Kimimaro's eyes stayed on Saya, but inside, he was measuring the fight just past.
Her strength wasn't bad.
In fact, it was impressive for her age.
And her genjutsu, he hadn't stared into it out of pride or bravado, but out of calculation.
He wanted to see how his defenses would hold against a bloodline-based illusion.
The Ketsuryūgan was said to be among the strongest genjutsu weapons in existence, and for him, it made a good proxy.
If he could resist this, then he could gauge how prepared he might be against the greater threat of the future: the Sharingan.
He hadn't been disappointed.
The girl's eye had weighed him down, clouded his body.
It was dangerous.
But he carried on fighting.
For now, he estimated his current state could barely hold up against a fully awakened three-tomoe Sharingan, perhaps enough to keep pace with it.
But Mangekyō Sharingan? He wasn't there yet. Tsukuyomi, Kotoamatsukami, the broken illusions of the Uchiha elites, those were even more out of reach.
Still, it was a start. And he was only ten.
His advantage came from more than stubbornness and willpower.
There were three reasons his defenses held.
First was the barrier he had spent years cultivating: his Yin Release chakra flow into his brain, a technique he named the 'Inner Bastion'.
Second, his spiritual power was naturally higher than most, thanks to his transmigration.
And third, his extraordinary sensory ability and internal perception cultivated talent gave him an inner clarity; he could detect genjutsu's layers and operate even under their haze, where others would flounder.
He didn't dare underestimate the Ketsuryūgan, nevertheless.
Legends said only the Uchiha could cancel out their illusions outright, which was why a clan as powerful as theirs was defeated and humiliated like that in the first place.
Ordinary shinobi had no such answer.
But he was no ordinary shinobi.
In truth, Kimimaro felt a twinge of disappointment.
Not at Saya herself, her talent was undeniable for her age, but at the Chinoike clan as a whole.
The story of their downfall was simple.
Expelled from the Land of Lightning into that isolated valley.
And why? Because they leaned too heavily on their genjutsu.
The moment the Uchiha were called in, everything collapsed.
One dojutsu pitted against another, illusions canceling illusions.
When the battlefield turned into a melee, Uchiha overpowered them easily with their way more versatile and powerful arsenals, and the Chinoike broke apart.
They accepted the Uchiha's judgment and their punishment like sheep.
Kimimaro found that pathetic.
"It didn't have to be that way," he thought coldly. "Their blood control aspect was always underdeveloped. They foolishly limited themselves only to places heavy with iron in the water. Crutches. Excuses."
He tilted his head, watching Saya's stance, the seal still burning faintly on her back.
"They feared losing blood, feared weakness. So they didn't like to use their own blood during fights. But what stopped them from using Yang Release to replenish it? To create more endlessly and master it with their eyes? Something like I am doing right now. If they had combined that vitality with their innate control ability, they could have risen as one of the most terrifying clans in history."
Instead, they stagnated.
And here she stood, proof of it.
She had her genjutsu, yes, but when that failed, she fell back on what?
Pure taijutsu. Scythe work. Chakra enhancement.
Minor manipulations of her blood to push her body beyond its natural limit.
Her physique was sharp, stronger than his in sheer rawness, especially with him being dragged down by the cultists' voodoo and her attempts to slow his blood.
But without range, without area control, without versatility… she was just a sharper blade, not a greater force.
Even Reika had outshone her in that regard.
One sweeping B-rank Ice Release had devastated the field, wiping out the zealots in an instant and forcing Saya onto the back foot.
Kimimaro's gaze hardened. "She's a prodigy, but not enough. Not like this."
His spikes receded slightly back into his arms as he straightened, though his eyes never lost their cutting edge.
As for the earth clone that had caught Saya by surprise, that hadn't been improvisation.
Kimimaro had sent it burrowing through the ground long before they ever stepped into the shrine. It was a simple, low-ranking earth-traveling technique, nothing fancy.
The reason she hadn't detected it was because of the seal he had layered over it, a stealth tag, one of the few practical results of his training under Ashina's constant instruction.
The range of seals they'd managed to create this way wasn't wide.
Suppression tags to block chakra flow.
Barriers, crude but functional.
And stealth talismans like the one that had hidden his clone until it struck.
They couldn't even craft proper explosive seals, not without Fire Release to anchor the formula, as Kimimaro didn't have it.
And even those three weren't in their peak forms.
These were the basic versions, the ones Kimimaro could reasonably replicate without burning months on perfecting lines of ink and chakra matrices until his hands bled.
He had a few other odd tags tucked away, but none decisive in a major battle.
After all, he was not Ashina Uzumaki.
He could emulate the dead man's lessons, follow his maddeningly complex instructions, but the effort was exhausting and not always worth the return.
Additionally, the most powerful fuinjutsu, the kind used mid-battle directly, was far beyond; it had to be done against all kinds of disruptions, demanding flawless chakra control and the kind of muscle memory only someone raised in sealing arts from birth could ever reach.
For now, talismans and hidden tricks were enough.
Enough to humiliate someone like Saya.
Enough to remind him that cunning, not brute force, was what turned a fight.
For if she were a bit better at sensing, she would have obviously been able to see through it.
He glanced at her again, her eyes still burning with that restrained fury, the faint glow of the talisman across her back holding steady.
"You lost," he said flatly. "And not because you were weak. But because you didn't think."
Kimimaro's eyes narrowed, the tag still glowing faintly across Saya's back as he spoke with quiet authority.
"First question. Why did your clan create this cult?"
His tone left no room for evasion.
His gaze, cold and unblinking, pressed on her like a blade at her throat.
Saya felt heat climb unbidden to her face, not from fear alone, but from the strange pressure his presence carried, something that twisted her anger into something else entirely.
She wanted to spit, to mock him, to remind him whose shrine this was.
But the words caught in her throat.
That gaze… it made lies feel like suicide.
She grit her teeth and answered, each word dripping with reluctant shame.
"Because we were cornered, ultimately...", she admitted at last, her tone clipped, almost spitting the words. "We had no army, no allies. Only eyes that everyone feared."
"During the Warring States, we were mercenaries in what is today known as the Land of Lightning. One of our women married the Daimyō. His first wife grew jealous. When he died, by coincidence, soon after, she blamed us, said we cursed him. Her lies spread, and the court turned on us."
Her voice dipped lower. "The Uchiha were hired to drive us out. They forced us into the Valley of Hell, here in the Land of Hot Water. That was our prison."
Kimimaro's eyes didn't soften. If anything, they sharpened. "So you obeyed."
"Some of us didn't want to accept it. But after the Hidden Villages formed, Kumogakure kept a leash on us. The line of that woman and Daimyo's first son sat on the throne in Lightning. We were watched. Always."
Her smirk twisted, but it didn't hide the strain in her voice. "Eventually, we spun a lie and dressed it in blood. Jashin, Evil God of Slaughter, was born from nothing but our need."
"We used our Ketsuryūgan to terrify, to 'prove' the faith with curses and rituals. The peasants around us… they believed. Then their neighbors believed. Before long, some people from the whole Land of Hot Water whispered Jashin's name."
Her eyes darted briefly to the cultists kneeling in the circle, their voices still barely muttering prayers in the background.
"These fools think he's real. That their sacrifices give them blessings. But it's all us. Tricks. Blood and fear. A stage we built because we had no other way to move beyond that valley."
Kimimaro studied her for a long moment, then let out a low, humorless chuckle. "So, a false god to mask a crippled clan."
Saya flinched faintly, then scowled, pride and anger boiling under her skin.
But she didn't deny it. She couldn't.
Kimimaro's gaze didn't waver.
His thoughts sharpened in silence as he pieced the fragments together.
So the Chinoike weren't wiped out entirely in a single night of infighting.
At least one bloodline survivor stood before him.
But more pressing was the ritual.
Jashin might have been fake, but the technique they used on him and Reika, just now, for example, was not.
And it was far too similar to what he remembered Hidan flaunting in the future.
His voice dropped lower, colder.
"Then tell me this. What was that ritual you tried to use on us?"
Saya stiffened.
She hesitated more than ever now, lips pressed in a thin line.
Answering this meant exposing too much of her clan's inner foundation.
But his gaze bore down on her, unrelenting.
Something in her chest twisted, anger, shame, and that strange pull again.
She exhaled sharply, eyes narrowing as though spitting venom.
"It's not Jashin. Not really. Those rites are ours. The cult is just a vessel, a mask. What you felt was Chinoike. Ancient teachings passed down in our clan. Shinobi techniques of sorts."
Her voice grew quieter, almost grudging.
"Our eyes bind more than flesh and mind. With the proper rites, with blood, with a circle, we can tie another's life to a vessel. Make their pain real... Even make their death a fuel of sorts."
Saya glared at Kimimaro and Reika in turn, defiant even in her confession. "Jashin is nothing. Just a story. But the rituals you call his? That's us. That's the blood of the Chinoike clan."
Kimimaro's expression barely shifted, but inside, pieces fell neatly into place.
This explained far more than Saya realized.
Hidan's ritual, his grotesque immortality, it hadn't been some divine gift at all. It had roots here, in the Chinoike.
That was why his 'random' visit to the Valley of Hell had been mentioned in scraps of old lore. This was the source.
But then another detail struck him. The girl in front of him, Saya, was no immortal. Her blood ran hot and fast. Her life was fragile.
So why had Hidan been different? Why had he manifested that grotesque "gift" when she had not? He would have to find out, too.
Kimimaro now believed her confession, because it matched what he had already worked out in his own analysis.
For years, he had classified Hidan's technique as something more than a curse: an advanced Yin–Yang Release, twisted into a ritual form.
And now it all fit neatly into place.
There was only one clan in the world shown with a natural affinity for both Yin and Yang at the same time.
Not Senju, not Uzumaki, not even Uchiha.
The Chinoike.
So, who was a better fit to also be able to master the fused Yin-Yang as well?
Their Ketsuryūgan touched both poles, after all, Yin in the illusions, Yang in the manipulation of living blood.
A rare balance, a unique convergence.
It was natural, then, that locked away in that valley for generations, they would sharpen those instincts into something else.
Something that blurred the line between technique and miracle.
He let his gaze linger on the bloody patterns etched into the shrine floor, the shattered puppets of their rituals, the still-muttering cultists who thought their god was real.
'Yes… Yin and Yang. What better tool to awe the weak? The power to create, to bind, to imitate godhood itself. No wonder the peasants bent their knees. No wonder the lie became truth.' Kimimaro's lips curled faintly, almost in amusement.
It was the force that created the Tailed Beasts themselves.
Even the weakest, most crippled offshoot of it would be strong enough to matter a lot.
This was why he had come here in the first place.
To dig into the seemingly random, the obscure, the forgotten.
To find what the world dismissed and carve out its hidden veins of power.
And the Chinoike… they were no mere footnote.
They were exactly the kind of resource he wanted.
'However, this begs a question,' Kimimaro thought, his gaze flicking briefly over Saya before returning to the Jashin-marked floor.
'How did they obtain such a Kekkei Genkai in the first place? Another stray Ōtsutsuki mingling with humans in some forgotten era?'
The idea carried weight.
And yet, the more he considered it, the less it fit.
The Ketsuryūgan, powerful as it was, still fell short compared to the confirmed Ōtsutsuki branches.
The Chinoike had strength, yes, but they lacked a bit of depth of god-blood refinement.
Kaguya clan might've been even weaker, but Kimimaro already understood why his own clan had deteriorated over time, and that it was not always like that, most likely.
The so-called Hagoromo clan might have been even weaker than the Chinoike, but there was never any proof shown that they carried a direct bloodline from the Sage himself.
If they had, history would not have buried them in near-silence.
A lineage tied to Hagoromo would have left marks far greater than footnotes.
More likely, they had merely taken his name out of reverence, a form of borrowed prestige, worship disguised as heritage.
Therefore, to him it seemed more likely that the Ketsuryūgan was a mutation, a unique divergence born not from direct Ōtsutsuki descent but from something stranger.
The God Tree.
In ancient times, before Hagoromo and Hamura severed Kaguya's control, nearly all of humanity had been entangled by its roots.
Nearly all had tasted its corruption.
If so, then it wasn't impossible that some fragment of its essence, some distortion of chakra born in that moment of crisis, had seeded itself into a human bloodline.
Passed quietly down the line until, generations later, it bloomed into something wholly new.
That would explain why the Ketsuryūgan existed at all.
Too weak to be direct Ōtsutsuki lineage, too refined to be dismissed as a mere random quirk.
It was not a bodily mutation like the Sakon and Ukon parasites.
Not a slow, generational adaptation into advanced elemental fusion like the lava or boil clans.
Not even something like Jūgo's cursed communion with natural energy.
All of those could be written off as evolutionary drift because the chakra was always present in all living things.
But the Chinoike?
Their dojutsu pointed to the God Tree.
Additionally, there was always that connection between the Ten Tails' jinchūriki and mastery over Yin–Yang Release in the original timeline.
That was his current best hypothesis, and until proven otherwise, he would work with it.