As the Limbo clone entered, the entire tunnel began to tremble. It seemed Karasuki's ability had a limit, and something had changed in the process of traversing time.
Or perhaps, to some extent, Uchiha Kirin had already broken free from the constraints of time, no longer bound to a purely three-dimensional existence—and that was what triggered this shift…
In the end, Kirin coated his body in a thin layer of crystalline spacetime, then wrapped himself in several thick layers of space barriers. Only then did the time tunnel begin to gradually stabilize.
The traversal began. The pale tunnel around him slowly started to change, becoming increasingly transparent in his eyes.
It felt like sitting in a moving train—he could clearly see everything outside. Time flowed and overlapped. Individual beings no longer existed as separate entities.
They had become long, wriggling creatures crawling blindly along the grooves of a sunken world.
If one were to slice along the axis of time, each segment would show the full course of a person's life—from childhood to death.
They were embedded within it, embedded inside the flat disk known as the Shinobi World. Occasionally, a long creature would try to wriggle out from its groove.
Most were severed and extinguished before they made it far.
A rare few, however, would struggle with everything they had to fall into another groove before death, clashing with the long creatures already residing there.
Some were crushed underneath, their lives draining away step by step.
Others managed to climb atop those already in the groove, leeching off their vitality to extend their existence in the dimension of time.
Some were eventually squeezed out again, forced to dig into the solid, flat world below, carving out a small depression with their lives—a cramped shelter for those who would come after.
Perhaps... these grooves were what people called fate.
Everyone was born into a groove called fate. Some lived out their entire lives along its path. Some tried to escape—only to fall into another fate entirely.
Some were born into wide roads meant only for them. Others had no choice but to live in narrow grooves, fighting other long creatures for a chance at survival.
In the end, they birthed the next generation, continuing this brutal cycle, until the corpses of insects piled high within the grooves, and fate could no longer move forward.
Naturally, most could not survive without fate. They died helplessly.
Only a tiny few, beyond the fate already carved out, used the entirety of their lives to blaze a new beginning for those who came after…
Uchiha Kirin stared into himself. Amid the overwhelming and vivid sensation, he accepted one truth:
He was merely a snake, capable of briefly gliding through low skies—nothing more.
He was luckier than most. He didn't have to be trapped in the narrow ruts of fate.
He could lift his head and see the path ahead. He wasn't doomed to crawl blindly. He could consciously shift his head and tail.
He was no longer anchored to time.
Occasionally, he could even leap up and gaze down at the land and the pitiful insects crawling below…
But still, he remained shackled to this earth. If he wanted to cross the towering peaks that pierced the heavens, he could only move slowly.
"What difference is there… between this and being an insect?"
Kirin sighed. The fragmented land, divided by mountains, meant no more to him than the grooves meant to those crawling insects.
The only difference was that he could see it all.
He could choose to stay and spin in circles… or slowly climb over the mountain ridges…
He raised his head and looked skyward.
The peaks above were empty—utterly void.
Below him lay a seemingly endless landscape, a great basin in truth. And in this basin, aside from himself, there were several other beings that had also evolved from insects into serpents.
These were what the Shinobi World called "Sages."
The largest among them were none other than the Slug Sage and the Sage of Six Paths. There was also a smaller one, its head marked by a blurry eye—a distinguishing feature. That one was the Toad Sage.
Yet now, after absorbing Kaguya and grasping the power of spacetime, he had surpassed them all.
He had completed the metamorphosis—from insect to snake.
Suddenly, in that bizarre perspective, Uchiha Kirin heard the cry of an eagle.
A massive shadow, brimming with overwhelming pressure, appeared from the sky above and dove straight toward him.
His heart immediately sounded the alarm. He tried to evade, but could only shift sluggishly and awkwardly.
"I can't dodge it!"
In this state, Uchiha Kirin couldn't do anything. He couldn't even activate the god-like techniques he had painstakingly developed.
He opened his mouth, using a faint breath to spray thin threads of crystalline spacetime.
As he watched the giant eagle dive down, he noticed its decaying aura. Its once-bright eyes were now empty and lifeless.
"A dead thing!"
A chill gripped his heart.
He immediately recalled something ominous—was this the terrifying existence he had seen when he crossed the Dragon Vein?
The being that had severed his future?
The crystals he expelled had no effect on the decayed eagle.
It seized Kirin in one of its talons and began to tear him apart in midair.
〖Ding ding… Alert!〗
〖System under unidentified attack. All defensive components destroyed!〗
〖Emergency protocol activated. Preparing to discard defense components!〗
Whoosh—
A formless light burst out from inside him, instantly coiling around that terrifying entity.
The decaying giant eagle let out a mournful cry, then loosened its grip and fell into the mountains below.
Kirin's mind wavered. When he awoke, he found himself once more inside the time tunnel.
Everything around him was white.
"Karasuki, did you notice anything just now?"
"There was a bit of turbulence, I think. Don't worry. The tunnel sometimes passes through unstable streams. It's totally normal…"
The Limbo clone exhaled in relief. It seemed even Karasuki hadn't sensed what had just occurred.
It had taken the system discarding its own defenses to shake off that thing.
What was that mysterious and terrifying existence?
"From now on, unless absolutely necessary, I'm never using spacetime teleportation again!"
Uchiha Kirin swore silently to himself and buried the terrifying image deep within his memories—sealed away with countless other thoughts and distractions.
"We're almost there!"
Karasuki spoke up.
Ahead, the pale tunnel began to fade into a more realistic scene.
This was a point a few months after he had entered the Dragon Vein. It also happened to be the moment when his original body and the remaining Limbo clones had just completed the final phase of their time research—and captured the spacetime crystals.
According to Karasuki, he had no idea why it was now impossible to cross over into even ten minutes after the clone had left.
But having seen it himself—having witnessed the multitudes squirming like worms, and his own transformation into a snake—Uchiha Kirin had found the answer.
—He had acquired width in time.
Those few months… were the part of his existence that set him apart from the insects.
A part that could not be folded.