The rabbit hole surrounding the Gedo Statue had become the centerpiece of Ryusei's suspicions, the final proof that tied everything together.
First of all, the Gedo Statue itself.
It had been created by the Sage of Six Paths after dividing the Ten-Tails' chakra into nine beasts. But why?
After using the Ten-Tails' power to form the nine bijuu, why would he bother leaving behind an empty shell?
If his goal was simply to seal or neutralize the Ten-Tails, he could have dispersed its body entirely.
When Minato split the Nine-Tails, he didn't craft a separate husk for it.
The only function of the Gedo Statue was to act as a vessel that could one day bring the Ten-Tails back.
And that realization chilled Ryusei to the core.
If the Gedo Statue wasn't deliberately left behind, it simply wouldn't exist.
Without it, there would be no mechanism for Kaguya's resurrection, no path for Black Zetsu's plan, no foundation for the Infinite Tsukuyomi.
Everything hinged on that statue, and that meant Hagoromo himself had planted the seed of his mother's return from the very beginning.
Then came the connection between the Gedo Statue and the Rinnegan.
That wasn't natural either. That link had to have been created later, intentionally.
Because when Hagoromo first awakened his Rinnegan, the Gedo Statue didn't even exist.
He had to have bound them himself afterward, tying the Rinnegan's powers to the statue like a lock and key.
It was elegant, even brilliant in design.
The only two people in history who ever unlocked the dual Rinnegan, Hagoromo and Madara, were the same two who could control the Gedo Statue.
Coincidence? No.
The connection was engineered.
The more Ryusei analyzed it, the clearer it became.
Hagoromo had built the perfect trap.
If the mere existence of the Gedo Statue wasn't enough to tempt those who found it, Hagoromo made sure the myth around it would be.
His centuries-long reputation, his legacy, and the symbolic bond between the Rinnegan and the Gedo Statue all ensured that anyone who obtained such power would eventually use it.
The design even filtered out the weak.
Only those capable of awakening the Rinnegan, those born of Indra's reincarnation, could summon or control the statue.
It was as if the entire system was a test, set in motion by the Sage himself, guaranteeing that someone powerful enough would one day repeat his exact pattern.
And that was the heart of the deception.
The Gedo Statue wasn't a remnant of sealing; it was bait. A blueprint for destiny.
When Madara awakened the Rinnegan, the first thing he did, instinctively, was summon the Gedo Statue. That wasn't a chance.
It was programming.
Itachi once planted Amaterasu into Sasuke's eyes as a countermeasure; Hagoromo had done something far more sophisticated, embedding commands into the very chakra laws that governed the Rinnegan.
No one else in history had that ability. No one except the Sage himself.
And it was clear that this had nothing to do with Kaguya directly.
Her eyes were dual Byakugan, potentially Tenseigan, and the Rinne Sharingan, completely different in nature.
The Gedo Statue was created long after her sealing. Whatever this was, it was Hagoromo's design alone.
The Black Zetsu and the Uchiha tablet were distractions, small cogs in a much bigger mechanism that had already been set in motion ages ago.
The prophecy, the reincarnations, the supposed "fate" of the world, it all led back to this one inevitability: the Rinnegan awakening, the Gedo Statue being summoned, and the Ten-Tails being revived.
Hagoromo had planned it that way.
He had said himself that one of Indra's reincarnations would eventually unlock the Rinnegan.
Meaning, he had seen it coming.
Or worse, ensured it would happen.
Even someone like Orochimaru, who never saw the tablet or listened to Zetsu, still uncovered the secrets of the Rinnegan through his own research, as if the world itself was guiding him toward it.
And once someone awakened it, the rest was inevitable.
The Gedo Statue would appear. Curiosity or ambition would take hold.
The Ten-Tails would return. The user would become its jinchuriki.
And, eventually, they would be crushed by their own power, forced into merging with the God Tree and activating Infinite Tsukuyomi.
It was a perfect self-fulfilling cycle.
Even the scattering of the tailed beasts across the world now looked deliberate.
It wasn't mercy—it was design.
By separating them, Hagoromo ensured that any Rinnegan user who tried to gather them would spark global conflict, uniting the world's hatred against themselves.
They'd be pushed into a corner, left with no option but to merge with the Tree and carry out the plan Hagoromo had engineered from the start.
Otherwise, if the beasts had remained together, the user could have quietly taken control, hidden away in peace.
But no, Hagoromo needed a climactic struggle, someone theatrical enough to play his chosen role for that part.
"Of course it had to be someone like Madara," Ryusei murmured, half to himself.
"A mad genius who refused to let anyone else take the spotlight."
He exhaled slowly, mind racing.
The deeper he dug, the more he saw it, the perfect manipulation of history.
Every god, every hero, every villain, just pieces on Hagoromo's board.
He shut his eyes for a moment, then turned back toward the direction where his lab was in the distance.
"Enough," he said quietly. "I can only control what's in front of me."
Now that he knew who his true enemies were, there was no excuse left if he didn't give every ounce of preparation.
If he wasn't ready for them when they came, it would be no one's fault but his own.
***
Ryusei returned to his laboratory and the quiet, sterile room where Kanae was waiting.
Today was the day.
The long months of preparation, theory, and experimentation had led to this moment.
They finally had two fully matured Byakugan ready for transplantation and fusion, enhanced to their absolute limit through Kanae's microscopic vision and Yang Release enhancements.
Each one was a masterpiece of precision and vitality, likely surpassing even the average Main Branch Byakugan in purity and power.
A few other samples were developing, but crafting each Byakugan of this quality was agonizingly slow.
Kanae had spent more than half a year nurturing just these two, each day a mix of learning, refining, and exhaustion. At this rate, it would still take months before the next viable pairs would be ready.
Ryusei stepped into the surgery room, the air cool and silent.
Kanae sat on the prepared table, already in a white patient-like robe, her expression calm but secretly tense.
Because of her Cursed Seal, the procedure couldn't be done in a normal way, by herself.
They couldn't simply remove her eyes, fuse the new Byakugan, and reinsert them; the seal would activate immediately, destroying everything.
The only option was to graft and fuse the two enhanced eyes directly into her existing ones, while they were still in her head.
That was what made this so dangerous.
Ryusei possessed a Byakugan himself, but not one as refined as Kanae's.
He didn't reach her microscopic precision, meaning the delicate work would have been almost impossible with sight alone.
So Kanae had already taken the first step herself, merging the two new Byakugan into a single composite eye beforehand with her surgical mastery and their advanced scientific instruments tailored for her eyes mostly.
What remained now was for Ryusei to integrate it into her own visual system, a task that required a level of control bordering on divine.
He wasn't relying on chakra nature alone for this.
No, Ryusei had designed something new for the procedure: a hybrid method combining fuinjutsu and science, sealing arrays functioning like surgical instruments.
To develop it, he had consulted three different masters: Fugaku, for the Uchiha's method and insights of Eternal Mangekyo eye fusion, which was very similar to what they attempted to do now, but also very different; Ashina Uzumaki, for insight into high-level sealing in general; and Orochimaru, for his unmatched understanding of biological integration.
It had taken Ryusei months of study, sleepless nights, and endless trial runs on synthetic tissue before he felt ready.
Now, everything came down to this.
He stood beside her, gloved hands glowing faintly with chakra. "Ready?" he asked softly.
Kanae looked up at him, her pale eyes steady. "If this works, it'll be the first step to breaking the seal forever," she said. "I'm done being the weakest one around you."
Her tone was calm, but the fire behind it was real.
Ryusei smirked faintly. "Oh? You sound like you're challenging me already."
She tilted her head, lips curling slightly. "Maybe I am. Though for a second, I thought you forgot about me. Maybe went chasing Kiyomi again?"
Ryusei chuckled. "Please. Don't act jealous now. You still owe me that little promise, remember?"
A faint pink spread across her cheeks. "That was only if you completely free me from the seal," she said, flustered. "Not halfway."
"Well," he said, lowering his voice just a bit, "guess we'll see how far I get today."
Her blush deepened, but her eyes softened.
For all her coldness and sharp edges, she trusted him completely now.
She had seen him work so much for her for months already, long nights, quiet mornings, endless precision.
Everything had been leading to this.
Ryusei's tone grew serious again. "Just relax. I've gone over every layer of this a hundred times. I won't let anything happen to you."
Kanae nodded silently. "I know."
That was all that needed to be said.
The faint hum of chakra filled the air as Ryusei activated the sealing array around them.
The lights dimmed slightly, and glowing blue patterns formed in concentric circles on the floor and walls, pulsing in sync with their heartbeats.
He inhaled once, steadying his focus. "Let's begin."
This was it. Months of hard effort, research, and quiet desperation on her part, all leading to this single, fragile moment.
Whether Kanae would finally break free from her cursed fate or lose everything in the attempt would be decided here.
And as Ryusei pressed his glowing hands toward her face, the first fusion sequence began.