WEEKLY POWER GOALS 💎🔥 30→2ch | 60→5ch | 100→8ch | 200→15ch | 400→25ch⏰ Resets Monday!
--------------------
Maji charged forward. His blade swung.
Clang! Clang!
Karin parried with her kunai. Her taijutsu was weak. Three moves in, her kunai was knocked from her grip. Maji seized the opening. A kick slammed into her gut.
"Guh…!"
She cried out in pain, her back smashing against a stone pillar of the shrine. Maji was on her in an instant. His hand closed around her throat. His eyes were cold. "Is this all you've got? Start talking. Or the next move takes your life."
He raised a hand. The stance for his signature kill: Wind Style: Wind Blade. The same technique he'd used with Kabuto to kill the eavesdropping Hayate GekkĹŤ during the assault on Konoha.
The principle was simple: generate chaotic blades of air at point-blank range. An unavoidable attack. Without a body like the Raikage's, getting hit meant death or crippling injury.
Karin sensed the killing intent pouring off him. Zzt! In her panic, the red of her irises darkened. Horizontal slits appeared at their center—the sign of the Blood Dragon Eye awakening.
"Huh!?"
Maji's pupils contracted. He aborted his jutsu, released Karin, and scrambled back.
"Her eyes… What the hell? The moment I met her gaze, I felt like my heart was being squeezed!"
By the pillar, Karin stood, one hand covering her eyes, swaying slightly. With the Blood Dragon Eye active, her aura had changed. An indescribable, sinister presence.
She slowly picked up her fallen kunai.
These eyes were a shrine that sealed an evil god. They could unleash the Dead Soul Possession as an ocular power.
But it was her first time. She wasn't sure if the "connection" was truly established.
She raised the kunai. Aimed it at her own shoulder.
Maji stared, bewildered. "Is she… going to kill herself?"
Karin gritted her teeth. She drove the kunai deep into her own flesh.
Crack! A wound that scraped bone.
"Gyaaah…!!!"
Instantly, the shoulder of Maji's flak jacket was drenched in blood. The pain made his arm go limp, hanging uselessly. His eyes shook with utter disbelief. "She… stabbed herself, and it transferred to me? That kind of ability… are you serious!?"
"Maji-sensei!!!"
Seeing her teacher wounded, Temari snapped. She sprinted forward, her Giant Folding Fan unfurling to three stars. With all her strength, she swung it at Karin, still leaning against the pillar.
Maji's eyes went wide with horror. "STOP…!!!"
Too late.
—Wind Style: Great Scything Weasels!!!
Booooom…!!!
The weasel-shaped gale roared from the fan. The stone pillar shattered. Karin's skin tore open.
"AAAAAAAAHHHH…!!!"
Her scream ripped through the air as she was hurled back by the blast of wind and debris, slamming hard against the shrine's outer wall.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH…!!!"
Then came the truly horrifying sight. On Maji's body, deep gashes tore open from nowhere. Blood fountained from his flak jacket. He became a man of crimson, collapsing into a spreading pool of his own blood.
Temari's mind finally caught up. "What…? Could it be… Sensei's earlier wound was also because…"
Half-conscious in the blood, Maji rasped, "Don't… attack… again. She's cast some kind of jutsu on me… Any damage to her… transfers to my body!!!"
Fear of this incomprehensible power made Temari's hands tremble on her fan.
"How… how do we fight her?"
She looked at Karin, who was struggling to her feet, one hand braced against the wall.
"No… Worse than attacking her… she can cripple me at any moment… just by hurting herself!!!"
Maji, ever the strongest Sand Jonin, found a solution even through the pain. "KankurĹŤ! Without harming her! Use your puppet technique's Body Binding to restrain her! NOW!!!"
"R-right…!"
Snapping out of his shock, KankurĹŤ rushed forward, fingers flying as chakra threads shot from them, aiming to ensnare and control Karin.
"The chakra pouring from my eyes… it feels like it's going to tear my body apart…"
Karin pressed the bloodied kunai against her own throat. "Take one more step, and I guarantee your teacher loses his head."
Swish!
KankurĹŤ's charge stopped dead.
Karin used the moment to analyze the power of these eyes that housed a god.
I've got the gist. No blood medium needed. Eye contact establishes the Dead Soul Possession link. Currently limited to a single target. No 'ritual circle' required for damage sharing. And another crucial point… Since I'm not a true devotee of that god, I don't have the natural immortality that freak named Hidan got.
Just as Orochimaru-sama said… These eyes… were tailor-made for me, Karin Uzumaki.
"I can't let Sasuke see me hurt."
Chomp! She bit down hard on her own wrist.
—Heal Bite!!
Hiss hiss hiss…!!
Steam rose from her entire body. Her injuries—the self-inflicted shoulder wound, the cuts from Temari's wind—closed up at a visible rate.
But the Dead Soul Possession only shared damage, not healing. The one left wounded was still Maji, and Maji alone.
Maji stared, utterly aghast. "How… What are you? And who… is the one inside the shrine, coveting the Dragon Vein!?"
On the shrine's altar.
The last stream of natural chakra from the Dragon Vein was refined into Yin-natured chakra compatible with the Sharingan. Zzt! A dark crimson, prism-shaped mark appeared on Sasuke's forehead. It formed at the hollow core where the Yang Seal's formulaic pathways converged.
Fwoosh!
The sealing pathways connecting the altar to Sasuke's body rapidly retracted, flowing into the mark on his brow.
The mark pulsed with light several times before stabilizing completely.
The Yang Seal was formed.
Sasuke opened his eyes. They were clearer, brighter than ever before.
"My vision, degraded from the fight with Sasori… it's fully restored. And this feeling… my ocular power feels more potent than it ever was."
"Hah…" Kabuto lowered his arm, which had been raised for three days and three nights. The character for 'Seat' faded from his palm. The eight wooden dragons slowly sank into the earth. He habitually pushed up his glasses, then began rotating his shoulders, working out the stiffness and numbness.
Orochimaru lowered his hands from their seal. He wiped the fine sweat from his brow and smiled. "Sasuke-kun, you can think of the Yang Seal as an external chakra source for your Sharingan. When you use your ocular powers, it will draw from the Seal's energy first. Of course, this energy is not renewable…"
Sasuke said, "Not renewable. So once the Dragon Vein chakra stored in the Yang Seal is exhausted, the Seal will vanish?"
Orochimaru's expression turned serious. "It is a shortcut, after all. The world is fair. All quick methods have their flaws. In the future, should you still require the power of the Yang Seal, you can accumulate it yourself. For now, its purpose is to preserve the light of your Mangekyō… to sustain you through high-intensity battles until you reclaim your father's eyes from Obito."
"Understood."
Zzt!
For the first time since the second battle, three tomoe spun to life in Sasuke's eyes. He rose from the altar, now devoid of the Dragon Vein's power.
"Karin has been gone a while… Let's go see."
--------------------
[FULL STORY ACCESS]
🚀 Why wait? Unlock (120+ Chapters) ahead of the public release!
Join Binge Ink on Patreon to access the full archive and read until the very last page today.
✨ Support the author:Patreon.com/BingeInk