The stone hand whistled down at extreme speed.
Even though it was so large that it could hold a Tailed Beast as massive as the Nine-Tails in its palm like a toy, it still moved with the force of thunder.
And as someone who had only just arrived here after an utterly baffling battle, Rei naturally recognized the owner of this stone hand at a glance—
Hamura's stone statue!?
Boom!
Rei, standing in midair without support or a proper point to exert force from, was struck heavily by the enormous stone hand.
Then, as the giant hand suddenly accelerated again, he was pressed into its palm and sent roaring downward. It smashed through the barrier around the lunar palace and, like a monkey suppressed by all the gods and Buddhas in heaven, slammed hard into the crystalline earth he had just created!
The vajra earth strengthened by senjutsu displayed endurance and impact resistance beyond common sense.
Even when a stone hand several hundred meters tall crashed down at several times the speed of sound, the crystalline ground still did not completely shatter or split apart. It merely produced cracks spreading outward like a spiderweb.
Instead, it was the stone hand that had fallen to earth like a pillar of heavenly punishment that rapidly broke apart during its collision with the crystalline ground, turning into countless flying fragments and dust.
And in the middle of those scattering stone chips, Rei, who had suffered the sneak attack, stood up again. He raised his head and looked somewhat unexpectedly toward the direction from which the stone hand had flown.
"Gun…"
Yes.
Through the sun and firmament that had been pierced clean through, Rei's Byakugan, strengthened by Six Paths power, very clearly saw the cosmic nebula beyond the hole.
He also saw Hamura's stone statue floating in that pitch-black night sky, continuously tearing apart nearby rocks to repair the right arm it had just fired away.
"Tch. Playing dirty with me… Do you think I have no way to strike back?"
Rei rapidly formed the hand seals for Bone Clones.
The spine on his back suddenly grew outward, then swiftly transformed in midair into several clones identical to himself.
Immediately afterward, those clones each formed seals of their own and instantly prepared to enter the Six Heavens Vajra mode—
"Don't even think about it!"
At that moment, Obito Uchiha's voice descended together with the spatial distortion he created.
With both Kamui gathered together, in only the blink of an eye, the still-forming Six Heavens Vajra were each twisted apart at vital points by the power of Kamui's spatial distortion.
And it was precisely this delay, though not long, that gave Hamura's stone statue floating in space the chance to seize the initiative again.
"Heavenly Obstacle Quaking Star!"
Black Zetsu, firmly rooted inside Otsutsuki Shinya's body, recklessly squeezed out the chakra within him while using the power of the Giant Tenseigan to drag nearby meteors over.
Then it granted them the power to ignore the moon's gravity restrictions and launch at full speed, unleashing a meteor shower that filled the heavens against Rei, who had been entangled by Obito Uchiha.
Boom, boom, boom, boom—
A seemingly endless meteor shower came crashing down one after another.
Even with Rei's current strength, he had no choice but to deal with it seriously.
And watching Rei leap up from the crystalline ground, shattering every falling meteor with one punch each in a flawless stance that left no opening, Black Zetsu's expression on Otsutsuki Shinya's possessed face became increasingly playful and excited.
"Yes, just like that. Continue fighting. Continue wantonly spreading your power. Freely show that worthless fool Obito Uchiha the divine might you obtained after ascending to the Six Paths level."
"Only then can you become my aid, Rei Kaguya… No, Otsutsuki Rei."
Listening to Black Zetsu speak as if it belonged to some third-party force, Otsutsuki Shinya, who had already harbored doubts about its existence, felt his heart suddenly stop.
After violently coughing up a mouthful of blood, he asked intermittently, utterly stunned,
"You… You and Obito Uchiha… are not on the same side!"
"You… What exactly are you? You are not a White Zetsu created by the Divine Tree at all…"
"Correct answer. I am indeed not a failed half-finished product like White Zetsu."
Black Zetsu pulled the half of Otsutsuki Shinya's face covered by black liquid and released a strange laugh that made one's scalp crawl.
"But what does that matter? Who I am, to you, to Obito Uchiha, and to Otsutsuki Rei… what meaning does it have?"
Otsutsuki Shinya did not know how to answer Black Zetsu's question.
But his instincts told him that Black Zetsu's method of using the Giant Tenseigan in Hamura's temple to continuously tear apart the moon's land and rocks to create meteors contained some extremely terrifying and dangerous purpose.
What could it be?
This thing calling itself Black Zetsu, which appeared to be helping Obito Uchiha and coercing me into fighting for him, but was actually pursuing its own calculations…
What exactly is it thinking?
As Otsutsuki Shinya pondered that question, he suddenly discovered that when Black Zetsu used his body to produce chakra and wielded the Giant Tenseigan's power over gravity, there was not the slightest unfamiliarity or awkwardness.
Rather than saying it was monitoring him as he used the Giant Tenseigan, it was more like…
It was using his body to bring out the Giant Tenseigan's power!
How is that possible!?
Even Rei Kaguya, who is fighting below, absolutely should not be able to reach this level of skill the first time he touches the Giant Tenseigan!
The Giant Tenseigan was a treasure of the Otsutsuki clan, created only after sacrificing the lives and Byakugan of countless clan members with pure bloodlines.
It was the symbol of the Byakugan evolved to its utmost extreme.
And among the people of the earth, aside from that disappointing Hyuga clan, where could there possibly be anyone else capable of grasping the true power of the Byakugan!?
Perhaps because his emotions had surged too intensely, or perhaps because his body had been squeezed too harshly, Otsutsuki Shinya's mind inevitably blurred.
And in that sudden blur, an event that he had previously failed to connect flashed into his mind—
The theft of the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path.
To steal the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path from its seal on the distant moon, at minimum, one needed the power of the Rinnegan and the corresponding knowledge.
Then, if the Rinnegan was the eye awakened by the person Black Zetsu and Obito Uchiha called Madara Uchiha, where did his understanding of the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path come from?
As the main force that sealed Otsutsuki Kaguya, would the Sage of Six Paths truly have mentioned something as dangerous as the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path in the things he left behind for his descendants?
The answer was naturally no.
Then what Obito Uchiha said he inherited from Madara Uchiha, aside from ninjutsu…
Could it be!?
Sensing the sudden eruption of Otsutsuki Shinya's emotions, Black Zetsu could not help releasing a cold and delighted laugh.
While expanding the area it covered on Otsutsuki Shinya's body even further, it whispered into his ear a truth enough to make Otsutsuki Shinya regret his choices to the point of madness.
"It seems you have guessed something… But do you not think it is a little too late?"
"You… You really are…!?"
"Thanks to your barely passable bloodline and chakra, the knowledge Mother left to me finally has a chance to be put to practical use… Grit your teeth and endure a little longer. That way, perhaps you may still see Mother return to the world."
Otsutsuki Shinya, now completely wrapped by Black Zetsu, formed a special seal.
He controlled Hamura's temple, which had originally been floating within the lunar palace, and made it fly higher.
It broke through the lunar palace's barrier, passed through the false sky outside, and reached the empty, boundless cosmos.
Then it flew straight toward Hamura's stone statue, whose body had already expanded several times by tearing apart the moon's surface, and merged into it without the slightest obstruction, like a stream flowing into the sea.