Chapter 440: Treasured Tool: Plow
If Ino were to pocket this Power of Six Paths for herself… she would be in big trouble.
Facing the Sage of Six Paths, who possessed both his own Power of Six Paths and the Rinnegan, ten of her wouldn't stand a chance.
Sigh. She lamented inwardly. She could only have some "scraps."
She wondered how much of this Power of Six Paths would be left after being used to awaken the young Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki's Rinnegan. The old fossil had calculated it with shrewd precision; there probably wouldn't be much left.
Thinking of how those two idiots, Naruto and Sasuke, completely wasted the most precious gift at the Valley of the End, her heart ached.
If you don't want it, you can give it to someone who needs it, like me, for example!
Ino had finally sorted out her mission's workflow: snatch the Sage Talisman, then use the Power of Six Paths to enable the not-yet-Sage-of-Six-Paths Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki to awaken his Rinnegan.
"Great Sage, I am ready. The problem is, how do I get there? You're not going to make me find my own way again, are you?" Ino asked tentatively.
Her old friend the Shinigami didn't have the ability to travel through time, and none of her friends in the living or dead worlds possessed such a skill. The Dragon Vein wasn't for time travel either.
The Sage of Six Paths, with his back to her, took out a palm-sized, earth-yellow pot from his robes.
He lightly tapped the front of the small pot, on a panel that resembled a nine-square grid.
The small pot, which looked like an unearthed artifact, instantly transformed into a turtle with a blue-striped hard shell. The turtle stuck its head out and looked at the Sage of Six Paths. "Descendant of the Ōtsutsuki clan, I am the Treasured Tool, Plow. Please allow me to introduce the precautions for use. First, please confirm the operating procedure…"
Ino had initially thought it was an inanimate object like the other Treasured Tools of the Sage, but then she realized it could speak and think, which made her think it was a living being. But seeing Plow's rigid intelligence, she thought it was more like a program.
The turtle rambled on with a long list of precautions, and Ino listened carefully, not missing a single detail.
"Lord Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki, please fill with the necessary chakra before use," the turtle said meticulously.
The Sage handed the turtle to Ino.
"I am already dead, and my chakra is nearly depleted. This, you will have to figure out on your own."
"??? You want me to charge it?"
Ino felt a massive headache coming on. It didn't take a genius to know that traveling through time would consume an enormous amount of chakra.
Her chakra reserves were large among ninjas, but for time travel? It was far from enough.
If she had the Yin-Kurama, it would be a different story, but she didn't have it yet.
This time, the Sage of Six Paths wasn't making her figure out how to time travel on her own; he provided the "car," but she had to pay for the "gas."
Ino's own chakra was useful, and she couldn't waste the chakra in her Yang Seal on "gas."
With no other choice, she could only resort to her "connections."
"This ruins the perfection. Damn my obsessive-compulsive disorder!" She took out her Shinigami Rosary, looked at the thirty-six beads, and casually picked one. With a snap, she crushed it.
Not long after, the Shinigami's voice appeared in her ear.
"What is it?"
"I need chakra. Lots and lots of chakra."
"…Fine."
Ino relayed her request, and after a long delay, chakra began to slowly transfer from the other side.
She guided it, feeding the chakra into the turtle-shaped Treasured Tool.
She could feel that this request had caused her relationship with the Shinigami to drop a notch.
The transferred chakra was very familiar to her; it was Hashirama Senju's chakra.
The great Hashirama, who believed that Naruto plus the Nine-Tails was "about the same as my chakra," had no idea what was happening as his chakra was siphoned away by the Shinigami, and quite forcefully at that.
A large portion of Hashirama Senju's chakra was drained, yet it still wasn't enough to meet the minimum requirement for time travel. His chakra had sufficient quantity, but in front of an Ōtsutsuki clan's Treasured Tool, its quality was lacking.
Ino endured the heartache and continued to crush beads from her rosary.
Snap. A bead was crushed. Snap. Another one shattered.
The Shinigami continued to draw chakra. The Third Hokage, the Fourth Kazekage, and the powerful members of the Uzumaki clan whose souls were in the Shinigami's possession all "generously donated."
The Uzumaki clan's experts were known throughout the ninja world for their vast chakra reserves. Even so, it took the chakra of fifty ninjas, plus that of Hashirama and the Third Hokage, to finally meet the basic requirement for time travel.
Eleven of the thirty-six precious beads on the rosary were crushed, reducing its power by a third. Ino's relationship with the Shinigami also plummeted, nearly returning to the state it was in before she had gifted it the Rashomon.
Ino's losses were severe; her solid trump card was reduced by half in an instant. But for those "scraps" of the Power of Six Paths, she was willing to go all out.
At least she had gathered enough chakra for the Treasured Tool, Plow.
The turtle tool, Plow, couldn't help but tilt its head to look at Ino. "Why is all the chakra you collected from dead people? Are there no living people left in the outside world?"
Ino said irritably, "Cut the crap! You're going to be picky? Where do you think we are? This is the world of the dead."
The turtle looked around. The surrounding scenery was indeed very grim.
Ino crossed her arms. "Just tell me if it can be used or not."
"It can."
"Then that's that."
Knowing that the old fossil didn't care for formalities, and having been tricked by him twice in a row, Ino was no longer as cautious as she had been initially.
The turtle tool, Plow, set the time travel destination. Once the energy was fully charged, its shell separated like a pagoda, and the chakra emitted a lead-gray light, forming a sphere of light more than three meters in diameter.
Plow was still explaining to Ino, "Normally, it should emit a golden light. Because all of your chakra is from dead people, so…"
Ino waved her hands dismissively. "No need to explain to me. I know what the chakra color means. It's just dead people's chakra, so what? It's not like there's a problem, right?"
She felt this turtle was discriminating against the dead, which was not a good thing. Did the dead eat your rice? Find living people? Not counting Hashirama, fifty Uzumaki clan ninjas were thrown into the mix. How many living people would I have had to find to fill this massive pit?
Ino bid farewell to the old fossil and stepped into the transport sphere. With Plow's cry of "Departing!" she disappeared from the world of the dead, heading to the distant past.
The Ōtsutsuki's technological prowess was countless years ahead of the ninja world. The process of time travel was incredibly smooth. Ino stood on what looked like a platform, watching colorful beams of energy flash by. Even with the Power of Six Paths inside her, she couldn't decipher any substantial information from them.
The concept of time was far beyond her current level. If she couldn't understand it, she wouldn't look. After about thirty heartbeats, the floating Treasured Tool, Plow, indicated that she had arrived at the target time. A translucent energy doorway appeared to her left. She grabbed Plow and stepped out.
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