Inside the Land of Hot Water, an unseen presence drifted across the landscape.
It was the reanimated body of Mū, the Second Tsuchikage—his form sealed in wrappings, silent and ghostlike.
Yet the one guiding his every step wasn't Mū himself.
The will behind the movement belonged to the jutsu's true master this time—Tobirama Senju.
Since his soul had been summoned back to the world of the living six months ago, Tobirama had adapted to everything almost unnervingly well.
The moment he was summoned, he quickly broke free from Danzo's control, and soon, when they returned back to the village, he quietly reasserted his command, like he had never left.
Hiruzen and Danzo bowed beneath his authority fully once more.
At his commands, Danzo even reanimated Hashirama next.
With both brothers restored, Konoha's immediate and spiralling internal chaos and newfound external pressure, due to the "Hyuga Incident," were swiftly brought to heel once more then.
Tobirama resumed his old research projects, expanded them, and began entirely new ones.
His Edo Tensei vessel granted him an inexhaustible well of chakra, so although his Flying Raijin was still somewhat less efficient than that of the young prodigy Minato, he'd heard about and praised, it was now identically devastatingly effective.
So, from time to time, he also joined battles across the world himself, like Minato, teleporting between warfronts with ease, often bringing Hashirama along.
Under their combined shadow, the other great villages began to falter.
The fear of the two legendary founders' impossible return from the dead, in their full glory, spread like wildfire.
In Konoha, they were once again worshiped as living gods, as if they had never died.
Hiruzen, though still Hokage in name, had become little more than a forgotten relic.
It was now again only a matter of time before the great war engulfing the continent ended in Konoha's favor.
Yet one mystery still eluded Tobirama, the unknown intruder who had attacked the Hyūga clan months ago.
His investigations had led nowhere.
The Hyūga denied knowing anything about the attacker, and when questioned about the strange energy that had repelled him in the end, they simply called it a "family secret."
Tobirama knew they were in a weakened state.
Both the Main and Side Branches had suffered heavy losses.
Dozens of Byakugan had been taken, their prestige shattered, and suspicion toward them within the village had never been higher.
Tobirama used that pressure to his advantage, demanding answers and pressing for any hint of what power they had used.
Yet even under his and even Hashirama's name, he brought up, the Hyūga remained guarded.
They claimed it was merely an ancient defensive weapon, nothing more.
He chose not to force the issue.
The world was still at war, and internal stability mattered more than his curiosities or greed.
There were more pressing threats, Ryusei Senju and his circle.
Tobirama understood that clans keeping such "heirlooms" or secret powers wasn't entirely forbidden, though in practice, what mattered most was who held the strength to enforce and protect their rights.
And for now, Tobirama simply felt like he had more leverage compared to the weakened and isolated Hyuga, despite their mysteries.
So, he proposed a "deal": they would join the coming raid against Ryusei and use that mysterious power once in his service.
In return, he would "protect" their standing in the village.
Hiashi, the current patriarch, eventually agreed in principle, admitting the clan could wield that power through him—but not yet.
The conditions weren't right for some reason, and he wouldn't budge on that, no matter what.
Tobirama eventually let the matter rest, only reminding Hiashi to remember his promise for the future.
Deep down, Tobirama was certain that whatever that ability was, it rivaled even Hashirama's full might.
It was still worth keeping in reserve.
And besides, he already had more than enough surprises prepared to deal with Ryusei Senju, thanks to certain unexpected developments, or rather bizarre "visions" and "dreams" he had begun to receive lately.
Tobirama had gained two crucial insights since his return, truths he had never grasped in life.
First, he realized how limited his understanding of the world had truly been.
Death had revealed to him mysteries far deeper than chakra, life, or reincarnation.
And now, the current state of the world showed him powers and forces that hadn't even existed in his time.
So, there were things that, with all his intellect, even he had never conceived of.
Second, he finally understood how flawed his brother's vision of peace had been.
Hashirama had ended the Warring States era, but in doing so, he hadn't ended war at all.
He had simply institutionalized it.
Instead of countless small skirmishes, the world now suffered colossal, organized conflicts—world wars, far rarer but infinitely more catastrophic.
When Tobirama died during the First Shinobi War, he had assumed it was a necessary price for shaping a new world.
But now, after seeing two more even greater wars follow, his conclusion was absolute. Hashirama had been wrong.
Hashirama's vision had been simple: that the unprecedented unity between the Senju and Uchiha, the two most contradictory and powerful shinobi clans of their era, would inspire others to follow in more ways than one, fear and admiration both.
He believed that their alliance would trigger a chain reaction across the continent, leading other clans to band together and form hidden villages of their own.
And in that sense, he had been right.
But his second premise — that greater power would make people more responsible and restrained — was disastrously wrong.
Even Tobirama could no longer deny it. Despite being brothers, he now saw how deeply he'd once been blinded by Hashirama's charisma and impossible optimism.
Hashirama truly believed that a system built on concentrated strength would bring order to the world, that the newly formed villages would restrain themselves and hence protect their children from war.
Instead, greater power only magnified human greed.
The same cycle of fear, greed, ambition, and rivalry simply shifted from individual clans to entire nations.
Even his so-called "tailed beast diplomacy" backfired.
He thought distributing the bijū among the villages would create a balance of mutual deterrence, a shared awareness of mutual destruction.
But the opposite happened; Tobirama saw it firsthand today.
Each village believed it could master its tailed beast faster, control it better, and weaponize it sooner than the others.
It seemed that for a while, peace lasted only because of Hashirama's sheer might and Madara's silent and looming threats.
But once that fear faded, so did restraint.
At the First Kage Summit, for example, Hashirama's delusional ideals reached their peak and their undoing.
In the end, he "sold" the tailed beasts to other nations, though only because Tobirama had urged him not to give them away entirely for free in the first place.
But it was still charity disguised as diplomacy, a gesture cloaked in talk of fairness and balance as well, but in truth, little more than idealistic self-sabotage.
Yes, the sales brought wealth to Konoha at first, funding its early rise, but Tobirama saw it differently now.
What use was money in a world ruled by strength?
Those tailed beasts were the ultimate weapons — the world's true fists — and Hashirama had handed them away.
Now, after his own revival, Tobirama could see just how naïve even his brother's external vision had been as well.
During life, he had already thought Hashirama's greatest weakness was his blind faith in the Uchiha, which he also made plans to mitigate later during his helm.
In his opinion, it was foolish to believe a clan so extreme and volatile could ever integrate peacefully into a stable internal order from the beginning.
However, now, after witnessing what became of the shinobi world, Tobirama realized even his brother's grand plan for peace had been a fool's dream.
Instead, true peace, Tobirama thought now, could only exist under dominance, exactly like Madara himself also always believed.
One village had to stand so far above the rest that no one dared challenge it. This was the answer that eluded Hashirama.
However, that village had to be Konoha, and he, Tobirama Senju, was the only one fit to lead it, not Madara nor the Uchiha.
Not even his overly-idealistic elder brother.
So, Tobirama now no longer desired to return to the afterlife.
He would have to get stronger also to achieve his new ambitions.
The visions he'd received since his awakening felt almost divine, as if something had chosen him to finish what his brother never could.
To conquer this chaotic world and bring it lasting order, by force if necessary.
But before that future could be secured, one threat had to be erased.
Ryusei Senju.
The boy was an internal cancer, unpredictable and dangerous.
A threat and enemy greater than any other village, no matter how absurd it sounded, in Tobirama's opinion.
So, he understood then that Ryusei wasn't just another rogue.
He was his true rival—someone born of the same blood, but destined to stand against him.
Even the strange entity that had whispered to Tobirama seemed wary of him and wanted him mainly gone.
It had begun in the strangest way.
One day, while experimenting with Edo Tensei, after his revival, Tobirama felt something, an unseen presence subtly guiding his hand.
He followed that pull, and the moment he did, a connection formed.
From that day onward, flashes of insight began to reach him through dreams and sudden waking visions.
Each one revealed a fragment of knowledge, refinements, corrections, and ideas that elevated his technique beyond anything he had ever conceived.
Over time, with that mysterious guidance, Tobirama created what he now considered the most advanced form of Edo Tensei in existence, one that even surpassed Danzo's.
Because it no longer required the DNA of the deceased.
Instead, it allowed Tobirama's own soul to briefly reach into the Pure Land.
If a person's soul had enough density, strength, or presence, he could locate and summon it using any suitable sacrifice.
It was a fusion of his earlier concepts, the spirit transformation technique he had theorized in life, and made that prototype, Edo Tensei itself, advanced sensory methods, and layers of sealing formulae.
Mū was one such soul, chosen precisely because past Kage-level shinobi possessed the most powerful and traceable spiritual signatures.
Yet even Tobirama knew this was beyond his natural ability.
No matter how brilliant, he could never have achieved this in fifty more years of study.
The pattern was too deliberate, too refined.
Something was guiding him.
He couldn't see it, but he could feel its presence, immense, inhuman, almost omnipotent, existing somewhere far beyond this world.
He had his suspicions.
All his new research on history in recent months, no matter the path in question, led and stopped to a single ancient name—the Sage of Six Paths.
Whether that being was truly the one aiding him, Tobirama couldn't be sure.
They never spoke, not directly.
But every time he worked toward eliminating Ryusei Senju, some force seemed to aid him—new insights, sudden opportunities, unexplained coincidences.
Even Danzo and Hiruzen had described the same thing before their own failed attempt half a year ago.
They, too, had received unexpected "gifts" that conveniently strengthened their hand against Ryusei.
Tobirama wasn't the type to deny what stood before him just because it defied logic. By now, it was obvious.
Something, or someone, wanted Ryusei gone.
It wasn't just Edo Tensei that benefited from this help.
The same influence had led him to design a barrier capable of disrupting teleportation entirely, perfect for countering Ryusei's Flying Slug Raijin technique.
Now, hidden within Mū's invisible body, Tobirama was placing the final seals to anchor it.
Even his excursions into the Pure Land had been touched by that force.
Each time he reached beyond, it was as if unseen hands cleared the way, revealing lost souls, forgotten Kage, and other powerful figures buried in the depths of history.
The more he experienced it, the more certain he became.
This was no illusion, no mortal power.
Compared to it, Hashirama and even Madara were nothing.
This was the power that transcended life and death themselves, an existence capable of commanding even the dimensions beyond reality.
"This time, you will not escape on my watch…"
Tobirama's voice was a whisper within the void.
This time, he had also fully personally prepared this death trap for the young Senju, so he felt fairly certain it would succeed.
Cloaked in Mū's perfect invisibility, even more improved now in this Edo form than during his prime, through some of his newfound adjustments, he moved through the air in silence, inscribing unnoticable otherworldly jutsu-shiki across the landscape, symbols so intricate that even he barely understood their full design.
They were constructs of pure soul power, capable of shaping space itself.
The mechanism was delicate. Most of the Kage souls he would summon later would have to channel their essence to sustain this structure, ensuring Ryusei couldn't flee once the trap was sealed.
Even so, there would still be enough of them and strength left among his Edo Tensei ranks to destroy him directly.
The plan was precise. Once Mū finished placing the final seals and the barrier activated, the real Tobirama, still stationed in Konoha, would teleport inside with Hiruzen, Danzo, and Shinsuke, his only possible aides for this operation.
From there, he would summon the rest of his prepared Edo Tensei, the legendary dead, to crush Ryusei and his allies in one decisive strike.
The barrier itself was peculiar by design.
Spatial movement into it was possible, but not out of it.
That was essential, since Tobirama needed to use Flying Raijin to enter, yet he couldn't risk anyone escaping.
He couldn't personally approach on foot; Ryusei's sensory field would detect him long before he got close.
Only Mū's body possessed the perfect chakra suppression necessary to set the trap without being noticed.
Only Mū's body could form a barrier that precise and compact, narrow enough to operate within the limited energy Tobirama had prepared, and with movements subtle enough to remain completely undetected by the enemy.
So, finally, after hours of precise movement and silent sealing, the last formula flared faintly, sinking into the earth and vanishing from sight.
The formation was complete.
Tobirama's presence pulsed once through the invisible tether connecting him to Mū's body.
Everything was ready.
Now, it was time.
Tobirama was certain Ryusei was there.
It wasn't the exact same location as before; Ryusei had obviously shifted his hideout in the meantime, but it was still within the same region.
His sensory ability, even now, was not inferior to the boy's; if anything, it remained superior.
Tobirama had always prided himself on being the greatest sensor in history, and while Ryusei's talent, in the same area, was even more impressive, he was still too young to surpass him.
That same level of sensory ability was what allowed Tobirama to control Mū's Edo Tensei body all the way from Konoha, across the map, in the first place.
Moreover, with the same mysterious insights that had refined his Edo Tensei and other arts, Tobirama had perfected the Spirit Transformation Technique to an entirely new level.
His soul could now extend its awareness across vast distances and work even better for sensing. And therefore, since it was far harder for others to detect a spirit than a physical presence, he had already confirmed Ryusei's location without alerting him in the slightest.
Tobirama knew the brat's ultimate confidence came from that possible reverse summoning of his, the link to Shikkotsu Forest, and those hateful slugs.
That was likely why Ryusei still dared to remain in the Land of Hot Water in the first place.
He probably believed he could escape at any moment or survive through any obstruction until then, with his strength, in Tobirama's opinion.
However, what he couldn't have anticipated was an otherworldly technique like this, one so complex that even Tobirama didn't fully understand it.
It used the souls of the powerful dead as fuel, weaving them into a field of spatial interference that warped the very fabric of the real world.
"Sage of Six Paths… if it truly is you, and it's your great hand that's been guiding me all this time in silence, for reasons beyond my shallow understanding," Tobirama murmured into the still air.
"Then so be it," He continued, his voice low but steady. "You have my gratitude, whatever your reasons may be. I'll see this through to the end and fulfill the design you've placed before me."
"You can return to your eternal peace," he murmured. "Ryusei Senju will soon be nothing more than a memory, perhaps not even that..." The words carried no anger, only certainty.