Underground base. Research laboratory.
Sasuke sat studying the cell sample of Kimimaro that Kabuto had sent over, while simultaneously working through Orochimaru's memories for everything related to Kimimaro's Shikotsumyaku.
Hardness. Exceptional physical regeneration. And the bleeding effect.
These were the three characteristics of Kimimaro's Kekkei Genkai as a member of the Kaguya clan.
Hardness: Kimimaro's body far exceeded steel in terms of physical resilience. An ordinary ninja striking him with a blade would fail to deal any meaningful damage.
Exceptional physical regeneration: Kimimaro's body also carried a powerful Yang chakra. In terms of raw regenerative ability, he wasn't quite at the level of Uzumaki Naruto, but he was significantly above an average Senju or Uzumaki.
The bleeding effect: wounds caused by Kimimaro's Shikotsumyaku were extraordinarily difficult to heal.
Ordinary Kaguya clan members possessed the Shikotsumyaku too, but only in the first two forms.
Kimimaro's Shikotsumyaku had dramatically amplified both and added a third: the bleeding effect, a suppression of healing ability in anyone he injured.
Thinking about that third characteristic, Sasuke's eyes shifted slightly. Something came to him.
He drew out a small sample of Naruto's somatic cells and placed them in contact with the others.
The moment Kimimaro's cells encountered Naruto's, they collided like lifelong enemies, tearing into each other immediately.
After a considerable length of time.
Naruto's cells, despite their extraordinary resilience, eventually crumbled under Sasuke's observation and dispersed into ash, scattering like dead leaves in a breeze.
But Kimimaro's cells hadn't fared well either. They were severely depleted, with only the faintest trace left.
Sasuke's gaze settled.
In terms of current strength, Naruto and Kimimaro were roughly comparable. If anything, in terms of raw constitution, Naruto's cells were individually somewhat stronger.
And yet Naruto's cells had still lost.
Because Kimimaro's cells possessed a specific property that suppressed the regenerative capacity of vitality-strong cells.
It seemed to be a targeted counter, specifically against opponents with powerful physical vitality, such as the Senju or the Uzumaki.
And extending that reasoning several steps further, the Kaguya's strongest technique, the Dust Release, Shakuton, Kekkei Tōta, the Truth-Seeking Ball, surpassed even the simple wound-inhibiting effect by a considerable degree.
The Kekkei Tōta was defined as a certain-kill technique. Anyone struck by it would be reduced to ash along with their bones, the body beginning to disintegrate at the point of impact and spreading throughout the entire form.
Even someone with the Six Paths body, possessing unlimited regeneration, would find that power rendered completely useless against the Shakuton's touch-and-die certainty.
If Kimimaro's Shikotsumyaku was a counter aimed specifically at diluted, ordinary Sage Bodies of the Senju and Uzumaki lineage...
Then Kaguya's Shakuton was targeted at the Six Paths Sage Body, or more precisely, at the Sage Body derived from the divine tree and the Ten-Tails.
At that realization, something snapped into clarity for Sasuke. He had been operating under a conceptual error.
He had always thought the several great clans were bound together by their common origin, all flowing from the same source.
But now he understood.
The Senju, Uzumaki, and Uchiha. The Hyuga, the Kaguya, and the Otsutsuki on the moon. They did all share one ancestor: Otsutsuki Kaguya.
But their bloodlines were nearly unrelated to one another in practice.
The Senju, Uzumaki, and Uchiha derived their bloodlines from the divine tree and the Ten-Tails.
The Hyuga, the Kaguya, and the moon's Otsutsuki carried the true Otsutsuki bloodline, derived from Kaguya herself.
When Otsutsuki Kaguya consumed the divine tree's fruit and merged with the Ten-Tails, she gave birth to two sons: Otsutsuki Hagoromo and Otsutsuki Hamura.
Hagoromo had perfectly inherited the characteristics of the divine tree.
He was born with the Rinnegan and what appeared to be the proto-form of the Eye of the Moon.
Neither the manga nor the anime ever depicted the Sage of Six Paths displaying any ability rooted in the Otsutsuki bloodline itself. *(Note 1)*
Hamura was the one who inherited Kaguya's true Otsutsuki bloodline.
His descendants, the Kaguya clan, the Hyuga clan, and the Otsutsuki on the moon, possessed the Byakugan and the Shikotsumyaku.
With that framework in mind, Sasuke felt the relationship between the Otsutsuki clan and the divine tree's Ten-Tails beginning to peel back its veil just slightly.
The Sage Body derived from the divine tree possessed extraordinary regeneration.
The Otsutsuki Shikotsumyaku also possessed extraordinary regeneration, but layered on top of that were the hardness and the bleeding effect, with the latter being specifically targeted at the divine tree's Sage Body.
The most extreme form, the Shakuton, could directly cause the divine tree's Ten-Tails itself to crumble into ash.
The Sage's Eye derived from the divine tree carried formidable genjutsu capability. The Otsutsuki Byakugan could see through chakra flow directly, and conventional genjutsu was essentially ineffective against it. Another targeted counter.
The Byakugan and the Sharingan had never directly clashed in the original story.
The only time a Hyuga fell to genjutsu was under Infinite Tsukuyomi's scope. Under equal conditions, standard genjutsu didn't work on the Byakugan.
Sasuke had found this noted in the Uchiha clan's records. *(Note 2)*
Beyond that, the Tenseigan's ability to manipulate celestial body trajectories, its spiritual puppet control, its spatial manipulation, and the demonstration of Chibaku Tensei shattering the moon created by the Sage's techniques, all of it pointed to the same pattern.
At equivalent levels of eye and body, the Otsutsuki bloodline's advantages against the divine tree and Ten-Tails bloodline were impossible to miss.
Thinking further, if Otsutsuki Kaguya's eyes had not been the Byakugan but had advanced one step further to something like the Tenseigan, Hagoromo and Hamura's Chibaku Tensei might not have been enough to seal her.
Sasuke wasn't particularly shocked by this. The Ten-Tails' divine tree power was formidable, certainly.
But at its foundation, it was a biological weapon the Otsutsuki used to harvest the resources of planets.
Tool and master.
That the Otsutsuki bloodline would subtly counter the divine tree bloodline at equivalent power levels wasn't difficult to accept.
What still puzzled Sasuke was why the descendants of the Otsutsuki bloodline could produce offspring with the descendants of the divine tree Ten-Tails bloodline, and why the Otsutsuki clan itself could merge with the Ten-Tails.
Yet when the two bloodlines were introduced directly in a controlled environment, severe conflict occurred.
Sasuke stroked his chin, genuinely at a loss.
His original plan had been to complete the Six Paths Hagoromo bloodline first, then as a second step, supplement it with the Hamura bloodline, bringing his overall bloodline closer to the origin of all chakra, Otsutsuki Kaguya herself.
But until he fully understood how the Otsutsuki bloodline and the divine tree Ten-Tails bloodline clashed, and how they could be perfectly merged, he would stop after completing the divine tree Ten-Tails bloodline.
Unless he found a method later, or used an entirely different body to carry the Hamura bloodline.
A body called Otsutsuki Sasuke.
At that thought, Sasuke's expression grew still, his eyes moving with quiet, inward light.
This brief experiment had not only revealed something about the relationship between the Otsutsuki bloodline and the Ten-Tails bloodline. It had also shown him how to address Kimimaro's illness.
The answer was simple. Give him a pair of Otsutsuki sage eyes.
If the Mangekyou Sharingan's descent into blindness was the bloodline disease of the Uchiha, then Kimimaro's Shikotsumyaku was a bloodline disease of its own kind. It would worsen over time, proportional to how often it was used.
The Uchiha had found their solution: the Eternal Mangekyou. But the Kaguya clan appeared to have never discovered theirs.
Or perhaps they had, and the answer had been lost on the night of their extermination.
So addressing Kimimaro's condition only left a second path.
The same path as transplanting the First Hokage's cells into an Uchiha. Allowing the surging Yin and Yang forces within his body to reach some form of balance and fusion, resolving the problem at its root.
Kimimaro's Shikotsumyaku Sage Body was too powerful. The answer was to give him a set of Byakugan, restoring the Yin-Yang equilibrium from within.
But an ordinary Byakugan wouldn't be enough. Kimimaro's Shikotsumyaku far exceeded what any ordinary Kaguya clan member had ever possessed.
And Sasuke currently had no interest in devoting serious effort to finding him a pair of eyes. Keeping Kimimaro alive was one thing. Going out of his way on his behalf was another.
Besides, even if Sasuke wanted to find them, he couldn't.
No Byakugan among the current Hyuga clan would be powerful enough to balance against his Shikotsumyaku.
The only ones that could were probably on the moon.
---
*Note 1: In the manga, the Sage was born with the Rinnegan. In the anime, it was not the Byakugan. He only asked his brother to use the Byakugan to look far into the distance at something he himself couldn't see from where he stood.*
*Note 2: The Byakugan and the Sharingan never directly faced each other in the original story. However, in the Itachi Shinden novel, when Shisui and Itachi fought the Hyuga Mukai, even working together they lost.*
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