"That's right. I'll wait for your personality to be corrected by Izanami. I'll wait until you kneel before me, weeping bitterly and begging us for forgiveness! And when that moment finally comes, I will reject you."
Konan piled on the pressure, painting a bleak picture of the future waiting for the masked man.
Hearing Konan lay it out like that, the masked man suddenly realized the trap.
'So there really is that kind of possibility.'
He was absolutely right.
If he actually fell under Izanami and his personality got completely reprogrammed before he escaped, wouldn't he have to atone for all the "mistakes" he had committed in the past?
The masked man's face went deathly pale.
"Hmph. You and Itachi joined hands to exterminate my beloved Uchiha clan. To atone for that crime, I'll have Orochimaru transplant the necessary organs into you, so that you and Itachi can personally restore the Uchiha clan's numbers!"
Tobirama mercilessly cranked up the pressure.
"..."
Could someone please explain why repopulating the Uchiha clan required organ transplants?
It couldn't possibly be the specific restoration method he was picturing... right?
Cold sweat beaded on the masked man's forehead.
"Tobirama, don't put so much pressure on this Uchiha child. Although what you just said isn't actually wrong, since the traditional method is no longer physically possible for him."
Senju Hashirama joined the fray.
He had been loitering on the shore by himself for a while and found it way too boring, so he just whipped up a wooden dragon, rode it over the water, and touched down right next to his brother.
"Brother, what exactly do you mean by that?" Tobirama asked, genuinely curious.
"Tobirama, I can sense that his body houses a massive amount of my cells. It doesn't look like an active, surgical transplant. It looks more like he suffered an injury in the past..."
"Like the arm Danzo grafted on after losing his original one?"
"Mm." Senju Hashirama nodded in confirmation.
Although that arm technically belonged to Orochimaru's experimental subject, Shin, the explanation was simple.
Back then—meaning in the original timeline—Orochimaru lacked a White Zetsu to use as a test subject, so he hunted down a White Zetsu substitute who could adapt to all kinds of foreign cellular transplants.
"My sensory perception for my own cells is extremely sharp and precise. When I bumped into this child earlier, I accurately sensed..."
Under the masked man's intensely uneasy glare, Hashirama looked at him and his gaze slowly drifting downward.
"Half of his entire body, including a very crucial large piece right down there, is constructed entirely from my cells. That side is completely smooth and flat, just like a White Zetsu..."
"..."
Hearing that absolute bombshell, everyone present fell dead silent.
In the past, everyone had secretly wondered if the masked man's refusal to revive Rin wasn't just tied to his twisted, incomprehensible philosophical arguments.
Maybe it was also because when he got solo-killed by a giant rock back in the day, a bit more than just the right half of his body had been crushed.
After all, even in the best-case scenario, if the boulder truly only crushed half his body—like cutting perfectly down a dotted line—the equipment located dead in the center still would have been tragically split right down the middle.
Half of it would be ruined.
And when that specific part was half-ruined, it was basically completely ruined.
Today, that lingering suspicion was finally confirmed.
So it really was gone.
No wonder he refused to use resurrection.
With his current physical condition, if he revived Rin, wouldn't he basically just be hand-stitching a wedding dress for Kakashi to wear?
Even if Kakashi currently lusted after his grandmother or Granny Chiyo, unless Rin chose to live a life of total celibacy, wouldn't she inevitably end up benefiting some other guy?
'The careless words you spoke~ finally cleared my doubts away~'
The face buried beneath the masked man's mask completely blackened.
The traumatic old scars of his past and the humiliating physical defects of his body had just been ruthlessly dragged out into the light.
And it happened right in front of several female shinobi, no less!
This was pure, absolute despair.
Sure enough, the shinobi world was hell!
If possible, the masked man truly wished he had some kind of massive suicide-bombing jutsu like Danzo's Reverse Four Symbols Sealing.
He genuinely wanted to detonate and drag every single person in front of him straight to the afterlife.
"Child, don't worry. Medical technology is highly advanced nowadays. Since half your body can be restored, I can just ask Orochimaru to use my cells to culture a brand new dick for you, then surgically graft it right on." Hashirama comforted the masked man, his face glowing with deep, grandfatherly "concern."
Hashirama's logic was firmly rooted in the future Makoto had described to him.
The Seventh Hokage, Uzumaki Naruto, got his arm blown off but still managed to culture a prosthetic replacement from Hashirama's cells and slap it right on.
It worked perfectly fine afterward.
By that logic, couldn't the masked man do the exact same thing?
Yes, the raw logic itself wasn't technically wrong.
But an arm was just an arm. Could that highly critical, personal piece of anatomy actually be grafted on using another man's genetic material?
If he successfully fathered a child afterward, whose damn child would it even count as?
What if the kid randomly awakened Wood Release?!
Hashirama's seemingly innocent, comforting offer actually felt like a sugar-coated poison pill.
It was unfathomably cruel as it struck directly at the core of a man's pride.
Just picture the horrific scene.
The masked man paces outside the delivery room, anxiously waiting for his child to be born.
When he hears the baby's first cry echo from inside, he cries tears of absolute joy.
"I'm a father! I'm a father!"
Then an Edo Tensei Hashirama standing right next to him pumps his fists, looking equally overjoyed.
"I'm a father! I'm a father again!"
Too dark. Way too despairing!
Makoto remained completely silent the entire time.
For a split second, he honestly wasn't sure which psychological direction the Senju brothers were trying to drive the masked man toward.
Leaking the existence of Izanami made it seem like they were trying to pull the guy back from the brink.
But the unhinged anatomical threats they just dropped felt like they were actively shoving him into an abyss of despair.
And Makoto swore on his life that he absolutely did not teach the two brothers any of the garbage they just spouted!
Even though Makoto was the undisputed root of all evil, there was a natural order to learning, and every field had its unique specialty.
A disciple didn't necessarily have to be inferior to the teacher, and the teacher didn't always have to outclass the disciple.
The unhinged psychological warfare the Senju brothers just waged on the masked man was truly a sight to behold.
They descended like filthy saviors—literal gods of the dick walking the mortal realm.
At this point, the masked man was crumbling under the immense pressure. The single, short minute remaining on his timer dragged on longer than an entire lifetime.
With Izanami hovering over his head, the masked man decided he would honestly rather die than get hit by it.
He couldn't even stomach imagining how utterly pathetic and humble that "redeemed" version of himself would act.
...But then again, declaring he'd rather die than get hit was easy to say.
If he refused to trigger Izanagi, he would genuinely drop dead.
Once a person died, it was all over.
He wasn't like Madara, who had pawns lined up to revive him and stage a grand comeback.
Thinking about that, the masked man couldn't help but feel a sharp pang of regret.
If he had known things would end up like this, he should have taken a page out of Madara's playbook and groomed his own loyal successor.
That way, if a mission went sideways, the kid could scheme up a way to revive him.
Looking at it from that angle, the First Hokage's old theory was spot on. A leader truly did need to cultivate followers willing to stand behind them.
The raw strength of a lone wolf was just too fragile.
Very quickly, his intangibility duration hit the final countdown.
The masked man hung suspended in midair all by himself, looking like a helpless roast duck dangling in a butcher's window.
Perhaps because the Senju brothers had pushed him to the absolute brink, Obito overdrew every last drop of brainpower from his past and future, and in the final ten seconds, he miraculously spotted a loophole!
"The second Sage of Six Paths will still be me! That destiny hasn't wavered in the slightest!" the masked man suddenly roared, his fighting spirit violently surging.
This abrupt shift completely stunned everyone below.
"Hmph. If I'm not mistaken, Izanami is a physical-contact genjutsu that actually requires touching the target's body to activate, correct? I refuse to believe you only wanted to save it as a last resort. The truth is, right now, you literally have no way to cast it!" The masked man sneered in triumph.
"So what? Your intangibility is about to run out anyway," Konan shot back indifferently.
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