The process unfolded without any unexpected incidents.
After Takuno defeated Toneri's father, he also successfully secured the Ōtsutsuki bloodline.
When the young Ōtsutsuki 'saw' him, he only asked one question.
"Father... did he fail?"
After that, he said nothing more.
At this moment, Toneri was still far from reaching maturity; naturally, he was unable to wield the power of the Golden Tenseigan like his father.
Takuno's gaze fell upon the unconscious Toneri in his arms.
Deep within Takuno's eyes, a flicker of contemplation passed through.
Must he truly end this child's life with his own hands? Takuno asked himself.
He was no bloodthirsty butcher, and he truly had little interest in crushing a fledgling bird.
This wasn't about mercy; it was more like the indifference of a powerhouse toward an ant.
However, Toneri's existence was a vital link on his path to power; he could not possibly give up the boy's bloodline.
More importantly, he could not handle Toneri in the same manner he had dealt with Kimimaro.
Because even if Kimimaro were to one day discover that Takuno was the one who orchestrated the Kaguya Clan's destruction, given his character in the original story, he wouldn't point the spear of revenge at Takuno.
But Toneri was different.
This child had witnessed Takuno defeat his father and seize his power and life.
That bone-deep hatred, as long as he lived, would inevitably take root and sprout at some point in the future.
Even without Takuno's actions today, Toneri's father was already at death's door, but did that matter? It wouldn't lessen the vengeful obsession that would surely ignite in Toneri's heart.
Takuno possessed absolute confidence in his own strength.
He never believed that even in the future, Toneri would have even half a chance of shaking him.
However, leaving someone who hated him to the core alive in this world, no matter how weak they were now, was an unnecessary risk.
Time passed quietly, and finally, Takuno thought of a dangerous but perhaps only feasible method.
He looked at the sleeping Toneri and said:
"Whether you survive depends on your own will, and whether you can endure this hellish torment."
Before his voice had even faded, Takuno had already completed the hand seals.
"Spirit Transformation Technique!"
In an instant, a burst of dazzling yet not blinding spiritual radiance erupted from around Takuno.
His body stiffened slightly as his consciousness entered Toneri's fragile mental world.
Takuno's conscious entity traveled through these memories, which had almost no defenses, with a clear goal.
He needed to find the secret method the Ōtsutsuki used to create those sentient puppets, as well as the key to controlling that Golden Tenseigan.
The search process was unexpectedly smooth.
On the moon, the Ōtsutsuki Clan had withered to this extent, with only the father and son left to depend on each other.
Toneri's father, that final guardian, naturally held nothing back from his only blood descendant.
All the secrets of the moon and the keys to their inheritance were deeply engraved in the depths of Toneri's consciousness, almost entirely undefended.
Takuno's spirit easily delved into that treasury of memories and seized the answers he wanted.
The goal achieved, the next step was the most critical: memory erasure.
Takuno had personally experienced the terror of this forbidden technique, which he had previously only used on himself.
Even now, just recalling the feeling of performing the technique on himself caused his conscious entity to tremble violently, as if re-experiencing that extreme pain of being crudely torn apart by invisible hands.
Cold sweat nearly drenched his non-existent spiritual body.
However, its effect was also absolutely domineering and peerless.
With his current Super Kage level strength, no matter what method he tried, he could not recall that erased segment of memory.
"With this technique as a lock..." Takuno's conscious entity whispered in Toneri's mental world, "Unless you can one day reach the threshold of the Six Paths, perhaps... only then might it be possible to glimpse a trace of what was erased."
But Takuno was certain in his heart.
Allowing Toneri to reach the Six Paths level? That was practically a fairy tale.
Even in the original story, when he awakened the Tenseigan and dominated for a time with its power, his true strength might not have reached the true Six Paths realm.
Furthermore, now that his path to the Tenseigan had been completely cut off, that possibility was even more remote, bordering on non-existent.
But this wasn't enough.
A complete "blank slate" required a new "background color."
Takuno also needed to meticulously weave a false yet reliable memory: his father, after a long and lonely vigil, had died of old age, peacefully returning to the dust;
And he, the young Toneri, was taken from their secluded home by Takuno to begin a new life outside...
From now on, Toneri would not remember anything about the moon or the Golden Tenseigan; he would only remember that he used to live in a place isolated from the world.
As for the memories of living with his father, those could be retained.
However, all these meticulously planned follow-ups were built on one premise.
Toneri's consciousness had to survive the soul-shattering agony of memory erasure... and make it through alive.
Takuno's spiritual body hovered in the center of this crumbling mental space.
He stared at that fragile core point of consciousness; the pain he was about to inflict would be more despair-inducing than any physical torture.
If Toneri's will crumbled in the storm...
The only consequence would be the complete annihilation of his consciousness, and this shell would forever fall into a slumber from which it could never wake—complete death!
Soon, under Takuno's precise spiritual control, the memories from the depths of Toneri's soul were stripped away piece by piece, as if by an invisible blade.
The entire process was swift and efficient.
At the very instant the memories were completely erased, Toneri's hollow eye sockets snapped wide open, as if they were about to tear apart.
Immediately after, a shrill howl, enough to pierce the soul, erupted uncontrollably from deep within his throat, echoing endlessly through the empty palace, making one's skin crawl.
Takuno's consciousness had returned to his body, and he watched the agonizingly thrashing figure before him with indifference.
Toneri's distorted face and convulsing body all spoke of that inhuman torment.
Deep in Takuno's eyes, there wasn't a single ripple of emotion.
He was all too familiar with this scene.
As if time were flowing backward, he saw himself once again, struggling countless times within the forbidden technique—those purgatorial memories he didn't even want to touch.
However, a cold certainty supported his current indifference.
Though this pain was like falling into an abyss, it was not a dead end.
He himself was the living proof of having crawled out of such torment countless times.
This was the only chance he was giving Toneri.
Whether he could grasp this slim path to survival depended entirely on his own will.
Time lost its meaning in the brutal struggle.
An unknown amount of time passed, until the only sounds left in the palace were the dull thuds of flesh hitting the floor, the faint scratching of nails tearing skin, and that suppressed, extreme whimpering.
Toneri slammed his forehead against the cold, hard ground again and again, leaving behind striking bloodstains;
His hands clawed bloody gashes into his own skin, attempting to use physical pain to slightly alleviate the spiritual agony that was tearing his soul apart.
Just when this self-destructive struggle seemed endless, the battered body finally exhausted its last shred of strength.
Toneri's tensed muscles suddenly relaxed, and those hollow eye sockets, wide from pain, slowly closed.
With a breath so faint it was almost inaudible, he collapsed heavily to the ground, completely losing consciousness.
"He actually... survived?"
Takuno's gaze lingered briefly on the unconscious Toneri, a nearly imperceptible trace of surprise flickering in his eyes.
This result slightly exceeded his expectations.
But this surprise was fleeting, immediately replaced by his habitual indifference.
Since the boy had passed this trial of life and death, then the chance he mentioned was naturally real.
The subsequent arrangements were simple: find him a new body, and then, just like with Kimimaro, send him to Nono.
Having finished the business at hand, Takuno walked straight toward the deepest part of this grand palace.
There, in the dark and silent core, quietly hovered the ultimate treasure of this palace, emitting a heart-palpitating, majestic power.
That was the massive Golden Tenseigan!
Takuno's gaze was firmly seized by the massive Golden Sphere hovering in the air before him.
This was the legendary Golden Tenseigan; it hovered silently in the depths of the dark space, its entire body flowing with a molten-gold radiance—not blinding, yet containing a pressure that reached straight to the soul.
Even though Takuno did not yet have the Ōtsutsuki Clan's bloodline flowing within him, he could still clearly perceive what kind of heart-palpitating, terrifying power was compressed within this brilliant golden light.
This was by no means an ordinary object.
The creation before him, resembling a miniature sun, was essentially the ultimate fusion of countless Byakugans from Hamura's descendants.
That branch of Hamura's descendants hidden on the moon possessed noble bloodlines, and their strength and foundation were far beyond those of ordinary Shinobi.
Perhaps those who could reach the Super Kage realm were as rare as phoenix feathers, and Kage-level experts might not have been numerous, but the number of Jonin-level existences was surely considerable.
Imagine, having gathered the Ocular Power of so many experts and supplemented it with that mysterious fusion technique, the energy level contained within this final Golden Tenseigan had reached an incredible state, worthy of being called a rare ultimate power in the world.
Even the Tenseigan that Toneri later developed for himself probably couldn't compare to it.
If Naruto and Hyuga Hinata hadn't shattered this Golden Tenseigan before the final battle, and if Toneri had been able to borrow its power, then the outcome of that battle might not have been so certain, theoretically speaking.
Of course, theory is just theory; as the protagonist, Naruto likely had enough explosive power to turn the tables.
Takuno held his breath, his gaze meticulously sweeping over the smooth, flowing surface of the Tenseigan.
At this moment, it was a unified whole, perfect and flawless; without inside knowledge, it would be hard to believe that the core of this sphere, which radiated divine light, was actually composed of thousands of individual pale eyeballs.
Only by completely shattering and destroying it, as in the 'original story' from his memories, would this world-shaking creation reveal its most primitive form, disintegrating back into pale eyeballs scattering through the air.
However, Takuno remembered another key piece of information regarding this Golden Tenseigan.
Its surface was shrouded in a barrier.
If anyone without Hamura's bloodline dared to touch this barrier, the Tenseigan would instantly devour and drain all the chakra within the intruder's body.
Takuno had no intention of risking himself to test the power of this barrier.
'After all, it's a rare treasure that touches the Six Paths level...' he thought to himself.
The sealing barrier itself might not be powerful, but if it could utilize the internal power of the Golden Tenseigan, then its strength might be unimaginably amplified, becoming unbreakable and extremely dangerous.
In the original story, the key to this barrier being shattered was that Hyuga Hinata herself possessed the bloodline of Hamura.
Otherwise, with Naruto having already lost the Six Paths Power at that time, it really wasn't certain if he could have shattered this Golden Tenseigan.
After observing the Golden Tenseigan, Takuno didn't linger and left the area.
After all, even if he stayed, he couldn't use its power; just standing there watching was meaningless.
Takuno walked with a composed stride through the deep corridors of the palace, arriving directly at the forbidden area where the Ōtsutsuki Clan's secret techniques were stored.
Tall, heavy stone bookshelves stood in rows, displaying scrolls that recorded ancient powers.
He quickly scanned these Ninjutsu, which the Ōtsutsuki regarded as treasures, but his eyes held a trace of undisguised contempt.
Perhaps because the characteristics of the Byakugan in their bloodline were too prominent, this branch of the Ōtsutsuki really seemed to lack momentum in pure Ninjutsu mastery, making it difficult for them to catch his eye.
Looking through the entire library of secret techniques, almost without exception, they all relied on the Byakugan to be performed.
Like Toneri's ultimate technique, the "Golden Wheel Reincarnation Explosion," which could split the moon in two, its essence was also a manifestation of the Tenseigan's vast power.
As his own level of power became increasingly refined and lofty, Takuno felt more and more deeply that ordinary Ninjutsu had become trivial to him.
Except for those S-rank forbidden techniques that touched upon the essence of things and could still pique his interest, the vast majority of low-to-mid-tier Ninjutsu were like chicken ribs in his eyes—useless.
He didn't even need to be restricted by fixed techniques or hand seals; he only needed to manipulate the corresponding attribute of chakra as he pleased, performing subtle shape transformations, and the instant attack power generated would be enough to surpass those rigid Ninjutsu effects.
At its core, the mystery of the vast majority of Ninjutsu was nothing more than the permutation and application of the two fundamental laws of chakra: "Shape Transformation" and "Nature Transformation."
So-called fixed Ninjutsu were merely shortcuts paved for those whose power was still shallow and who found it difficult to directly master the essence of chakra.
It allowed them to simplify and standardize the complex and profound process of energy manipulation through fixed "hand seal" patterns.
This was originally a method created by Indra; in the ancient era of the Sage of Six Paths, when power was closer to its source, there were no such complicated rituals.
Therefore, compared to the Ōtsutsuki Ninjutsu scrolls which were of limited use to him, Takuno's gaze was more attracted to another type of secret technique.
Those puppet secret techniques that contained "self-intelligence."
With these intelligent puppets as helpers, he would no longer be alone when conducting experiments in the future.
Even if they could only handle basic assistant work, for Takuno, who didn't really trust others to come to his laboratory, it was already enough.