The border between the Land of Hot Water and the Land of Frost, a region directly adjacent to the coast.
The ley lines extending from the Mountain Graveyard reached all the way here.
In the quiet night, before a boundless and pitch-black ocean, a withered old man sat leaning against a jagged reef. He used a scythe as a makeshift cane, resting within the colossal shadow cast by a massive entity, seemingly waiting for something.
The old man lifted his head slightly, gazing at the waning moon suspended in the mid-sky. His brow furrowed.
"Byaran... why is that useless fool late again?"
"Tch. As expected... I should have just killed him last time."
Madara clicked his tongue coldly, his impatience deepening. Right then, the reef beside him rippled like the surface of water. A pale figure wrapped in a pitcher-plant-like shroud emerged halfway, a strange smile plastered on its face.
"My, my, Madara-sama, good evening~"
"It seems the Third Mizukage has encountered an unexpected character?"
"Byaran? Who did he run into?" Madara asked coldly, his brow narrowing.
The Third Mizukage's name was indeed "Byaran." Like the First Mizukage, Byalan, he hailed from the Yuki clan and had inherited all of the First's Ice, Water, and Wind Release techniques. In the original history, he had attended the first Five Kage Summit as a bodyguard to the First Mizukage. Usually, such bodyguards were the designated heirs, but unlike the other four nations, the Second Mizukage was not Byalan, but the famous "Mustache," Gengetsu Hōzuki.
The story behind that shift remained unknown to outsiders.
"It's that brat you were interested in—" White Zetsu's smile turned mischievous. "Ren Uchiha!"
At those words, Madara's gaze instantly sharpened. A pair of crimson, three-tomoe Sharingan flared to life in the darkness.
"Four days ago, you changed the plan. You didn't kill the Third Mizukage; instead, you lent him Tobi."
"Hehe... that guy is terrifyingly strong right now!"
Whoosh!
Creeeak—
An azure skeletal hand of Susanoo manifested instantly, fleshing out into a giant palm that gripped White Zetsu tightly. The Zetsu's body groaned under the pressure, letting out a shriek like a dying rat.
"Gah—! Madara-sama, I was wrong!"
Madara stared at him with chilling eyes.
"You say... Ren Uchiha?"
"When you reported to me the other day, wasn't that boy playing house in the Land of Lightning?"
Following the battle at Hell Valley, Madara had ordered Zetsu to keep a close watch on Ren. He knew everything the boy had experienced in the Land of Lightning, and his plan to force the brat to face reality was proceeding steadily.
Yet now—
The chosen heir and the pawn used to control a nation were about to clash. Letting the two meet before they had become true enemies was, no matter how one looked at it, a failure on Zetsu's part. An inexcusable lapse in intelligence.
White Zetsu spoke through the pain, "Madara-sama, the boy housing the Rinnegan is near that brat. I couldn't get too close. After all, those are your eyes—"
"By the time I discovered Ren Uchiha's trail, the two were already closing in on each other."
"They are on the ocean. There is no way to avoid it."
Bang!
The white flesh was crushed into a pulp on the ground. Madara Uchiha stood up abruptly. The man who sat behind the curtain, strictly controlling the direction of the entire world, had not expected a flaw in this particular link.
He narrowed his eyes, peering toward the horizon of the sea, and let out a deep breath.
"I hope it's still in time..."
"Before that waste... is forced to use Wood Release!"
Clutching his scythe, Madara walked toward the water with a grim expression. Behind him, the massive Gedo Mazo cast a terrifying, looming shadow.
"Otherwise—"
"No matter how much I admire you, Ren Uchiha,"
"If you become a factor outside the plan, I will have no choice but to discard you!"
On the other side, upon the boundless blue ocean, a lone boat drifted at the intersection of the moon and the sea.
"Damn it, how did water get into the engine?"
Ren held a maintenance manual in the lower cabin, giving a couple of frustrated kicks to the engine that was currently spewing black smoke. He scratched his head.
The "Lightning Boat" was a great invention, but the technology was so new that the supporting infrastructure wasn't as refined as it would be in the future. Facing a sudden breakdown left him feeling a bit blind.
Cough, cough. Ren would never admit it was because he had been driving the boat too fast.
Looking at the pile of parts he'd taken off but couldn't put back together, Ren wore the expression of an old man confused by a smartphone.
"Well, at least I'm already in front of Turtle Island's projected path."
"Now, I just have to wait for the Island Turtle to swim by. As for getting back... I'll have to let Orochimaru figure that out."
Having failed his attempt at being a mechanic and confirming he had zero talent for man-machine synchronization, Ren sighed and walked up to the deck.
"Well then."
"Since I have nothing else to do, I'll start verifying some of my theories."
He sat cross-legged on the deck, glancing at the position of the moon. Estimating it would take another hour for the turtle to arrive, he didn't plan to stay idle.
He had come to Turtle Island to investigate the possibility of upgrading his Sage Form. The island offered two main things: the Falls of Truth, where one faces their inner darkness, and the training rooms where one enters their own mental world.
Taming a Tailed Beast and taming Sage power were similar—both involved domesticating a savage power that didn't belong to the user. By using the falls to conquer himself and reach a state of mental emptiness, then activating his mutated Sharingan...
Perhaps he could replicate the sensation he felt at Ryuchi Cave when he used the opal provided by the Tagitsuhime. Back then, his mind had been cleansed, entering a state of symbiosis with nature that allowed him to grasp high-concentration natural energy.
Going back to Ryuchi Cave for an opal after backstabbing the White Snake Sage wasn't an option. Besides, he hadn't seen the Sage wearing it during the Hell Valley incident, which suggested it was exceptionally rare even there.
But beyond that, there was something else Ren wanted to test before even setting foot on the island.
It was something sitting in his status panel—an ability that looked powerful but hadn't provided much help yet:
[Talent: Fragmented Ten-Tails' Body (S)]
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