White Snake Sage's Prophecy

At the deepest part of Ryūchi Cave lay a vast space beyond Neji's imagination.

The ceiling was so high it vanished from sight, and the rock walls were studded with glowing crystals that cast the entire cave in a hazy pale violet. The air carried a strange fragrance, like the scent of some ancient flower and the smell of aged medicinal herbs. In the center of the cave coiled a gigantic pure-white snake—not Garaga's crimson red, but an immaculate, jade-like white.

The White Snake Sage was not particularly enormous, at least not as overwhelmingly oppressive as Garaga. Yet the way she lay coiled there made the entire space seem to revolve around her. Her eyes were closed as though she were asleep, but the instant Neji entered the cave, they opened.

What kind of eyes were those? Golden vertical pupils, yet instead of a snake's coldness, they held an almost divine clarity that seemed to see through all things.

"Oh?" The White Snake Sage spoke. Her voice did not come from her throat, but rang directly inside Neji's mind—ancient and gentle, yet carrying unquestionable authority. "The little friend Garaga brought... a child of the Hyuga Clan."

Neji dropped to one knee—not out of respect, but as an instinctive reaction from his body. Before an existence of this level, every cell in him screamed, Unmatchable.

"White Snake Sage." He lowered his head.

"Raise your head and let this old woman have a look." There was a hint of curiosity in the White Snake Sage's voice.

Neji obeyed and looked up. The White Snake Sage's gaze fell upon the Caged Bird Seal on his forehead, lingering for a moment before shifting to the pair of white jade horns that had just grown in. Her golden pupils narrowed slightly, as if she had seen something interesting.

"One hour and forty-seven minutes..." the White Snake Sage murmured. "More than three times faster than those who normally pass the trial. And you still bear this seal..."

She suddenly fell silent. Those golden pupils stared directly at Neji, yet their focus did not seem to be on him. It was as though she were looking through him, at something deeper. Seconds ticked by, and the cave held only the faint hum of glowing crystals.

After a long while, the White Snake Sage slowly withdrew her gaze. For the first time, an emotion that could be called "confusion" appeared in her eyes.

"Strange..." she said. "This old woman has lived for over a thousand years and seen countless threads of fate. The Caged Bird's restraints are plainly visible upon yours, but the thread itself... is changing. It is not being tugged by outside forces. The thread is growing on its own, twisting, stretching toward a direction I cannot see."

Neji's heart tightened. A thread of fate? A direction she could not see? Was it because he was a transmigrator?

"Little one." The White Snake Sage lowered her enormous head until her snout was only three meters from Neji. "Do you know the essence of nature?"

Neji shook his head.

"It is plunder, and it is evolution." The White Snake Sage's voice grew low, like an echo from ancient times. "The weak are devoured by the strong, and the strong grow stronger through devouring. But true evolution is not simply becoming stronger. It is... metamorphosis. Changing from one form of existence into another, higher form."

She stared at the horns on Neji's forehead. "Right now, you have only had a slight awakening. Sage Art Chakra has altered your body and allowed you to touch Natural Energy. But if you wish to truly evolve to the level of a 'god'... you still have a long way to go."

A god? Six Paths Tier? Neji's heart pounded wildly, but his expression remained calm.

"Please enlighten me, Sage."

"Enlighten you?" The White Snake Sage let out an aged laugh. "This old woman is merely an old snake who has lived too long, not some mentor. But... you are interesting. Very interesting. A soul bound by the Caged Bird, yet desperately struggling to touch the sky. That contradiction, that tension..."

She coiled herself back into place and closed her eyes. "Go back. You have entered the path of Sage Arts, and the next month will be an adjustment period. Pain, hallucinations, and bodily mutations are all normal. Endure them, and you will formally step onto the immortal path. Fail, and you will become a handful of soil in Ryuchi Cave."

Her voice gradually faded from his mind like the receding tide.

Garaga slithered out from the shadows and lightly tapped Neji with his tail. "Let's go. The White Snake Sage always talks like that, all mysterious and cryptic. But for her to call you 'interesting' is rare. The last human she called 'interesting' was the Sage of Six Paths' younger brother."

Neji gave that pure-white figure one last look, then turned and followed Garaga out.

On the way back to the Echo Ninja Village base, he kept thinking about the White Snake Sage's words. Plunder and evolution... an unseen thread of fate... the level of gods...

And, most importantly: was he truly only "slightly awakened" right now?

The moment he returned to that six-square-meter stone room, Neji immediately sensed the difference.

First was his perception. Even without activating his Byakugan, he could clearly "see" everything within fifty meters—not visual sight, but an all-encompassing, three-dimensional perception. He could "see" the speed of water flowing through pipes inside the walls, "see" the operating frequency of instruments in the neighboring laboratory, and even "see" the faint vibrations in a cockroach's legs as it crawled at the end of the corridor.

Then came his body. It felt as though lava flowed beneath his skin, warm but not uncomfortable. His muscle fibers had become denser, while his bones tingled faintly—they were being strengthened by Sage Art Chakra. Most noticeable were the horns on his forehead. Like two extra sensory organs, they continuously drew Natural Energy from the air, automatically converting it into Sage Art Chakra and storing it inside his body.

But the price came with it.

Just as he sat down to regulate his breathing, the first wave of pain struck. It was not the pain of an external wound, but a mingling of soreness, numbness, and swelling that seeped from deep within his marrow. It felt as though countless ants were crawling through his bones, gnawing at them, rebuilding them.

Neji clenched his teeth and forced himself into meditation. Sage Art Chakra circulated through his body. With every cycle, the pain intensified, but so did the transformation of his body. He could feel his cells undergoing a fundamental change—his metabolism surged, old cells died, new cells were born, and the new cells were more complex and resilient in structure.

Two hours later, the second wave arrived: hallucinations.

Countless bizarre scenes suddenly appeared before his eyes. At times, it was Konoha's training grounds, with Might Guy giving him a thumbs-up. At times, it was the Hyuga Main House estate, where Hinata looked at him timidly. At times, it was a cultivation tank in Orochimaru's laboratory, his own corpse floating inside. Most terrifying of all, he "saw" the Caged Bird Seal's runes come alive, turning into countless green venomous snakes that burrowed out of his forehead, wrapped around his body, and drilled into the depths of his brain...

"Fake." Neji spoke to himself in his mind, his voice so calm that it did not sound like someone suffering hallucinations. "They are all illusions produced as Sage Arts reconstruct my neural pathways. Hold fast to my true self. Do not waver."

His cross-legged posture did not move in the slightest, and even his breathing rhythm remained steady. The experience of living two lives had given him an almost abnormal degree of control over his emotions. Fear? He had died once already. Pain? He had long grown accustomed to it during three months of training in Hidden Sound Village. Hallucinations? Memories of his former world and his experiences in the Naruto World had intertwined so thoroughly that he could no longer tell what was real and what was false. Why should he care?

He remained seated for a full twelve hours.

When Neji opened his eyes again, the stone room was still the same stone room, but it had become entirely different in his eyes. Multicolored streams of energy floated through the air—red fire-nature energy, blue water-nature energy, brown earth-nature energy, cyan wind-nature energy, golden lightning-nature energy, and even thinner currents of black-and-white Yin-Yang Release energy. Like plankton in the ocean, they drifted slowly, colliding, merging, and separating.

Sage Art Eye. Natural Vision.

Neji stood and stretched his stiff body. His bones were still making faint cracking sounds as newly formed bone adapted to its new density. He walked to the water vat by the wall and leaned over it.

The reflection in the water was already completely different from yesterday's.

His skin had become fairer and smoother, yet it was not a sickly pallor, but the warm sheen of jade. The horns on his forehead had grown a little longer, their spiral patterns clearer. Most noticeable were his eyes—the foundation of the Byakugan remained, but the pale golden ring around his pupils had brightened, and the serpentine vertical markings deep within them had become clearer. Whenever he focused his gaze, those markings contracted slightly like the pupils of a real snake.

And the Caged Bird Seal... was still there, pale green runes winding across his forehead. But when Neji directed Sage Art Chakra through that area, the runes visibly dimmed, and the icy sensation of restraint temporarily faded.

"One month..." Neji murmured. "Once I endure this month, I will be able to initially master Sage Mode. Then the experiments on non-elemental transformation can begin."

He needed Orochimaru to give him a surprise—research on Yin-Yang Release, and a safe method for converting all elemental natures. Time was running out. He had to speed things up.

But just as he prepared to find Orochimaru, his Byakugan perception caught a familiar chakra source moving through the training area.

Sasuke Uchiha.

At Training Ground Seven, Sasuke was practicing Chidori.

Lightning shrieked in his hand, gathering and compressing with the piercing cry of birds. He slashed out with one hand, and the lightning transformed into a blade that left a deep scorched mark on a specially made alloy target. But Sasuke frowned—not fast enough, not strong enough, not... lethal enough.

He withdrew his hand and looked toward the edge of the field. A figure had appeared there at some unknown time, silently watching him.

Neji Hyuga.

Sasuke's gaze instantly turned cold. For the past three months, he had watched this Branch House member of the Hyuga Clan change from an experimental subject who interested Orochimaru into a "collaborator" whom even Orochimaru treated seriously. Especially lately, the aura Neji gave off had become more dangerous by the day, more and more... unfathomable.

"Need something?" Sasuke asked coldly.

"Just passing by," Neji said. "Your Chidori's compression ratio can be raised another fifteen percent. The flow of lightning-nature chakra between the third and fourth finger joints is slightly unstable, affecting the stability of its final form."

Sasuke's pupils contracted. This was a subtle issue even he had failed to notice during training, yet Neji had seen it at a glance?

"How do you know?"

"I saw it." Neji pointed to his eyes. Those eyes looked no different from ordinary Byakugan now, but Sasuke's Sharingan could catch the subtle difference—something older and more dangerous flowed in the depths of Neji's pupils.

"Sage Arts?" Sasuke suddenly asked.

Neji did not deny it. "Just entered the path."

The two fell into a brief silence. Only the hum of operating equipment filled the training ground, along with the distant shouts of other Sound Village ninja training.

"You have the Earth Curse Mark too." Sasuke suddenly changed the subject. "Why have you never used it?"

It was something he had wondered about all along. Orochimaru had implanted the Earth Curse Mark in Neji, yet during the past three months, Sasuke had never seen Neji use its power—not even once. The Curse Mark's boost to strength was real. Sasuke himself had already begun attempting combat in Cursed Seal Stage One.

"No need," Neji said.

"No need?" Sasuke sneered. "Are you looking down on the Curse Mark's power?"

"I am not looking down on it." Neji turned to leave, but before walking out of the training ground, he looked back at Sasuke and spoke the words that would keep Sasuke awake all night.

"It is simply that I already have a better choice. And... do you really understand what the Curse Mark truly is? Is Lord Orochimaru really 'cultivating' us?"

With that, Neji's figure disappeared at the end of the corridor.

Sasuke stood where he was. At some point, the lightning of Chidori in his hand had dissipated. He stared fixedly in the direction Neji had gone, his Three-Tomoe Sharingan slowly turning.

The essence of the Curse Mark? Orochimaru's purpose?

And Neji's "better choice"... did he mean Sage Arts?

A sense of crisis crawled up his spine like an icy venomous snake. Sasuke suddenly realized that in this den of demons known as the Sound Village, his greatest rival might not be the other Sound Village ninja, nor Orochimaru's other experimental subjects, but Neji Hyuga—a fellow Konoha ninja who bore fate upon his shoulders as well, yet had chosen an entirely different path.

"I will surpass you." Sasuke spoke softly, his voice filled with cold determination. "No matter what method I use, no matter what price I have to pay. Before I kill that man... I will never lose to anyone."

He gathered Chidori again, and the lightning was more violent and more dazzling than before.

Meanwhile, in the laboratory, Orochimaru watched the training ground footage on a surveillance screen, amusement gleaming in his golden pupils.

"Sage Arts succeeded... Neji Hyuga." He licked his lips. "And Sasuke Uchiha, the fighting spirit sparked by a sense of crisis... what a wonderful chemical reaction."

He pulled up another report containing all of Neji's examination data from the past three months. Under "Chakra Nature," it still read non-elemental, but under "Energy Activity Index," the number had soared to an astonishing level.

"Non-elemental... Sage Arts... Yin-Yang Release..." Orochimaru murmured. "If you truly complete all-element transformation, then fuse Yin-Yang Release, then add Sage Arts on top of it... what kind of monster will be born?"

He turned off the screen and walked over to a massive cultivation tank. A mutilated body floated inside, a hole in its chest—that was Kimimaro's corpse. Orochimaru pressed his hand to the glass, his gaze becoming profound.

"There is not much time... I must accelerate the process. Before the owner of those eyes comes looking for me, I need enough... bargaining chips."

Outside the window, the eternal darkness of Hidden Sound Village's underground base shrouded everything.

Yet in that darkness, three venomous snakes had quietly bared their fangs—one pursuing freedom and power, one obsessed with hatred and revenge, and one coveting immortality and truth.

And whom would their fangs ultimately bite?

Only time knew the answer.