Heaven knew that this entire night had been the peak performance of his acting in his whole life. Caught between those two big shots, he had repeatedly danced back and forth between them, pushing both his bluffing skills and his ability to put on a saintly front to the absolute limit.
Buddhist scriptures had come to his lips at a moment's notice, sharp exchanges flowed the instant he opened his mouth, and from beginning to end, he had remained calm and composed, as though everything were under control.
But every sentence he spoke felt like dancing on the edge of a blade. Fortunately, his steps had not faltered.
Later, at the most critical moment, he even had the main body use the incarnation manifestation function to manifest as the other him, giving Madara and Isshiki a heavy shock and making them feel that Genjo was even more unfathomable.
Still, come to think of it, it was rather interesting.
This clone of his was itself a monk, and monks had always been the most skilled in verbal debate since ancient times.
And in Shinichi's previous life, Genjo had been especially famous for his eloquence. On his Journey to the West, when he encountered bandits, he had relied on words alone to persuade those desperadoes to lay down their butcher knives and take refuge in the Buddhist precepts.
Later, when he arrived in India, at the great debate assembly that gathered the greatest Buddhist debaters from across the country, he calmly met the repeated challenges of eminent monks from various schools and heterodox debaters, refuting his opponents one by one.
It was known that the Buddhist debaters of that era were the very best in the world at debating scripture and even better at stubbornly refusing to admit defeat, yet even so, one after another, they were left speechless by Genjo's refutations, convinced in both heart and mind.
At another assembly afterward, Genjo established his thesis of true consciousness-only inference, hung a placard outside the venue, and boldly declared that if anyone could refute even a single word of it, he would offer up his own head in apology, yet for eighteen whole days, not one person dared respond.
After that battle, the followers of the mahayana honored him as the, Deva of mahayana, while the followers of the hinayana honored him as the, Deva of liberation, as a lone monk from a foreign land, he shook the Indians with his fame, won the admiration of ten thousand monks, and reached the highest glory of a buddhist debater in the homeland of scriptural debate itself.
He wondered just how much of the skill of that authentic Genjo from his previous life he had managed to display tonight.
While Genjo was secretly breathing a sigh of relief inside the ruined temple, the main body Shinichi, who was in Konoha, opened his personal talent panel and discovered that two new changes had quietly appeared on it.
[Basic Light Style (White): Your perception of light nature chakra is relatively keen, and your control over it is smoother. The efficiency and success rate with which you learn and use basic Light Style Ninjutsu are slightly increased.]
[Basic Dark Style (White): Omitted.]
There was no need to think much; Shinichi could already guess the source of these two new entries.
They must have been generated by the cognition produced simultaneously by Isshiki Otsutsuki and Madara Uchiha when he used the power of manifestation to incarnate as Genjo Sanzo.
The two of them had taken Genjo Sanzo's sudden manifestation out of thin air as an application of Dark and Light Style.
However, judging from the fact that in the end both talents had only remained at the white rank, at least one of them had not possessed a deep understanding of it, and perhaps had not even believed it was truly Dark and Light Style at all.
And that person was, without question, Isshiki Otsutsuki.
Otherwise, even if the external cognition feedback received by Genjo was only sixty percent efficient, given the sheer weight of cognition possessed by these two towering figures standing at the summit of the Shinobi World, even a single instant would have been enough to push both Dark and Light Style talents directly to green quality, and perhaps even advance them quite far within the green stage.
Shinichi carefully examined them and discovered that these two talents, Dark and Light Style, brought no direct numerical changes whatsoever to his base physical qualities. They did not directly increase his vitality, nor did they increase his spiritual power.
Like the other five basic nature talents, they were a kind of enhancement that simply made him more adept when applying abilities in the corresponding field.
For example, possessing the Light Style talent would make the conversion of chakra smoother when he used Medical Ninjutsu, while possessing the Dark Style talent would grant him an innate sharpness when using Genjutsu or any Ninjutsu requiring fine chakra control.
And while the main body Shinichi in Konoha was examining the effects and characteristics of the two new entries, Genjo in the ruined temple also withdrew his thoughts and began to inspect the temple itself.
His gaze moved slowly, first pausing for a moment on the spot where Isshiki had previously been sitting, his expression calm.
Then his line of sight shifted toward the place where Madara had previously been, and his eyes moved slightly.
At that moment, the stirring sensation that had arisen before he came here, a sensation originating from the Fortune Sight talent, suddenly became incomparably intense.
Because right there, on the dust-covered bluestone floor, there lay quietly a strand of white hair so fine it was almost invisible; in the darkness, it was practically impossible to see.
"So even a legendary figure of the Shinobi World can't escape hair loss once he gets old."
Genjo chuckled inwardly, but his gaze did not linger there any longer than it had on Isshiki's former spot before moving away as though nothing were amiss.
A moment later, Genjo rose to his feet and walked straight out of the temple gate. He lifted his head to glance at the night sky, where the rain had already stopped but the heavens remained dark and overcast, and the corner of his lips curved upward.
"Senior Brother Nitai, this time, you won."
"But I didn't lose out either. If anything, I made a killing."
Such a thought flashed through Genjo's mind, and then, without turning back, he left the ruined temple.
Inside the temple, in the darkness, only that insignificant strand of white hair remained lying quietly in the gap between the bluestone tiles, as though no one had ever noticed it, or as though it had already been quietly carried away by a gust of wind.
...
One day later, in a forest somewhere within the Land of Fire, deep inside an underground cave.
Sitting cross-legged upon a stone platform with his eyes closed in meditation, Genjo suddenly opened them.
Those black eyes, which one day earlier had been as clear as water and as still as an ancient well, had, at some unknown point, quietly changed; the entire pair of eyes became eerie blood-red pupils!
A single pitch-black tomoe floated quietly within that crimson field.
Sharingan!
More precisely… an innate Sharingan!
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