The air in the Time Chamber seemed to have frozen solid.
Tennin Hyuga's phantom floated in midair. The ancient Hyuga Clan robes he wore still bore cracks left behind by a battle a thousand years ago. His face bore a seventy-percent resemblance to Xiao's, but his brows carried the weathered weight of time, along with a fatigue that seemed almost burned out.
"You arrived earlier than I expected," Tennin said, his voice like an echo from the depths of time. "I thought you would not enter this place until you had gathered at least four Covenant Stone Fragments."
Xiao did not lower his guard. The azure glow of the Tenseigan Prototype swirled deep within his pupils. He could sense that the phantom before him was not merely a memory projection, but a remnant soul bearing a certain will.
"Tennin Hyuga." Xiao slowly spoke the name. "The clan records state that you were the Hyuga Clan's strongest Branch House genius a thousand years ago, and that you mysteriously vanished at the age of thirty."
"Vanished?" Tennin laughed, his smile full of bitterness. "No, I was erased. Erased by the Main House, by those 'masters' on the moon, by everyone who feared the truth."
The phantom raised a translucent hand and pointed at the Humanity Stele in the center of the hall.
"Do you see that stele? I built it with the last of my strength. Not to resist Divine Erosion—though it does indeed serve that purpose—but to record. To record everything that happened a thousand years ago, the true origin of the Caged Bird Seal, and the truth of this planet being raised as a pasture."
Xiao's breathing paused slightly.
"A pasture?"
"Yes." Tennin's phantom drifted closer. Complex patterns surfaced in those Byakugan, so similar to Xiao's—the traces of a Tenseigan