The plan to awaken the Mangekyō Sharingan had failed before it had even truly begun.
Other than letting Uchiha Ensei experience the feeling of rage, nothing happened.
As for the special chakra extracted from Itachi Uchiha's brain, it had not served any purpose either.
Whether there had been too little of it, or whether different people required different special chakra, it had ultimately been completely ineffective.
Since it had failed anyway, Uchiha Ensei straightforwardly waited for the Izanagi sealed within the Transcription Seal to take effect and alter the reality that had already occurred.
Izanagi and the Transcription Seal really were the strongest combination.
Their only drawback was that Izanagi could not alter a future that had already happened. It could only change the time after Izanagi had been used.
Oh, right. It was also possible that using Izanagi was why he had failed to awaken the Mangekyō Sharingan.
After all, in theory, the time after Izanagi was used could be considered an illusion cast upon the world.
Even if a Three-Tomoe Sharingan could use Izanagi, it still did not seem qualified to contend with the Mangekyō Sharingan.
In any case, although the Mangekyō Sharingan experiment had failed, Uchiha Ensei had not given up on finding ways to improve his strength. He had prepared another option instead.
That was right: the Tenseigan.
After cloning one hundred thousand Byakugan, Uchiha Ensei had initially intended to temporarily replace his own eyes.
However, after discovering that he could draw upon the Byakugan's ocular power by sealing the hundred thousand Byakugan within his body using the method for sealing a Jinchuriki, he abandoned that idea.
Original eyes were still better to use. If he did not have to replace them, it was best not to.
There was another reason as well: the purity of those one hundred thousand cloned Byakugan was probably insufficient.
Now that he had discovered the inadequacy of his own power, Uchiha Ensei began preparing to continue recreating the Tenseigan.
First, he cloned Hinata's eyes. As one of only two pairs of eyes in the original work whose purity met the standard, Uchiha Ensei monitored them closely during the cloning process.
Yet after they had been cloned, Uchiha Ensei still could not find any difference between those eyes and other Byakugan.
So, Uchiha Ensei activated his backup plan—purifying the Byakugan's purity himself.
How was he supposed to do that? Naturally, he would leave it all to the all-purpose chakra.
However, this approach had another problem: how could he determine whether a Byakugan was pure? How could he distinguish impurities from power that truly belonged to the Byakugan?
Uchiha Ensei naturally did not know, but he could use a crude method: use the chakra extracted from the hundred thousand Byakugan within his body to purify the cloned Byakugan.
As for what exactly would be purified out, Uchiha Ensei naturally had no way to tell. He could only increase the number of experimental samples and thereby raise the experiment's success rate.
To that end, Uchiha Ensei cloned one hundred pairs of Hinata's eyes and began conducting purification experiments like mad.
A month later, only six pairs of Byakugan remained. Of those six, only two pairs still retained the form of Byakugan; the others had undergone unknown mutations one after another.
Setting aside the mutated Byakugan, Uchiha Ensei could already sense something different from other Byakugan in the two remaining pairs.
As for whether they were Byakugan whose purity met the standard, that still required further testing.
Originally, Uchiha Ensei had planned to replace one pair of his own eyes.
But during this period, he discovered that the fragment of the Divine Tree he had acquired had undergone an unknown mutation under the assault of his chakra and Natural Energy.
To describe it specifically, it looked like White Zetsu flesh that was not quite so white?
No, unlike White Zetsu's lifeless appearance, this white substance more closely resembled the skin color of the Ōtsutsuki Clan.
"Could this thing cultivate a Ten-Tails?"
"I remember that what Kaguya Otsutsuki brought to the Ninja World was a Divine Tree seed. Since it is a tree, it should be able to bear seeds too, right?"
Uchiha Ensei stared at the thing he had created and fell into deep thought. Ten-Tails cells? A Divine Tree seed? Was it a trap, or an opportunity?
Immediately afterward, Uchiha Ensei suspended the Tenseigan recreation plan and began researching the white mass.
After more than a month of research, Uchiha Ensei discovered that this thing really did seem to originate from some special existence of the Ōtsutsuki Clan.
It could absorb all kinds of chakra or Natural Energy to grow, and after growing to a certain stage, it could even nourish its host in return.
That trait was truly very similar to the most primitive Ten-Tails.
Thus, Uchiha Ensei named it the Little Ten-Tails and began a detailed study.
In the end, through its nourishing ability, Uchiha Ensei successfully obtained two Mangekyō Sharingan.
As for why they were two individual eyes rather than a pair—
It was because Uchiha Ensei only possessed flesh from three types of Mangekyō Sharingan: Kamui from Kakashi Hatake, and Kotoamatsukami from Shisui Uchiha.
As for Itachi Uchiha's ocular technique... although it was powerful as well, its practicality was not particularly satisfying, so it was abandoned.
After obtaining the two Mangekyō Sharingan, Uchiha Ensei's nourishment of the Little Ten-Tails had reached a certain limit.
At this point, the Little Ten-Tails had grown to over three meters tall. Aside from the Byakugan's ocular power within Uchiha Ensei's body, only Natural Energy could satisfy the Little Ten-Tails' growth requirements.
Furthermore, perhaps because it had been fed too much of his own chakra, Uchiha Ensei could now sense the Little Ten-Tails' condition and abilities.
There was not much to say about its condition. It was constantly growing, and its demand for energy increased by the day.
As for its abilities, the Little Ten-Tails originated from the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path and inherited part of the Ten-Tails' ability to absorb Natural Energy and nourish its host in return.
However, perhaps because it lacked the chakra of the nine Tailed Beasts, the Little Ten-Tails did not produce Chakra Fruit when nourishing its host. Instead, it released special chakra that caused objects near it to evolve.
After Uchiha Ensei became able to sense the Little Ten-Tails' existence, the release of that evolutionary power could be controlled to a certain extent.
That was how the Mangekyō Sharingan in Uchiha Ensei's possession had come to be.
At first, what Uchiha Ensei cloned from that flesh had only been the most basic One-Tomoe Sharingan.
Now that he had obtained the Mangekyō Sharingan, Uchiha Ensei had theoretically achieved his original goal and could choose to return.
But as he looked at the Little Ten-Tails before him, an impulse rose within him. If the plan succeeded, he would possess talent or abilities comparable to those of the Ōtsutsuki Clan.
If it failed, he could simply abandon this body.
After a long period of consideration, Uchiha Ensei still decided to take the gamble.
But before gambling, Uchiha Ensei needed to choose a clone body to use while his original body underwent evolution.
At this moment, the Tenseigan cloning plan that had long been temporarily shelved could continue.
Selecting one pair from the two special pairs of Byakugan as the vessel for the Tenseigan, Uchiha Ensei began extracting his own cells. After fusing them with some Hyuga Clan cells, he cloned a new body.
Then he inserted the Byakugan, used the Spirit Transformation Technique, and entered the new body...
Before you continue