Half an hour later, atop the giant rock on the island, Seimei paused the nurturing of his Byakugan.
It wasn't that he wanted to stop—it's just that the chakra left in the interdimensional space at his brow had run dry.
Opening his eyes, Seimei instinctively reached for the metal orb beside him, the one sealing the Seven-Tails, ready to use the "Chakra Absorption Technique" to siphon some of its chakra. But the moment he started, a thought hit him. He'd already gone overboard today, drawing way more chakra than usual. How was the Seven-Tails even holding up?
With a flicker of intent, he sent his mental energy probing into the seal. What he saw next genuinely shocked him.
Inside the sealed space, the Seven-Tails—once massive—had shrunk several times over. Its aura was feeble, practically on the verge of collapse. It looked like it was about to keel over and die.
That freaked Seimei out big time. The Seven-Tails wasn't some random catch—he'd put serious effort into snagging it. If it reincarnated because of this, he'd be out a ton.
No hesitation. He immediately poured more mental energy into the seal, carefully checking the Seven-Tails' condition. The beast seemed to sense his presence too. Even in its pitiful state, it let out a series of insect-like screeches. Seimei could hear the raw anger in them—clearly, it wasn't thrilled about him recklessly draining its chakra without a care for its survival.
Too bad for it, though. No matter how mad it got, with the eight chains formed by the "All-Encompassing Seal" holding it down, it wasn't going anywhere.
Still, seeing it react like that put Seimei at ease. If it had the energy to snap at him, it probably wasn't in immediate danger of dying. And after a closer look, he confirmed it. Letting out a quiet sigh of relief, he realized that while his over-the-top chakra draining had damaged its core a bit, tailed beasts weren't normal lifeforms. A few days of rest, and it'd bounce back. Soon enough, it'd be a reliable "chakra battery" again. No need to panic.
That said, he'd have to lay off siphoning too much from it for the next few days.
With that sorted, Seimei pulled back his mental energy and checked his own status. Right now, he had just over 200,000 chakra points left in his body. Most of what he could recover had already been spent on today's training, so he didn't have much to spare. That meant his plan to test the evolved Byakugan's capacity was a bust for now.
On the bright side, he'd at least figured out how efficient nurturing the Byakugan was at this stage. Over the past half hour, he'd burned through about 500,000 chakra points, and the evolution progress on his panel had gone up by two points. Well, more like 2.5, to be exact. So, roughly every 200,000 chakra points translated to one point of progress for the evolved Byakugan.
That was double the cost compared to before. Still, since it could keep improving normally, Seimei could live with it. The real question now was its limit. If it could handle 2 million points a day, he'd be able to rack up ten evolution points daily through this method. In just a year and a half, it could evolve again. But if it fell short of that, the pace would slow down. More than that? He didn't even dare dream about it. Even if it could take more, he didn't have the chakra to feed it. Heck, even hitting 2 million would take some serious planning.
Oh, and one more thing: now that his Byakugan had evolved once, it could handle more chakra in a shorter time. Like just now—500,000 points in half an hour. Before, it capped out at 400,000. Not a huge jump, but it'd still save him some time.
Thoughts swirled in his head for a bit before he reined them in and let it go. Standing up, he tucked the metal orb with the Seven-Tails into his ninja pouch. After packing up his gear, he cast "Wind Release: Wings of Wind" and the "Chakra Cloak," took to the sky, and headed toward the Leaf Village.
After nearly half a month of hardcore training, it was time to kick back and relax a little. Plus, it'd give the Seven-Tails a chance to recover.
---
Half an hour passed in a flash.
As the last rays of sunlight faded, Seimei arrived just outside the Leaf Village. Lowering his altitude, he touched down smoothly. A quick glance around—no one in sight. Good. He strolled toward the village gates.
Passing through without a hitch, he stepped into the Leaf Village. You could tell the Third Shinobi World War was fading into the past. The place had bounced back fast, bustling like it used to. Even at dusk, merchant caravans were still coming and going.
Weaving through the lively crowd, Seimei made his way to the Uchiha clan's district. Compared to the rest of the village, it was a lot quieter here. Sure, plenty of regular Uchiha folks ran stalls or shops to get by, but it didn't have the same buzz as the main village. Add in the Leaf Police Force's bad rep and the clan's general standoffishness, and you'd see why outsiders didn't come around much.
Not that it mattered to Seimei. He hurried home, washed up quick, and crashed. Food? Catching up on the memories from the shadow clone he'd left behind? That could wait until he'd recharged.
But man, when he went down, he was out. He didn't wake up until late the next morning.
Sunlight slipped through the window cracks, brushing his face. Seimei's eyelids twitched. He rolled over, tempted to keep sleeping, but after more than ten hours, most of his exhaustion was gone. No matter how much he wanted to doze off again, he just couldn't.
After a while, he finally opened his eyes. "Hoo…" With a soft exhale, he dragged himself out of bed. The window creaked as he pushed it open. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he gazed out, letting his eyes drift over the uneven rooftops and the people milling about below. His mind went blank, and he zoned out completely.
Time slipped by, minute by minute.
He wasn't sure how long he'd been sitting there when footsteps outside snapped him back to reality. The door creaked open, and someone stepped into the bedroom. It was none other than the shadow clone he'd left behind when he'd headed out of the village over ten days ago.
Their eyes met for a second before the clone vanished. A flood of memories poured into Seimei's mind. He closed his eyes again, sifting through them carefully.
An hour later, he opened them again. The clone's memories weren't anything wild. To keep energy use low, it had mostly stayed home, flipping through random books in its downtime. Not much intel to speak of. Still, a few bits of news had trickled in.
Like that population disappearance case he'd been keeping tabs on. After a few quiet days, it had apparently picked up again. And even now, neither the Police Force nor the Anbu had dug up anything solid.