"You really don't get it, do you?" Shen Mo said with a wry chuckle. "Fine, I'll explain it simply."
He'd already guessed which can series suited Jiraiya.
Raising a hand, he snapped his fingers—snap.
The world around Jiraiya shifted. They stood in utter darkness, no light source, yet Jiraiya could see Shen Mo clearly, as if the void itself illuminated him.
The surreal contrast jarred him.
"In the eyes of someone like me, what do you think fate looks like?" Shen Mo's smile held a cryptic edge. Without waiting for an answer, he continued, "A tree. The Tree of Fate."
"The Tree of Fate?" Jiraiya echoed, brow furrowing.
"You saw the vision I showed Naruto and the others during the first Fate-Witnessing Stage, right?" Shen Mo asked.
"Yeah," Jiraiya nodded solemnly.
He'd quizzed Naruto about that stage's details while training him. The vision Shen Mo revealed—Naruto's original fate, where Haku died, Zabuza died, even Sasuke died—had shaken him.
It was as if Shen Mo could prophesy the future.
"In my eyes, your world's original fate was simple, transparent," Shen Mo said.
He raised a hand. From his palm, a tree of glowing yellow light sprouted slowly.
But it had no branches.
A bare, pitiful trunk, more pillar than tree.
"Fate, or rather, the future, is a profound concept," Shen Mo said. He touched a point on the trunk, and a vision flickered: a younger Jiraiya, listening to the Great Toad Sage's prophecy at Mount Myōboku. "Normally, those entangled in fate struggle to predict it absolutely. But the Great Toad Sage succeeded. You believed because its prophecies never failed."
Jiraiya's eyes widened, grasping the implication.
"You're saying," he ventured, voice tinged with reverence, "the Great Toad Sage's prophecies were accurate because this world's fate was a single trunk, a fixed outcome?"
"Exactly," Shen Mo replied, unsurprised by Jiraiya's quick understanding.
He tapped another point on the trunk.
A new vision appeared.
Jiraiya, blood-soaked, collapsed on the ground, his eyes holding regret yet contentment—a man who'd found his answer but wouldn't live to see it.
Jiraiya watched silently. "So, in the Great Toad Sage's prophesied fate, I die before the prophecy's fulfilled?"
His tone carried no panic, only acceptance. If his mission was complete, death held no fear.
Besides, that fate had likely been altered.
He looked at Shen Mo, expression complex.
"Such a barren fate is utterly dull," Shen Mo said, not answering directly. He extended the trunk toward Jiraiya, voice low. "Your emotions, your actions—all of you were puppets of fate, playing out a script we could read from start to finish. That doesn't deserve to be called fate!"
Shen Mo had voiced this view before, but now it struck Jiraiya deeper.
This man was like a reader of Jiraiya's novels, dissatisfied with the plot's predictability, stepping in to rewrite it, twisting the story into something more thrilling.
Terrifying.
For the first time, Jiraiya felt true dread of Shen Mo. Even knowing Shen Mo's unmatched power hadn't chilled him like this. To Shen Mo, their world was a novel, its characters' thoughts and fates malleable with a whim.
Shen Mo, sensing Jiraiya's thoughts, found the analogy oddly fitting.
Not far off from mortals' guesses about higher beings.
Smiling, he continued, "But that's changed. The moment I entered this world, everything shifted."
He tapped the trunk at a specific point—the moment he met Tsunade.
From that point, the Tree of Fate sprouted wildly, like a sapling in spring. Branches forked, multiplied, and bloomed into a dense canopy. In moments, it dwarfed a man, then a wall, until…
The entire dark void shimmered with crystalline branches.
Jiraiya looked up, awestruck by the breathtaking, radiant sky.
This was their world's fate now?
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Shen Mo gazed upward too. "Infinite branches, endless possibilities. Every can you open, every change in power or thought, every clash between you—it all spawns new futures. This is what the Tree of Fate should be."
Jiraiya couldn't deny it.
It was stunning.
His eyes caught a few branches that stopped growing. Pointing, he asked, "Why don't those branches extend?"
Shen Mo glanced casually. "Oh, those? Their worlds were destroyed, so they stopped."
"Destroyed?!" Jiraiya's jaw dropped, disbelief etched across his face.
Could he not say such horrifying things so nonchalantly?
"It's common," Shen Mo shrugged. "The Sage of the Six Paths had world-destroying power. Humans love war. As your strength grows, so does the chance of annihilation. Some always crave total destruction."
Jiraiya swallowed hard.
Beneath this beautiful canopy, countless branches likely led to fates worse than the original.
Give me back that barren trunk!
"I sense your desire," Shen Mo said, squinting with a smile. He raised a hand, voice ringing. "To prevent those darker fates, struggle for the future you want. Based on your wish, I recommend a series to guide fate—the Prophecy Series!"