Chapter 518: Recovering the Ocular Power

Chapter 518: Chapter 518: Recovering the Ocular Power

With the aid of the Tenseigan, Kagami easily avoided every obstacle in his path and silently returned to the village.

With the soft light of dawn at his back, he stood atop the towering outer wall and surveyed the village before him—a village that had barely survived a catastrophe.

At this moment, only Konoha’s outer wall and a few districts close to it could be considered relatively intact. The closer one got to the center of the village, the more horrific the devastation became.

The districts located in the heart of the village had all been reduced to enormous, sunken craters.

Not a single building could be seen nearby. Forget ruined walls or broken structures—even bricks were difficult to find. There was nothing but churned mud, dust, and rubble.

It could be said that ninety percent of Konoha’s buildings had been completely destroyed overnight.

Kagami’s own courtyard was among them.

And yet, Konoha was far from desolate.

On the contrary, the village was bustling with activity. Rows of neatly arranged tents had already been erected atop the ruins, while the villagers orderly lined up to receive food.

This attack was different from Nagato’s assault on Konoha in the original timeline.

In the original timeline, Nagato had launched a surprise attack. Konoha had been completely unprepared, and the villagers hadn’t even had time to seek shelter. As a result, a single Shinra Tensei had instantly caused thousands upon thousands of casualties.

But Konoha had been prepared for Akatsuki’s surprise attack last night.

The moment Satori broke into the village, all of Konoha had already entered a state of emergency. Thanks to the evacuation drills conducted beforehand, the majority of the villagers had successfully made their way into the shelters.

Therefore, by the time the Deva Path unleashed its large-scale Shinra Tensei and destroyed Konoha’s surface structures, the vast majority of the villagers had already been safely evacuated underground.

Most of Konoha’s shinobi, meanwhile, had gathered along the village’s outer defensive perimeter.

Thus, when it came to actual casualties, the situation wasn’t nearly as severe as one might have imagined.

After quietly replacing the shadow clone he had left behind in the village, Kagami found Rei in the temporary hospital.

Although she had gone through several fierce battles inside the shelter and had severely depleted her chakra, Rei was still a medical shinobi of the village. Gritting her teeth, she continued treating the injured shinobi and villagers.

By the time Kagami found her, her face was already deathly pale, and her legs were trembling.

After helping Rei over to the side and letting her sit down, Kagami let out a long sigh of relief.

"As long as you’re okay. With everything that happened last night, I was really worried something might happen to you!"

Rei seemed to suddenly remember something. She glanced around, and after confirming that no one nearby was paying attention to them, she whispered,

"Kagami, something strange happened to me last night. My left eye..."

Before Rei could finish, Kagami patted her gently on the shoulder.

"I know."

Using a Transcription Seal to seal a portion of his Tenseigan’s ocular power into Rei’s left eye had merely been a precaution Kagami had taken in case something went wrong.

He hadn’t expected it to actually come into use.

And that was precisely the main reason he had been so worried about Rei’s safety.

After all, when he sealed his Tenseigan’s ocular power into Rei’s left eye, he hadn’t explained the details to her. As a result, Rei couldn’t consciously activate the Tenseigan’s ocular power herself.

Only when she was in extreme danger, at the height of her emotions, would the Tenseigan ocular power residing within her left eye erupt on its own.

In other words—

Rei must have come within a hair’s breadth of death last night.

Hearing Kagami’s words, Rei immediately understood that the bizarre scene that had occurred in the shelter corridor last night hadn’t been a coincidence.

Startled and uncertain, she said,

"Kagami... so it really did have something to do with you!"

Kagami smiled and asked,

"Who was there at the time?"

Rei thought back for a moment, then listed the names one after another before adding,

"The corridor was very dark at the time. Everyone thought someone had secretly intervened from the shadows. No one suspected me."

Kagami nodded.

Wheel of Will, just like the Rinnegan’s Shinra Tensei and Bansho Ten’in, was a dojutsu based on invisible repulsive and attractive forces, making it inherently difficult to detect.

Rei asked curiously, "Kagami, is that a new technique you developed?"

"You could say that!"

After a brief pause, Kagami cautioned her,

"This technique isn’t fully developed yet, so you absolutely can’t mention it to anyone. Not even your sensei, Lady Tsunade."

Rei nodded gently.

"I understand."

There was no need for Kagami to spell things out for her. Rei understood that this technique of his must involve some kind of taboo or secret for it to require such secrecy.

Considerate as she was, she didn’t ask any further questions.

After all, for a shinobi, knowing nothing was often the best way to keep a secret.

At that moment, Kagami placed his hand over Rei’s left eye and recovered the Tenseigan ocular power he had sealed within it.

The reason Kagami had immediately begun showing signs of decline last night after losing the support of the Giant Tenseigan on the Moon was precisely because he had also separated a portion of his own ocular power and sealed it inside Rei’s left eye using a Transcription Seal, greatly reducing his combat strength.

And storing Tenseigan ocular power inside another person’s body through a fuinjutsu like this was itself an enormous burden—and danger—for a host like Rei, who did not possess the Tenseigan.

After all, the quality of Tenseigan ocular power was extraordinarily high. It was comparable to the ocular power of Nagato’s Rinnegan and was a power that stood above even that of the Mangekyo Sharingan.

For Rei, whose strength was only at the level of a special jonin, harboring such power for an extended period carried an enormous risk of it going out of control.

After recovering the Tenseigan ocular power that had been residing in Rei’s left eye, Kagami’s gaze sharpened.

Even the chakra within his body became noticeably more active.

Rei shook her head slightly, gently covering her left eye as she said,

"I suddenly feel so much lighter."

Kagami didn’t mention the Tenseigan ocular power again. Instead, he turned his head and looked toward the tents surrounding them.

Since the hospital had been destroyed, the temporary hospital consisted of one tent after another, all of them filled with patients suffering from various injuries.

There were relatively few ordinary villagers among them. Most of the injured were Konoha shinobi.

With just a single glance, Kagami spotted many familiar faces among them.

There was Kakashi, whose entire body was wrapped in bandages like a mummy, as well as Anko, who lay unconscious on a hospital bed, among many others.

After catching her breath, Rei, who was sitting beside him, said with a guilty expression,

"Lady Hinata was abducted right in front of me. I..."

When Kagami had dispelled and recovered his shadow clone, he had already learned that Naruto, Sasuke, Hinata, and Neji had been abducted.

Hearing Rei bring it up now, he immediately asked,

"Do we know for certain who took them?"

Rei hurriedly replied,

"The one who abducted Lady Hinata was Orochimaru!"

"Orochimaru?"

Kagami froze for a moment before wondering to himself,

"Why would Orochimaru kidnap Hinata? Could he have developed an interest in the Byakugan too? That doesn’t make sense. Isn’t he researching the Chimera Bud right now? Does he really have enough time to split his attention and start researching the Byakugan as well?"

Rei continued,

"Orochimaru didn’t just take Lady Hinata. He also took Naruto. And the Akatsuki member called Kakuzu abducted Neji and the Uchiha clan’s second young master."

Kagami rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"Don’t tell me... they grabbed the wrong targets?"