Countless forces had been stirred into motion by the Zabuza assimilated body, yet he himself was currently fusing the Mangekyo Sharingan.
And not just him.
Aside from the daimyo's son assimilated body and the Danzo assimilated body, which had yet to complete Danzo Shimura's full assimilation, everyone else was doing the same.
The so-called Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan was, quite simply, a Mangekyo Sharingan that would never go blind.
Other than Indra, only Madara Uchiha had awakened the Eternal Mangekyo by transplanting his younger brother's Mangekyo Sharingan.
Later on, Sasuke Uchiha would do the same with Itachi Uchiha's eyes.
"If I gouge out my own Mangekyo, use Hyper Regeneration to grow a new pair, then swap them back in… there's a very high chance that still won't awaken the Eternal Mangekyo."
That was only a theory, but the assimilated bodies had already acted on it.
They dug out their Mangekyo Sharingan, and before long, new Mangekyo eyes regrew in their sockets.
Then the clones gouged those out again and replaced them with the original pair.
"As expected. There's no increase in ocular power at all. Simply swapping in your own eyes cannot awaken the Eternal Mangekyo."
The clones had anticipated this result from the start.
If the Eternal Mangekyo were that easy to obtain, then Shin Uchiha's eyes would have become Eternal Mangekyo long ago instead of remaining ordinary Mangekyo Sharingan.
After all, Shin had used Orochimaru's technology and his own cells to create numerous clones of himself.
"So that can only mean one thing. The Mangekyo that have appeared over the past century are fundamentally defective eyes."
The clones knew something else as well.
The progenitor of the Uchiha, Indra, had no brother whose Mangekyo he could transplant.
That meant his Mangekyo had been perfect from the very beginning.
Indra's descendants possessed bloodlines inferior to his own, which meant their Mangekyo Sharingan were flawed.
Only by transplanting the Mangekyo Sharingan of a sibling, repairing the genetic defect, and fusing the ocular power of both pairs of eyes could that flaw be completed.
Only then could their bloodline draw closer to Indra's and produce a Mangekyo Sharingan that would never lose its light.
There was also another theory the clones knew of.
Some said that Indra had been born with a fully matured three-tomoe Sharingan, that he had never possessed a Mangekyo at all, and that he had achieved the Perfect Susanoo using only the three-tomoe Sharingan.
Whether that theory was true or not was irrelevant to the clones right now.
"Although I don't know how Madara Uchiha awakened the Eternal Mangekyo—whether he used some special secret technique on the two pairs of eyes, or whether merely transplanting Izuna Uchiha's eyes was enough—it doesn't matter. I have my own method."
All the clones shared the exact same thought.
Without exception, they activated the Mangekyo Sharingan.
The Zabuza assimilated body did the same. Earlier, he had already removed Kakashi Hatake's eye and replaced it with his own Mangekyo again.
Only with both Mangekyo could the full power of the Mangekyo Sharingan be brought out one hundred percent.
"Absolute Control."
The clones and the Zabuza assimilated body all activated the ability simultaneously.
The strange thing about Absolute Control was that it granted perfect command over one's own power.
Those Mangekyo Sharingan that had been gouged out earlier were also part of their own power.
Under Absolute Control, the ocular power inside the removed Mangekyo slowly began to flow back into the clones' current eyes.
Under the effect of this dōjutsu, the two sources of ocular power began to converge and fuse.
They shared the same origin.
More than that, they were virtually identical.
There was no rejection at all.
Boom.
The clones and the Zabuza assimilated body felt their entire bodies tremble with a strange, exhilarating shock.
Their ocular power and chakra both rose by a large margin.
Most importantly, their very life essence began to advance.
Their bloodline felt purer somehow.
"Absolute Control. Shared Pain."
The clones had no enemies in front of them, but they used their dōjutsu freely, wanting to test just how far their eyes had advanced.
"The side effects really are smaller than before… but this still hasn't reached the level of the Eternal Mangekyo. Even without having used Susanoo before, I can already tell—this level of ocular power still isn't enough to manifest the Perfect Susanoo."
The clones did not panic in the slightest.
At worst, they would simply gouge out their eyes a few more times.
The Mangekyo Sharingan in their hands lost all ocular power and turned into ordinary eyes.
Without hesitation, the clones raised their hands, ignited Fire Release chakra in their palms, and destroyed those eyes.
One minute later, they gouged out their newly fused Mangekyo once more.
After another pair of Sharingan regrew in their sockets, they again used Absolute Control to absorb the ocular power from the Mangekyo in their hands.
Soon enough, the Mangekyo in their hands reverted once again into ordinary eyes, and the new fusion began.
Then suddenly, every single clone began to tremble.
A piercing pain shot through them. It felt as though every pore in their body was being ripped open by a torment too intense to describe.
"Damn it… is this because of our bodies? Are they too weak to keep up with the process?"
Their bodies were undergoing transformation.
Unlike Madara Uchiha or Sasuke Uchiha, whose fusion came through combining two sets of eyes in the conventional sense, the clones were repairing their own defects, forcing their bloodline closer to Indra's.
Through the power of the Mangekyo and the overwhelming force of Yin Release, they were forcibly driving their own evolution.
In terms of bloodline, an Uchiha should never be able to surpass Indra.
But the clones could.
Because they were carving out an entirely new genetic chain of their own.
The problem was that their constitutions were far too weak.
If not for Hyper Regeneration, their genetic structure would have collapsed completely.
They would have died.
Died from the pain alone.
They would not have died permanently, of course. Their flesh would simply give rise to new consciousnesses, and they would still remain clones of Uchiha Fujie.
But they would no longer be the same selves as before.
Now, they endured the agony while simultaneously feeling their strength rise.
The Zabuza assimilated body had it easiest, because his physical constitution was the strongest among them all.
That was unavoidable.
The clones had all grown rapidly through Tomie's abilities.
They had not, like ordinary Uchiha, advanced one tomoe at a time while gradually building up their ninjutsu and physical strength along the way.
The clones and assimilated bodies bit down hard on their own arms, refusing to let even a cry escape.
More than ten minutes later, their bodies were soaked through.
They were drenched in sweat, so thoroughly that their clothes could practically be wrung out into a basin of water.
"For the near future, we absolutely cannot fuse ocular power again. If we do, someone really will die."
Every clone reached the same conclusion.
Their bodies were filthy, but they simply lay sprawled on the ground, completely unwilling to move.
Another ten-odd minutes passed before they finally got up.
Using Water Release, they washed themselves off as best they could and then began testing their Mangekyo again.
Hidden deep within remote mountains and ancient forest, the Kawakami Tomie clone went further and activated Susanoo.
With Absolute Control, she could use her ocular power with perfect efficiency.
A Susanoo giant over sixty meters tall appeared out of nowhere.
Despite it being her very first time using Susanoo, the degree of completion already surpassed Itachi Uchiha's, though it still fell short of Madara Uchiha's.
Kawakami Tomie's Susanoo was black.
In fact, every clone's Susanoo was black.
Only the assimilated bodies might vary in color.
For everyone else—including the original body—their Susanoo were all black, because in the end, they were all one person.
"This can be considered the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan. This level of ocular power is already greater than Sasuke Uchiha's Eternal Mangekyo during the Fourth Great Ninja War, though still inferior to Madara Uchiha's. That makes sense. Even with the Eternal Mangekyo, power still has to be unearthed gradually. It's not as if you can awaken the Perfect Susanoo the instant your eyes evolve."
At this point, the clones were already extremely powerful.
But not invincible.
Even with eyes comparable to the Eternal Mangekyo, they still could not sustain Susanoo for very long.
Their physical constitutions were still too weak, and their chakra reserves were not yet especially vast.
Madara Uchiha may have had less chakra than Hashirama Senju, but he still possessed dozens upon dozens of Kakashi-level reserves.
Compared to that, Fujie's clones were still not strong enough.
Then again, Uchiha Fujie had not even been in this world for half a year.
Given that, this was already astonishing.
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