A crimson light shone down on Urashiki, unraveling the cursed technique planted by Jashin, breaking it apart piece by piece.
But Urashiki didn't come out of it unscathed either. The explosive energy inside the fish basket caused his body—already not yet fully healed—to fracture like fragile porcelain.
"Get up, damn it!"
Driven by sheer survival instinct, Urashiki's last remaining Rinnegan burst with red light. His broken body shot upward at high speed, soaring into the sky.
On the ground below, the hunter who thought the prey was already cooked missed his final chance. Instead, the shockwave from Urashiki's ascent sent him flying backward.
Looking down at the disheveled hunter below, a strange feeling of relief welled up inside Urashiki.
When had it ever come to this—Urashiki, a proud Ōtsutsuki, feeling glad to have escaped from such a weak, lowly creature?
The honor and nobility of the Ōtsutsuki Clan had been utterly shattered in that moment...
But before he could catch his breath, a new disaster struck.
The black shadow of Jashin appeared right behind Urashiki, who had barely escaped with the help of the fish basket's power.
A massive hand came crashing down.
Boom!
Urashiki's body was completely destroyed. He screamed in agony, unable to even identify where the attack had come from.
His will to survive collapsed.
In desperation, he ignited all the remaining energy stored in the fish basket in one go. In an instant, a vast and chaotic mass of energy erupted midair.
A strange-colored aura ballooned outward, devouring everything in its path.
Even Jashin sensed the immense danger and quickly evaded.
"Haha... ha... This is my escape route!"
Urashiki cackled wildly, pulling a small turtle from the bottom of the fish basket.
Activate!
In that instant, Ōtsutsuki Urashiki, just before the expanding energy mass could consume him entirely, successfully activated the clan treasure he had brought with him—〖Karasuki〗.
It warped his remaining body and weapons out of the current time-space continuum.
Only after the Shinigami used a seal to suppress the runaway energy, and Sasuke and Neji arrived on the scene, was the anomalous power finally neutralized.
During this process, Jashin—an ancient deity who had survived since the age of myth—engaged in peaceful dialogue with the new generation of powerful shinobi.
He even offered to lend them his strength where possible, explaining that his cursed techniques were especially effective against the Ōtsutsuki.
With external threats looming, all living beings of the Shinobi World—human or not—should unite against a common enemy.
However, the current Shinobi World was severely lacking in high-level combatants.
Thus, Neji and Sasuke had been constantly on the move, extinguishing fires wherever they flared. Less than fifteen minutes after meeting Jashin, Neji left in haste.
His next mission was to organize civilians into a counterattack against the aristocratic factions. Only by shattering this outdated cage around the Shinobi World could they unlock more resources and tap into new potential.
Only then could they cultivate more capable core fighters—and perhaps, birth true powerhouses.
Jashin asked Sasuke to find a chance to use the Dead Demon Consuming Seal to awaken the Shinigami's consciousness—another way to bolster the world's strength...
But none of the three realized that Urashiki's broken body had already been sent into the past of the Shinobi World, carried through space-time reversal via 〖Karasuki〗.
They all assumed he had brought about his own doom, swallowed by the explosion of his own chaotic energy.
Only Jashin sensed something off from the 〖Kāma〗 still bound in his hand by a curse technique. Yet even after activating the jutsu, he couldn't detect any target—Urashiki must have already died, he thought, and dismissed the matter.
Instead, he turned his focus toward his next destination—meeting the Mountain God.
...
Behind the hills of Hoshigakure, Jashin met the newly reborn Mountain God.
What he didn't expect was that despite being newly born, the Mountain God's strength already rivaled his own.
Jashin suspected some powerful entity must be behind the Mountain God's sudden rise—perhaps one of the sages from the great sacred lands, or the Sage of Six Paths himself, or even a remnant of the Ōtsutsuki Clan left buried in the land.
But no matter how he racked his brain, he couldn't link Hoshigakure's involvement to any known faction.
At that moment, because it was the Mountain God's first time meeting a fellow divine being, he proactively invited Jashin into his dwelling for a deeper conversation.
Jashin took this chance to present the 〖Kāma〗 of the Ōtsutsuki—still sealed by a curse—and asked the Mountain God to forge him a weapon suited to his hand.
Inside the Mountain God's abode were many prototype Divine Tools in the making.
Among them, one caught Jashin's eye immediately: the Scythe of Death once left behind here by Uchiha Kirin.
This weapon was even stronger than the one he had once wielded.
Just as he reached toward the pitch-black scythe, a faint, translucent purple figure suddenly appeared.
"That's mine. You wouldn't be able to handle it..."
Uchiha Kirin's Limbo clone materialized, picked up the scythe, and gave it a few swings.
Having spent so long here, forged through the power of belief and refined with the Sword-Nurturing Art, it now felt far better than it ever had before.
At last, the weapon had caught up with his strength.
It could keep pace with his growth—and as he used it to slay more enemies, it would only grow stronger.
At present, he had fully fused with Kaguya's power. Both eyes had awakened the Rinnegan with nine tomoe and stabilized the newly merged world.
However, to fully digest the half God Tree fruit he had refined from Kaguya's body and take his power to the next level—along with perfecting his Breathing Art of the Sage Path—he still needed more time to integrate his chakra and various energies into a cohesive whole.
For that reason, his true body had returned to slumber.
Fortunately, Uchiha Kirin's body had now stabilized.
So, even if the true body couldn't yet leave the sun's continuous energy supply, all six Limbo clones could freely move.
Two clones were left to guard his main body.
One clone went to Hoshigakure.
Another quietly headed to the moon to observe Momoshiki.
A third traveled to Water Curtain Cave of Mount, retrieving a stele from the Cat Clan and researching the suspected sealing techniques inscribed on it.
And another wandered the Shinobi World, continuing to seek out lost cultivation methods.
Thanks to Kirin's latest power boost, his Limbo clones—aside from being unable to use augmentation techniques like the Eight Gates—were otherwise identical to his true self in ability.
Just one clone was enough to completely suppress Jashin, leaving him struggling to breathe.
Even in his prime, Jashin had no way to gauge the power of this new version of Uchiha Kirin.
So, being highly adaptable to the situation, Jashin asked no questions about Kirin's origins. Instead, he spilled everything—his background, his clash with Urashiki, and every other detail.
"You're saying that aside from this fishing rod, Urashiki didn't leave anything else behind?"
Kirin's Limbo clone weighed the red fishing rod handed over by the Mountain God—the same one Neji had snatched from Urashiki.
"This is a good item."
Uchiha Kirin smiled faintly. As expected from an Ōtsutsuki-crafted tool, even the materials surpassed any metal found in the Shinobi World a hundredfold.
Its strength and resilience were on par with his scythe.
Most important of all, the energy hook cast from this rod could pierce through nearly any defensive-type chakra, even barrier techniques weren't exempt.
If there was one flaw, it was that it could only extract a limited amount of energy per use—at most, enough to instantly drain a Kage-level ninja's chakra.
If his guess was right, then the matching fish basket probably had the ability to store vast amounts of diverse energy types.
As nourishment for a God Tree, this would be perfect. Perhaps by watering the tree with this, it could even bear fruit compatible with multiple kinds of power!
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