To confirm his suspicion, Shinji looked around his surroundings, attempting to find some traces of the Barrier Project.
But all that met his eyes was a mass of chaos; except for the mountains and terrain which could still be barely identified, there were almost no reference objects of value.
"Earthquakes, floods, wildfires..."
Shinji's expression was complex.
He had actually experienced such a scene many times, but seeing it fall upon the Shinobi World, he still felt a slight sense of discomfort.
Suddenly, a massive shadow appeared in the distant sky.
And the world beneath the shadow shattered inch by inch, turning into bits of fine powder and dissipating into the endless void.
"That is..."
He sensed a powerful force from the shadow; this power was not unfamiliar, it was the Hegemon of Terror that had set its sights on the Shinobi World.
Shinji instinctively wanted to activate Takamimusubi to enter God Emperor Mode and meet it, but as soon as the thought arose, he suppressed it.
He was currently a time-traveler; everything he did in the "future" would affect the "past" and "present," so if he chose to act here, the long river of time would be altered, and once he failed, the fact of the Shinobi World being destroyed would be destined, achieving unity across every time node of "future," "past," and "present."
Therefore, he could not be impulsive; his "present" was not yet ready, so he could not rush to face the "future."
Rumble
Just as Shinji was about to activate Chōga and return to his own timeline, a massive roar suddenly came from the sky above his head.
Shinji looked up and found that the moon in the starry sky had shattered, and the long-haired Kaguya Otsutsuki escaped from her imprisonment, heading toward the shadow attacking from the distance.
Following that, a giant black sphere appeared and gradually grew larger.
"Expansive Truth-Seeking Ball..."
Shinji recognized that gradually expanding black sphere at a glance.
Undoubtedly, Kaguya Otsutsuki, having escaped the seal and discovering the Hegemon of Terror, chose to use the Expansive Truth-Seeking Ball to perish together with the Hegemon of Terror.
Crack
But just at this moment, a massive sound of shattering rang out.
The black sphere that was continuously expanding seemed to be affected by some force, and in an instant, it collapsed and disintegrated in mid-air, turning into sky-filling ash; turning into ash along with the Expansive Truth-Seeking Ball was Kaguya Otsutsuki, who had just met the shadow.
Shinji shook his head lightly.
A single Kekkei Mora cannot resist a Hegemon; Shinji had already tried this point, not to mention that Kaguya Otsutsuki, who had just escaped her seal, was in terrible condition, and it was hard to say if she could even maintain herself at the Kekkei Mora level, so it was only natural that she was no match for the Hegemon of Terror.
However, seeing that even the sealed Kaguya Otsutsuki had taken action, while he and the members of the Akatsuki were nowhere to be seen, Shinji could not help but feel full of suspicion, thinking: "Is it possible that I do not exist in this future?"
Without waiting for Shinji to ponder further, the shadow in the distance arrived before his eyes.
Shinji no longer hesitated, secretly activating Chōga to slip into it and leave this future.
...
After returning to his own time node, Shinji thought to himself: "It seems this is just one branch among many futures..."
In his heart, he actually knew clearly that the future he had just traveled to was likely not only a branch of the future, but more likely the branch most likely to be realized among the many branches of the future.
In other words, the Shinobi World would most likely be destroyed in the future.
This point also conformed to the ultimate destination that worlds targeted by a Hegemon must inevitably experience!
Returning to the central practice field of the Flying Fortress, Shinji sat cross-legged on the ground again and fell into deep thought.
"The 'past' and 'present' can clearly achieve perfect overlap, so why can't the 'future'? And why was I not in the future within Chōga?"
The future he had just experienced where he did not exist caused many doubts for him, and the biggest doubt among them was why his figure struggling against the end was absent from the future apocalypse.
One must know that he was currently a Kekkei Shinra, an existence in a league of his own in the Shinobi World; except for the Hegemons, no one could truly threaten him, and even if Shibai Otsutsuki were resurrected, who would win between them was an unknown.
Furthermore, even if a strong enemy capable of rivaling Shinji really appeared in the Shinobi World, the great war between Shinji and that enemy would be enough to cause immense destruction to the Shinobi World, yet the Shinobi World in that future just now clearly had no traces of a great war.
While thinking, Shinji suddenly realized something: "I understand, for worlds targeted by a Hegemon, the future is severed!"
A Hegemon needs the "past" and "present" of a world because only if this world possesses a "past" and "present" can it carry the information required by the Hegemon, but a Hegemon does not need this world to possess a "future"!
Therefore, before targeting a world and carrying out erosion, the Hegemon had already severed the future of that world. This was the reason why, among the futures Shinji traveled to using Chōga, the vast majority of branches were the Shinobi World inevitably stepping into destruction.
However, the Hegemon can only sever the future of the Shinobi World, but cannot sever the future of Shinji, who has already advanced to Kekkei Shinra, which is why Shinji did not exist in the future severed by the Hegemon.
"No wonder the hope seen by the Jougan was myself; so I am the only variable affecting the future of the Shinobi World!"
Having figured this out, Shinji breathed a slight sigh of relief, but his brow soon furrowed again.
The future of the Shinobi World has been severed by the Hegemon of Terror, which caused his idea of preparing to monopolize the entire concept of time to completely fall through.
Because he could change the past and change the present, but he could not immediately change the future severed by the Hegemon.
In other words, his Chōga did not completely overlap with the true long river of time of the Shinobi World, and some flaws appeared in the "future" link.
But despite this, because the "past" and "present" had completed their overlap, his Chōga had undergone unimaginable changes.
When he first fused Chōga using Susanoo Tomoshibi, although Chōga leaped to become the strongest dojutsu Shinji currently mastered, it still had not completely escaped the scope of a dojutsu; in the eyes of others, Chōga at this stage could be called a Shinjutsu, but in the eyes of Shinji, this Kekkei Shinra, Chōga at this time was still missing something.
Once Shinji perfectly overlapped the "past" and "present" with the Shinobi World, Chōga instantly underwent a qualitative transformation, breaking away from the constraints of chakra strength and the number of dojutsu, advancing from a dojutsu to a concept.
Or rather, it usurped the true long river of time of the Shinobi World, donning a cloak of conceptual reality.
At this moment, Chōga was no longer a dojutsu; even in Shinji's eyes, it could be considered a Shinjutsu worthy of the name, so Shinji pondered for a moment and thought: "From now on, this technique shall be called Jikō Chōga (River of Time)!"