In outer space, Black Zetsu sensed its increasingly skillful use of the Giant Tenseigan, as well as the enormous meteors continuously gathering toward Hamura's stone statue through the Giant Tenseigan's power.
It sensed the layers of lunar rock being torn from the moon and drawn toward the statue, whose size had already exceeded several thousand meters.
Pulling at Otsutsuki Shinya's facial muscles, Black Zetsu revealed an excited smile it could barely control.
"The Giant Tenseigan? Those foolish descendants of Hamura truly did create a useful tool… Even while bearing the responsibility of watching over Mother, they were stupid enough to sacrifice so many clansmen to create a treasure capable of moving the moon, just to eliminate those with different beliefs…"
"Ahh, truly, thanks to your internal strife, I no longer need to keep waiting for the next Indra reincarnation I can deceive. Nor do I need to tremble with fear while plotting over the Tailed Beasts and the Rinnegan, exhausting myself for Madara and Mother's resurrection…"
"You… have… not… won… yet…"
Otsutsuki Shinya, whose strength had nearly been completely drained by Black Zetsu, gritted his teeth and forced the words out one by one.
"I will absolutely… not let you… have any chance… to touch… the Rabbit Goddess…"
"With what? With those useless and powerless words of yours?"
"Gah—"
Black Zetsu once again increased the intensity with which it squeezed Otsutsuki Shinya's chakra.
As a large amount of chakra surged into the Giant Tenseigan, Otsutsuki Shinya, already fatally ill, immediately coughed up a mouthful of dark red blood.
His entire presence became even weaker and more dispirited.
In contrast, Hamura's stone statue grew in size once again, and then—
"Sage Art: Thread of Heaven!"
A line of water that split the sky shot upward with lightning speed through the huge hole created by countless meteor strikes and explosions.
The instant it touched Hamura's stone statue, which could not dodge in time, it swiftly spread through the surrounding space.
"Wha—"
Before Black Zetsu could react, a thick layer of ice crystals began rapidly forming on the surface of Hamura's stone statue.
The inherent low temperature of space combined with Ice Release supported by senjutsu chakra.
At an unimaginable speed, the massive Hamura statue and the approaching meteors around it were frozen together.
And as the ice layer spread, another presence appeared in Black Zetsu's perception.
A white figure breaking through space at nearly a hundred times the speed of sound.
It was Rei Kaguya, in Six Paths Mode!
For Black Zetsu, who had witnessed the heaven-shaking, earth-changing battle between Otsutsuki Kaguya and the brothers Otsutsuki Hagoromo and Hamura, even while it held a treasure like the Giant Tenseigan, which was powerful enough to move a planet, it absolutely did not dare be careless.
Seeing that it could no longer avoid Rei's direct strike, it decisively chose—
Self-destruction!
An explosion bloomed silently from the inside out in space.
The enormous Hamura statue burst with endless light, turning into a brand-new sun in Rei's eyes.
The massive shockwave instantly shattered the ice layer formed by Thread of Heaven, and also turned Hamura's stone statue into countless fragments scattering across the sky.
After that explosion, one so brilliant that even people living on the ground could clearly observe it at night, Rei emerged unscathed from within the hollow sphere formed by the Truth-Seeking Balls.
Looking at the fragments of Hamura's stone statue scattered across the sky, he slowly raised the Six Paths staff in his hand.
"Self-destruction? No. You want to split apart the fragments affected by the Tenseigan's chakra to accelerate the tearing of the moon's surface? Not a bad idea. Then I will pretend not to know and help you a little."
"Sage Art: Skyfall!"
An almost imperceptible dark ripple spread from Rei's body, expanding toward all the meteors and fragments of Hamura's stone statue around him.
Those meteors and fragments, which had originally followed their own trajectories, changed direction almost instantly the moment they touched the dark ripple.
In perfect unison, they accelerated and fell toward the desolate lunar surface beneath Rei's feet.
Black Zetsu, which had used the explosion to control Hamura's temple and escape Rei's attack range, and which was manipulating the surrounding gravity and repulsion through the Giant Tenseigan, immediately noticed that dark ripple.
Then, through the falling stone statue fragments, it very naturally guessed Rei's purpose.
The number of meteors around the moon was limited.
If those meteors forming Hamura's continuously expanding stone body, as well as the fragments of the Hamura statue itself, fell back onto the lunar surface, then during the coming chase, the material supply it could obtain from the surrounding environment would gradually decrease.
Under those circumstances, forget turning Hamura's statue into an even larger body. Even restoring it to the size it had before the self-destruction would become a distant dream.
And the smaller the Hamura statue it could control, the harder it would be to escape Rei's pursuit.
"Damn it. Although I can control the statue's fragments from a distance to gather nearby meteors and lunar rock, once the distance grows and that fellow's chakra affects them, I must consume even more chakra stored inside the Giant Tenseigan to do it… Is he planning to use a war of attrition to exhaust me, or rather, exhaust Otsutsuki Shinya's body?"
"No choice. I had originally wanted to preserve as much of the ocular power and chakra inside the Giant Tenseigan as possible so Mother could use it to recover…"
After clicking its tongue softly, Black Zetsu's eyes revealed a resolute look.
This time, it no longer considered whether Otsutsuki Shinya's body could endure it.
Instead, it began squeezing the last of his life with full force.
Through the endless overdraft of Otsutsuki bloodline power, Black Zetsu created chakra far beyond Otsutsuki Shinya's own limits in one breath, then poured all of it into the Giant Tenseigan.
And then, the moon, whose surface had just received a round of meteor impacts and now held countless craters of all sizes, suddenly began to shake and deform violently, as though something inside it was about to break out of its shell.
With the statue fragments that had just fallen onto the lunar surface as starting points, massive fissures large enough to cut across an entire nation sprouted one after another across the moon's surface like bamboo shoots after rain.
They spread and connected at an unimaginable speed.
Then, amid an earth-shaking, heaven-collapsing spectacle, piece after piece of lunar surface, each comparable to the entire territory of a medium-sized nation in the shinobi world, rose from the ground.
Driven by an indescribable mighty force, they howled toward the rapidly moving Hamura temple like birds returning to the forest.
Although Rei, likewise in outer space, "exerted all his strength" to try to stop those plates forming the lunar surface from gathering around Hamura's temple—
Although he used methods such as Sage Art: Heaven-Moving Strike to destroy continent after continent rising from the ground, and Sage Art: Skyfall to forcibly smash the uprooted continents back onto the moon, disrupting Black Zetsu's actions—
The Giant Tenseigan was, in the end, a treasure of the Otsutsuki clan possessing the mighty power to move a planet, and it was regarded as the key to reshaping the entire world after the moon fell and destroyed it.
When Black Zetsu used the ocular power and chakra that should have been reserved to recreate the world without regard for consumption, tearing apart the moon's surface and even the entire moon, Rei's power alone truly could not stop the process.
And so, after shattering lunar continents covering almost one and a half Lands of Fire in area, and forcibly causing the shattered land and several other lunar continents of similar total area to fall back onto the moon, Rei "had no choice" but to give up stopping Black Zetsu from tearing apart the land.
Instead, he used the force Black Zetsu was using to attract the land and accelerated with all his might toward Hamura's temple.
Behind him, the moon, which could originally be called a beautiful sphere, had been forcibly torn open with a massive gap.
A gap so enormous that people in the shinobi world who were admiring the full moon could scream in terror that the heavenly dog was devouring the moon.
…
"It really has developed into the worst-case scenario, just as he said."
On the border between the Land of Rain and the Land of Wind, Nagato, who possessed the Rinnegan, gazed at the enormous full moon visibly deforming before his eyes.
The words Rei had left for him alone after convening the previous remote Five Kage meeting naturally surfaced in his mind.
"Although I have a decent chance of smoothly concluding this trip to the moon, the matter of the moon falling is too large in scale. There is no way to hide it from Obito Uchiha. Therefore, to prevent him from interfering and causing some especially terrible situation, I have a contingency commission I want you to carry out."
"What commission?"
Nagato turned his head, somewhat surprised by Rei's solemn attitude.
"After I go to the moon, if you observe the moon visibly collapsing or some other abnormal change, do not hesitate. Immediately use the privilege granted to you by the Rinnegan and summon the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path that Madara Uchiha stole from the moon to your side with Outer Path: Summoning Technique. Then use everything you have… no, stake your life on keeping it beside you."
Rei considered his wording briefly, then said that.
"…Why not now?"
Nagato fell silent for a while, then asked his question.
"Because that is the core of Madara Uchiha's plan. If it is stolen now, it would be very troublesome if Obito Uchiha disregarded everything and came to fight you to the death…
"After all, you are not me. His pair of Mangekyo Sharingan, specialized in space-time ninjutsu, have far too many opportunities to threaten your life. And at present, I truly do not have any good method to kill that fellow who can freely travel through his own private alternate space."
Rei's projection patted Nagato's shoulder as he spoke.
"Only at present?"
Nagato narrowed his eyes.
"If everything goes smoothly, then when I return from the moon, that pair of Mangekyo Sharingan's myth of overcoming higher tiers will completely come to an end."
Rei gave his answer with complete confidence.
"…If things do not go smoothly, will you have to fight that Otsutsuki who can make the moon fall head-on?"
After a moment of silence, Nagato asked with a grave expression.
"A decisive battle against an Otsutsuki? That can only be considered a normal development that is not so ideal… If the situation truly deteriorates to the worst possible point, I might have to use a configuration that has not undergone any qualitative change compared to now to face an enemy returning from myth."
Rei shrugged and spoke with a sigh.
"The Demonic Statue of the Outer Path's original master?"
"Smart… Now you know how heavy the burden on your shoulders is, right?"
Facing Rei's projected hand that patted toward him again, Nagato took a slight step back and dodged that encouraging pat meant for a junior at exactly the right moment.
Then he looked into Rei's eyes and shook his head with utmost seriousness.
"No matter how heavy this mission is, it will not be heavier than your need to face the enemy head-on… Be careful on this journey. Returning safely is more important than any gain. The shinobi world today can no longer do without you, the Child of Prophecy who guides the world."
"Is that not your title?"
Rei raised his brows and teased.
"It suits you better."
"But I do not like things like prophecy… It makes it sound as though, aside from the person who was prophesied, everyone else's struggles and efforts are nothing more than background created specifically to serve as a foil for the chosen one."
"Even if you know that leaving everything to the chosen one would allow you to live a simpler and easier life?"
"Then before the chosen one solves everything, how could I still sleep? The wails of those who failed to survive until the chosen one arrived because I lay flat and did nothing would give me nightmares every night… Hm, time is about right. I should go complete the final preparations. See you later."
The conversation ended there, with a conclusion that could not be called perfect.
"I hope your 'see you later' is a promise that can still be fulfilled even if the situation reaches its worst, Rei Kaguya."
Nagato took a deep breath.
He touched the full bag of secret medicine—"biscuits"—that he had bought from the Kingdom of Roran, which was already on the right track, and began his own battle.
"Summoning Technique: Demonic Statue of the Outer Path!"
"Uwoooh—"
The Demonic Statue of the Outer Path, mountain-like in size and hideous in appearance, descended into this desert where nothing existed except yellow sand and rocky wasteland through the power of the Rinnegan.
The red-haired youth sensed its enormous and bizarre chakra fluctuations, as well as the instinct within it that seemed to demand something from him.
A smile slowly appeared on his young face.
"You have something to ask of me? That truly is… good news."