"Mother I'm sorry, I can't help you break the seal anymore." Black Zetsu was plunged into absolute, crushing despair.
This technique was fundamentally different from an ordinary Planetary Devastation. A standard sphere's gravity would steadily weaken over time and eventually crumble apart. But this prison, unleashed jointly by two titans, had practically zero possibility of decay.
The original Moon was still floating up there, completely intact. Inside that ancient rock was the physical husk of Kaguya, the mother he had always desperately wanted to rescue. Its continued existence proved that waiting for this new seal to naturally fail would take millenniums.
"Father, look."
On the village outskirts, Asuma suddenly stopped running and pointed up toward the distant sky.
The retired Third Hokage looked up, and a heavy hint of shock surfaced in his aged eyes.
That was... a moon?
No, that couldn't be right. The real moon was still hanging perfectly in the sky, so this massive sphere was a second one. Hiruzen recalled an ancient legend about the Sage of Six Paths. It was said that the original moon had been forged in ancient times to lock away a demon. Until this exact moment, everyone had treated it as mere myth.
But looking at this... it was undeniably real. Two moons, hanging in the sky together.
"Father, what's going on?"
"Don't ask any more questions, Asuma. This battle is no longer something you can involve yourself in. Go back to the village immediately." Hiruzen's expression was gravely serious. With a swift swish, he departed.
For the moment, he couldn't determine exactly who Madara had targeted, but one thing was abundantly clear: a clash on this apocalyptic scale was far beyond anything Konoha's conventional forces could handle. Even in his absolute prime, Hiruzen didn't think he could survive the shockwaves.
'I pray it isn't the result I'm imagining...' he thought silently.
It wasn't only Konoha who witnessed the miracle. A moon rose from the earth, anyone with functioning eyes could see it. Whether it was the Land of Lightning, currently engaged in massive infrastructure projects, or Sunagakure, busy aggressively mining their borders, they could all clearly see a bright, immaculate moon hanging in the atmosphere.
It was slightly smaller than the original, but still incomparably bright, its pale light pouring over the continent.
"What happened in Konoha?" Rasa looked up, his heart full of suffocating shock.
Creating a celestial body! That was a feat only a god had ever achieved. How overwhelmingly powerful did a shinobi have to be to execute such a thing?
"Kazekage-sama, that is..."
"Keep digging." Rasa waved his hand and let out a hollow, defeated sigh.
Comparisons will kill you with pure frustration. The immense joy he'd felt at discovering a small gold mine vanished instantly. He no longer harbored the slightest thought of opposing the Konoha. Given the current state of Sunagakure, they weren't even playing the same game.
Even if the entire shinobi world united, they probably still wouldn't match Konoha's might. This brutal script was all too familiar. They'd all lived through this nightmare once already, for decades, no one had dared start a war against Hashirama.
This was practically his second coming.
But then Rasa thought of another highly depressing problem. Hashirama had only lived for several decades. Summons possessed lifespans far beyond frail humans. A black cat with Senjutsu might easily live a century, or even longer.
Damn it. The more he thought, the more entirely hopeless it felt. Rasa took a deep breath and forced himself to stare at the dirt.
The exact same scene unfolded for Onoki and the Third Mizukage. Their bitter hatred of the cat was in no way less than Rasa's. Onoki had genuinely believed that after enduring for so many grueling years, Iwagakure had finally made it through. Then Konoha immediately sent a silent message to the entire continent:
They were just a group of younger brothers now, they all needed to behave themselves.
Forget it. Better to just sit tight and play honest. With power at the Six Paths level pressing down on them, even if Konoha decided to violently unify the map, they had no option but to surrender.
Not convinced? Swallow the pride or die.
Now, survival entirely depended on whether Konoha possessed that brutal ambition.
The strongest leaders of the ninja world were anything but calm. This night was doomed to be completely sleepless. Only a tiny portion of Konoha knew the actual truth, most were still lost in deep confusion.
Yet the most thoroughly bewildered observers weren't the shinobi below, but the descendants of Hamura Otsutsuki on the Moon. The origin of their home lay in the joint sealing jutsu used by Hagoromo and Hamura. Such power could only be wielded by beings on their divine level.
Could the Sage have been resurrected? Impossible. To accomplish this required two people simultaneously wielding that exact chakra.
The most troublesome part was that their current situation was incredibly dire. They had just fought a devastating civil war, using the strength of the entire clan to annihilate the peace-advocating main house. The horrific price was their own near-extinction. Their sacred bloodline was on the absolute brink of total extermination.
"What should we do?"
The remaining couple discussed the terrifying anomaly. They had already violently sacrificed their Byakugan, leaving them permanently blind. Even so, the mighty surges of chakra below were so enormous they could clearly sense them.
After several seconds, the man spoke. "Nothing. Right now, we might not be their match. And the clan desperately needs us to carry it on. Let's wait a few years. But I am highly curious, what exactly was sealed inside that new rock?"
"It must be something important."
The sphere kept rising higher and higher into the atmosphere. Once it reached the vacuum of space, it began violently absorbing surrounding meteorite fragments to grow, until it became almost the identical size of their own moon.
Unfortunately, the clan was down to two survivors. And at that exact moment, they sensed the arrival of two intruders.
One didn't feel human, but was terrifyingly dense. The other carried the distinct, unmistakable aura of the Sage of Six Paths.
Descendants of Hagoromo? The couple tensed in pure terror. In their twisted view, they bore the sacred mission of destroying the earth to reshape it. Thus, they regarded the Sage's descendants as mortal enemies. If those descendants discovered them... they would surely die.
They scrambled to hide in the dark castle, desperately masking their signatures.
However, with the impossibly keen senses of Takeshi and Madara, it was entirely futile.
"There really are people here."
"Meow~ But of course. How could I lie to you?"
Something about the castle felt terribly off to Madara, but the facts were undeniable: people truly lived on the Moon. Judging by their chakra, they were quite strong, far beyond the current Kage. Their aura felt distinctly similar to the Hyuga, yet vastly more ancient.
"Let's go take a look."
Right now, Madara had no time to worry about the parasite he'd just crushed. His mind was entirely consumed by the image Takeshi had painted of the Otsutsuki. He needed to know if the pair hiding inside matched the horrifying legend.
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