Note: Reaper → Shinigami.
Though he half-suspected it might be Minato, the voice sounded completely different.
Minato's voice was highly distinctive. Much like the man himself, the moment he opened his mouth, it practically radiated pure yasashii, an incredibly warm, sunny vibe. Besides, if memory served correctly, that guy had ended up inside the stomach of the Shinigami, which was an entirely different story from the Pure Land itself.
Thus, after a brief moment of speculation, Diarmuid instantly dismissed the idea.
Sure enough, after a short pause, the voice spoke again, "I am not Namikaze Minato."
By now, a new hypothesis had formed in Diarmuid's mind. He fell silent for a moment before following up with a question, "You are the Shinigami, correct?"
From what he remembered, even someone as formidable as Madara lost all concept of time upon entering the Pure Land; when resurrected, Madara had no idea how long he had been dead. From that, one could deduce that being in the Pure Land reduced even Madara's mind to a numb, stagnant state. It wasn't just him, either. Hashirama, and even that shrewd fellow Tobirama, were exactly the same. There was no logical reason for these top-tier powerhouses to be incapacitated while someone else maintained a unique exception.
Yet this entity had explicitly mentioned the Nine-Tails and Konoha. This clue allowed Diarmuid to narrow down the possibilities and deduce an answer.
If one calculated carefully, there were precious few entities capable of wielding actual power within the Pure Land. Jashin, the Shinigami, and King of Hell were the prime suspects. Furthermore, the entity mentioned having seen him in Konoha, specifically, on the night of the Nine-Tails attack.
Back then... when Minato died, Diarmuid had indeed seen the Shinigami. If his memory served him right, he had even locked eyes with the entity for a brief moment. As for how the Shinigami knew his name, it must have overheard it during the conversations taking place at the time.
This time, however, the other side remained silent for a long while, for reasons unknown.
After waiting for a bit, Diarmuid spoke up again, "Can we meet face-to-face to talk? "
"It is indeed me," the response finally came, right on the heels of Diarmuid's request.
It really was the Shinigami!
A surge of shock rippled through Diarmuid's mind. Even though he had already guessed the answer, confirming it was another matter entirely. He had never expected the Shinigami to possess independent thought.
According to Black Zetsu's theories, entities like the Shinigami and King of Hell had already devolved into conceptual deities of this world, essentially acting as extensions of its fundamental laws to maintain a certain level of order. Who would have thought the Shinigami still possessed a consciousness of its own?
Before Diarmuid could fully process this thought, his surroundings abruptly plunged into pitch-black darkness, as if he had been pulled right back to his initial entry into the Pure Land.
Before he could react, eerie, emerald-green ghost fires suddenly ignited within the darkness. Like blazing torches, they illuminated the surrounding space.
Looking forward past the ghostly flames, he saw a flight of stairs ascending upward. At the very peak of the staircase stood a grand throne, upon which a figure sat perched.
Holy hell, Diarmuid thought, completely taken aback.
This scene looked incredibly familiar. It bore a striking, almost uncanny resemblance to the Empty Throne in the world of One Piece, with the sole exception that the figure seated upon it wasn't Imulia...
The sudden mental association with Imulia caused Diarmuid's thoughts to drift for a brief moment. He wondered which corner of the universe that terrifying woman had chosen to explore. If her trajectory had successfully returned her to the Earth he once knew, had she already consolidated global authority and assumed the mantle of Global Leader?
Was she currently orchestrating planetary expansion campaigns against extraterrestrial civilizations?
Simultaneously, his mind replayed the memory of their high-intensity, passionate clash aboard the Ancient Weapon, Uranus.
While Diarmuid freely admitted that no deep romantic sentiment existed between himself and Imulia, given that their face-to-face encounters numbered fewer than ten, most of which were high-lethality duels to the death, recalling her now brought an unexpected pang of nostalgia. He felt a sudden urge to traverse time and space just to see exactly how far a legendary figure like her had progressed.
Regardless of which world she had landed in, Diarmuid harbored zero doubt that given her unparalleled intellect, strategic brilliance, and peerless capability, she would comfortably sit at the absolute apex of whatever hierarchy she encountered.
With a myriad of thoughts swirling in his mind, Diarmuid quickly reined in his personal distractions and carefully scrutinized the situation atop the stairs.
When he had encountered Imulia all those years ago, she had been lounging somewhat lazily upon the Empty Throne. The figure currently seated above him was a familiar one as well, it was unmistakably the Shinigami, sporting that one-of-a-kind demonic visage.
However, the Shinigami sat perfectly upright upon its throne, appearing somewhat rigid. Its gaze was fixed intently on Diarmuid.
Only at this exact moment did Diarmuid recall that the Shinigami did, in fact, possess an active will. If his memory served him correctly, when Orochimaru had slit the entity's stomach open to retrieve Minato, Hashirama, Hiruzen, Tobirama, and his own severed arms, the disemboweled Shinigami had actually shed tears.
"It has been a very long time since I have seen a soul as active as yours within the Pure Land. The last one was a fellow named Senju Tobirama," the Shinigami suddenly spoke.
Diarmuid's eyes lit up. As expected, Tobirama had indeed caused quite a ruckus in the Pure Land. How else could he have pioneered a technique like the Reanimation Jutsu?!
From this statement, one could also infer that Tobirama's soul was exceptionally powerful. Of course, dying was a completely different playing field. Regardless of how powerful a soul might be, it would normally fall into a state of mental stagnation. Otherwise, given Tobirama's immense genius, he probably would have already established a complex bureaucratic network in the Pure Land by now, complete with the Eighteen Levels of Hell, the Six Paths of Reincarnation, and the Ten Kings of Hell. The man simply loved researching and implementing institutional systems; almost the entire infrastructure of Konoha had been established according to his ideological blueprints.
Seemingly possessing no intention of waiting for Diarmuid to reply, the Shinigami spoke once more: "Just as I mentioned earlier, the Pure Land is the domain of the deceased. You do not belong here, Diarmuid. You are of the living."
Whether it was merely an illusion or reality, Diarmuid sensed that the Shinigami's cognitive faculties were far sharper now than when it had been monotonously repeating "You have come" at the very beginning.
It felt as though... the entity was gradually waking up.
But what was causing this awakening? Was it because it had detected his soul, a foreign entity that did not belong in the Pure Land?
"Is that a command from the Shinigami?" Diarmuid asked after a brief silence, countering with a question of his own.
If it truly were an absolute command, truth be told, he had no intention of resisting. The sheer magnitude of the Shinigami's soul was right there before him. When he had encountered it in the living world, he hadn't felt anything particularly extraordinary. But here in the Pure Land, he could fully appreciate just how unimaginably powerful the Shinigami's soul truly was. It was absolutely not something he could oppose.
For an entity that had existed as a deity for thousands of years in an environment as saturated with spirit particles as the Pure Land, its soul would naturally evolve to an absurd degree over time, even without any deliberate cultivation!
In reality, the Shinigami had never trained in any soul-based techniques. Exactly as Diarmuid suspected, it had simply grown to this terrifying echelon through sheer natural progression.
Hearing Diarmuid's inquiry, the Shinigami shook its head and replied, "It is no command. Nor is there any law dictating that the living cannot enter the Pure Land. It is merely a warning."
Diarmuid breathed a subtle sigh of relief, feeling a bit more at ease.
While he wouldn't have resisted if the Shinigami forcefully evicted him, Diarmuid possessed an immense interest in the Pure Land. This place was glaringly obvious as a prime location for him to exploit a massive power-up for his soul strength. Naturally, he was reluctant to abandon it and leave so easily.
As for the inherent dangers? Don't be ridiculous. Is there any path to acquiring true power that doesn't come with risk? Even working out at a gym carries the risk of getting crushed to death by a barbell, right?
However...
"Why would you warn me? Is it because we've crossed paths once before? Or is it simply because I'm exceptionally handsome?" Diarmuid asked, testing the waters.
Why would the Shinigami bother to give him a warning? Diarmuid could even faintly sense that the inexplicable, destined feeling he had experienced upon entering the Pure Land was directly tied to the Shinigami itself.
The Shinigami appeared momentarily stunned by Diarmuid's utterly shameless query.
After a noticeable pause, it spoke again: "It is merely a warning, devoid of any hidden agenda. I believe you have already experienced the dangers of the Pure Land firsthand? I have been observing you for quite some time. By the time I first spoke to you, your cognitive functions had already begun to enter a state of decay, had they not?"
"...Yes. That's true," Diarmuid admitted. There was no point in hiding the truth regarding this matter.
"In this universe, the boundary between life and death is not nearly as absolute as people imagine. The dividing line between the living and the dead is exceedingly blurred. Over the course of millennia, there have always been a select few capable of entering the Pure Land while still retaining their lives," the Shinigami explained, offering these deep insights seemingly out of nowhere.
Diarmuid nodded in agreement. The separation between life and death in this world was indeed absurdly loose, almost functioning like a cosmic joke. Regardless of how many decades someone had been dead, as long as the proper methodology was applied, they could be yanked right back to life.
And the side effects? There weren't any damn side effects at all! The Fourth Shinobi World War could essentially be viewed as a grand clash of the living dead. It was glaringly obvious how ridiculous the mechanics of this world truly were.
"Are you referring to me and Tobirama?" Diarmuid asked with a slight smile.
"I am referring to myself, King of Hell, Jashin, you, Tobirama, and many others," the Shinigami softly revealed.
A look of genuine astonishment flashed across Diarmuid's eyes. "You mean... all of you started out just like us? As living beings who ventured into the Pure Land?"
"Correct," the Shinigami affirmed. After a brief pause, it added, "You do not need to ask who I once was. I do not know myself; I have effectively forgotten my own name. In truth, there are many matters I can no longer recall. You may simply address me as the Shinigami."
"Dot the King of Hell and the others still retain their own consciousness?" avoiding any secondary topics, Diarmuid asked this directly.
"I believe they do not. The more powerful a 'deity' becomes within the Pure Land, the more they lose what you would call an independent will. As for myself, I belong to the fringes of this realm. My existence within the Pure Land is trivial, which is likely why I have managed to barely preserve my own consciousness," the Shinigami answered after a moment of reflection.
The King of Hell was widely considered the most vital 'deity' governing the Pure Land, making him visibly more powerful than the Shinigami. Yet ironically, it was precisely due to that overwhelming power that his individual consciousness had apparently dissolved into nothingness.
Meanwhile, the Shinigami claimed to be trivial within the grand scheme of the Pure Land.
Initially, Diarmuid thought the entity was merely acting humble. But when he analyzed it carefully, the Shinigami really didn't seem to do a damn thing of significance!
Its title sounded incredibly grandiose. The Shinigami! In almost any mythological framework, a death god possessed power on par with the chief deities of their respective pantheons. Look at Anubis, Pluto, or Hades. Yet in this world, the Shinigami... was practically useless.
Its sole utility seemed to be using its stomach as a storage container for a handful of souls.
For a moment, Diarmuid looked at this seemingly formidable Shinigami, completely at a loss for words.
You really are... a tragic figure.How utterly pathetic.
"The Pure Land and the living world... the boundary between life and death is incredibly ambiguous. However, the operation of the cosmos over thousands of years is gradually, albeit slowly, rectifying this anomaly. Perhaps in ten thousand years, or perhaps in a hundred thousand, the barrier between life and death will finally become firmly established, and it will no longer remain as absurd as it is today," the Shinigami soliloquized, seemingly talking to itself.
Diarmuid chose not to interrupt.
"For living beings like you and me, entering the Pure Land is fraught with immense peril. If we allow ourselves to become entirely submerged within this realm, your future will become my present," the Shinigami concluded, its gaze locking directly onto Diarmuid.
Diarmuid pondered the statement for a moment, slowly grasping the profound weight behind those words.