.

The opening act of a storm that would sweep across the ninja world had begun, while the true performance would unfold amid ice and snow.