"Hmm!"
Meanwhile, deep within the Pure Land of the Pure Land.
In this seemingly endless blank space, the figure of the Sage of Six Paths, who was sitting cross-legged, trembled slightly, then he let out a muffled groan, and two streaks of blood slowly seeped from the corners of his eyes.
Although Shinichi Higashino's name had been on his watchlist since the banquet a few months earlier, he wasn't observing the boy all the time.
For the Sage of Six Paths, who has lived for over a thousand years, time flows in units of months or even years.
After paying attention to something once, it is often a considerable amount of time before he looks at it again.
This gaze was solely due to a sudden, inexplicable stirring within him, so he looked over.
Then, he saw the boy standing in the moonlight amidst endless waves of rice, laughing wildly to the sky.
Upon seeing this scene, the Sage of Six Paths frowned.
This smile reminded him of Indra, and the generations of Indra's reincarnations, whose smiles were once so flamboyant and unrestrained.
This made the Sage of Six Paths feel uneasy, and he subconsciously activated his prophecy technique again because Shinichi's flame contains both the hope of destroying old wounds and the madness of burning everything away.
He still didn't know where this boy would lead the Shinobi World in the future.
Then, as expected, his eyes, which seemed to see through everything in the world, were once again burned by the vision of the future.
Just like last time, this young man who will lead the world toward great change in the future remains unpredictable.
Even if he was not peering directly at the youth himself, but merely at matters related to him, even the Sage of Six Paths suffered backlash, because this youth was not only a crucial figure in the future worldline; he himself was also a being constantly favored by the world.
Yes, he's being favored by the world!
This was a characteristic the Sage of Six Paths had already noticed several months ago.
Over the past thousand years, it was not as though he had never seen people with extraordinarily powerful fortunes. He had seen many protagonists of their eras, many who danced atop the waves of destiny.
He had seen far too many people blessed with great fortune, but most of these people only had their fortune concentrated around major events. In many trivial matters, they were no different from ordinary people.
And in the end, no one could escape the fluctuations of fortune, what rises must fall, and what reaches its peak must eventually decline.
Only Shinichi Higashino was different.
Although the amount was not yet particularly large and could not compare to those protagonists at the height of their glory, the Sage of Six Paths had never seen anyone so continuously favored by the world itself.
It was as though the world feared something might happen to him, and so it continuously piled layer upon layer of its affection upon him at every moment.
The Sage of Six Paths even vaguely felt that this favor might continue to strengthen and accumulate in the future.
Perhaps one day, the youth would not even need to act personally.
As long as someone harbored ill intentions toward him or something stood in the way of his progress, the world would proactively erase it before the youth even noticed.
The Sage of Six Paths silently wiped away the bloodstains from the corners of his eyes. At this moment, his brows were no longer tightly furrowed, and a trace of relief appeared on his face, because in the instant before the backlash of the prophecy struck, he had caught sight of several fleeting scenes.
He saw rice fields that stretched endlessly to the horizon, as boundless as a golden ocean!
He saw granaries filled to the brim with grain.
He saw mountains of fruits and vegetables.
He saw the aroma of food rising from ordinary households.
He saw wheat growing in deserts.
He saw rice growing in salty coastal lands.
Upon those barren lands where not even a blade of grass had once grown due to drought and salinity, rows upon rows of crops were stubbornly thriving, transforming formerly desolate corners into land that could be cultivated and harvested.
He even saw countless kinds of grains and fruits whose names he did not know.
And all of this was because of that youth.
So this is what you were laughing about.
The Sage of Six Paths suddenly understood the reason for that laughter.
If it had been him, he would have laughed as well.
Thinking of this, a faint smile appeared at the corner of his mouth; however, before that smile could remain for long…
Boom!
From deep within this boundless space, which had been silent and blank for nearly a thousand years, a world-shaking thunderclap suddenly exploded!
It was as if the sky had been cleaved open from the outside by an axe, and the entire space trembled violently in that instant.
The smile on the Sage of Six Paths' face immediately froze.
'What happened?'
The Sage of Six Paths raised his head in alarm and uncertainty.
This space had been formed from his own power and was completely integrated with his will. For a thousand years, it had never shown the slightest abnormality.
Logically speaking, no external force in the current Shinobi World should have been capable of invading this place, much less causing such a violent disturbance.
Unless… the source of this disturbance was precisely himself.
Or rather, some tremendous change closely connected to him was occurring!
With that thought, the Sage of Six Paths immediately cast his gaze toward the Shinobi World again and to that youth.
Within the endless rice fields, the youth had unknowingly stopped laughing, and he was now seated on the ground.
Using the moonlight, he spread a blank scroll across his knees and began writing rapidly with a brush.
"The Ninja Declaration."
Ninja Declaration…?
What is he trying to do?
The Sage of Six Paths raised an eyebrow and continued watching in silence.
The youth wrote quickly, with sharp strokes, almost without pausing, yet the moment the first opening paragraph appeared on the scroll, the Sage of Six Paths' expression suddenly changed, and another earth-shattering thunderclap exploded in space, ten times more powerful than before!
Cracks of pitch-black darkness split open across the pale, boundless walls of the space, and strange purple arcs of electricity flashed from their depths, like thousands of serpents slithering in the darkness.
It was as though the space itself was trembling because of the words written upon that paper.
For the youth had written: "A heroic Spirit named the Sage of Six Paths! For a thousand years, the gaze of this ancestor of ninjas has continuously wandered across this Shinobi World..."
How do you know? How do you know that I have watched over the Shinobi World for a thousand years?
Upon seeing this, the Sage of Six Paths' pupils shrank drastically. He disregarded the spatial anomalies, and his lips moved, almost blurting out something.
But having lived for over a thousand years, he quickly suppressed the shock in his heart.
This kid is just writing a declaration; he's merely using his own name to call on ninjas to return to their ancestral roots, that's all.
Thinking of this, he continued reading, but as he watched, the Sage of Six Paths' expression gradually changed.