Main World.
Summer, Year 30 of Konoha.
British Continent, New Capital.
Imperial Palace, the Consort Ying's bedchamber.
Sakura Haruno sat on the cushioned couch beside the window, holding a cup of tea she had barely touched for a long time. Outside, the light was shifting from the bright white of noon to the deeper warmth of afternoon, spreading through the window gauze in a gradually expanding patch across the floor.
Her gaze rested not outside the window, but on Chengkong opposite her. He had only just come in and had not sat down. He stood near the door, as though he had yet to decide whether to sit down and talk.
When Chengkong spoke, his pace was the same as usual, as though he were relaying a set of data he had already checked several times. He described the functions of his left and right eyes separately, finishing one before beginning the next, with identical intervals between them, as though arranging his output according to a fixed format.
"Temporal Replication. Left-eye Dōjutsu. It can fully replicate any Ninjutsu, bloodline limit, Taijutsu, or Dōjutsu I've seen. The strength of the replication is permanently synchronized with the original owner's upper limit. Using it once grants permanent mastery, with no limit on uses. Every ability replicated permanently raises all my base attributes by a small amount. There's no limit to the abilities I can store, and I grow stronger the more I fight. The side effect is that continuous use causes memories of other people's techniques to keep accumulating, gradually cluttering my thoughts."
He paused, leaving Sakura Haruno enough time to enter the preceding passage into her notes, then continued at the same pace as before. "Temporal Extremum. Right-eye Dōjutsu. Any ability I've mastered can instantly be pushed to its theoretical maximum in