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Chapter 275: Can We Really Live for Hundreds of Millions of Years?
Hanabi sat on Hinata's lap. Her little head rested against her older sister's bulging Snow Seeds, nuzzling softly against them. It felt as though she were resting against the softest, most comfortable cotton in the world.
"Big sis," Hanabi said, tilting her head back to look at Hinata with unbridled admiration. "You mentioned before that we're going to live a very long time now. That we won't die, and we won't age."
She pointed up at the starry sky and asked innocently, "Does that mean we can live as long as the stars?"
Lady Konan had just said that the stars they were seeing were the light from hundreds of millions, or even billions of years ago. An ordinary person's lifespan was barely a hundred years. Compared to the hundreds of millions of years a star lived, human life was completely insignificant.
Hanabi was genuinely confused. Could an ordinary person, or even a ninja like her sister, or even a god-like being like Lady Konan... really live to see the stars themselves wither away? Could they truly live for hundreds of millions of years?
She simply couldn't fathom it.
"..." Hinata fell silent, a trace of deep bewilderment surfacing in her eyes. Faced with Hanabi's question, she had no answer. She didn't know.
Lady Konan had mentioned that eating the Chakra Fruit granted immortality. Before now, she hadn't given the concept of "immortality" much deep thought. She simply assumed it meant living on forever. But now, paired with the sheer scale of "hundreds of millions of years," the true, terrifying weight of what immortality meant suddenly crashed down on her.
Could a human... really live for a hundred million years??
A heavy silence descended upon the pavilion. Konan remained quiet, her expression unchanged as she continued to admire her first real view of the Land of Rain's night sky. Honoka stood utterly paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of "hundreds of millions of years." Samui and Mabui were equally stunned. It was impossible to even begin imagining what the ninja world—or themselves—would look like after a hundred million years had passed.
"Hey, Mei." Ino snapped out of her daze, her elbow casually digging into Mei's left side again.
The jab made Mei jolt, and she glared fiercely at Ino. "What do you want now?"
"A hundred million years. A hundred million!" Ino gestured wildly with her hands. "That's such an insanely long time! How can anyone live that long?"
"If we don't die and don't age, and we stay looking exactly like this forever, what is everything going to look like a hundred million years from now? You were the Mizukage, you've seen a lot of the world. Who's the oldest person you've ever met, and how long did they live?"
The ancient, wrinkled face of Elder Genji instantly surfaced in Mei's mind. He was the living fossil of the Hidden Mist, a man who had been around since before the village was even founded. She shook her head, a hint of melancholy in her voice. "The oldest I know of is nearly eighty years old."
"Wait, didn't you see the Sage of Six Paths at the center of the battlefield?" Ino asked. "He was a thousand-year-old monster."
Because Mei had been struck down by Madara Uchiha early on, she never made it to the center of the battlefield and was subsequently caught in the Divine Tree's vines. She had never actually seen the Sage of Six Paths. It was only after reviewing the final battle that she had been shocked to learn the legendary Sage had popped up at the climax of the Fourth Great Ninja War.
Unfortunately for him, he was instantly obliterated by Lady Konan's thunderous strike of golden light.
"That old man?" Ino scoffed. "He was just a soul projection, and he looked incredibly decrepit. He looked like he was barely hanging on. He probably would have naturally faded away in another thousand years anyway."
She certainly didn't think that old ghost had what it took to live forever, let alone for hundreds of millions of years.
"We can." A familiar voice suddenly echoed through the space.
Konan pulled her gaze from the night sky and looked toward the center of the pavilion. In the next instant, Alex and the silver-haired Kaguya Otsutsuki materialized out of thin air.
"Lord Alex!" Honoka stood up, her face lighting up with joy.
"Lord Alex!"
"Lord Alex!"
Samui, Hinata, and the other girls all happily chimed in with their greetings.
Ino's expression instantly turned dead serious. She looked at Alex and offered the sweetest, most picture-perfect smile she could muster, embodying the absolute ideal of a dutiful, obedient maid. She had secretly been studying how to act like an endearing maid behind the scenes.
Mei and Mabui weren't far behind. Both had been high-ranking leaders in their respective villages, meaning they were highly intelligent women. Once they made a decision, they threw themselves fully into their new roles without hesitation.
Alex smiled warmly at Hanabi, then let his gaze sweep over the girls looking at him.
"To answer Hanabi's question..." He paused for a moment before speaking clearly. "We can all live forever. A hundred million years is nothing."
He himself had once wondered if the immortality granted by the Chakra Fruit was truly eternal. He eventually found the answer by examining Kaguya. He had thoroughly inspected her soul. Even after a thousand years sealed away, Kaguya's soul hadn't decayed in the slightest. There was a constant, underlying force perpetually sustaining her soul's vitality. It was as if the lifespan of her soul had simply been frozen the exact moment she consumed the fruit.
That was the power of the Chakra Fruit—it granted true "immortality" to both the flesh and the soul.
Alex couldn't yet determine how long the fruit's power could sustain that state, or if it would eventually weaken and run dry. But even if it did, that day was unimaginably far away. Kaguya had mentioned that members of the Otsutsuki Clan who consumed complete Chakra Fruits lived for at least hundreds of thousands of years.
Furthermore, having grasped the rules and secret techniques inscribed on the Black Fragment, Alex could faintly touch and comprehend the fundamental laws of this universe.
It seemed there was no such thing as a restrictive "Heavenly Dao" limiting them here. There was no absolute ceiling on lifespans. Anyone who found the right method could achieve longevity, or even true immortality. In some universes, even beings powerful enough to casually wipe out entire galaxies were bound by Heavenly restrictions that capped their lives at a few tens of thousands of years.
Compared to those, the Naruto universe was entirely boundless. To Alex, the Naruto universe was clearly a low-level universe with incomplete rules. Living until the end of time itself wouldn't be difficult at all.
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