After a brief silence, the desire and bewitchment that had been suppressed by Ryosuke earlier erupted once again, even more violently.
Dong! Dong! Dong!
Ryosuke's heartbeat was incomparably heavy, like war drums, like thunder, booming loudly.
At first, the sound was still confined within the Great Toad Sage's room.
But very soon, the sand and stones around Ryosuke, under an invisible power, escaped the pull of gravity and slowly floated into the air.
The earth followed his heartbeat, trembling with each thump, resounding throughout Mount Myoboku.
The tremor spread across the ground. Jiraiya's hand shook, and a drop of ink fell onto the manuscript paper.
He couldn't be bothered to wipe it, and turned his head toward the direction of the Great Toad Sage's room.
Jiraiya knew Ryosuke had come.
It was just that Ryosuke was talking serious matters with the Great Toad Sage, so he had thought he would go find Ryosuke later for a chat.
But this sound…
'Don't tell me they've started fighting?'
Thinking of the White Snake Sage from the rumors, who was chopped to pieces, Jiraiya suddenly stood up.
From the knees down his legs were still stone, but his thighs could already exert strength. He hopped one jump at a time toward the mountaintop.
Not only Jiraiya, but all the toads still in Mount Myoboku also sensed the trembling of the earth, and the terrifying natural energy contained within it.
Fukasaku and Shima, the two high elders, were the first to react, rushing forward. Closely following behind were Gamabunta, Gamaken, and the other giant toads.
They leapt through the mountains, and along the way, even carried Jiraiya, who was hopping like a kangaroo on both feet.
The group of toads came in a mighty surge. Just as they landed, a boom sounded, the walls of the Great Toad Sage's house shattered, collapsing with a crash. Dust filled the air, obscuring their vision.
Gamabunta immediately drew his blade, about to charge in.
Fukasaku hurriedly stopped him.
"Don't be rash."
A gust of wind blew past, dispersing the dust. They saw the Great Toad Sage, face covered in dirt, sitting in his chair, teacup knocked over and caked with soil.
But he didn't care about any of that. His usually half-asleep eyes were wide open, staring deathly hard at the front.
The toads all followed his gaze.
Ryosuke was sitting cross-legged, suspended in mid-air, surging natural energy radiating outward. A light breeze lifted the dust, circling around him, like an immortal descending.
But when Jiraiya clearly saw Ryosuke's face, his pupils shrank. His mind felt as if firecrackers had been stuffed inside, exploding with a bang, leaving his head utterly blank.
Half of Ryosuke's face had turned into a snake's face. White scales had grown on his skin. And within those snake eyes…
Were emotions, intense, evil, emotions no human should ever possess.
"Whi... White Snake Sage!"
The half-snake face grinned widely. The memories belonging to the White Snake Sage had revived, spreading like a virus through Ryosuke's soul, flesh, and cells.
The Dragon Pill, no living being could resist the life-gift it offered. It was one of the White Snake Sage's trump cards.
"I thought you could suppress your greed. Who would have thought… in the end, you are just another ordinary mortal!"
The half-snake face laughed with wild glee, behind its joy thick with venomous hatred.
"Ryosuke!"
The White Snake Sage roared, "Your body isn't bad. From now on, it's mine!"
A huge surge of life force poured from the Dragon Pill. The scales writhed, spreading with the White Snake Sage's laughter toward the other half of the body.
But in the next second, the laughter cut off abruptly.
The scales… were being devoured.
Ryosuke's flesh was like boiling sulfuric acid. As it spread, every snake scale it touched was rewritten at the genetic level by Ripple and Natural Energy, forcibly converted back into human skin.
The White Snake Sage's laughter turned into terrified howls.
It could feel itself being eaten away little by little.
From its life force, to its natural energy, to even the transformation-into-dragon arts cultivated over a thousand years, everything was being swallowed, bite by bite, by the human before it.
If it were the real White Snake Sage, perhaps at the brink of death a flash of inspiration could appear.
But this was only a wisp of memory housed in the Dragon Pill, no different from the little snakes that had escaped from the golden eggs.
It couldn't stop it. It could only watch as everything that belonged to it was seized by Ryosuke. It even saw…
On Ryosuke's forehead, two dragon horns slowly growing, white like jade, without the slightest trace of snake aura.
Fukasaku's old, wrinkled face was full of shock, "This is… the White Snake Sage's Dragon Transformation Art?!"
No, this was absolutely not ordinary Dragon Transformation Art.
The remnant soul of the White Snake Sage screamed deep within its heart.
Pure Ripple power had erased all the impurities of "snake," stepping into the realm of dragon with a pure body, flawless, without defects.
This was the realm the White Snake Sage had pursued all his life yet never touched. Fear, hatred, and jealousy almost drowned him. His teeth gnashed audibly.
He was unwilling.
He wanted to drag Ryosuke down with him.
Unlike the White Snake Sage, the toads and Jiraiya all held their breaths, forgetting everything else, just wanting to carve the scene before their eyes into memory.
They were witnessing a miracle worthy of being written into history, the miracle of a man turning into a dragon,
Crack!
Countless thoughts were cut off by this single crisp sound.
Ryosuke had reached out and snapped off the two horns that were about to take form, tossing them carelessly to the ground.
The White Snake Sage, who had been gritting his teeth, swearing to fight Ryosuke to the death, froze.
It stared blankly at the dragon horns on the ground. Ryosuke's voice echoed in its ears, "You think I would give up my body's potential, and solidify this flesh into a so-called 'dragon'?"
"You really underestimate me."
The "perfect dragon" that it had chased all its life was thrown to the ground like trash by someone else.
The White Snake Sage's eyes turned gray with despair. The barnacle-like scales clinging to Ryosuke's body peeled away, falling with a hua-la-la sound, turning to ash in an instant, scattered by the wind.
The consciousness hidden in the Dragon Pill collapsed completely, vanishing without a trace.
Ryosuke brushed off the falling snake scales, met the gazes of the toads, and finally looked at the Great Toad Sage, speaking a little awkwardly, "Sorry about that, I didn't think it would cause such a commotion… how much does rebuilding cost, I'll pay you back."
The Great Toad Sage waved his hand. "You let me witness a miracle. That's far more precious than this house. How do you feel now?"
Ryosuke didn't know how to describe it. Under the vast life force and natural energy of the Dragon Pill, every cell in his body felt like it had been "reset," as if he were a newborn baby.
His control over Ripple and natural energy was even more delicate. And also…
Ryosuke looked at his feet.
He could faintly sense the power of the "earth."
Although he couldn't reach the White Snake Sage's level of undying immortality, as long as his feet touched the ground, his Ripple, natural energy, spirit, and recovery would all receive comprehensive enhancement.
The Ripple, which had once fallen into a bottleneck without direction, now, under the earth's amplification, faintly showed several new paths worth exploring.
But that would take Ryosuke time to slowly study.
'First it was 3000 soul fragments, then a huge pile of gold and silver treasures, and now it's even helped me find the direction to improve Ripple.'
Ryosuke also thought of Orochimaru, who even after death was still providing technical support for him.
'Looks like… I really am fated with 'snakes.''
In the time that followed, Ryosuke was like a day-scholar.
After eating breakfast in Kirigakure, he would carry the bento made by Mayuri to Mount Myoboku for training, and at night he would teleport back to Kirigakure again to hold his evening classes.
The natural energy of Mount Myoboku was thick, helping him adapt better to his newfound strength. When encountering things he didn't understand during training, he could also take advantage of the Great Toad Sage's moments of clarity to consult him.
Of course, Ryosuke wasn't only taking.
The Dragon Transformation methods recorded in the Dragon Pill from the Ryuchi Cave, during their mutual exchange, he passed them on to Mount Myoboku, filling in gaps in their Sage Arts.
———
Time flew by, and three months passed in a blink.
In these three months, Jiraiya's legs finally shed their petrification, no longer forcing him to hop like a kangaroo every day.
Tsunade officially took office as Hokage.
Terumi Mei completed negotiations with Sunagakure, dispatching a team to help train Sand shinobi in the "Awakening Curriculum," with the team led by the recently popular figure in the village, Iwamine.
As for Ryosuke, he floated in mid-air, countless small rocks orbiting around him. He opened his palm, where a wisp of golden flame burned.
"At last… it's done."
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