Chapter 566: The Ideal of Peace
Hesitation.
Haruno Sakura was hesitating.
On the island hundreds of miles away, Nagato was also hesitating over a certain decision.
"I must... attack one more time."
"No, you can't!" Konan shook her head violently, fiercely objecting, "Nagato, you cannot use a jutsu like this again!"
She held Nagato's hand, looking straight into his eyes. But the man looked into the distance, his gaze seeming to cross time and space, landing on that stubborn girl who had survived the Super Shinra Tensei and consistently refused to accept defeat.
Nagato remained silent, just like the silent Deva Path, Yahiko, on the battlefield.
"Konan." He spoke suddenly.
"Do you still remember our dream?"
Nagato said in a low voice while panting heavily.
"To break the chain of hatred where grievance breeds grievance, and to achieve true peace, we need to use absolute power to suppress the entire world, thereby guiding the world into an era of stability and peace."
"In this process, we cannot retreat even the slightest bit; we must maintain absolute strength. Because if we retreat even once, in the future there will always be people harboring hopes of a fluke to break the boundaries of peace and challenge our authority. Then, peace will never be achieved."
"Therefore, no matter what the price, I must kill Haruno Sakura right here, and then take away the Three-Tails and Nine-Tails to complete the crucial step of our plan!"
He seemed to be persuading Konan, and also persuading himself.
"But your body—" Konan said hesitantly, furrowing her brows.
"Rest assured, Konan..." Nagato panted, speaking forcefully, "Before our dream is realized, I will not fall!"
He began to refine chakra again.
"Hah", "Hah"—
Cold sweat quickly flowed down his forehead.
His breathing gradually became heavy, and Nagato's body became increasingly emaciated. With every breath, the ribs on his chest showed more prominently.
Dark red blood flowed down from the corners of the man's mouth, nostrils, and even his eyes and ears. Bleeding from his seven orifices, Nagato had squeezed himself to the absolute limit.
Konan looked at him with heartache but was powerless; she could do nothing.
The brief process of refining chakra seemed so long to her. Finally, Nagato stopped.
He slowly and strenuously raised his head. The weaker his body became, the brighter his eyes shone, as if his will was gleaming.
"Peace is right before our eyes..."
Nagato said with incomparable determination.
On the other side of the battlefield.
"It truly has been a long battle. Senjutsu, a mysterious clone possessing the Mangekyou Sharingan..." Pain, standing high in the air, said slowly. "I have to admit, you have given me surprises time and time again, causing me to make errors in judgment."
"That is why I missed two opportunities to kill you."
"But there won't be a third time!"
"For our ideal, for long-lasting peace, even if I have to pay a price, I will kill you right here!"
Haruno Sakura frowned tightly.
She looked up at Pain as if looking at a madman: "Killing me will bring peace to the world?"
"This is only the first step." Pain's cold voice came from above. "Kill you, then capture the Three-Tails and Nine-Tails, followed by the remaining Tailed Beasts. When we gather all the Tailed Beasts, we can use their power to create a Tailed Beast weapon of infinite might, a weapon capable of destroying a country and a village in an instant..."
"You want to imitate the era of peace created by the First Hokage back then..." Haruno Sakura quickly understood his meaning and said sternly, "The so-called Tailed Beast weapon is nothing more than another First Hokage controlled by you!"
"You can also understand it that way!" Pain nodded.
"But the difference is that Hashirama Senju would age, get sick, and die, while the Tailed Beast weapon will not!"
"Another difference is," Pain continued, his voice suddenly turning extremely cold, "I will use it to make the world feel true pain!"
"And this terror and pain can effectively suppress the ambitions of those who start wars, thereby bringing peace to the world!"
"Even if, as time passes, people forget this pain and terror, we can use this eternal Tailed Beast weapon to create new pain and terror, bringing peace back to the world... This is my wish."
Haruno Sakura sneered.
"What a great ideal!" she said disdainfully. "But who deserves to become the sacrifice for the Tailed Beast weapon? What qualifications do you, who create slaughter all over the world, have to be the god who judges the world!"
Pain merely shook his head calmly: "As long as one is stronger than anyone else, they can become the god who brings peace. Isn't this what your leader once did?"
"So you are going to kill me." The girl said in a deep voice.
"Yes." The man high in the sky said, "Indeed, my parents were killed by Konoha ninja right before my eyes. My clansmen and country were also destroyed and ravaged by Konoha. Therefore, I hate Konoha and Konoha ninja..."
"But I want to kill you not because you are a Konoha ninja, but simply because I must be invincible in this world, and you stand on my path, obstructing my progress."
Haruno Sakura lowered her eyelids.
Having lived two lives, she could understand Pain's ideal, but she would absolutely not agree with his viewpoint. Earth in another space-time had indeed maintained a long peace under the deterrence of a nuclear winter, turning hot wars into cold wars, but that was a balance maintained by multipolar forces, fundamentally different from Pain's balance of terror.
To be honest, she quite sympathized with those small countries. After all, her motherland in her previous life had also once been similarly precarious, suffering from years of war and endless pain, but in the end, it survived and rose again as a great power, even a superpower.
Therefore, peace is never obtained through the charity of others, but strived for through one's own unyielding self-improvement. Pain's delusion of bestowing peace upon the world was fundamentally unrealistic, entirely just the childish fantasy of an overage chuunibyou, and could even cause a more terrifying situation at any time!
She opened her mouth, just about to say something, when suddenly her heart skipped a beat. The moment she turned her head, she saw a golden radiance flash and disappear in the extreme distance.
That was... Sasuke's railgun! She remembered that light!
Only that move could fly extremely far, its trajectory visible even two to three hundred miles away.
"It seems... a chakra reaction has disappeared. It looks like things have also ended over there." Pain also looked over there and said leisurely.
A chakra reaction disappeared? Haruno Sakura's heart skipped a beat.
Did someone die?
What exactly happened?
Sakura stared fixedly at Pain, desperately wanting to get more intelligence from his mouth, but the latter unconcernedly turned his head back, looking at Haruno Sakura again.
"Then, it's time for us to finish too."
As he spoke, he abruptly raised his hand.
Surging chakra once again descended upon Pain.
He was brewing the Super Shinra Tensei once again!
Haruno Sakura also no longer hesitated.
She took a deep breath, reached her hand into her inner clothes, groped around, and pulled out the last scroll.
"You're right, it's also time..."
"To settle this once and for all!"