บท 101: 101. Unbreakable
The hunched and frail figure of Uchiha Igaku stood upright at this moment. The broken bodies of the old prison guards around him began to rapidly disintegrate, turning into gray-white sand that swirled toward the elder.
In no time, they enveloped him, turning him into a white mummy. A large mouth opened from the shadows in the void behind him and swallowed him whole, disappearing without a trace.
"Clack, clack, clack."
As a black glow lit up, a tall figure, radiating an oppressive and ominous aura, stepped out from the shadows.
"Sorry to keep you waiting."
A young voice emerged from the darkness, and when the black light faded, a stranger stood before Uchiha Gin.
Dressed in a form-fitting, grayish-white bone armor adorned with ancient, mysterious seals, with sharp bone spurs protruding from the joints of his arms and knees, the figure appeared both formidable and strange.
His fully enclosed helmet had vents at the nose and mouth, allowing the frosty breath of Uchiha Igaku to be visible as he exhaled. A flame-patterned scarf fluttered around his neck, and his eyes were a pair of large black insect-like compound eyes. On his forehead was a V-shaped antenna decoration.
The most striking feature was his waist, where he wore a belt imprinted with the Mangekyō Sharingan symbol. A faint black glow flickered on the belt.
Uchiha Gin's envy was palpable. His fists clenched tight, and his red eyes widened in disbelief.
"What a damn cool transformation! Grandpa, I want to learn that transformation!"
Seeing such a spectacle for the first time, Uchiha Gin's worldview was shattered. There was no way he could deny his envy.
"Why does Old Man get such an awesome transformation effect? I'm the protagonist here!"
"This is the ultimate fusion technique between me and Spectre."
The voice under the mask was young yet deep, as the rejuvenated Uchiha Igaku slowly raised a hand and pointed at Uchiha Gin in the distance, speaking coldly:
"Now, let's recount your crimes!"
"Wait! No need to count, Grandpa! Grandpa! Open your eyes and see, it's me, your beloved grandson!"
At this point, Uchiha Gin couldn't care about pride anymore, dropping to his knees in a slide, almost ready to bow down to the transformed Uchiha Igaku.
"Grandpa, if you'd told me earlier you could do this, I would've rebelled with you."
Driven by envy, Uchiha Gin made a decision that defied his ancestry.
"Nonsense. You think such words will fool me again? This time, I won't fall for your tricks."
Uchiha Igaku, fused with Spectre, sneered at Uchiha Gin's sudden change in attitude. He had seen this tactic from Gin too many times before—there was no way he would be deceived by a sneak attack again.
Uchiha Gin deeply regretted it. Had he known, he would have spent more time visiting the dungeons over the years, not out of obligation but just to show some respect to the elderly.
Whether the eye technique was powerful or not, that didn't matter much. Being cool was what lasted a lifetime.
"This is the second stage of my fusion with Spectre. It allows me to fully utilize all of his abilities while adjusting my physical state to its peak and awakening new powers."
Clenching his fists and feeling his body restored to its prime, Uchiha Igaku proudly declared. In his current form, at his perfect 30-year-old state, he was practically unrivaled among the Uchiha clan.
"Prepare yourself, Uchiha Gin."
Uchiha Igaku struck a strange opening pose before disappearing from Gin's sight in an instant.
"Where did he go?"
Despite secretly activating his mutated Byakugan, Uchiha Gin couldn't find a trace of Uchiha Igaku, even with his 360-degree vision.
This was the first time the mutated Byakugan had failed. Even its ability to peer into spatial forces couldn't locate Uchiha Igaku.
"Looking in the wrong direction?"
A voice suddenly whispered in Uchiha Gin's ear as he frowned, pondering his next move. Startled, he turned to see Uchiha Igaku standing right beside him, arms crossed, gazing coldly through his compound eyes.
"Curious how I disappeared?"
Seeing Uchiha Igaku's desire to show off, Uchiha Gin nodded in cooperation. Any ability that even the Byakugan couldn't detect naturally piqued his interest.
"One word: speed. As long as I skip the current second and leap into the next, you'll never be able to find me."
Uchiha Igaku flicked his armored hand, his voice filled with pride. His movements had surpassed the flow of time, allowing him to temporarily vanish.
Watch out, or I'll accuse you of copyright infringement.
Uchiha Gin finally understood: Uchiha Igaku hadn't used his usual spatial techniques but a power he'd never seen before—time manipulation.
As long as his speed surpassed time, he could vanish within any given second.
No wonder the Byakugan couldn't keep up. It wasn't that the Byakugan was weak, but that the enemy was too crafty.
"Now that you know my ability's secret, you can rest in peace."
Uchiha Igaku's voice echoed again, and his figure vanished once more.
What a buggy ability. If he'd used it earlier, he wouldn't have been pressed down by Uncle. Everyone just loves keeping their trump cards hidden, huh?
Uchiha Gin frowned. The concept of time manipulation was utterly unfamiliar to him, and his skill set was full of conventional techniques, leaving him without any way to counter this ability.
"Boom!"
Despite keeping his Byakugan active and maintaining the highest alert, Uchiha Gin was suddenly struck, sent flying through the air. He barely managed to stabilize himself mid-flight, ensuring a less awkward landing.
Fortunately, thanks to his hybrid bloodline, which included strong physiques like the Senju and Uzumaki, his body quickly healed from ordinary injuries. His resilience was so high that he would scab over before even needing bandages.
Just as his wounds healed, Uchiha Igaku appeared again, landing more blows. This cycle repeated several times until a panting Uchiha Yao appeared some distance away, standing on a shadow.
Despite the compound eyes, Uchiha Gin could sense the frustration on Igaku's face.
"You... What's wrong with your body?"
Seeing Uchiha Gin clap his hands, causing a wooden lounge chair to sprout from the ground, Uchiha Igaku bit his lip and questioned angrily.
He had attacked over a hundred times, yet aside from some damage to Gin's clothes, the boy remained unharmed, his skin untouched.
Uchiha Igaku could feel the impact of his blows, but something was definitely wrong with this kid.
"What? Tired already?"
After deducing the mechanism behind Igaku's attacks, Uchiha Gin, now fully confident, spoke sarcastically. Though Uchiha Igaku's time-based abilities were indeed powerful, they were like a double-edged sword.
His void-like strikes, though frequent, were like gentle scratches to Gin, who healed faster than Igaku could hurt him.
Uchiha Igaku, in his current state, was all agility but lacked attack power and defense.
Lying on his wooden lounge chair, Uchiha Gin yawned. All those flashy eye techniques amounted to nothing if they couldn't even break his defense. What a waste of cool powers.
"Don't underestimate me!"
Furious beyond belief, Uchiha Igaku desperately channeled all his chakra into his dojutsu, empowering his eyes to the fullest. He couldn't afford to split his focus to suppress the other will inside him. Leaping high into the air, he flipped and increased the momentum of his descent, aiming a powerful flying kick straight at Uchiha Gin, who was lying on the ground.
Whoosh!
The kick, enhanced by the power of time, accumulated the force of countless moments. With each passing second of the descent, Igaku's strength multiplied and compressed into a single point.
Raising his head, Uchiha Gin, battered by Igaku's hundreds of previous attacks, suddenly found that his mutated Byakugan could faintly glimpse the future timelines. In his eyes, it wasn't just one Igaku coming at him, but countless versions of Igaku from different points in time, all converging on him at once.
In the end, all these timelines merged into the final image of Igaku, with the force of a million tons focused into one devastating kick.
Locked onto by Igaku's aura, Gin felt a deep sense of crisis. If he took this kick head-on, he feared it wouldn't end well for him. Just as he was about to escape, shadowy tendrils, lying in wait on the ground for a long time, reached out and wrapped around his legs.
Alarmed, he swung his sword of love to cut the black tendrils, but more kept coming, binding him tightly.
"This is my ultimate technique!"
With his internal energy in chaos, Uchiha Igaku gritted his teeth and announced his ultimate move, knowing that the Uchiha pride wouldn't allow him to die without keeping face.
"[Forbidden Ultimate Art: Instant Prison Shadow Killing Formation!]"
Uchiha Gin had no time to comment on the name as he quickly thought of a countermeasure while bound in place by the shadows.
"Don't bother struggling. Only a Mangekyō can contend with another Mangekyō. Your lack of strength means you can only lose to me."
Even now, Igaku couldn't resist offering some "guidance," proving himself to be the embodiment of a condescending mentor.
"Mangekyō, huh?"
Gin couldn't help but curse his own incompetence. After all these years of traveling through time, other protagonists would have long since unlocked their Mangekyō or even the Choku Tomoe Rinnegan. Yet here he was, still stuck with the basic Three-Tomoe Sharingan, repeatedly tortured by NPCs using Tsukuyomi.
Wait!
Suddenly, a long-forgotten memory surfaced. He had an unused item in his possession.
With a thought, a dark red card appeared in his mind. He had never encountered an opponent strong enough to warrant its use, so he'd completely forgotten about it.
"[Tsukuyomi Experience Card: Use to cast one free Tsukuyomi, unaffected by the enemy's strength.]"
If not now, then when? Gin slapped the card, and a dark, obscure power flowed into his mind. A familiar sensation returned.
His mutated Byakugan shut itself off, and his eyes turned crimson. His left eye was enveloped in the foreign energy, causing the three tomoe to spin rapidly.
A "ding" echoed in his mind, and suddenly, his vision in his left eye became crystal clear. At the same time, unfamiliar knowledge flooded into his brain.
"Huh? You... how?"
Just as Igaku's kick was about to land on Gin's chest, his Mangekyō suddenly resonated. He stared in disbelief at the unfamiliar pattern in Gin's left eye, crying out in shock.
"Hehe, taste my Tsukuyomi!"
Feeling the overwhelming power in his left eye, a large grin spread across Yin's face as he activated his newly acquired Mangekyō, trapping Igaku, still in midair, in a powerful genjutsu.
The scene shifted. Gin found himself in his long-forgotten second homeland, standing on a mirror-like lake. He looked up at the rising red moon, feeling a pang of nostalgia.
"The bleak autumn wind is here once more, and yet the world has changed."
Reflecting on his return to the Tsukuyomi world, Gin marveled at how the roles had reversed, with him now in control.
Uchiha Igaku, now stripped of his earlier arrogance and back in the form of a hunched old man, was nailed to a towering cross, silent.
"Nothing to say?"
As the victor, Gin curiously asked. After all, when he had been trapped here before, his captors had ensured he remained conscious for the full torment experience.
"Mm…"
The old man, nailed to the cross, finally awakened, his once arrogant eyes now clear and full of confusion.
"Gin? Where is this place?"
The elder's tone was sincere, completely devoid of the earlier haughtiness.
"???"
Sensing something was off, Gin frowned. Was the old man pretending? How could he suddenly look so innocent?
"Where is the one who betrayed me?"
The old man's face twisted into madness as he ignored his bound state, struggling and grinding his teeth. This Igaku was the one betrayed by Black Zetsu.
"He actually left that thing in my body too. After the explosion, I was suppressed by the dark will and couldn't control my body."
Uchiha Igaku explained earnestly to Gin.
"What exactly is this 'dark side' you keep talking about?"
Gin, who had never encountered such a concept before, was very curious about this frequent mention of a dark side.
"In essence, it's also part of my Mangekyō's ability."
The elder sighed and began to explain.
After awakening the Mangekyō, Igaku's remaining eye developed the ability called "Spectre." His other ruined Mangekyō once had a technique called "Ama-no-Uzume."
"Ama-no-Uzume?"
Gin, having never heard of such a dojutsu, asked in confusion.
"Ama-no-Uzume can manifest the dark side of a target's heart, waiting for the right time to detonate and let the second personality, formed by this darkness, take over their body."
This dojutsu certainly sounded intriguing. Gin stroked his chin in thought. So, that explains the earlier changes in Hikari.
"Ama-no-Uzume is extremely taxing to use. I only ever cast it once on Nameless. But who would have thought that that black liquid also planted an Ama-no-Uzume in both me and Tajima."
"How can it be undone?"
Rather than dwelling on when Black Zetsu might have planted Ama-no-Uzume in Igaku, Gin was more concerned with how to break the dojutsu.
"There's no way. My Mangekyō is already blind."
Igaku shook his head, his sincere tone carrying no hint of deceit.
"Unless you have something that can suppress negative energy. That way, Ama-no-Uzume would lie dormant once more."
While Igaku didn't offer a solution, he did suggest a temporary fix.
"Suppress negative energy, huh…"
Gin recalled the dark green cloak worn by the girl earlier, a glint of insight flashing in his eyes.
"How did you break free of Ama-no-Uzume's control?"
Turning to the now-sane Igaku, Gin asked how he managed to regain control.
"Huff... While the dark side's persona can seize the body, it leaves the mind vulnerable. A Mangekyō-level genjutsu can temporarily suppress it."
Ah, that explains why the dark version of Igaku was instantly subdued by Gin's Tsukuyomi.
"What about Uncle? His Mangekyō should be able to suppress Ama-no-Uzume, right?"
Thinking back to Uchiha Tajima and Hikari, both with genjutsu-empowered Mangekyō, Gin wondered why they were so easily controlled.
"There are two conditions for Ama-no-Uzume's activation. First, if the target's chakra is too depleted to cast a Mangekyō-level illusion, and second, if the target's mind is in a state of extreme vulnerability. In either case, Ama-no-Uzume can be triggered."
It was all because his uncle insisted on using Kotoamatsukami: Radiance, leaving his Mangekyō on cooldown.
As for Hikari, perhaps her over-relaxation after regaining freedom gave Black Zetsu the chance to trigger Ama-no-Uzume.
"Has your dark side gone dormant again?"
Gin curiously asked Yao, who was still nailed to the cross. Igaku looked confused, glancing behind Gin before hesitantly replying,
"I thought you knew. That guy's over there."
Puzzled, Gin turned around, following Igaku's gaze to a spot where another Igaku was surrounded by hundreds of Gin's clones.
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