c1 - First Arrival in the New World
In a vast, boundless desert,
Madara Uchiha, clad in the red lacquered armor he had worn since the Warring States Period and carrying the white gunbai war fan of the Uchiha clan, slowly opened his eyes.
Countless memories, like scattered scraps of paper blown about by the wind, swirled violently through his mind.
Madara understood immediately; he had arrived in a completely different world.
In the ninja world,
during the climax of the Fourth Great Ninja War,
he had successfully become the jinchūriki of the Ten-Tails after absorbing the Ten-Tails' chakra and integrating it with his own body.
At that time he had awakened not only his dual Rinnegan, which he had previously implanted after reclaiming them from Nagato's legacy through Obito, but also the power of the Sage of Six Paths that came with becoming the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki.
Just as he was preparing to complete the final stage of his Eye of the Moon Plan and cast the Infinite Tsukuyomi using the Rinne Sharingan that manifested on his forehead after merging with the God Tree,
a strange spatial distortion resembling a black hole suddenly appeared and swallowed him whole, transporting him to this unfamiliar world before the plan could be fully realized.
Although somewhat concerned about the unfinished Eye of the Moon plan and the fact that the Infinite Tsukuyomi had yet to be cast upon the moon to trap all humanity in eternal illusion, now that he was in a new world he could not remain fixated on what had already passed.
He needed to quickly understand the situation here.
Madara placed his gunbai war fan behind his back, closed his eyes, and began to manipulate and refine the chakra circulating throughout his body.
He, Madara Uchiha, the legendary shinobi who once rivaled Hashirama Senju and founded Konohagakure with him, was not someone who would sit quietly and wait for death.
Although worlds were different, the fundamental principles governing power rarely changed.
Regardless of whether a world was strong or weak,
it would inevitably follow the law of the jungle: the strong rule while the weak are trampled beneath them.
Whether he could refine chakra, the fundamental energy system created from the combination of spiritual energy and physical energy as taught by Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki, would determine whether he possessed an initial advantage in this unknown world.
Madara Uchiha focused his attention inward toward his own body. The moment he began refining chakra, enormous quantities of spiritual energy from his mind and physical vitality from his cells fused together, forming dense and perfectly balanced chakra just as shinobi had done since the age of the Sage of Six Paths.
"The power of chakra still exists, doesn't it?"
Madara nodded slightly; this was excellent news.
If his understanding was correct, this was because chakra was not dependent on external sources alone but was fundamentally produced by combining the user's mental and bodily energies, a principle he had mastered long ago during countless battles with Hashirama Senju.
After confirming that the chakra system still functioned normally within his body, Madara began refining massive amounts of chakra bit by bit at an astonishing speed.
A faint smile appeared at the corner of Madara's lips. This was the first time he had consciously circulated and refined chakra since officially becoming the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki and synchronizing with the power of the God Tree.
The speed at which he was now producing chakra far exceeded any previous point in his life, even compared to when he possessed the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan during the Warring States era.
As expected of the Ten-Tails, the primordial source of chakra in the shinobi world and the original entity from which the nine tailed beasts were later divided by the Sage of Six Paths.
This immense power suited him perfectly.
With such terrifying chakra generation and circulation speed, Madara Uchiha restored his body's combat readiness in little more than ten seconds.
After confirming that his chakra network, ocular powers, and jinchūriki vitality all remained intact, Madara nodded in satisfaction.
Although he did not fear beginning from nothing, he had always despised the sensation of weakness.
The feeling of standing at the peak of power, ready to dominate the battlefield at any moment, was the state he enjoyed the most.
Having recovered his strength, Madara closed his eyes once again and extended his chakra outward to sense the surrounding environment.
After becoming the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki, his sensory perception had reached an extraordinary level, comparable to the chakra-sensing abilities of elite sensory ninja and even rivaling the detection range of shinobi such as Karin Uzumaki with her Mind's Eye of Kagura, allowing him to perceive life signatures across a vast radius of many kilometers.
The moment his chakra spread outward, Madara immediately sensed numerous living presences scattered throughout the surrounding desert, the nearest one located directly beneath his feet.
Madara crouched down, narrowed his eyes slightly, condensed chakra into his right hand, and then suddenly plunged his fingers deep into the sand.
In the next instant, a yellowish-brown scorpion was dragged out of the sand, frantically baring its claws and venomous stinger toward Madara.
No matter how fiercely the small creature struggled, it was completely unable to escape the iron-like grip of Madara Uchiha's fingers.
Madara calmly examined the scorpion before him.
Although his earlier perception had been brief, Madara had already noticed that every living creature he sensed possessed a strange form of energy circulating within their bodies, and even the surrounding atmosphere seemed to contain faint traces of it.
If his analysis was correct, this unfamiliar energy was likely the fundamental power system governing this new world.
"The place where the energy is most concentrated..."
"Here."
Madara gently pinched the scorpion's head between his thumb and index finger. With a slight application of force, a small round crystalline yellow core was extracted from its body.
Madara casually tossed the lifeless scorpion aside and then began carefully examining the strange core in his palm.
Although the crystal was extremely small, the amount of energy sealed within it was surprisingly dense, though not particularly abundant.
Perhaps he could experiment with this world's energy system and determine whether it could coexist with, or even strengthen, his own chakra cultivation.
With that thought in mind, Madara casually tossed the demonic core into his mouth and crushed it with a few slow movements of his teeth, calmly testing how this unfamiliar power would interact with the chakra flowing through the body of the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki.
The moment the demonic core shattered, it unleashed a torrent of violent energy.
It was only a first-tier demonic core, yet the strange energy contained inside it was extremely violent and chaotic. Even the trained fighters of this world likely could not directly absorb it into their bodies without suffering backlash.
The correct method to utilize such a demonic core would normally require a skilled alchemist to refine it together with medicinal herbs and stabilizing ingredients, transforming the raw core into a pill that could be safely absorbed by the body.
However, the word "impossible" had never existed in the dictionary of Madara Uchiha.
"Hmph."
Madara Uchiha snorted coldly the moment he sensed the violent energy from the shattered demonic core rushing through his body like an uncontrolled current.
Such a weak and disordered force actually dared to rampage within the body of the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki?
Instantly, the enormous chakra circulating through Madara's chakra pathway system surged forward like an overwhelming tide. The vast chakra created from the fusion of spiritual energy and physical energy forcefully suppressed the foreign energy that had entered his body.
This power directly guided the chaotic energy through Madara Uchiha's internal chakra pathways, the same complex network shinobi used to circulate chakra for ninjutsu and taijutsu.
After circulating through his entire body once, the originally violent and chaotic energy quickly lost its resistance.
Under the absolute suppression of Madara's chakra, it was forcibly stabilized and gradually transformed into a much gentler white energy that obediently remained inside his body.
Then Madara Uchiha exerted his control with sudden precision.
The stabilized energy was instantly refined under the manipulation of his chakra control, a skill he had mastered long ago while competing with elite shinobi such as Hashirama Senju during the Warring States Period.
Large amounts of this newly transformed energy were gathered together, and then the faint white energy circulating around Madara's entire body was compressed toward the center of his abdomen, condensing into a denser and more stable form.
The pale white energy gradually changed from a thin mist into a thicker milky-white state.
The white energy attempted to resist Madara's control, instinctively trying to scatter and escape.
But this resistance was clearly meaningless in front of Madara Uchiha, a shinobi who had once controlled the Ten-Tails itself.
After only a brief moment of struggle, the energy reluctantly contracted under Madara's overwhelming suppression.
It shrank down to roughly the size of a palm, gradually transforming the previously chaotic energy into a rotating milky-white vortex.
Outside the vortex, a layer of nebula-like milky white energy gas slowly revolved around it, forming a stable energy core within Madara's body.
Madara Uchiha attempted to compress this milky white vortex even further.
He wanted to see whether he could condense it to an even denser state, possibly transforming the energy into a liquid-like form similar to highly compressed chakra.
However, the amount of energy produced by a single first-tier demonic core was simply too small.
The tiny vortex lacked the volume necessary to support further compression.
Madara Uchiha thought for a moment before trying another approach.
A thin strand of white energy separated itself from the milky vortex and slowly gathered in Madara's right palm.
Madara calmly raised his hand and then struck the desert beneath his feet.
A clear palm imprint instantly appeared in the hardened sand, the surrounding grains exploding outward under the sudden release of energy.
Madara narrowed his eyes slightly as he observed the effect.
"It is already comparable to the destructive power of a basic D-rank ninjutsu."
Madara Uchiha was completely unfamiliar with the power ranking system of this world and could only compare everything he experienced with the classification system used by shinobi in the ninja world.
Judging by the intensity of the attack he had just produced, the raw destructive force was roughly equivalent to the lowest class of ninjutsu used by academy graduates or newly promoted genin.
Of course, Madara knew very well that such a comparison was extremely rough.
Even a genin in Konohagakure could use chakra to perform techniques such as the Transformation Technique, Substitution Technique, or basic elemental ninjutsu after sufficient training.
In contrast, the energy he had just used was only a crude external release of power without any refined technique.
Madara closed his eyes again and once more released his sensory perception outward.
A massive wave of chakra spread silently through the desert landscape, covering a radius of several dozen kilometers just as it had earlier.
Ever since he had become the Ten-Tails' jinchūriki during the Fourth Great Ninja War, Madara's sensory ability had expanded enormously, allowing him to detect the presence of living beings and fluctuations of energy across a vast distance.
Although Madara had already obtained a small amount of this world's power system through the demonic core, his understanding of the world itself was still almost completely blank.
If he wanted to truly understand the rules governing this world, he would need information.
And information usually came from intelligent beings.
At this moment, roughly one kilometer away from him, Madara sensed approximately thirty separate life signatures gathered together.
Madara immediately judged that these were most likely intelligent creatures.
During his earlier scan of the surrounding desert, he had detected many similar clusters scattered throughout the region.
The fact that these life forms moved together in organized groups strongly suggested the presence of intelligence and social coordination.
After all, mindless beasts rarely formed groups with such orderly movement patterns.
With that thought in mind, Madara Uchiha released a burst of power.
Chakra erupted beneath his feet, propelling his body forward with explosive speed similar to the high-speed movement shinobi used during battle.
In the blink of an eye he dashed across the desert like a streak of lightning, his crimson armor reflecting the harsh sunlight of the desert.
Come then.
Let him, Madara Uchiha
the legendary shinobi who once stood at the peak of the ninja world
see exactly what kind of world this place was.
....