After reaching a consensus with Minato Namikaze and the others, Uchiha Yuan and Hyuga Asana left the Namikaze residence and returned to the Uchiha clan grounds.
Over the course of this year, the Police Department's reforms had been fully completed.
Minato Namikaze had given the Uchiha clan other responsibilities within the village, so the clan members were no longer confined to just the Police Department.
Now, members of the Uchiha clan and other clans in the Police Department were split about fifty-fifty.
Especially in the newly formed Fourth and Fifth Divisions, the members were primarily from other clans.
The Fourth Division was mainly made up of members from various Konoha clans such as the Ino-Shika-Cho trio and the Aburame.
The Fifth Division was mostly composed of civilian shinobi.
In contrast, the earlier First and Second Divisions still had a higher concentration of Uchiha members, approximately a 70-30 split.
The Third Division was already at an even 50-50 split.
After Uchiha Yuan became the clan head, the captain of the Third Division became Uchiha Cai.
Yamanaka Kagetsu went to the Fourth Division to serve as its captain.
It's worth noting that Hyuga Asana also began working—not in the Police Department, but at the Konoha Hospital.
Ever since joining the Konoha Hospital, Hyuga Asana had been running between there and the Hidden Sound Village.
Fortunately, with Shadiao, flying over didn't take too much time.
Over the past year, Orochimaru and Hyuga Asana extracted the genetic segment missing in the Hyuga clan from the Kaguya clan's bodies and injected it into Hyuga Asana.
Later, they attempted to extract genes from the Uzumaki and Uchiha clans—both descendants of the Sage of Six Paths.
After multiple screenings, they identified the genetic deficiencies in the Hyuga lineage and reinjected the missing genes into Hyuga Asana.
Following these two rounds of gene supplementation, the hereditary flaws in the Hyuga bloodline were significantly repaired.
However, her Byakugan did not evolve this time. Instead, the Caged Bird Seal had all but vanished—leaving only a small green mark on her forehead, about the size of a fingernail. She no longer needed to wear a forehead protector to hide it.
At this point, the Caged Bird Seal only retained the post-mortem destruction function: it would automatically destroy her Byakugan after death.
Even if the Hyuga clan's main family activated the seal now, the most it would cause Hyuga Asana would be a mild neural tingling—no longer a serious threat.
Her aura had gradually become more like that of the Ōtsutsuki clan. Her skin had become even paler, and her hair had turned into the signature silver-white color of the Ōtsutsuki.
Uchiha Yuan speculated that if Hyuga Asana could obtain the bloodline of the Ōtsutsuki Hamura descendants on the moon, she would fully achieve a reversion to the Ōtsutsuki ancestry—just like the Sage of Six Paths and his brother—thus acquiring a complete Ōtsutsuki bloodline.
Naturally, Hyuga Asana's changes drew the attention of the Hyuga clan, especially after she stopped wearing her forehead protector. Clan members were shocked to discover that her Caged Bird Seal seemed to have disappeared.
This stirred up excitement among many branch family members who held resentment toward the main family.
They secretly approached Hyuga Asana, hoping she could help them remove their Caged Bird Seals as well.
In fact, the moment she realized she had more or less freed herself from the influence of the seal, Hyuga Asana immediately attempted to use the same method to remove the seals on her parents and older brother.
The first to undergo the attempt was her elder brother. After receiving a transplant of Senju Hashirama's cells, just like Asana, he had an intense rejection reaction and nearly died on the operating table.
Fortunately, Orochimaru managed to save his life.
Hyuga Asana reconsidered and decided to extract only the parts of the First Hokage's cells that were genetically complementary to the Hyuga lineage and made another attempt.
This time, her brother's chakra increased significantly, and the Caged Bird Seal mark also faded, but there were no signs of evolution in his Byakugan.
Later, Hyuga Asana injected him with the two other gene extracts.
His Caged Bird Seal shrank to the size of a fingernail, and like her, his hair turned silver-white, a characteristic of the Ōtsutsuki clan, but no other Ōtsutsuki traits emerged.
Afterward, Hyuga Asana administered the serum to her parents as well. Her father's hair also turned silver-white, while her mother, aside from having the Caged Bird Seal removed, exhibited no changes—her hair color remained the same.
This left Hyuga Asana deeply puzzled.
Orochimaru, after conducting numerous experiments, formed a hypothesis: the differences might stem from the purity of the Byakugan—or more precisely, the purity of their bloodlines.
To confirm this, Hyuga Asana asked Uchiha Yuan to stealthily infiltrate the Hyuga clan and steal blood samples from various clan members, especially from the main family.
Hyuga Asana sent these samples to Orochimaru, who confirmed his suspicion after testing them.
Moreover, Orochimaru reached a new conclusion: within the entire Hyuga clan, the individual with the purest bloodline was the main family's eldest daughter, Hyuga Hinata. Even Hyuga Asana ranked second, showing a noticeable gap in purity compared to Hinata.
Uchiha Yuan wasn't surprised by this outcome. In the original story, the Ōtsutsuki on the moon directly referred to Hinata as the "Princess of the Byakugan," and Ōtsutsuki Toneri awakened the Tenseigan by seizing Hyuga Hanabi's eyes.
This suggests that Hyuga Hiashi's two daughters likely possessed Byakugan of extremely high purity.
In other words, they both potentially could undergo the same transformation as Hyuga Asana—completing the ancestral reversion through gene supplementation.
Upon learning this conclusion, Hyuga Asana became quite interested in Hyuga Hinata.
And since many branch family members were secretly coming to her for help, Hyuga Asana decided to assist them in removing the Caged Bird Seal altogether. She also planned to take this opportunity to abolish the Hyuga clan's main-branch family system.
Hyuga Asana shared her thoughts with Uchiha Yuan, who naturally gave her his full support.
So Hyuga Asana told the branch family members who came to her in secret to look for missions that would require them to leave the village.
This was because removing the Caged Bird Seal using her method required some time, and doing it within the village might result in being discovered by the main family mid-procedure, which would be troublesome.
The branch members who secretly sought her help readily agreed.
In the following days, more than a dozen Hyuga branch members took on missions requiring them to leave the village, effectively "escaping" the Hyuga clan.
Hyuga Asana had Orochimaru arrange personnel to intercept and receive them in advance.
Orochimaru was also very welcoming of the Hyuga branch members—he too wanted to observe the changes that would occur after they were injected with the genetic serum and whether another "exception" like Hyuga Asana would emerge.
At the same time, Uchiha Yuan had also completed all preparatory work on his end and was ready to attempt constructing a new Tailed Beast inside Naruto's body at any moment.
(To Be Continued...)