"Oh? So this is the Eight Branches Technique Rei-kun improved? For natural energy to be so violent and surging to this degree… I'm afraid your bone clone gathered natural energy from nearly half the shinobi world, didn't it?"
Inside the Moon Palace, now completely empty, with even the puppets controlled by Tenseigan chakra collapsed motionless on the ground, Orochimaru, who had taken advantage of the earlier chaos to sneak in and collect a large amount of intelligence and documents, turned his head and cast an envious, emotional gaze toward the enormous figure roaring up at the heavens.
Sage Art: Eight-Branches Great Serpent.
It was a senjutsu Rei Kaguya had developed using Orochimaru's self-created S-rank forbidden technique, the Eight Branches Technique, as its foundation.
Its objective was to completely transform the user's body into a vessel made to contain natural energy, one possessing a special symbolic meaning. In a sense, it was almost a self-sacrificial senjutsu.
When using this technique, the caster had to absorb natural energy far beyond the limit of their own chakra. Then, borrowing the characteristics of Ryuchi Cave senjutsu, they would use the overloaded natural energy to force a directed mutation of the caster's physical body, shedding their human form and transforming into a massive, violent eight-headed serpent body capable of containing natural energy beyond their limits.
When Rei Kaguya, relying on his control over natural energy as a perfect sage, successfully developed this technique, Orochimaru, who had watched the entire process from the side, had once thought he intended to create a forbidden technique meant to drag the enemy down with him.
Something like the forbidden technique Fury of Heaven once possessed by the Tsuchigumo clan—a forbidden technique that erased the user, the enemy, and everything within a hundred miles.
But Rei Kaguya had no intention of doing such a thing.
"Mutual destruction? I would never consider something that foolish… If I cannot win, then I run. After escaping, I reorganize my strength, research the enemy's intelligence and weaknesses, raise myself to the point where I can crush them outright, then counterattack in one wave with enough force to uproot them completely. That is my style."
"Then what exactly is this self-sacrificial senjutsu for—"
"To forge a blade that can truly threaten the immortal progenitor of chakra, using natural energy, something independent of the chakra system."
That conversation seemed to cross space and time as it echoed in Orochimaru's ears.
He gently shook his head, then softly spoke the name of the technique Rei Kaguya was about to activate next.
"Sage Forging: Ame-no-Murakumo… A weapon that uses the Eight-Branches Great Serpent as its sheath and surpasses even the Totsuka Blade in power. I suppose there could only be this one. Heh… This is not something that can be compared to the Kusanagi swords forged by mortals…"
At the same time, above the Boundary Lake.
The Eight-Branches Great Serpent, whose middle head had been pierced by the Six Paths Staff, let out a roar that shook heaven and earth. Its massive body immediately began struggling with a force that overturned rivers and seas.
Wherever its snake tails and heads passed, the earth collapsed, mountains shattered, and nothing could stand against it. Combined with the naturally apocalyptic force of the moon accelerating in its descent, it displayed even more clearly a despairing sense that the end of the world had already arrived.
But in Rei Kaguya's eyes, after deliberately arranging all of this, the apocalyptic scenery before him was nothing more than the prelude being played for the god-slaying battle about to begin anew.
The pitch-black Six Paths Staff pierced through the Eight-Branches Great Serpent's body from head to tail. With the destructive power of the Truth-Seeking Ball, which far surpassed all ninjutsu, it completely ended the life of the bone clone that had lost control after activating Sage Art: Eight-Branches Great Serpent.
And the instant the Eight-Branches Great Serpent fell, Rei Kaguya decisively mobilized more than half of his senjutsu chakra and began carrying out the final shaping of the Eight-Branches Great Serpent's "corpse" above the Boundary Lake, which had already begun cracking apart upward.
The enormous Eight-Branches Great Serpent began shrinking at a speed visible to the naked eye. During this process, the natural energy forming that massive serpent body was compressed to the extreme.
Together with the Rei Kaguya chakra still remaining inside the bone clone, and the Six Paths Staff that had just pierced through the Eight-Branches Great Serpent's body and stopped at the end of its tail, it gradually transformed into the shape of a long, slender tachi.
And as that tachi took form, another large chunk of the rapidly falling moon broke away.
This time, the location where the fragment broke off was precisely the region where Black Zetsu had previously used the power of the giant Tenseigan to tear large plates from the surface of the moon.
And so, the lunar prison that had once diligently sealed away a fallen goddess for several thousand years finally revealed an irreparable gap.
How could such a gap possibly escape the notice of the Rabbit Goddess, who had waited silently in endless darkness for the day she would break free?
Boom—
The entire moon shook violently.
A massive impact continuously surged from within, accelerating the collapse of the moon, which had already been on the verge of falling apart. As enormous cracks appeared across the entire moon, cracks so large that they could be clearly seen even by looking up from the shinobi world, a chakra vast enough to suffocate, despair, drive mad, and even make all living beings instinctively prostrate themselves erupted without reservation from the moon's stellar core.
"How… long have I slept?"
Amid a sigh that seemed both resentful and confused, every battle taking place on the moon was brought to a halt.
Whether it was Obito Uchiha, who had been in a perilous situation, or Orochimaru, who was racing against time to rummage through the Otsutsuki clan's library, all of them stopped what they were doing at the same time and instinctively turned toward the small figure slowly rising from the cracks in the lunar earth.
White hair that trailed all the way past her feet.
A white robe with black tomoe patterns, symbolizing her noble identity as a member of the Otsutsuki clan.
Cold, emotionless white eyes, enormous horns growing from her forehead, and the tightly closed third eye in the middle of her brow added a pressure called power to that sacred, solemn, ruthless, and beautiful face.
The Rabbit Goddess.
The mother of the Sage of Six Paths.
The true progenitor of chakra in the shinobi world.
The Ten-Tails Jinchuriki—
Kaguya Otsutsuki had returned to the world after several thousand years of sealing and slumber.
"Zetsu… my child. Why can I not sense your presence?"
Kaguya Otsutsuki looked around blankly, as though she had just woken from sleep, searching for the third child she had created before being sealed by her two unfilial sons, searching for Black Zetsu, who might have helped her break the seal.
But what puzzled her was that not only did Black Zetsu's presence not appear within her sensory range, which could encompass thousands of kilometers, but the place where she had broken free was not the shinobi world she had expected before being sealed.
The Demonic Statue of the Outer Path, which she had tried every possible way to send out in order to break the seal placed by her two rebellious sons, Hagoromo and Hamura, had not returned to her body either.
The only thing that gave her a faint sense of familiarity was the young figure walking slowly through the air with a tachi in hand.
"That chakra… Ah, my child, Hamura, is that you?"
Kaguya Otsutsuki turned her gaze toward the young man dressed in white Otsutsuki robes, with a pair of pure Byakugan in his eye sockets, and murmured softly.
"Have you finally recognized your mistake and ignorance? Have you changed your mind and returned to your mother's side?"
"First, I am not Hamura Otsutsuki. My name is Rei Kaguya. I am a descendant Hamura left behind in the shinobi world, Ancestor Kaguya."
"Second, I have no intention of submitting to you and offering my life, my chakra, and the shinobi world, where I finally managed to begin a small seed of reform, as sacrifices to you."
"Third…"
The young man answering Kaguya Otsutsuki paused slightly.
Only after waiting for his full appearance to be reflected in Kaguya Otsutsuki's Byakugan did he slowly reveal a mad smile and whisper softly.
"I came to kill you, Ancestor Kaguya."