About three months had passed since Ryusei had mastered Thunder Release and completed the first procedure to enhance Kanae's Byakugan.
He was meditating alone when it happened—a sudden flicker in his senses.
A new presence had appeared in the distance, one that hadn't been there a moment ago.
It was faint but unmistakable, moving toward his underground laboratory where Kanae was working.
Ryusei's eyes opened.
His expression shifted only slightly before settling back into calm focus.
In the next instant, he rose to his feet, chakra surging.
Five Inner Gates opened in unison, his body radiating a deep, boiling pressure.
A quake bubble burst beneath him, launching him toward the intruder in a blur of motion.
Meanwhile, far away, Tobirama—still controlling Mū's invisible Edo Tensei body—felt a flicker of irritation.
So, Ryusei had detected him after all.
Even with all his adjustments, it seemed impossible to slip directly past that boy's senses.
He had intended to infiltrate the laboratory first and target Ryusei's allies, but the chance was gone.
Accepting this, Tobirama made his move.
From within the Leaf, he summoned himself, along with Danzo, Sakumo, Hiruzen, and Shinsuke, to the site through Flying Raijin.
His real Edo Tensei body appeared beside Mū's as four coffins burst from the earth before him, their lids trembling but not yet open.
At that same moment, on the outskirts, the other prepared Kage souls previously stationed by Mū activated the sealing formula.
The air shimmered as the vast, otherworldly barrier came alive, an intricate web of soul-forged space that instantly sealed the area, cutting off all outward teleportation within its sphere.
The trap had been sprung.
Ryusei immediately sensed that something was wrong.
But instead of teleporting away or fleeing the area, while he may have had a chance, he stayed where he was.
Leaving Kanae, Kiyomi, Pakura, Renjiro, and his laboratory unprotected was out of the question.
Besides, after surviving their last ambush, he felt a bit more confident facing them.
So, in a single focused pulse, he sent a sensory signal through his clone network, instructing them to relay the situation to Orochimaru and Ashina.
At the same time, he activated a tiny slug fragment hidden nearby, giving it one simple command: reverse summon Tsunade here, immediately.
She appeared beside him in a surge of white smoke, the summoning complete in an instant.
Almost at the same time, Kanae stepped out of the laboratory, her pale eyes already active and scanning the surroundings.
From farther out, Kiyomi, Pakura, and Renjiro arrived one after another, from the wider hideout, drawn by the surge of chakra and the tension in the air.
Within moments, all of them stood together in front of the lab, facing the intruders head-on.
Across from them stood Tobirama Senju, Danzo, Hiruzen, Sakumo, Shinsuke, and Mū's invisible form, faintly flickering into partial view.
Danzo and Hiruzen's presence told Ryusei everything before they even spoke. They looked like beaten dogs, older, drained, and stripped of the arrogance they once carried. Their chakra felt subdued, their eyes hollow.
It was obvious who truly ruled Konoha now. With Tobirama and Hashirama both revived, men like them had been reduced to third-rate figures in their own village, shadows of the power they once held. Ryusei could almost pity them.
For men so obsessed with control and ambition, living under someone else's absolute authority must have felt like a personal hell.
He didn't doubt that Tobirama had often reprimanded them harshly for their repeated failures, maybe even punished them directly.
That would explain their silence now. They stood there like subordinates who knew their place. And Tobirama, true to form, didn't waste words.
Instead, beside Tobirama, those four coffins just jutted out of the ground, their lids slowly creaking open.
Ryusei also noticed that Tobirama hadn't brought Hashirama or Mito with him, an obvious decision, given Tsunade's presence.
Instead, he had chosen new additions for his Edo Tensei lineup.
Ryusei wondered briefly who they might be, and how they could threaten the current him, and the answer came the moment the coffins opened before him.
The first revealed the Third Kazekage, his eyes cold and unblinking even in death.
The second held the Second Mizukage, his smirk unchanged from the stories.
The other two coffins unveiled figures Ryusei didn't recognize, one clad in ornate samurai armor, the other in the simple robes of a monk.
But even without knowing their names, Ryusei could feel the weight of their chakra. Both were monsters in their own right.
Ryusei had long known that, before the shinobi age Hagoromo "accidentally" unleashed by teaching humans how to refine and weaponize chakra beyond its previous limits, thanks to his innate half-Otsutsuki gifts, instincts, and understanding, the true powers of the world were the samurai and the monks.
Before feudal lords began hiring semi-nomadic shinobi clans, they relied on their own standing armies of loyal samurai, much like in the history of Ryusei's previous world.
And the monks of this world were not simple priests either; they were powerful, organized, and almost like miniature feudal lords with their own lands, influence, and peasants, which in some ways mirrored the history of Ryusei's previous world.
But they were far stronger than the versions in his old world could ever be.
After all, everyone here possessed actual souls, and those souls, together with their bodies, produced chakra, complete with real chakra pathways.
What they lacked was simply the knowledge of how to fully weaponize it before Hagoromo's "love and peace" teachings conveniently spread.
Even so, they had always enjoyed a natural boost to physical strength, speed, durability, reflexes, mental clarity, and overall brain performance, and general resilience, thanks to even that most basic passive chakra circulation, especially compared to Ryusei's old home planet.
And Ryusei suspected, based on research he had done in the past, that the most dedicated practitioners among them had gone even further.
Decades of meditation and discipline likely allowed them to somehow project their intent and strikes outward, amplifying their fists or blades beyond normal human limits.
He never underestimated that possibility.
After all, the only reason those traditions eventually vanished from history was that shinobi simply became far more monstrous.
Once Hagoromo introduced his teachings, it was the shinobi clans, the outcasts and mercenaries of the world, who adapted first.
They had no rigid traditions and skillsets to cling to, no moral restrictions, and every reason to twist chakra into a weapon the moment they learned how.
Their versatility, their hunger for power, their philosophy of using any method or tool necessary to finish a job, and their complete lack of hesitation allowed them to outpace the samurai and monks almost immediately.
Shinobi replaced them because shinobi could do everything they could, and far more; With the strongest shinobi clans eventually settling in the most fertile and wealthiest heart of the world, at the time, in today's Land of Fire, closest to the richest feudal lords of the age.
But that didn't mean the greatest samurai or monks in history were weak by today's standards.
If anything, only their average members were weaker than the average shinobi.
The true masters of the old ages were probably far more dangerous than most people alive now realize.
And now Ryusei would see for himself what was true, what was false, and uncover the real mystery erased from history, the mechanics behind their power, and what they truly used.
Kanae's gaze, meanwhile, sharpened immediately. "Edo Tensei again," she said quietly, her tone low but tense. "So they finally decided to throw everything this time."
Pakura clicked her tongue, her eyes narrowing. "The Second Hokage himself leading it this time… I almost thought the last fight was the end of it."
Kiyomi's Sharingan spun to life, her expression calm but her voice edged with cold anger. "They didn't give up. And they came prepared again. They don't plan to leave any of us alive."
Renjiro cracked his knuckles, his lips curling into a small, dangerous grin. "Good. Saves me the trouble of hunting them down later."
Tsunade took one step forward, her chakra already flooding the ground beneath her. "Tobirama Senju…" she said sharply.
"I should've known a selfish man like you wouldn't stay naturally buried if you got the chance. Dragging the dead around again for your experiments? How low did you fall even after death?"
Tobirama's face remained composed, his voice measured. "Practicality isn't 'low,' Tsunade. You'll understand that when this is over. Out of respect for my brother, I will do my best not to make it too harsh on you in the meantime."
As Tsunade then continued shouting to Tobirama, very enraged, for a few more moments, Ryusei's expression, however, stayed unreadable.
Inside, his mind was a storm.
The strange barrier encasing the area, in the distance, that he barely sensed now, wasn't natural; its structure was woven from pure soul energy, something beyond human creation.
He had already tried sending a few slug fragments back to Shikkotsu Forest, but they failed to transfer.
That confirmed it.
This wasn't just Tobirama's doing.
Hagoromo himself was helping Konoha again to deal with him with those incomprehensible methods that defied all of Ryusei's previous calculations once more.
His hands clenched slightly. "So this is it," he thought.
"Another trap… but this time, there's no running even in theory it seems. So I lose, I die."
He glanced once toward his allies, Tsunade furious and focused at the same time, Kanae observant, Kiyomi, and Pakura already forming their battle stances, Renjiro grinning like a wolf about to bite.
His expression hardened.
"Then fine," he thought. "If I can't run, I'll break their entire world again, with my people."
Ryusei could sense it clearly now, the presence of many powerful souls fueling the domain that severed the area from the outside world.
Their combined energy formed the lattice that blocked all outbound travel.
And in that instant, another thought struck him.
He suddenly recalled the unexplained power Hagoromo's soul had displayed in the original series, how he had pulled Naruto and his friends back from Kaguya's dimension with ease, using the souls of the past Kage out of thin air. This awfully reminded him of that situation.
"That alone should've been the red flag to everyone," Ryusei thought. "Like, why did he even possess that kind of power, and how? Why did he wait for that exact moment only to act?"
It was clear to him now. Hagoromo's authority over life and death, over the afterlife itself, extended far beyond what the world believed.
And this was also the same being who had casually granted Naruto and Sasuke power enough to stand against Madara and Kaguya.
That wasn't benevolence, that was control.
Ryusei couldn't have predicted what Hagoromo might do next, in the last few months, ever since he got those suspicions, and that uncertainty was exactly why he had trained harder and smarter than ever to prepare to face the impossible next.
Still, one thing always gave him a sliver of reassurance.
Despite all that power, Hagoromo couldn't descend directly.
Something restrained him from acting in person, no matter what, also seen by how he sent his Konoha's favorite 'minions' to do his bidding for him once again.
And for now, that single limitation was enough to keep Ryusei's resolve at least unshaken despite the pressure and the situation spiralling out of his control.