Within Toneri's sharp perception, Carl and the massive Tenseigan had completely merged at zero distance.
To be precise, Carl's hand had reached into the very core of the Tenseigan.
The instant they made contact, an overwhelming torrent of chakra surged forth like a boundless ocean. Even with a body as powerful as Carl's, he still felt a swelling pain coursing through him.
If an ordinary person were to touch the Tenseigan the way Carl did, the result would be obvious—instantaneous bodily explosion.
As the chakra from the Tenseigan flowed into him, golden lines began surfacing beneath Carl's skin—the color unique to the Tenseigan's chakra.
Countless golden veins, like winding rivers, crawled up his face and split into two streams, evenly merging into his eyes.
Even Carl hadn't expected this development. Fortunately, it didn't harm his eyes—it only made them feel slightly feverish.
He instinctively closed his eyes, and a ridiculous thought surfaced in his mind.
"Don't tell me... I can actually awaken them?"
The very idea made Carl chuckle.
He wasn't from the Ōtsutsuki clan—how could he possibly awaken such eyes?
But soon, he realized something was wrong. Despite his gravitational pull devouring almost all the chakra from the gigantic Tenseigan, the chakra within his eyes continued to surge, far exceeding the amount he had absorbed.
Carl blinked in confusion. That didn't follow the law of energy conservation!
He shook his head and rubbed his temples. There he went again—talking about scientific laws in a world governed by supernatural forces.
Pushing aside the pointless thoughts, Carl calmed his mind and focused on the changes in his eyes.
By now, the chakra inside them had stopped rising so violently. It seemed to have reached a certain threshold.
That actually made things worse—because the chakra now contained within his eyes was terrifyingly dense. It felt as though twin mountains were pressing down inside his sockets, so heavy that he couldn't even open them.
Carl had no intention of going blind. Since his eyes couldn't handle that much chakra, he decided to divert some of it. After all, he had recently condensed a chakra crystal—why not use it?
With that thought, he quickly activated the chakra crystal within his body, attempting to channel the excess chakra from his eyes toward it.
But the moment he began, another mutation occurred.
The instant the two chakra streams met inside his body, they seemed to trigger an explosion. Instead of absorbing the chakra from his eyes, the crystal was forcibly drained of its own chakra.
Carl froze. His eyes were already overloaded to the point where he couldn't open them—and now he had absorbed more chakra? Was he about to end up like Fujitora, permanently blind?
Still unwilling to give up, he tried again to redirect the chakra. But before he could start, an intense pain suddenly erupted from his eyes, so fierce that even he dropped to one knee.
It had been a long time since Carl had felt pain like this. The burning in his eyes was so severe it felt as though they were about to burst.
He didn't even notice that his entire body was now enveloped in a layer of golden chakra.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
A sound like a heartbeat echoed from his eyes, shaking the entire moon itself.
Outside, Ōtsutsuki Toneri, who had been lying prone, widened his eyes in disbelief as he heard the booming reverberations from within the temple.
Moments ago, he had been completely despondent and had shut down his perception. But when he reopened it, the vibrant tremor of life he sensed shocked him even more than anything he had just endured.
His lips twitched as he muttered blankly,
"Fetal movement... the fetal movement before the Tenseigan's awakening... How is this possible? How can this be!?"
This was the sight he had longed for all his life. Born without eyes, he could never merge with the giant Tenseigan—like guarding an immense treasure he could never spend.
And now, that treasure was being freely used by some outsider who had appeared from nowhere!
...
Inside the temple, Carl was still enduring the torment in his eyes. But as time passed, the pain began to fade. Slowly, he rose to his feet, one hand covering his eyes, brows knitted tightly.
Even though he carried the memories of Earth, the thought of the Tenseigan's "fetal movement" hadn't crossed his mind. He had always believed that only those of Ōtsutsuki blood could awaken the Tenseigan. How could someone like him—who wasn't even a native of the shinobi world—possibly trigger such a phenomenon?
Yet reality was far stranger than fiction. As the pain ebbed away, he felt a brand-new power emerge within his eyes, breaking free like a butterfly from its cocoon.
He snapped his eyes open.
Two colossal golden beams burst forth, slicing the temple cleanly in half.
The beams continued to expand in size, and only Carl's quick thinking—tilting his head upward—prevented the moon itself from being split apart.
When it was finally over, his eyelids still trembled slightly. He exhaled deeply and lowered his gaze to the golden chakra cloak covering his body.
Under his gaze, the radiant chakra cloak began to flow and shift, reshaping itself into the form of a white robe draped over his shoulders.
Behind him, twelve black orbs slowly rotated in a circular formation.
Carl stood there silently for a long time before finally confirming the truth—he had entered the so-called Six Paths level, and not at a low tier either.
Recalling the anomaly in his eyes, he lifted his hand and drew a shard of shattered glass toward him. Though the surface was cracked and distorted, his reflection was still visible—especially his eyes.
Unlike Toneri's blue Tenseigan from the movie, Carl's eyes glowed with a radiant golden hue. Within their pale gold irises, the pupils burned like miniature suns, overflowing with unfathomable power.
Staring at his reflection, Carl's mouth twitched as he muttered to himself,
"So maybe... the people who came to the moon back then became the Ōtsutsuki clan?"
If that were true, then his ability to awaken the eyes made perfect sense. That massive Tenseigan must have resonated with him—because the Ōtsutsuki were of the same origin as him!
He had suspected as much before coming here, though he hadn't dared to fully believe it.
Now, it seemed that his wild guess might have been right all along...
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+100 chapters on p@treon/tambeerg