Hagoromo's eyes half-closed as he listened to the faint hum of the world below them, the pulse of life still moving through every tree and stream.
He thought quietly, the same calm hiding an old, heavy cunning.
After all, beings like the Otsutsuki, or anyone even close to them like him, were never easy to kill or for them to die.
Their souls could still linger, no matter how their bodies ended.
After all, even his sons' souls, each only a quarter Otsutsuki by nature, were still too powerful to enter the Pure Land after death.
They lingered instead, caught between endless reincarnations and the edges of Purgatory.
Though this cycle was also partly orchestrated and constantly manipulated by Hagoromo himself, as one of the central acts in the grand play he and Gamamaru had built, it still proved the point.
Their souls were simply too immense, their existence too unnatural, to ever truly rest inside the Pure Land easily.
That was exactly what had happened to Hagoromo as well, but in a way more clear sense.
After his physical death, his soul didn't vanish; it stayed behind.
Slowly, it spread through the Purgatory until he made that entire realm his domain.
Over time, he also became deeply familiar with the flow of the Pure Land itself, how souls entered and left it, and how the planet's natural energy tied everything together.
He had long since learned how to control it to an extent.
In the process, he gained new powers, things no mortal could even describe.
Additionally, before his death, he had left several backhands in the physical world, too, hidden pieces of himself and his will.
So he was always aware of how far their plans had come.
And Gamamaru could always reach him easily, since both of them were strong enough to communicate instantly across dimensions whenever they wanted.
Hagoromo could have returned already, to the real world too, but that was never the goal.
He knew the requirement; he had to find a body capable of accepting him.
That was the key. Also, if he did it too early, they had already calculated that the planet's chance of resisting the Otsutsuki in the future would drop sharply, for some reason.
It was simply way more optimal to stay still.
His very return could weaken the natural defense cycle of this world.
That was why he chose to wait.
He planned to return only after that blond family, the one destined to repel the Otsutsuki, had finished their part.
Once they built their powers and physiques enough, once the danger was over and the Otsutsuki threat was about to fall, and they were about to win, then Hagoromo would move right at the most opportune moment, and scenario, Gamamaru helped calculate for him.
He would strike at the perfect time, take one of their bodies for himself, and rise again.
He would win in the end, thanks to his patience of more than a thousand years, and finally reap the fruits of his schemes and their labor.
Then, together with Gamamaru, he would act.
The two of them would destroy the other sage regions completely, the Snake and the Slug, and unify the natural energy under their control.
Gamamaru would manipulate things from within nature, while Hagoromo ruled over all souls.
They would become the true gods of this planet, its will and its natural energy combined.
This had always been Hagoromo's true nature.
Ambitious, cunning, never content to serve anyone else.
In truth, he and Gamamaru had reached that understanding long ago, over a thousand years past, even before they faced his mother, Kaguya.
Back then, they were still young in spirit, one a curious toad, the other an ambitious man already learning how to scheme like a god.
They had simply hidden it all behind the illusion of balance, prophecy, and harmony, even to Gamamaru's toad and human followers.
Yet, the world never knew that Hagoromo had even tricked his own twin brother.
He had told Hamura, near the end of his life as well, to go and pour almost all his essence into that Giant Tenseigan on the moon.
That way, his descendants could survive there for centuries, enduring that barren, hostile environment while guarding the Ten-Tails husk and keeping constant watch for any Otsutsuki or other invaders from beyond the stars.
But that was all part of the act.
In truth, Hagoromo only wanted to remove his greatest rival.
There was no real need for that moon play at all.
Gamamaru could already sense whenever the Otsutsuki tried to descend.
And as for the Ten Tails husk, Hagoromo had already bound it to the Rinnegan, meaning that any chosen successor could summon it freely to the Earth again later.
So, there was no real reason to guard something that was no longer sealed.
Hamura had been tricked.
The entire "Moon Clan" story, the mission, the duty, all of it had been a clean way to send him away and drain his power.
Hamura had given up most of his soul and strength for that giant Tenseigan, and only a small fragment remained alive there, a fragment Hagoromo already planned to recycle later.
That fragment would eventually be drawn into the wife of the so-called "main character" he was preparing for the next era.
It was all calculated.
Every bloodline, every prophecy, every "chosen" hero—they were just the stage Hagoromo built for his own eventual return.
Gamamaru's throat rumbled with quiet amusement beside him.
"You always were the better actor, Hagoromo. Even your brother never saw through it."
Hagoromo's expression remained calm. "He never could. He was pure," he said quietly. "And purity is just another word for blindness."
In the grand hierarchy of schemers, Madara Uchiha and even Black Zetsu were nothing more than jesters to him, fools pretending to pull the strings in a world that still moved according to his design, alongside themselves as well.
The cavern breathed softly around them, the natural energy pulsing in slow, steady waves, as if the planet itself was listening in silence.
Then Gamamaru's bulbous eyes narrowed slightly, the ripple of his throat slow and deliberate. "It seems," he began, his voice echoing softly through the cavern, "that Konoha is finally making its big move."
He went on to explain, his words low, heavy with implication, but what he said was left drifting somewhere between the glow of the water and the hum of the surrounding energy...
...
When the faint resonance of his explanation ended, Hagoromo's soul flickered faintly with light, a quiet glint of satisfaction.
The biggest factor Konoha had chosen for their attack—Edo Tensei—was exactly the sort of thing that opened doors for him.
He could almost feel the structure of it from here, that crude imitation of the soul cycle, the pull between the Pure Land and the living. A bridge he could twist without ever being seen.
Hagoromo's expression softened with faint amusement.
"Edo Tensei, is it? Then their arrogance has done the work for me," he said quietly. "If they're calling the dead back, it means I can reach through the cracks again."
His voice sank lower, carrying a calm certainty. "That boy, Ryusei, the impostor, the vessel, whatever he truly is, I'll make it far worse for him. He won't survive. After that, I'll also decide what to do with Orochimaru and the others circling around him."
Gamamaru's throat swelled with a slow, rumbling chuckle.
"You're going to interfere again, aren't you?"
Hagoromo's glow steadied, faint but cold. "Not interfere," he said. "Correct."