The golden clock that only Izayoi could see had just appeared when its hour, minute, and second hands began to whirl backward at high speed.
From inside the clock, shard‑like scenes—visible only to Izayoi—shot out and passed straight through his body.
A moment later, images from the distant past materialized before his eyes: the realm of Pure Land, where Ōtsutsuki Hagoromo once dwelled.
Seeing this, the corners of Izayoi's mouth lifted slightly.
"So Tensonari really can peer into the past of a soul… In that case, the threat Hagoromo poses drops sharply."
Given enough time, Izayoi could rifle through the sage's thousand‑year history in the Pure Land and observe everything he had done there. If all of Hagoromo's current techniques were honed in that plane, Izayoi might even "steal the style" and learn them himself.
But now was not the moment for leafing through the past.
He dismissed Tensonari, then raised his hand and conjured two orbs of light—one pitch‑black, the other golden. At first glance they resembled Truth‑Seeking Balls and chakra prayer beads, but in the very next instant the two fused, transforming into a black sword coiled in golden radiance.
Hagoromo's violet Rinnegan widened. He muttered gravely, "After only two battles you've fully merged the Sword of Nunoboko with the chakra bead? Such talent is staggering… Could it be that you can steal and stack the gifts of others?"
As the progenitor of shinobi, Hagoromo had never met anyone whose innate talent surpassed his own. Yes, his mother's raw power far exceeded his—but hers came from the Chakra Fruit. Though he inherited some of that might, his Sage Body, Yang Seal, and Six Paths Senjutsu were all self‑cultivated. With sheer aptitude he had overthrown his betters, sealing his immortal, invincible mother without ever becoming the Ten‑Tails jinchūriki.
Yet at Izayoi's age, even Hagoromo had not wielded power of this caliber—and Izayoi had started from an even lower base. Theft of abilities alone could never explain it; without extraordinary talent he would be like Kaguya, a walking apocalypse who never learned to wield her strength to its fullest.
Clearly, Izayoi—reborn from another world—was a prodigy beyond imagining. But what world was he from? Another planet? A parallel dimension? Or… an entirely different universe? Hagoromo resolved that once he defeated Izayoi, he would soul‑search him for answers.
Vwoom—
A blinding white slash suddenly filled Hagoromo's vision, racing toward him like a meteor. He flicked his wrist; an identical white slash split Izayoi's attack in two, then warped space in its wake as it hurtled back at Izayoi—only to vanish mid‑flight. Izayoi had shifted it away with Amenominaka, banishing it to another sub‑space.
As one of the two signature dōjutsu of the Rinne Sharingan—a bloodline limit so rare even the Ten‑Tails' jinchūriki cannot use it—Amenominaka is the pinnacle of space‑time ninjutsu. No ordinary teleportation jutsu can compare, not even the sibling technique Yomotsu Hirasaka. It alone activates with zero start‑up lag: anyone or anything within range can be forcibly warped to another dimension if they lack a counter.
Precisely because of that, the canonical author portrayed Ōtsutsuki Kaguya as a naïve, inexperienced fighter; otherwise Team 7 would have stood no chance. Now that Izayoi wielded the progenitor's abilities, even facing the Father of Shinobi left him unperturbed, for his Rinne Tenseigan and Rinne Sharingan let him gauge Hagoromo's power—and the sage's chakra reserves fell short of his own.
Hagoromo's top stat was still "Rinnegan," and not even as high as Madara's after he became the Ten‑Tails' jinchūriki—no bloodline merger at all.
As long as Izayoi watched out for Sword of Nunoboko and Six Paths: Chibaku Tensei, denying Hagoromo close quarters and draining his chakra, victory was within reach.
Yet the wily sage had spent a thousand years haunting the Pure Land. Even as a mere soul riding Madara's body he commanded Six‑Paths‑level chakra, proof that his power had only grown. Who knew what new techniques he had engineered?
After warping Sword of Nunoboko's slash away, Izayoi raised his other hand, formed a blade seal, and intoned, "Wood Release… Deep Forest Emergence!"
A thunderous quake tore through the dimension. Countless fissures spider‑webbed outward, and colossal tree trunks as thick as hills burst skyward until the realm became an ocean of forest, branches lashing toward Hagoromo. One sweep of the sage's sword unleashed an expanding white light that vaporized the branches to nothing. He frowned. Summoning such a vast forest should have consumed enormous chakra—Wood Release is devastating against armies but wasteful against a single peer opponent. Izayoi was too shrewd for purposeless extravagance.
Before Hagoromo could puzzle it out, a deafening sonic boom erupted: a titanic golden fist—Eighty Gods Vacuum Fist—engulfed him. Again he carved a white portal, slipped inside, and Izayoi's punch hit nothing but empty air.
Floating in place, Izayoi activated Tensonari to view the future of this dimension. Moments later he pivoted toward four o'clock and loosed a bone arrow. As it streaked forward, a white fissure opened ahead, unfolding into a portal. From it erupted a pure‑white tornado that twisted and shredded space, effortlessly pulverizing the arrow and then roaring at Izayoi. He pointed with a fingertip; a black rift blossomed into a portal that swallowed the storm whole. Even that space‑rending vortex could not break his gateway.
Yet as Izayoi used Yomotsu Hirasaka, a white slit silently opened behind him, widening. Because even Six‑Paths Sage Mode cannot sense Yomotsu Hirasaka, he noticed nothing. A black sword shot out—yet Izayoi's figure vanished without warning. Hagoromo emerged, scanning the forest. Realization flashed in his eyes: Izayoi had wasted chakra growing this forest only so he could litter it with Flying Thunder God seals and deploy Wood clones as lookout posts.
The sage retreated into his white portal and disappeared. Re‑materializing amid the trees, Izayoi again invoked Tensonari to read the coming minutes, but no new white fissure appeared. "What's going on? Has he given up?"
he wondered—until a sudden insight struck: Hagoromo's true aim. Instantly he telepathically briefed his Wood clones.
Within three seconds a slumbering beast materialized—the Ten‑Tails, drained of chakra by Izayoi. No sooner had the Ten‑Tails returned than a white fissure ripped open overhead. Before it could widen into a portal, several thumb‑sized black spheres shot out, whirled together, and fused into a fist‑sized black ball. A monstrous gravity surged—like an extreme‑gravity zone. The ground quaked; trees and soil wrenched free and flew upward.
Chibaku Tensei!
It was the basic Rinnegan technique that even Nagato and Madara could perform. Madara, as the Ten‑Tails jinchūriki, could spawn dozens casually—yet none matched the pull of this one. At first Izayoi thought it might be Planetary Devastation capable of sealing the Chakra Progenitor herself, or a weakened Six Paths: Chibaku Tensei, but on closer look it was merely a super‑charged Chibaku Tensei.
He thrust a sky‑splitting beam of light upward, blasting through uprooted trees and earth toward the black core. One hit would shatter it—even a single punch bore blood‑limit-melded force far surpassing Might Guy's life‑burning Evening Elephant. Sensing danger, the black sphere "blanched," turning pure white—and in the next instant, an even greater gravity welled out. The surrounding space warped, the white sphere shattered, and a swirling white maw formed: a white hole—an inverted black hole. Its gravity, magnified many times, swept the entire dimension. Izayoi's beam distorted and was devoured; he, the Ten‑Tails, trees, and land all rose helplessly.
Izayoi's face changed. The dimension itself was shuddering, on the brink of collapse under the stress. Having witnessed an alternate dimension's birth and death before, he understood: these pocket realms are constructs of space‑time and yin‑yang release, their stability far below the real world's. Hagoromo's Chibaku Tensei, now a white hole, had exceeded this realm's limits. If unchecked, it would tear the dimension apart.
Amenominaka failed to warp the white hole away. So Izayoi morphed a Truth‑Seeking Ball into a white sphere, teleported it beside a tree marked with a Flying Thunder God seal that was being sucked in, and detonated it. Blinding light and annihilating force erupted within the white maw; when it faded, the white hole was gone—but the gravity surged further. A black fissure gaped where the white hole had been: a Space‑Time Singularity. Izayoi had heard of such holes but never seen one. Its raging devour‑all aura meant the realm was doomed.
He infused the trees' chakra to form a Wood clone, then, using Yomotsu Hirasaka, escaped with the Ten‑Tails into the inter‑dimensional void rather than risk Hagoromo camping another pocket realm. Two of his six linked spaces were already gone; he needed new ones to pair with Amenominaka.
"Almost there," Izayoi muttered, golden light glinting in his Rinne Tenseigan as he glanced back at the singularity. "Soon the tables will turn."
~~~
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