Chapter 318: Uchiha Douhuan Returns, Yin Sage Mode
The stalemate of the three-way chaotic battle continued. Naruto, Sasuke, and Neji, like the most cunning peregrine falcons, continuously shuttled and interfered amidst the stormy attacks of the two great powerhouses.
Sasuke's Amenotejikara was unpredictable. It always managed to swap their attacks at the most critical moments, causing Kaguya's and Isshiki's killing moves to repeatedly hit empty air or be forced to cancel each other out. Naruto, on the other hand, used his majestic Yang Power and Truth-Seeking Orbs to carry out tough blocks and counter-attacks, forcing the two to be unable to ignore his existence. Neji's Tenseigan saw through the entire situation, continuously launching sharp, long-range precision strikes with his Eighty Gods Vacuum Attack and Truth-Seeking Orbs, tying down the movements of the two.
Ōtsutsuki Isshiki's face was terrifyingly grim. He had never been so frustrated. These "ants" in his eyes were like annoying flies. Although they couldn't inflict fatal wounds on him, they were greatly hindering his pace of suppressing Kaguya and retrieving the fruit. His attacks became more and more violent. Black cubes and spatial cuts poured down like a torrential rain, but they were always cleverly neutralized or deflected by that bizarre time-space dōjutsu and the golden Truth-Seeking Orb barrier.
Ōtsutsuki Kaguya was equally anxious and angry. Black Zetsu shrieked continuously from her sleeve, urging her to quickly break away from the entanglement. But the thick Indra and Asura chakra on Naruto and Sasuke, as well as the tricky cooperation they displayed, which far surpassed any previous reincarnates, made it impossible for her to concentrate her power to deal with Isshiki, let alone capture them. Her All-Killing Ash Bones would even be swapped back by Sasuke, forcing even her into a flurry.
"Damn Indra! Damn Asura!" Kaguya roared madly in her heart. Her hatred for the chakra reincarnates of her two rebellious sons had reached its peak.
Just at this critical point, when the intense and chaotic battle, where no one could completely get the upper hand, had reached a certain limit—
A sudden change erupted from within Ōtsutsuki Kaguya's body!
"Ugh—!"
Ōtsutsuki Kaguya suddenly let out a muffled grunt mixed with pain and horror! Her massive body abruptly stiffened in mid-air, her movements completely stopping! Even the majestic chakra around her body showed an extremely unnatural, violent fluctuation, as if it were boiling water!
"Mother?! What's wrong with you?!" Black Zetsu shrieked in terror. It sensed that some terrifying mutation was happening in its mother's core!
Ōtsutsuki Isshiki also keenly sensed his opponent's abnormality. But being cautious by nature, he did not immediately press the attack, but instead watched coldly from the sidelines and strengthened his guard.
Naruto, Sasuke, and Neji also immediately retreated, looking at the suddenly stiffened Kaguya with shock and uncertainty.
"That chakra..." Sasuke's Rinnegan stared deadly at Kaguya. He sensed a familiar yet somewhat different chakra that was extremely domineeringly awakening and expanding from the deepest part of Kaguya's body!
"It's Teacher Douhuan?!" Naruto also sensed it, and a look of unbelievable joy appeared on his face.
They saw Ōtsutsuki Kaguya's beautiful face begin to twist. Within her Rinne Sharingan on her forehead and her pair of Byakugan, the phantom of another pair of even deeper, more complex Rinnegan eyes actually appeared, overlapping! As if two consciousnesses were fiercely fighting for control of the body!
"No... impossible! How can you... still exist?!" Black Zetsu let out a terrified shriek, its voice changing pitch. "Your soul and power should have been completely assimilated by Mother!"
A calm and familiar voice, as if resonating from every cell in Kaguya's body, responded to his horror:
"Assimilation? Black Zetsu, you underestimate me. Don't you think that the fact your seal was opened at the same time I became the Ten-Tails Jinchuriki was a bit too much of a coincidence?"
This was precisely Uchiha Douhuan's voice! Unmistakably clear!
"Did you think I swallowed the Ten-Tails merely for power? No, that was more to feel the core of the God Tree up close, to feel the origin of Yin-Yang Release, so that I could walk out this step of the sublimation of life by myself."
As his words fell, Kaguya's body trembled even more violently. Under the surface of her skin, it was as if countless blue runes were flickering and flowing!
"Turn back time... Omodaru!"
Uchiha Douhuan's voice was like a final proclamation!
Weng—!!!
A bizarre to the extreme time-space fluctuation suddenly erupted from within Kaguya's body! This was not a jutsu that acted on the outside world, but a reverse-time regression that acted on Uchiha Douhuan's own state of existence!
This one-time-use Transcription Seal dōjutsu, left behind by that astonishingly brilliant genius of the Uchiha clan, Uchiha Asahi, as the final insurance when cultivating the human sage mode, which Uchiha Douhuan had regarded as his final trump card ever since he obtained it, at this moment, reversed his own state back to the very instant before he was devoured!
This was not a simple resurrection, but a fundamental negation of the fact that "being devoured by Kaguya" had ever happened to him!
"No!!!" Ōtsutsuki Kaguya let out a desperate shriek. She could feel that a complete, independent, and even more powerful consciousness was being forcefully stripped and reshaped from her origin!
Under the shocked gazes of everyone, at the center of Ōtsutsuki Kaguya's massive body, the thickest mass of chakra suddenly collapsed and reshaped!
Kaguya's body became illusory and unstable, like an image with a bad signal.
And another figure stepped out from that illusory image!
Still that white robe with tomoe, still those nine jet-black Truth-Seeking Orbs, and the Rinnegan in his eyes was still eerie. But the difference was that the gaze in his eyes was no longer Kaguya's indifference and madness, but the absolute calm and profundity belonging to Uchiha Douhuan. His aura was more harmonious and stronger than when he had first become the Ten-Tails Jinchuriki.
Uchiha Douhuan, relying on his own layout and forbidden dōjutsu, from within Ōtsutsuki Kaguya's body, completed the reversal and returned strongly!
He floated in the air, slightly moving his wrist, as if adapting to this more perfect body. He glanced at Ōtsutsuki Isshiki opposite him, whose face was incomparably ugly and who was on high alert. Then he glanced down at the dumbfounded Naruto, Sasuke, and Neji.
Finally, his gaze fell back on Ōtsutsuki Kaguya behind him, who was gradually re-condensing but whose aura was much weaker, her face full of shock and anger.
"Thank you for the 'hospitality,' Princess Kaguya," Uchiha Douhuan's voice was calm, but it carried a bone-chilling coldness. "The bloodline of your clan really has some tricks. To be able to engrave the ability to control Yin-Yang Release into your DNA as an instinct."
As Uchiha Douhuan spoke, he actually took the initiative to exit the Six Paths Sage mode and returned to his human form. At the same time, the vast natural energy between heaven and earth began to gather towards him.
"However, we are not the same race. This way of controlling Yin-Yang Release has considerable hidden dangers for the humans of our ninja world."
"So..."
The natural energy gathering on Uchiha Douhuan's body began to undergo a heaven-and-earth-shaking change.
"The form of power should not stop at imitation and inheritance," he muttered to himself, as if talking to himself, and also as if announcing to this world.
The vast Ten-Tails chakra around him began to vibrate at a strange frequency. It was not agitation, but a deeper resonance. The Rinne Sharingan on his forehead opened slightly, revealing a trace of light that sought the origin.
"The power of the God Tree originates from the planet's life; natural energy exists between heaven and earth. Chakra was originally something brought by the God Tree's fruit. Although it has the same origin as the natural energy of this world, it does not flow the same way." His consciousness sank into his body, transcending the roar of the Ten-Tails, transcending the rushing of chakra, and probed towards the depths of the natural energy that constituted the most basic, omnipresent foundation of the world.
"Yin-Yang Release, the power of creation and destruction. Kaguya and Isshiki, they have the power, but they only know what it is, not why it is. The Sage of Six Paths founded Ninshū, but he also stopped at the transmission of chakra."
"And I... must go further."
His spiritual power, with the blessing of the Ten-Tails' power, at an unprecedented intensity and precision, began to forcibly comb, guide, and even rein in the vast, sea-like, yet violent and disorderly natural energy around him!
This was a more domineering, more direct, and also more dangerous attempt—to use his own powerful will and the Ten-Tails' power as a lever, with his deep understanding of the essence of Yin-Yang Release as a blueprint, to forcibly bring natural energy into his own control system!
"Yin Release, commands imagination, grants form."
"Yang Release, commands life, grants vitality."
"And natural energy... is the most primitive, purest 'raw material' between heaven and earth!"
Weng—!!!
The space around Uchiha Douhuan began to distort violently. It was not a time-space ninjutsu, but a phenomenon produced by natural energy being extremely gathered, compressed, and even having its physical rules changed! His white tomoe robe billowed without wind, crackling loudly. The nine Truth-Seeking Orbs behind his back were no longer just jet-black spheres. On their surface, splendid and dangerous gray-white energy patterns, like nebulas, began to flow—that was the new product of the perfect combination of highly condensed natural energy and Yin-Yang Release!
He suddenly opened his eyes!
That pair of Rinne Sharingan had already undergone a great change! The original purple-red ripple base had turned into a deeper, dark color that seemed to be able to swallow all light. And the ripples themselves lit up with a silver-white light as cold as the stars. Around the corners of his eyes, arcane and complex, gorgeous patterns outlined by gray-white natural energy appeared, extending all the way to his temples, adding a few traces of divine indifference and majesty to him.
A completely different, more ancient, closer-to-the-world's-origin, terrifying pressure erupted from him as the center! This pressure, it even made Ōtsutsuki Isshiki and Ōtsutsuki Kaguya feel an instinctive discomfort and vigilance!
"What... is this?!" Kaguya's pure white eyes were filled with confusion and suspicion. She had never seen this form of power.
"Hmph, playing tricks!" Isshiki snorted coldly, but his eyes became more grave. He could feel the essential improvement of the other's aura.
Uchiha Douhuan slowly raised one hand, his palm facing up, his five fingers slightly spread.
He did not mobilize the Ten-Tails' chakra, nor did he use the ability of the Rinnegan. He just purely, with his new will that had fused the understanding of natural energy and the essence of Yin-Yang Release, gently grasped at the void.
"Manifest."
As his cold voice fell, in the space above his palm, matter seemed to be directly "created" from nothingness!
No longer a transformed form of a Truth-Seeking Orb, but real, out-of-thin-air material creation!
First were tiny metal particles, then they quickly gathered, shaped, and extended... a long sword, pitch-black all over, its body flowing with a nebula-like luster, the space around its blade slightly distorted, was born out of thin air in an instant!
This sword was not chakra solidified, but a real sword with a material form! What it contained was the perfect combination of the ultimate Yin Release annihilation power and natural energy!
Uchiha Douhuan held the hilt of the sword and casually swung it forward.
There was no earth-shattering explosion, no gorgeous special effects.
Only a fine, black, thin line that seemed to be able to cut space flashed past.
In the next moment, a mountain peak in the distance, which had been flattened by half by the aftershocks of Kaguya's and Isshiki's battle, its remaining part, along with a large area of space around it, like a painting erased by an invisible eraser, disappeared without a sound! No rubble, no dust, just completely turned into nothingness, as if it had never existed!
Creating matter from nothing! Annihilating with a thought!
This was Uchiha Douhuan, with natural energy as the foundation and Yin-Yang Release as the guide, the brand new realm he had created for himself—
Yin Sage Mode!
In this mode, his control over Yin Release had reached an unprecedented extreme. What his mind thought, he could create tangible objects out of thin air relying on natural energy and Yin Release power. He could also decide with a single word, returning all things to nothingness. Its power, its realm, had already surpassed the category of a simple Ten-Tails Jinchuriki, touching the true edge of the authority of Yin Release! Just like the ancestors of the Ōtsutsuki clan had done.
His gaze fell coldly on Ōtsutsuki Isshiki and Ōtsutsuki Kaguya. The long sword in his hand, which had been born from nothingness, was slightly raised.
"Now, let's start over."
"Use your existence to verify this new power of mine."
The atmosphere of the battlefield, due to the appearance of this power beyond cognition, was once again pushed into a more unknown, more terrifying abyss!
"So, this was Teacher's purpose?" Neji also said with a laugh at this time.
At the beginning, when Neji saw Uchiha Douhuan, after defeating Uchiha Madara, choose to swallow the Ten-Tails himself and activate the Infinite Tsukuyomi, he had also felt that he had been betrayed. But now that everything had come to light, Neji finally understood his teacher's purpose.
In the next instant, Uchiha Douhuan's figure appeared beside the trio of Naruto, Sasuke, and Neji. He reached out with his left and right hands, helping the two of them comb through the Sage Art chakra and Yin-Yang power in their bodies. Then he looked at the two enemies in the sky.
"You three, it seems that after becoming my disciples, we haven't fought together yet." After helping Naruto and Sasuke comb through the power in their bodies, Uchiha Douhuan then acted to completely erase some of the hidden dangers in Neji's body that had been brought about by the Caged Bird Seal, and only then did he speak.
"Yeah, Teacher. Since becoming ninjas, it seems the three of us have never had the experience of having our Jonin instructor take us on a mission," Sasuke clenched his fists, feeling the power in his body that had become stronger again, and said with a laugh.
"Then this time, I'll make up for your regret," Uchiha Douhuan said with a laugh.
(End of chapter)