Oh crap. I rushed that. I underestimated my vitality after getting cheats. If I weren't suppressing it, I feel like a new one would grow.
He felt like Fugaku's dojutsu right now-like Danzo looking at Louis XVI: he couldn't see a head in sight.
"Uh, do I gouge mine out like that too?"
The corner of Shisui's eye twitched wildly, his expression turning strange. Sasuke's behavior really did fit the stereotype he had always had of him.
If Sasuke had pulled something like this before, Shisui might not have known what to do. But now, Sasuke clearly had the strength to handle a Mangekyo. His chakra reserves and vitality were practically overflowing. After witnessing it firsthand once again, Shisui no longer doubted Sasuke's claim about having a Hashirama Senju trial card.
Even if it was a First Hokage trial card adjusted somewhat to his own strength, that vitality and chakra reserve could easily sustain the consumption of a single Sharingan.
He had at least several dozen Kakashis' worth of chakra.
"Uh, how about this, Shisui? Hypnotize yourself into ignoring the pain, then I'll pour vitality into you. Use my eye for now."
Scratching his head while pouring vitality into the eye in his hand, Sasuke waggled his brows and his eye... socket.
Honestly, that hollow, chilly feeling was pretty novel. It was just easy to forget when he got carried away, so he first used a skill to hypnotize himself.
"..." Shisui silently looked down at his hand, the corners of his mouth twitching uncontrollably. This whole thing felt utterly bizarre.
Could you really just gouge eyes out like that?
Looking at Sasuke's expectant lone eye, Shisui felt his temple twitch. He gritted his teeth, reached up, and gouged out his left eye.
It hurt. The pain cut right to his core. Shisui had fought on battlefields and suffered plenty of injuries, but the pain of losing an eye was something else entirely. The agony made him seriously question Sasuke's reaction earlier. How could this kid possibly endure pain better than he could?
But before he had suffered for more than a few seconds, Sasuke reached over with his right hand glowing a soft green. With a press and a swipe, Shisui could see again, though the eye in his socket was now Sasuke's Sharingan. At first, it was a Two-Tomoe Sharingan, but as Sasuke continuously supplied vitality, a connection formed between the eye and its new owner. It felt as though a particular chakra pathway had opened. Shisui tested it and successfully deactivated the Sharingan himself.
When Shisui nodded, Sasuke pressed Shisui's Mangekyo into his own eye socket under the others' watchful gazes.
He finally got to experience the Sharingan's plug-and-play USB functionality. The moment it entered his socket, he distinctly felt rejection, but as he poured in immense amounts of vitality and circulated his Mental Power and chakra to establish a connection, his vision gradually returned.
And now that he actually had a Mangekyo, some of his earlier guesses were confirmed.
Despite the difference between worlds, Yin Release chakra could essentially be equated with Mental Power, while Yang Release chakra could essentially be equated with vitality.
After he obtained the Mangekyo, the exceptionally vast vitality within him seemed to undergo a chemical reaction with some special power in Sasuke's body that even he didn't understand. Yin and yang alternated, continually strengthening the source of his power.
With the Mangekyo's enhancement, the Purple Demon Eye in Sasuke's left eye temporarily evolved. Not only did it break through to the third stage, it also gained many abilities beyond anything Tang San had anticipated.
"How is it, Sasuke?"
Itachi narrowed his eyes as he asked. Although he didn't know exactly what had happened, Sasuke seemed to have activated some special power within himself through this Mangekyo.
Could it be the ancestral awakening of Indra's bloodline mentioned on the stone tablet?
"Better than ever. And I think I've figured out how the Mangekyo awakens."
Inspecting the pathways inside his body, Sasuke discovered a major difference between himself, the other three, and everyone else. First, compared with ordinary people, all four members of the Uchiha Clan present had a special pathway behind their eyes that connected directly to the brain.
That was also one reason replacing an eye hurt so much.
Neither Tang San nor Xiao Yan had possessed this in Sasuke's memories. Previously, he hadn't been able to see through other people's bodies to examine their pathways, but now neither those pathways nor the flow of chakra within them could escape his eyes.
Theoretically, he could directly copy someone's techniques by observing the flow of their chakra.
The biggest difference between him and the other three Mangekyo users also lay in that pathway connecting directly to the brain.
The three tomoe in his left eye spun furiously, transforming into a four-pointed pinwheel. Before his eyes, the pathway behind Itachi's eye changed. It was as though past events were replaying. He clearly saw vast quantities of Yin Release chakra surging violently from the brain toward the eye a few hours earlier. The violent chakra left irreversible damage in the pathway, as though a glass flower covered in cracks had blossomed amid a raging sea of blood.
"The Mangekyo itself is flawed. The reason might lie in how it evolves.
"We Uchiha are different from other people. We have a pathway that directly connects our brains and eyes. When our emotions are stimulated, the brain produces enormous amounts of Yin Release chakra that rush into the Sharingan, causing it to evolve.
"From what I can deduce, the Sharingan essentially needs Yin Release chakra to evolve.
"Whether it's because of the method of evolution or because this entire evolutionary route is wrong, the Mangekyo is doomed to destruction from the moment it awakens. Every use directly lowers the maximum amount of Eye Power it can hold. It's like a glass flower covered in cracks. Every touch adds another crack, until it shatters completely."
"Hiss-" ×3
So that was what was happening?
The three had used their Mangekyo to varying degrees. Fugaku, who used his frequently, had already suffered considerable deterioration in his eyesight. He had originally assumed that was normal, but after hearing Sasuke's explanation, he recognized the problem. It really did seem to be exactly as Sasuke had described.
"Then is there a solution?" Shisui asked instinctively, his brow deeply furrowed. He had never used his unique dojutsu, but he had used his Mangekyo plenty.
Replace the eyes! ×2
Recalling what they had just read on the stone tablet, Fugaku and Itachi silently answered at almost the same moment.
"Hehe, there really is. Normally, the reason the loss of a Mangekyo's Eye Power is considered irreversible is that every use damages the Mangekyo itself. Along with reducing eyesight, it lowers the maximum Eye Power, eventually causing blindness and making that power completely unusable.
"And that's essentially a breakdown inside the eye. There are two ways to solve it. One is to replace your eyes and use a different sequence to compensate for what yours lack. As for the other..."
Sasuke grinned, green light blazing around him. He poured all that vitality-enough to forcibly drag back someone already buried up to the crown of their head-into the practically bottomless pit that was the Mangekyo.
"Vitality, or Yang Release chakra. There's a phrase on the stone tablet: the Power of All Creation. Put simply, it means balancing yin and yang. Combining Yin Release and Yang Release chakra lets them complement each other and evolve."
Of course, ordinary Yin-Yang Complementarity couldn't awaken the Rinnegan. After all, it wasn't part of the Sharingan's normal evolutionary sequence. More precisely, the Sharingan itself was a mutation of the Otsutsuki bloodline, and the Rinnegan was yet another mutation after that. They shouldn't have been on the same evolutionary tree at all.
It had to be Indra and Asura to awaken it.
Huh?
As he felt the changes inside his body, Sasuke suddenly had an idea.
Could I try exchanging chakra with Naruto regularly? We tried it unintentionally a few times before, and it seemed like both our Mental Power and vitality, as well as our chakra reserves, improved quite a bit.
Come to think of it, no wonder I could feel my Sharingan improving when I practiced the Purple Demon Eye. Mental Power can essentially be equated with Yin Release chakra, after all. If that's the case, could I teach this technique to others directly?
Even just as a method for training Mental Power, it's a perfect match for the Sharingan. And that's not even counting how it can imitate the Byakugan to a degree.
His thoughts wandered further and further before Sasuke abruptly snapped back to himself. Obtaining this Mangekyo seemed to have made his mental state even more wonderfully unhinged.
With the enormous infusion of vitality, the depleted condition of Shisui's Mangekyo had clearly been restored. That completed his first experiment. Next came...
Licking his lips, Sasuke pulled a mirror from his waist under the three men's astonished gazes.
The sudden move caught all three off guard. What was he trying to do?
Sasuke said nothing. He merely gave a wild grin and angled the mirror toward his eye.
He grinned like a two-hundred-pound Dragon King with a crooked smirk.
Sure enough, if you lived long enough, you ended up becoming Madara Uchiha.
Madara wanted to challenge the pinnacle of the ninja world's taijutsu. Sasuke wanted to experience one of the pinnacles of genjutsu himself.
The large pinwheel in his left eye slowly rotated. Raising a hand to cover his face and leaving only that eye exposed, Sasuke unleashed his dojutsu directly on his reflection.
"Amaterasu!"
[Kotoamatsukami]!
Before you continue