The instant Hyuga Xiao stepped into the White-Eyed Chamber, the stone door behind him closed without a sound.
There were no traps as expected, no Main House ninja lying in ambush.
There was only a vast starry sky.
He stood in the void, a transparent layer of energy beneath his feet and a rotating galaxy overhead. Countless stars flickered in the darkness, each emitting a faint blue glow like countless eyes watching him. The air was thick with the scent of ancient chakra, so heavy it nearly crushed the breath from his lungs.
Xiao's Tenseigan Prototype activated on its own.
His vision abruptly sharpened.
Those stars were not actual celestial bodies, but points of light condensed from chakra. They moved along some profound trajectory, forming an immense array so vast it was suffocating. At the center of the array floated a massive sphere—a model of an eye over three meters in diameter, entirely azure, with starlike radiance flowing through its pupil. It was the Tenseigan. Xiao's heart began to pound violently.
He walked forward, ripples spreading across the energy layer beneath his feet. With every step, the surrounding starry sky shifted, as though he were flipping through an ancient scroll of memories. He saw Hamura Ōtsutsuki descend upon Earth, saw him and his elder brother Hagoromo seal their mother Kaguya, and saw the brothers separately guard Earth and the moon.
Then the scene changed.
Hamura's descendants on the moon began to split apart, and the conflict between the Main House and the Branch House fermented over a thousand years. At some point, the Main House elders gathered before a Starry Sky Altar identical to the one before him. They cut their wrists and let their blood drip into the eye model at its center.
The blood seeped into the eye,