"What is that?"
It wasn't just Karin Uzumaki who was stunned. At that very moment, Satori in Hōzuki Castle also saw the sun rising into the sky.
Even though Hōzuki Castle was still several miles away from Uchiha Chizumi, just feeling that blazing power in the heavens made Satori instinctively uneasy.
Before, Satori had only sensed a huge mass of chakra approaching from afar. But now it finally understood—that overwhelming chakra was the sun hanging in the sky.
"Could my lord really be the legendary god who rules over the sun?"
Out in the wilderness, Karin looked at Kitsujiro beside her and couldn't help voicing the question. To her, Uchiha Chizumi really had become a sun. Calling him a god who ruled the sun didn't feel like an exaggeration at all.
But Kitsujiro didn't answer her. He too was staring at the sun Chizumi had become for a long time without speaking.
Chizumi had told him before that this was the power of a kekkei tōta, but no matter how many times he saw Chizumi enter Radiance Release Chakra Mode, no matter how many times he watched him become a sun, Kitsujiro still couldn't help being awestruck.
"Another god?"
"A god who awakened before me in this age?"
Satori stood atop Hōzuki Castle, staring fixedly at that sun in the sky as it drew closer and closer. A trace of confusion flashed through its eyes.
Before Kaguya Ōtsutsuki descended upon the shinobi world, it wasn't as if the world had lacked powers of its own.
Whether it was the evil god Hidan worshipped, the Shinigami summoned by the Dead Demon Consuming Seal, or even the priestesses of the Land of Demons, the roots of their power all traced back to the ancient gods.
But once the Sage of Six Paths began walking the world, those ancient gods had all faded into dust in history.
The evil god had been sealed away who-knew-where. The Shinigami of the Dead Demon Consuming Seal had even had its intelligence erased. Satori itself wasn't a god, but it knew very well that beings like gods did exist in the shinobi world.
"But I don't remember any god by that name…"
Satori stared warily at the sun drawing nearer and nearer.
As it approached, Satori could already feel an indescribably intense heat. Under that scorching force, it was starting to lose the ability to even maintain a human shape.
With a dull thud, the figure that had still looked like Muku completely reverted to its true form.
It was a grotesque thing, with an unnaturally long body. Strange enough that it seemed to have no waist at all—just a long spine connecting its upper and lower body.
Its body was entirely black, its mouth lined with savage fangs, so vicious they looked as if they could tear apart anything in their path.
Its arms were long and thick, and a pair of huge wings sprouted from its back.
Just judging by its appearance alone, anyone could tell this was no harmless creature.
And once Satori returned to its true form, it could finally see the figure at the heart of the sun in the sky—or rather, it could see Uchiha Chizumi himself.
A golden-red chakra shrouded Chizumi's body, forming a divine robe of light around him. The so-called sun was nothing more than the power radiating unintentionally from that golden-red Radiance Release chakra mantle.
"So it's actually… human?"
Satori beat its wings and rose into the sky, staring warily at Uchiha Chizumi.
Even before they had fought, Satori could already vaguely sense that it probably wasn't a match for this strange human.
"A monster, huh?"
"And a monster so soaked in sin it's practically overflowing."
Uchiha Chizumi was also studying Satori. Under the heat of his Radiance chakra, Satori's feathers were already starting to curl and char. And with his Tenseigan, Chizumi could clearly see that Satori's chakra reserves weren't actually that huge.
At least in Chizumi's eyes, the chakra inside this monster didn't even compare to the Three-Tails within Karatachi Yagura.
"Nameless new god, state your purpose."
"This land below has been my territory since ancient times. Leave."
Satori didn't understand what Chizumi meant by "sin," but when it looked at him, its eyes were filled with extreme wariness. The closer it got, the more clearly it could feel Chizumi's strength.
Or rather, it felt that Chizumi's power really was like the sun itself.
Even in that ancient age before the Sage of Six Paths appeared, a god of this level would have ranked among the strongest beings on the planet. Satori truly did not want to fight something like that.
As for killing people…
The gods of the shinobi world had never been good things.
Whether it was the evil god Hidan worshipped or the Shinigami of the Dead Demon Consuming Seal, which one of them hadn't treated human lives like dirt? Which one didn't have blood enough on its hands to drown nations?
Satori assumed Chizumi was simply another god, so it didn't think there was anything wrong with its own killings. After all, that was just the way the world had always been. A thousand years ago, whether monsters or gods, everything in the shinobi world had been like this.
"A new god? Me?"
Uchiha Chizumi had no idea what the monster released from the Box of Ultimate Bliss had misunderstood, but looking at the glaring red name over its head, he felt only one thing—this evil needed to be erased.
"Forget it. Don't bother. I'm not interested in listening."
Standing within that golden-red sun, Uchiha Chizumi couldn't be bothered to care what Satori was trying to say. Right now, all he wanted was to use this creature to test just how powerful his Radiance Release really was.
The moment his words fell, tiny red sparks began to appear around him.
In the blink of an eye, those sparks transformed into massive golden-red fireballs.
From where Karin and Kitsujiro were watching, they could clearly see that ten suns had appeared above Hōzuki Castle.
Those ten suns radiated light and heat without restraint.
Those ten suns, just by hanging in the air, made people tremble—made them fear.
The sheer heat scorched everything nearby. The land began drying out. Grass and trees turned to ash.
And no one felt it more clearly than Satori itself.
Under that terrifying power, it felt as though its blood was beginning to boil. Its skin started splitting under the heat. And from its own body came the unmistakable smell of flesh being roasted.