Back to Square One

The next day, news that the Uchiha Clan head had refused to carry out the Hokage's order quietly spread through Leaf Village. In just half a day, nearly every ninja in the village had heard it.

Hyuga Iwa did not know what others thought when they heard the news, but his first reaction was that Danzo was stirring up trouble again.

However, according to what he had learned, the Uchiha Clan really had refused an order issued by the Hokage!

What was going on? The Uchiha Clan had actually refused to carry out the Hokage's order? Did they really have that much nerve?

Were they not afraid that the Hokage would punish them under the charge of betraying the village?

After all, before this, no clan had ever openly refused to carry out the Hokage's orders!

What would the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, do next?

Yet a whole day passed, and the Third Hokage strangely made no move at all, as if nothing had happened!

Afterward, word spread that the Uchiha Clan head had visited the Sarutobi Family late at night for a private discussion, and the Hokage had personally seen him off when he left!

Hyuga Iwa could not help thinking sarcastically, This is even more entertaining than watching a play!

Hyuga Iwa did not know how things developed afterward, but he happened to hear that some members of his clan had joined the Hokage's direct ANBU, while several Uchiha had joined as well.

As for other secret dealings, they naturally would not be discussed openly.

Ever since Hiruzen Sarutobi took over as Hokage, the Uchiha Clan and the Hyuga Clan had never given him a friendly face. Now, several major clans...

Sure enough, politics was the art of compromise. Since compromise was inevitable, they would naturally bet on the stronger side.

Hyuga Iwa had no interest whatsoever in the petty schemes of the higher-ups. He understood one principle well: without strength, one had no right to speak.

He understood even more clearly that one should not meddle in affairs beyond one's station. Before possessing strength that matched his status, Hyuga Iwa would not go looking for trouble.

However, Hyuga Iwa did not know that sometimes, avoiding trouble did not mean trouble would avoid him. More often than not, trouble came knocking on its own.

Several days later, the rumors in the village gradually died down. On the surface, it seemed as though nothing had happened, but it was said that Danzo and Hiruzen Sarutobi had already had several fierce arguments in the Hokage's Office.

Several times, the Hokage's assistants had thought the two were about to start fighting, but in the end, nothing came of it.

Although the village seemed somewhat unstable these past few days, life still had to go on.

One day, after training his body for several days, Hyuga Iwa finally remembered that he had a pair of Byakugan. He had nearly forgotten that the Byakugan could also be developed.

When it came to the Byakugan, the first thing Hyuga Iwa thought of was the Otsutsuki Clan, that powerful race capable of crossing the universe through their own strength.

The Byakugan was the mark of the Otsutsuki Main Family, while the Byakugan of the Shinobi World came from the descendants of Hamura Otsutsuki.

There were currently two Byakugan clans in the Shinobi World. One was the Hyuga Clan in Leaf Village, while the other was the Otsutsuki Clan living within the moon.

After years of development, the ground-dwelling Hyuga Clan had completely forgotten that they even had relatives elsewhere!

At the same time, as a Kekkei Genkai, the Byakugan originated from the Otsutsuki Clan. It was a dojutsu the Otsutsuki Clan possessed from birth, yet the present-day Hyuga Clan needed constant training just to awaken it.

Hyuga Iwa thought that, although the Byakugan was one of the three great dojutsu, it seemed inferior to the Uchiha Clan's Sharingan, let alone the Rinnegan that the Sharingan evolved into.

But Hyuga Iwa knew that the Byakugan was the Otsutsuki Clan's dojutsu. Through the Byakugan, the Otsutsuki Clan could control the Ten-Tails as easily as controlling a pet!

The Byakugan was an eye even more capable of directly controlling people than the Rinnegan!

It truly deserved to be called the eye of puppetry!

Moreover, the Byakugan could do more than control people. After evolving, it possessed even more varied abilities!

In fact, Hyuga Iwa had a suspicion: the Byakugan should also be an eye of the mind, and one of an even higher level!

It was simply that the Hyuga Clan's Byakugan had degenerated too severely, to the point where it could not display its proper strength.

Otherwise, the Tenseigan that the Byakugan evolved into was called the Eye of Destruction, existing purely for destruction!

Hyuga Iwa remembered that Hagoromo Otsutsuki seemed to have awakened the Rinnegan only after killing his younger brother Hamura, and one of the Rinnegan's abilities was the power to revive the dead!

The Rinnegan was called the eye that controlled life and death. It was more like an eye of functions, and was also known as the Eye of Creation!

Hyuga Iwa came up with a bold theory. The Byakugan specialized in control and destruction, while the Rinnegan specialized in creation. Perhaps a high-level Byakugan could control the Rinnegan!

Regarding this, Hyuga Iwa had another speculation: among the Otsutsuki Main Family in the universe, everyone possessed the Byakugan, while only those from the Hyuga Branch Family, or even their subordinates, possessed the Rinnegan!

The Main Family used the Byakugan to control their servants, completely holding their lives and deaths in their hands!

Hyuga Iwa was startled by his own conjecture. He knew that if he was right, it would be far too unbelievable!

But on second thought, it did not seem impossible. The Otsutsuki Clan on the moon could directly control puppets through the Byakugan, and that was with a degenerated Byakugan!

And the Tenseigan had effortlessly controlled Hanabi Hyuga!

As Hyuga Iwa continued thinking, imagining a future where he was omnipotent and controlled all things, he could not help shuddering.

"Eugh—if that day really came, wouldn't that make me like a god? No, wait, that actually sounds right!"

Hyuga Iwa muttered to himself, seeming almost delirious.

After quite a while, Hyuga Iwa came back to his senses from his surging excitement and sighed. "Sigh... What's the point of thinking so much? I haven't even managed the most basic awakening yet. What's the point of thinking about all that?"

Having returned to reality, Hyuga Iwa finally began considering the Byakugan's abilities. What abilities did the Byakugan have at this stage again?

It could see people and objects in the distance, and clearly see the chakra inside an opponent's body. As for anything else, there seemed to be nothing.

No wonder it was overshadowed by the Sharingan. The low-level Byakugan truly did not have abilities as varied as the Sharingan's.

And now it had been branded with the Caged Bird, sealing away part of the Byakugan's abilities once more and making it even weaker!

Sigh, how pitiful!

Hyuga Iwa began complaining again.

Hyuga Iwa sat cross-legged on his bed and slowly poured chakra into his eyes according to the clan's method for awakening the Byakugan.

It was a strange feeling, as though a black-and-white curtain had fallen over his vision. When he looked into the distance, the scenery far away was clearly visible, though everything was only in black and white.

Hyuga Iwa could not help thinking, Awakening my Byakugan seems pretty easy. I thought it would be much more troublesome.

Hyuga Iwa identified what he could see, then compared it against his memories. The straight-line distance was around five hundred meters.

A thought flashed through Hyuga Iwa's mind. That seems decent enough.

After moving his Byakugan around and looking in every direction, Hyuga Iwa found that it truly deserved to be called a powerful dojutsu. It had an incomparable advantage in long-range reconnaissance.

However, before long, Hyuga Iwa's Byakugan deactivated. It was not because he wanted to stop, but because he had run out of chakra and it shut off on its own.

"It really drains chakra." Hyuga Iwa muttered.

Hyuga Iwa lay on the bed and began thinking about how to develop the Byakugan.

Now that he had tested the Byakugan, chakra seemed to be a problem. But it was not a major problem, since he was still young. So how should he develop the Byakugan at this stage?

Hyuga Iwa could not help falling into deep thought.

Seeing far away... far away... what did that resemble?

It was rather like a telescope.

Seeing the chakra inside a human body was rather like a microscope.

A telescope and a microscope!

The principles behind both seemed related to optics, right?!

Optics...

Byakugan...

At that thought, Hyuga Iwa felt as if he had grasped something.

The reason people could normally see things was because objects reflected light. After light entered the human eye, it formed an image on the retina, and only after the brain's complex processing did it become what people saw.

Then what about the Byakugan?

How did the Byakugan see things in the distance?

Could it be that the Byakugan used chakra to directly capture the light reflected by distant objects?

It was theoretically possible, but did that have anything to do with developing the Byakugan?

For the moment, Hyuga Iwa could not think of any use for it.

No, what if he looked at it from another angle? What if the Byakugan was regarded as a receiving device, activated through chakra to receive the light that already existed and form images?

If that were the case, every image formed should have a certain range. That seemed quite similar to how the Byakugan saw things.

Hyuga Iwa thought again that the human eye and brain normally received an enormous amount of information, but in order to protect themselves, the eyes and brain automatically filtered out a great deal of "useless" information. But if this "device" were strong enough, could it receive and analyze that information, allowing one to see things that were normally invisible, even scenes from the past?

What was that?

Seeing the past?

Hyuga Iwa froze at his own thought.

How had things gotten more and more outrageous?

Shaking his head, Hyuga Iwa stopped thinking about such unrealistic things.

Still, if his guess was true, Hyuga Iwa felt that chakra was the key. So in the end, everything had returned to square one—chakra training!