Shin's battle in the lair of the Ōtsutsuki clan was beyond description.
With near-lightspeed agility, he knocked out the Ōtsutsuki in mere seconds, casting them into his dark dimension without granting them even the dignity of a direct confrontation.
Had Shin been less interested in capturing living test subjects, even the slightest force from him would have reduced the entire clan to scattered remains. The disparity in basic attributes was simply too overwhelming.
No matter how many bloodline abilities or strange powers they possessed, the Ōtsutsuki stood no chance against a being who could move faster than light and wield a planet as though it were nothing more than a ball in his hand.
"It's a pity this planet has only one Divine Tree," Shin muttered, gazing at the colossal trunk that pierced into the sky. "But that makes sense. If they had more than one, they would have harvested them all long ago instead of leaving one behind here."
He raised his hand, dark mist swirling and wrapping around the immense tree, attempting to draw it into the dark dimension.
Immediately, a massive surge of chakra erupted, and the sacred tree began to shift, its massive form twisting as if awakening. The bark split open, branches coiling, and slowly it reshaped into a humanoid figure.
"Hmm... nothing new under the sun. Another attempt to fuse with the Divine Tree? This must be the Ōtsutsuki clan's final trump card." Shin's eyes narrowed in curiosity. "Its chakra level is nearly one-thousandth of mine."
The figure finished taking shape, revealing a pale man over two meters tall, his features sharp and imperious. What startled Shin most was not his size but his eyes: they were perfectly normal. No Byakugan, no Rinnegan, none of the mutations common among the Ōtsutsuki.
"A return to nature?" Shin floated before him, a faint smile tugging at his lips. "Unfortunately, I've lost interest in your bloodline. What I want is your Divine Tree itself."
The man's expression hardened, fury rising in his gaze. "How dare you speak so casually before the ancestor of chakra! I will strip every drop of energy from your body."
As he spoke, a terrifying suction force spread outward. Winds roared across the planet, oceans churned, and mountains trembled as if gripped by a catastrophic storm.
Yet the real terror was not the physical upheaval. Shin quickly realized the pull was not gravity; it was the absorption of all surrounding energy. Sunlight dimmed, natural energy drained, radiation and even kinetic energy itself were siphoned into the being's body.
Most alarming of all, Shin's chakra stirred violently, eager to rush out of his body. Only his powerful biomagnetic field and life force prevented it from escaping. Without that, his chakra would have been ripped away in an instant.
"Remarkable," Shin murmured, eyes glinting with interest. "He's absorbing not just chakra but every form of energy, sunlight, radiation, even gravity, and fusing it into his own. What is this? An ultimate form of Sage Mode?"
The attraction was immense, but against Shin, it was meaningless. His biomagnetic field contained his chakra effortlessly. In truth, if Shin allowed even one percent of his energy to flow into this so-called ancestor, the man's body would detonate on the spot.
The Ancestor of Chakra frowned, realizing something was wrong. Why did this intruder not release any energy? Was his absorption failing?
With a wave of his hand, he hurled a black sphere into the void. It expanded suddenly, creating a hollow that engulfed Shin. The emptiness contracted violently, attempting to crush him into nothingness.
Shin's eyes gleamed with fascination. He did not resist at once, instead observing how the space compressed against his biomagnetic field. At last, the hollow shattered with a resounding crack, scattering turbulence and spatial debris in all directions.
"You dared withstand my cosmic destruction?" The Ancestor's voice thundered with disbelief. "Impossible!"
When the chaos cleared, Shin hovered unharmed, his clothes torn, shallow cuts marking his skin. He glanced at them with calm appreciation. "What a formidable technique. It actually pierced my defenses... though only slightly. If I had activated my Galaxy Glaze defense, even these scratches wouldn't exist."
His words only enraged the Ancestor further. Even at his full strength, the most he had done was leave marks that had already healed before his eyes.
"Damn you!" the Ancestor bellowed, condensing a massive Truth-Seeking Orb in his hand. The sphere turned from black to gold, expanding until it blazed like a newborn star. With a roar, he flung it toward Shin.
"It resembles the Golden Wheel Reincarnation Explosion," Shin mused, watching it approach. "Judging by the energy, it could gouge a crater into the Earth or, condensed into a beam at light-speed, pierce its core and shatter the planet. An impressive attack... for most. But compared to the turbulence from your earlier destruction, it's harmless to me."
He extended his palm. The golden energy met his hand and was swept aside, dissipating into the void.
But when Shin looked again, the battlefield was empty.
"So, he ran," Shin said softly, a chuckle escaping his lips. "Not everyone is a fool. He knew he couldn't win, so he chose to escape under the cover of a flashy attack."
Activating his super vision, Shin followed the Ancestor's trail. He streaked across the stars, opening rifts in space one after another, fleeing desperately.
"What remarkable speed," Shin acknowledged. "He's already traveled hundreds of light-years in this short time. If I wait too long, even I might lose his trail."
Shin's body blurred, vanishing into teleportation, pursuing without hesitation.
Meanwhile, the Ancestor of Chakra grit his teeth as he raced through the endless cosmos. "What is this monster? Even the power of cosmic destruction left him unscathed. I haven't suffered such humiliation in countless years!"
For all his fury, fear gnawed at him. The universe was vast, boundless, and the Ōtsutsuki clan's reputation as conquerors had always been relative. In their rise, they had been hunted by even greater powers, forced to abandon their homes and wander in exile. Retreat was not a new lesson to them.
And so, despite his title and his pride, the Ancestor of Chakra carried no shame in fleeing. Survival was victory enough.
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