Brook could tell that Imu's self explosion, right in the Underworld God's hands, barely caused a ripple.
So he ran even faster.
The problem was, he was running like a headless fly. He had no idea where to go.
"It's over. It's over. We're going to get killed this time!"
The Underworld God was catching up, step by step. Brook's anxiety kept climbing until it felt like his soul might tear itself apart.
Was there really no way out of Underworld Hell?
"Hey! Underworld God! Stop chasing me!" Brook shouted back while sprinting. "Can you let me go? I can be your little brother!"
The moment the words left his mouth, a roar shook the abyss.
"I am Jin."
The Underworld God's voice carried pure fury.
"You ant that stole my power dares call yourself Hell God Jin? I don't even dare use the title God of Hell!"
Jin, the god of the Sangri Domain's western lower hell, was genuinely terrified by the implications. If the name "Hell God Jin" spread upward, he might get skinned alive by his superior and the higher level Underworld gods.
So Brook had to die.
A native soul this arrogant could not be allowed to exist.
"Great God Jin, I didn't know!" Brook's scalp went numb. "I won't say it again. I swear. I really want to join your side!"
"I don't need any subordinates!"
Jin swung a spear of dark energy and blasted it toward Brook.
He remembered the miserable fate of the Southern Underworld God, sealed by his own subordinates, and his murderous intent sharpened instantly.
He was a five thousand year term Underworld god. Why would he need followers?
And Brook was no beauty either. Was he supposed to drag this ugly ant back to a mid tier Underworld for laughs?
No.
These natives had terrible loyalty.
They needed to be erased.
Brook felt his soul nearly shatter as the attack ripped past him.
Surrender was useless.
So he ran, desperate and blind, not even knowing where he was flying.
"Ant, stop running," Jin sneered as he closed the distance. "The Underworld Realm is ahead. Your soul is under the jurisdiction of Western Underworld. You can't escape."
Without realizing it, Jin had chased Brook all the way to the boundary of the Northern Underworld.
Even Jin himself could not cross this Underworld Realm barrier, let alone Brook.
Jin knew what happened to ordinary souls that touched it.
They were instantly crushed to nothing, without even the chance of reincarnation.
After hearing that, Brook became even more desperate.
If he stayed, he died.
If he ran, he died.
So he chose the only option left.
Try anyway.
Brook forcibly mobilized his Underworld power and dark energy and slammed straight into the faintly transparent barrier.
"Ant, it's useless. Run…"
Jin's words died in his throat.
His eyes widened in shock as Brook crossed the boundary in an instant and vanished into the Northern Underworld.
Jin could not believe it.
He threw himself into the barrier.
Boom.
The rebound force blasted him backward.
He watched Brook disappear completely.
"How… how could this happen! No! How could this happen!!"
Jin roared, furious.
How could an indigenous soul pass through a boundary that even he could not cross?
He waved his hand, grabbed a handful of wandering souls, and threw them at the barrier.
They hissed and evaporated into nothingness.
So the barrier was still working.
Just not on Brook.
"Why is the Underworld Realm ineffective against that soul?" Jin's thoughts spun wildly. "He isn't a soul under Western Underworld? Is he a soul from outside the Sangri Domain's lower hell?"
Or had Brook's soul mutated?
Jin wanted to catch Brook and dissect him.
Study him.
But the ant had already entered the Northern Underworld, and Jin could not follow now.
In the end, he forced himself to breathe.
"Fine. I hope you're still alive a thousand years from now. When the shift changes, I'll go to Northern Underworld, kill you, and clean up the rebellion there too."
Jin's expression was ugly. Anger rose like poison in his chest.
He muttered as if cursing the world.
"That useless Northern Underworld God, Hirasaka, was actually killed by the natives. Worse than the Southern Underworld God, Ling."
"The northern part of the Sangri Domain actually produced a god level native. They fought Hirasaka to the death. Even Hirasaka's domain was occupied by that native's descendants."
From the little clone he had once sent, Fengjin had learned fragments.
The native who died together with Hirasaka was called the God of Otsutsuki, but Jin still did not know his true name.
Now the northern galaxy was being used for planetary grazing by the Otsutsuki clan.
That Otsutsuki god had left behind a descendant named Otsutsuki Shibai, who had devoured a great deal of Hirasaka's divine bloodline and abilities.
The Otsutsuki followed the path of devouring evolution.
A race full of potential.
A race that had already killed an Underworld God.
A thousand years later, Jin would absolutely work with his superior to wipe them out.
"At least my Western Underworld doesn't have a planetary race that ambitious," Fengjin sighed. "Otherwise I couldn't have slept for three or four thousand years in peace."
But thinking of Brook, that special ant, still made him uneasy.
In Imu's memories, Brook had relatives in that pirate world.
If necessary, Jin could use tricks.
But the bigger question was this.
Could Brook's soul even survive in the northern galaxy under Northern Underworld's jurisdiction?
The Otsutsuki were there.
That race had the potential to kill gods.
In the end, Jin turned away from the boundary and returned to his garrison.
He would train.
Strengthen his bottlenecked power.
Prepare for any unexpected situation.
He decided he would not sleep for the next thousand years.
Because a thousand years later, when his superior arrived, he would go to Northern Underworld, kill Brook, and eradicate the Otsutsuki.
Only then would his irritation finally end.
··
Meanwhile, Brook sprinted through darkness, not daring to stop until he could no longer feel Jin's pressure behind him.
Only then did he slow down, panting, and begin recovering what little strength he had left.
He looked around.
This place felt wrong.
The environment was nothing like the Underworld Hell he had just fled from.
Even the dark energy and ghostly energy felt thinner, scattered, as if the world itself had been torn open.
Where were the Underworld gods here?
Was there no god guarding this Northern Underworld at all?
-----------
Brook wandered through the ruined Underworld, absorbing the remaining ghost energy and Underworld power to restore his soul.
For several days, he did not encounter a single living creature. There were only endless ruins, and not even one drifting soul.
"Has this Underworld Hell lost its pull on the dead?" Brook's heart sank. "Does that mean the reincarnation cycle in this region has already been broken?"
The conclusion was horrifying.
Then he remembered what Jin had said, that Brook's soul fell under the jurisdiction of the Western Underworld.
If that was true, then this place was likely one of the other Underworld Hells in the remaining directions.
Which meant only one thing.
Something powerful had shattered this Underworld.
"Did a being strong enough to break an Underworld Realm come here? Even a god comparable to Jin was killed?"
Brook's scalp went numb.
This Northern Underworld felt even more dangerous than Western Underworld, the one Jin ruled.
He immediately began scanning the ruins with extreme caution, afraid that some monster would appear and erase him in an instant.
"How do I leave the Underworld and return to the real world?"
Brook's thoughts spiraled.
Should he try to slip back to Western Underworld, then quietly look for a chance to return to the One Piece world?
If he could sneak back across the Underworld Realm barrier without alerting Jin, that might be his safest path.
So Brook continued roaming, absorbing ghost energy and Underworld power to strengthen himself, while searching for an opening to go back.
But on the seventh day, he felt it.
A blunt spiritual call.
It was clumsy, awkward, and persistent.
Brook hesitated.
Was this a lucky encounter, or a trap?
While he lay inside a cluster of collapsed buildings and weighed his options, a white figure suddenly appeared in the distance.
Brook nearly jumped out of his soul.
He instantly hid, thinking a big shot had come to kill him.
Then his expression turned strange.
A pale skinned man in white, with long light blue hair, appeared through a black portal. Without stopping, he opened another black portal and vanished again, as if this ruined Underworld was nothing but a transit station.
Brook stared, stunned.
"That guy with the glowing red fish basket on his back, the glowing red fishing rod in his hand, and the black portal ability…"
His thoughts snapped together.
"Is that Otsutsuki Urashiki?"
So he had crossed into the Naruto world.
And the black portal Urashiki used, the bloodline ninjutsu called Yomotsu Hirasaka.
Brook's mind cursed nonstop.
Had this Underworld Hell been destroyed by the Otsutsuki clan?
Had the Underworld god stationed here been devoured?
Brook thought about the Rinnegan, Sharingan, Byakugan, the bloodline limits, the bloodline eliminations, the bloodline nets.
Especially the Rinnegan.
Just hearing its name felt like an Underworld ability.
A terrible guess formed in his mind.
The Otsutsuki had killed the god of this Underworld, devoured the divine corpse, and from that, gained countless strange abilities.
If the Otsutsuki could awaken Yomotsu Hirasaka, that meant they could enter Underworld Hell, then use that foundation to develop space time movement, traveling between reality and Yomi.
And Brook had noticed something else.
The Rinnegan, Sharingan, Byakugan all felt like external abilities, like objects that could be dug out and used by any living creature.
It was outrageous.
As if those powers were not truly innate to the Otsutsuki at all.
After thinking through all of this, Brook stopped resisting the spiritual call.
He might have just found his way out.
Either follow the Otsutsuki and escape, or follow this call.
Brook chose the call.
The moment he connected to it, a flood of information poured in, and a connection stabilized.
Brook's eyes widened.
"It's… Jin's clone?"
He felt excited and wary at the same time.
This consciousness was the so called death god from the Naruto world, the one that seemed mindless, yet it was actually an intelligence tool connected to Jin.
And now it had linked to Brook because Brook carried Jin's aura and power.
The information came in pieces, but it was more than enough.
This ruin was the Northern Hell of the Sangri Domain's lower Underworld. Its resident god was the Northern Underworld God Hirasaka.
And Hirasaka had died together with the first Otsutsuki God.
This death god tool had arrived on the ninja world a thousand years ago through Kaguya Otsutsuki's Yomotsu Hirasaka and had taken shelter inside a death god mask guarded by the Uzumaki clan.
Because it lost contact with Jin and received no instructions, the Uzumaki clan used it as the foundation for a forbidden technique.
Shiki Fuujin.
And the name of this intelligence tool death god was also Jin, a low profile clone of Western Underworld Jin.
Now, because Brook carried Jin's aura, it could contact him successfully.
The Northern Underworld had been broken, and the reincarnation of the planets in this northern region was broken as well.
On the ninja world, Kaguya's eldest son, Hagoromo, was still present and had established a "Pure Land" to collect souls.
That explained the strange phenomenon of Impure World Reincarnation being able to summon souls from everywhere.
Otherwise, those souls would have long since been dragged into the true Underworld and recycled.
Brook absorbed the information rapidly.
And something else clicked.
There was no summon call from the Third or Fourth Hokage.
Which meant the timeline was still before Minato Namikaze's death.
"The timeline is early," Brook muttered. "But it doesn't matter."
His eyes sharpened.
"These powers belong to gods. The Otsutsuki stole them. It looks like I need a slice too."
Brook began thinking hard.
According to the death god clone's information and Brook's understanding of Naruto's plot, the Otsutsuki clan's closest figure to the old Otsutsuki God, Otsutsuki Shibai, was already approaching the combat level of two Underworld gods.
The first Otsutsuki God had defeated the Northern Underworld God Hirasaka.
So what would happen if Shibai, who had inherited and devoured part of Hirasaka's abilities, continued evolving?
Would Shibai grow beyond Jin and Hirasaka?
Over the years, Shibai had collected Hirasaka's bloodline and continuously used the Divine Tree to absorb planetary energy to advance.
Maybe he really could surpass the original Otsutsuki God and reach a higher world.
After digesting everything, Brook temporarily abandoned the idea of sneaking back to Western Underworld.
Jin was still watching for him.
Now he had to make a path here.
And if possible, steal a glimpse of Hirasaka's abilities. If he got lucky, he might even gain power on the level of a god.
Brook could return to the real world through the Otsutsuki clan's Yomotsu Hirasaka, but that might lead directly into the Otsutsuki lair, where Shibai could kill him in minutes.
So the only remaining option was this.
Use the death god clone as a route to the Naruto planet.
But the current death god clone, Jin, was weak. It did not have enough energy to summon Brook out of the Underworld on its own.
Which meant Brook had to wait.
He needed a powerful sacrifice.
Only then could the death god clone gather enough strength to pull him out of Northern Underworld and into the living world.
.....
[If you don't want to wait for the next update, read 10–50 chapters ahead on P@treon.]
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