"Why! Why won't you spare even my pregnant wife and our unborn child!" The man's eyes were bloodshot, his voice hoarse from screaming. His hunched figure trembled in the dust.
The other villagers were indeed terrified by those glowing crimson eyes; some flinched and looked away.
But others pointed at him, shouting: "Look! I knew there was something wrong with Ran'ya's family!"
"No wonder someone came looking for them. He's a monster!"
"Jinx! Get out of our village!"
"Lord, we will hand over Ran'ya's family immediately! Please, just spare our village!"
The villagers clamored, completely disregarding the fact that the man they were betraying had lived among them for over a decade.
Abandoned by his neighbors, the scrawny Ran'ya dug his fingernails deep into the dirt. He turned to the mysterious figure in desperation.
Ran'ya crawled on all fours to Menma's feet, kowtowing repeatedly. "Lord! I beg you, spare my pregnant wife! If it's this bloodline you want, I'll go with you! Just let her be!"
Menma looked down at Ran'ya, who was begging for the lives of his family, and felt a twinge of disappointment.
The Ketsuryugan—once the legendary nemesis of the Byakugan—had dwindled to such a pathetic state. The clan was reduced to a single man so destitute he didn't even possess his family's secret techniques. Faced with a powerful ninja, he could only wag his tail and beg for mercy.
Meanwhile, the other villagers had already dragged Ran'ya's wife forward. They treated the heavily pregnant woman with startling brutality, showing no shame. Instead, they looked at the mysterious man with fawning expressions, hoping to buy their own safety.
"How truly pathetic," Menma's hollow voice drifted from behind his mask. He dropped a kunai at Ran'ya's feet.
"If you want to live, reclaim your dignity as a shinobi." The voice sounded like a whisper from the depths of hell, coiling around Ran'ya's ears.
Ran'ya looked at his wife, who was clutching her belly in terror, and then at the villagers who had so readily discarded them. His right hand trembled as he gripped the kunai.
Memories suppressed for nearly twenty years began to flood back. Even though this branch of the Red Eye survivors had stayed out of war for a long time, the instincts of a shinobi still flowed through his veins.
With his eyes glowing a deep red, Ran'ya reversed his grip on the kunai. Driven by the raw instinct of his Kekkei Genkai, he began to project chakra illusions, masking his presence from the villagers' senses.
Then—
The man, as thin as a bamboo pole, moved through the crowd with haunting ease, slitting the throats of the villagers.
Blood sprayed, staining Ran'ya's coarse clothes crimson. His blood-red pupils reflected the village that had sheltered him for twenty years, only to push him into the abyss.
Menma watched the revenge coldly. Even if he hadn't appeared, in a few years, Ran'ya and his wife would have died of illness, leaving their son, Ranmaru, to be treated as an omen of ill-luck, bullied and ostracized by these very people.
If Raiga Kurosuki hadn't happened upon the village while hunting rogues, Ranmaru's fate would have been even worse. That night, Raiga would have slaughtered the villagers anyway. This was simply bringing the tragedy to an early close.
After killing a dozen of the main aggressors, Ran'ya stopped. He didn't wipe the entire village out. Trembling and covered in blood, he walked to his wife's side and embraced her. He turned a pleading gaze toward the masked man.
"Let's go," Menma said. He didn't care how many villagers Ran'ya killed; he only wanted the bloodline.
Menma reached out, placing a hand on the shoulders of Ran'ya and his wife, and activated the Flying Thunder God Technique.
In the blink of an eye, they were in the capital of the Land of Stars.
In the Medical Department laboratory of the Star Base, under the cold glow of the lights, Menma gazed at a pair of crimson orbs suspended in a glass container.
He let out a sigh of admiration. "Truly, a pair of eyes as brilliant as rubies."
Ran'ya lay on an operating table in a lab coat. Several of Menma's shadow clones were busy preparing to transplant a pair of ordinary, bright eyes back into him.
"I'm taking your Red Eyes. In exchange, I'll give you normal vision and provide your family with protection and a safe environment for your wife to give birth. In the future, your clan will serve me for generations," Menma said. He didn't like being in debt, even to a destitute survivor.
"I only ask that my wife and child can live a normal life. My life belongs to you, Lord," Ran'ya whispered. His eyes were bandaged, and he tilted his head toward the sound of Menma's voice.
"Your physical constitution is too weak. The burden of the Red Eye would only have dragged you down... Forget it, you'll understand eventually." Menma didn't elaborate. Ran'ya had lived as a civilian for twenty years with no training; his use of the eyes was purely reflexive.
Considering Ranmaru's future frailty—sometimes so weak he couldn't walk—Menma suspected the bloodline had become diluted, making the body unable to handle the power of the Kekkei Genkai. It was similar to the Kaguya clan's Shikotsumyaku; the stronger the power, the more severe the bloodline disease.
Once the clones wheeled Ran'ya out to a recovery room, Menma removed his fox mask.
Little Kurama poked his head out from the fur collar, staring curiously at the glass tube. "Hey, Menma, I've never seen those before."
"Of course you haven't." Menma temporarily removed his own left eye and replaced it with a Red Eye.
As he funneled chakra into the new eye, a completely different perspective flooded his mind. Menma recalled a theory: all dojutsu in the shinobi world originated from Kaguya Otsutsuki—Byakugan, Sharingan, Red Eye, Ketsuryugan... they all shared a common ancestor.
After the Warring States period, the Sharingan and Byakugan became world-famous, while the Red Eye and Ketsuryugan nearly vanished.
The Red Eye's ability was a perfect counter to the Byakugan. It could create chakra phantoms that interfered with the Byakugan's ability to see the chakra pathway system, making the user invisible to a Hyuga's primary sense. It also granted X-ray vision and danger perception.
The chakra phantoms had no physical form or attack power, but when paired with the Hidden Mist Jutsu, they were a nightmare to deal with. These phantoms reminded Menma of a weakened version of Madara's Limbo: Hengoku.
The Byakugan evolved into the Tenseigan, and the Sharingan into the Rinnegan. What did the Red Eye and Ketsuryugan evolve into?
"Well, I have the Sharingan and the Red Eye. Next is the Byakugan and the Ketsuryugan." Menma adjusted to his new vision, already thinking about Orochimaru's cloning technology. Since there were so few survivors, natural breeding was too slow.
"But first," Menma looked toward the east, "it's time to keep my appointment with the Hyuga."
The time on the advance notice was drawing near