Chapter 349: The Sage of Six Paths
What... is going on here? Why would a rift suddenly open up beneath the earth? And that person I can't even see through — he seems to already know exactly what this sudden rift actually is.
A wisp of lingering chakra, drifting through the Naruto world, kept watch over the reincarnations of Indra and Asura.
Something that only ever surfaced amid the chaos of the cycle of rebirth — and the rift's appearance already proved that chaos had begun.
No one knew that this fragment of lingering, sentient chakra was, in fact, the legendary Sage of Six Paths!
Some believed the Sage of Six Paths had truly existed; others dismissed him as nothing more than a myth invented by the ancients.
That young man especially — the one I simply can't see through no matter what — gives off a genuinely dangerous feeling. Like he could snuff me out with a mere flick of his wrist. When did the shinobi world produce someone like that?
The Sage sank into deep thought, sensing that whatever was happening now had thrown the world's normal rhythm badly out of balance.
If some genuine catastrophe struck right now, that would be disastrous. He could sense Indra and Asura's chakra, sure — but what he sensed was locked inside a one-year-old brat.
This was entirely outside his frame of reference. Before his death, when he'd first become chakra drifting the shinobi world, he'd had a premonition that something would happen down the line — which was exactly why he'd let his two sons' chakra keep reincarnating endlessly through the shinobi world.
It had been his own contingency, as the Sage of Six Paths, for whatever chaos the future might bring.
But right now, the current reincarnations of Indra and Asura were both barely a year old — some not even that.
And whatever massive crisis this was looked to be unfolding within the next ten-odd minutes — a scenario that genuinely fell outside anything the Sage had prepared for.
A crisis this sudden, with no buffer time at all, left even the Sage of Six Paths with a genuine headache, his mind racing through one contingency after another.
Just then, the Sage — manifest as a translucent human shape — felt his pupils contract sharply, his gaze seeming to pierce straight through the soil beneath Konoha and see exactly what lay below.
A flicker of genuine shock crossed his ghostly face — and for something to draw that expression out of a being who'd lived as long as he had said everything about just how deeply the Void Beast had rattled him.
What is that thing? There's a trace of chaos clinging to it — like it doesn't belong to this world at all. And its sheer size... isn't that a bit much?
The Sage's expression turned graver than it had ever been — the presence radiating off that strange creature matched, without question, his own peak strength back when he'd still been alive!
How could something like this exist in the shinobi world? None of it made any sense!
He'd never once encountered a creature like this before — not anywhere in the universe, in his entire existence.
By now, nearly ten minutes had passed since the ground first began to tremble.
The dimensional rift underground kept widening, and an enormous Void Beast had already exposed four-fifths of its massive body.
Every shinobi in Konoha was throwing themselves into evacuating civilians — anyone who could run was told to run, and anyone who couldn't got carried.
In under ten minutes, more than half the village's residents had already fled, leaving only around a fifth still inside.
How was the evacuation moving that fast?
Because Konoha's population wasn't especially large to begin with.
And the village itself probably wasn't even as large as a small county back on Earth.
Add in shinobi leading and escorting everyone out, and the evacuation naturally moved fast.
Ryū tilted his head up toward the thick clouds overhead. Nobody else could see anything unusual up there, but it didn't escape his Observation Haki.
He could "see" the ghostly figure's face with perfect clarity, and its identity clicked for him instantly.
Ryū didn't bother acknowledging the Sage of Six Paths, though — not much help to be had there. The Sage's strength had been considerable, sure, but only back when he'd actually been alive.
Dead as he currently was, there was only so much he could actually contribute — support duty, at absolute best.
Pulling his attention back, Ryū refocused on the Void Beast. He'd already pinged the chat group's top-tier fighters a few minutes earlier.
Handling this alone would've been a stretch — Ryū could already tell this Void Beast was considerably stronger than the ones from last time, by more than just a small margin.
The Ancient One: "@RawrSoFierce, Lord Admin, I'm all set. Got your 2,000-Point red envelope too — ready to head over and help whenever."
Eternally Seventeen: "Eh? 2,000 Points? Why's that infuriating Admin-sama only giving me 1,000 for travel expenses? Blatant favoritism, that's what this is!"
Kaguya-sama: "Yukari-nee, don't you get what Admin-sama means by that? What he means is, you're his and he's yours, so handing you an extra 1,000 Points is just moving money from one of his own pockets to the other — so why bother?"
Eternally Seventeen: "Eh? Is that really it? Why does it feel like you're making excuses for that infuriating Admin-sama, Little Kaguya?"
Eternally Seventeen: "Or is that genuinely how it is? Hmm... why does it feel like my IQ's been dropping lately?"
Admiral Kizaru: "Isn't it perfectly normal for people in love to lose a few IQ points? This old man's all set too, by the way — ready to cross over whenever."
Edward Newgate: "Gurararara, honestly the Admin didn't need to hand out travel and labor fees at all. No quest triggered this time, sure, but a Void Beast's corpse is worth about as much as a reincarnator's watch."
Edward Newgate: "Even without a quest triggering, both of those can still be turned in for Points, can't they!"
RawrSoFierce: "Still gonna hand out the Points regardless. Though Whitebeard's not wrong — Void Beast corpses really are worth salvaging."
RawrSoFierce: "Just not sure how many we're dealing with this time. A thousand of them last round was already plenty to handle."
Terrible Tornado: "Just put in for a long leave from the Hero Association. First time visiting Admin's world too — looking forward to it!"
Kaguya-sama: "Same here, +1. Glad my own strength's just barely at the point where I can actually help out."
My True Form Is Cola: "The envy's giving me a full osmotic crisis. Somebody stream it, please! I want to see what Admin-sama's world looks like too — is it a slice-of-life world too?"
Street-Corner Illustrator: "Pfft... Admin-sama's strength is right up there with Yukari-senpai's. How could that possibly be a slice-of-life world?"
My True Form Is Cola: "Huh, fair point... ahem, my bad, my bad."
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