Chapter 433: Death Upon Contact

Chapter 433: Chapter 433: Death Upon Contact

For Kagami, who had personally concocted compound toxins before, neither biological toxins nor mineral toxins were unfamiliar territory. Thus, he knew very well that in nature, plants and animals that carried toxins were generally immune to their own poison and would not be harmed by it.

There was nothing miraculous about this.

It was simply because any plants or animals incapable of doing so had long since gone extinct, vanishing into the vast river of history and becoming nothing more than specks of dust in the course of evolution.

Survival of the fittest—such was the way of nature.

Yet the Kaguya Clan had managed to survive in the shinobi world for a thousand years. This proved that the toxin rooted within the Shikotsumyaku, to a certain extent, did not directly threaten the continuation of the Kaguya bloodline.

Instead, it merely limited the upper ceiling of the Kaguya Clan’s strength, restricting how deeply they could develop their Shikotsumyaku Kekkei Genkai.

And this particular characteristic reminded Kagami of the Uchiha Clan’s Mangekyo Sharingan.

The Mangekyo Sharingan was the product obtained when an Uchiha pushed the Sharingan—their dojutsu Kekkei Genkai—to an extreme level of development. It also represented the pinnacle of ocular power that an individual Uchiha could normally attain.

However, because the bloodline they had inherited from the Sage of Six Paths had gradually thinned over a thousand years of reproduction, the ocular power possessed by an individual Uchiha was no longer sufficient to sustain the enormous consumption of the Mangekyo Sharingan.

As a result, awakening the Mangekyō Sharingan had instead become a curse—

A curse that inevitably led to blindness once awakened!

The Uchiha Clan had been plagued by this problem for a very long time, but eventually, they discovered a solution.

By transplanting and fusing the Mangekyo Sharingan of a close blood relative with their own, they could permanently enhance their ocular power and solve the underlying problem at its very root, allowing their Mangekyo Sharingan to evolve once again—

Into the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan, which would never lose its sight!

"Could the Kaguya Clan be suffering from the same problem? After a thousand years of reproduction, their Sage bloodline has become too diluted to support an excessively powerful Kekkei Genkai?"

The moment that thought surfaced in his mind, Kagami quickly realized that if his conjecture was correct, then the mysterious substance rooted within the Shikotsumyaku was probably not something as simple as a toxin.

Kagami had always been a man of action. Once he had a hypothesis, he did not continue indulging in baseless speculation and immediately began conducting experiments.

Since he already knew that this ’toxin’ was hidden within the blood of the Kaguya clansmen, Kagami took out the blood samples he had collected from Kimimaro and attempted to extract the ’toxin’ to determine exactly what kind of substance it was.

At first, the extraction process went extremely smoothly.

Kagami quickly discovered the presence of the ’toxin’ in Kimimaro’s blood and, using the simplest dissolution methods, successfully extracted it.

However, as he gradually purified the substance, Kagami encountered a major problem.

To his astonishment, once the ’toxin’ extracted from Kimimaro’s blood was purified beyond a certain point, there was no longer a single container in his entire laboratory capable of holding it.

Even reinforced experimental vessels would immediately collapse upon coming into contact with the "toxin" once it reached a certain level of purity, disintegrating into nothing but drifting ash.

Kagami suddenly found himself in the awkward predicament of having absolutely nothing capable of containing the substance, preventing him from purifying it any further.

And this phenomenon inevitably reminded Kagami of one particular technique—

Otsutsuki Kaguya’s All-Killing Ash Bones!

Kaguya’s All-Killing Ash Bones possessed the characteristic of death upon contact. Anyone struck by them would have their entire body disintegrate, crumbling apart like withered branches and dead leaves before scattering into the wind as a pile of ash.

"It seems the Kaguya Clan’s Shikotsumyaku really does have some connection to Otsutsuki Kaguya’s All-Killing Ash Bones..."

Hyuga Kagami’s expression grew solemn, his eyes flickering thoughtfully.

The All-Killing Ash Bones used by Kaguya were bone blades that extended directly from within her own body.

In other words, Kaguya herself was immune to the All-Killing Ash Bones.

However, Kaguya was the progenitor of chakra, a Kekkei Mora who had fused all seven chakra natures—Yin, Yang, Fire, Wind, Lightning, Earth, and Water. She was the first truly immortal powerhouse in the shinobi world. The fact that her body could withstand the All-Killing Ash Bones did not mean her descendants possessed the same capability.

If the Shikotsumyaku truly was a weakened version of the All-Killing Ash Bones...

Then Kagami could only lament just how unlucky the Kaguya Clan was. Of all the formidable abilities Kaguya possessed, they had failed to inherit so many of them, yet somehow inherited precisely the most dangerous one.

The Uchiha Clan had similarly suffered from the dilution of their bloodline and the weakening of their abilities. Although their ocular power was insufficient to sustain the Mangekyo Sharingan, the worst consequence was merely blindness.

But if a member of the Kaguya Clan developed their Shikotsumyaku too deeply, causing it to approach the level of the All-Killing Ash Bones and gradually acquire its characteristic of death upon contact...

Then naturally, the first person to die would be the Kaguya clansman themselves, whose body was incapable of enduring the properties of the All-Killing Ash Bones.

After all, although the Kaguya Clan had inherited the Sage Body of Otsutsuki Hamura and possessed a portion of Yang-nature chakra within their bodies—meaning that in terms of sheer constitution, they were perhaps second only to the Senju and Uzumaki Clans—the death-upon-contact property of the All-Killing Ash Bones was simply too overwhelming.

Even Six Paths-level beings who had fused Yin Release and Yang Release found it difficult to resist, let alone the Kaguya Clan, who possessed only Yang Release.

After reaching this conclusion, Kagami keenly realized that the Kaguya Clan’s Blood Replacement Ritual, recorded in the secret scroll as the solution to their bloodline disease, was not actually a treatment in the true sense.

Instead, it was a method of artificially weakening their own Shikotsumyaku.

Through blood replacement and medicinal pills, they removed the death-upon-contact characteristic rooted within the Shikotsumyaku, thereby prolonging their own lives.

This could not even be compared to the Uchiha Clan’s method of fusing the Mangekyo Sharingan of close blood relatives to obtain eternal ocular power.

The Uchiha Clan had genuinely discovered a way to solve their problem.

The Kaguya Clan had merely discovered a way to cling to life.

Of course, this could hardly be blamed on the incompetence of the Kaguya Clan’s ancestors.

Because in truth, there was only one method capable of fundamentally curing their bloodline disease—

They would have to become like Kaguya herself: a Kekkei Mora who had fused all seven chakra natures of Yin, Yang, Fire, Wind, Lightning, Earth, and Water, strengthening their body to the point where it could withstand the death-upon-contact characteristic of the All-Killing Ash Bones.

But becoming a Kekkei Mora was easier said than done.

Forget fusing all seven chakra natures to achieve a Kekkei Mora—even within the entire shinobi world, there were very few people who had managed to unite Yin and Yang and obtain the Power of All Things.

Excluding the Otsutsuki, the first person to accomplish this was Uchiha Madara, who awakened the Rinnegan after transplanting Hashirama’s cells.

Therefore, the fact that the Kaguya Clan’s ancestors had managed to devise a method like blood replacement that allowed them to cling to life was already an extraordinary achievement.

Letting out a soft breath, Kagami thought to himself,

"Looks like I can’t use the Blood Replacement Ritual. This so-called ’Blood Replacement Ritual’ is actually a method of weakening the bloodline, not treating it."

Kagami understood that as long as he could complete his Kekkei Mora Project and become a Kekkei Mora before his Wind Release clone succumbed to the death-upon-contact property of the All-Killing Ash Bones...

Then this disease would simply cure itself without any treatment at all...