The moment Hyuga Xiao stepped out of the Ancestral Shrine Barrier, the Caged Bird Seal on his forehead suddenly burned like a red-hot branding iron.
The agony struck without warning.
It was not the faint stabbing pain from before, but a tearing sensation erupting from deep within his skull, as if countless steel needles had pierced his brain at once. He let out a muffled groan and dropped to one knee, his right hand clamped tightly over his forehead as veins bulged between his fingers.
His vision began to blur.
It was not a visual blur, but a distortion of perception—he could "see" the chakra in his body being frantically extracted by some invisible force, flowing backward along the Curse Mark's pattern like floodwaters through a breached dam. His meridians ached with the hollow sensation of being drained, and his limbs began to weaken.
"Second-Level Curse Mark... forcibly activated?"
Xiao gritted his teeth, cold sweat instantly soaking through the clothes on his back. He forced himself to stay conscious as the deep-blue glimmer of the Tenseigan struggled to light up within his pupils, attempting to use that newly awakened, not yet fully controlled power to resist the Curse Mark's erosion.
It worked, but it was a drop in the bucket.
The Tenseigan Chakra formed a thin protective membrane around the wildly extracted stream of chakra, slowing the drain by thirty percent. But the price was that the Tenseigan's power was being consumed by the Curse Mark as well—that thing was like a greedy black hole. It was not picky. It devoured everything.
``` [Warning: Host has been detected suffering forced activation of the "Caged Bird · Second-Level Curse Mark"]
[Curse Mark Effect: Continuously extracts the host's chakra and life force. Host expected to be drained within 48 hours]
[Current Suppression