The violent, dark red Nine-Tails Chakra formed a torrent from the tip of Menma's outstretched right palm, brutally piercing into the pale golden core glow!
Boom!!!
At the point where dark red and pale gold collided, a blinding white light, brighter than the sun's core, erupted!
Instantly devouring everything within the Hamura Shrine!
The rushing metal tracks, ancient stone walls, and everyone inside… all scenery twisted and faded within the pure white light, leaving only the absolute cacophony of clashing energies!
It wasn't an explosion.
But something deeper, an annihilation and roar on the level of rules!
Boom-!!!
Within the blinding white light, Menma's figure, shrouded in the Nine-Tails Chakra Cloak, instantly stiffened!
Time seemed to freeze around him.
Hikari's heart clenched in that instant!
Her Mangekyo Sharingan, ignoring the searing pain from the intense light, remained completely locked onto the chaotic light domain that had swallowed Menma!
She clearly 'saw' those nine streams of dark red Chakra tTorrents suffering unimaginable tearing and annihilation inside the giant Tenseigan's core!
Light and dark, order and chaos, engaged in the most primitive, cruel slaughter within the depths of this so-called [Eye of God]!
And Menma's body, as if becoming a fragile bridge between the two terrifying energy sources, hung on the brink of destruction!
She could feel the chakra within her body surging wildly, her right arm almost lifting uncontrollably, a red skeletal hand forming, instinctively about to drag Menma out of that hellish area!
But the next second, she forcefully stopped the action.
The Mangekyo's pattern spun madly. She caught something more hidden within the core of the violent energy clash… a spiritual energy vast beyond imagination was locking onto Menma's consciousness through the Nine-Tails Chakra's Channel!
Menma himself had actively delved into it!
"Shura-sama!" Kanon's exclamation was drowned out by the energy's roar.
Her Adamantine Sealing Chain on Toneri trembled violently.
Hizashi grunted, two lines of bloody tears streaming from his eyes!
His Byakugan strained to its limit, piercing through the terrifying light blast, directly observing the collision point at the very core of the energy!
This was no ordinary Chakra clash as understood by normal people!
In his field of vision, the pale golden Giant Tenseigan was like a massive, intricate living energy organ beyond comprehension, each pulse pulling at the energy tides of the entire lunar space!
And the invasion of the Nine-Tails' Chakra was like detonating a violent energy nova deep within its core!
A chaotic crimson storm and an orderly pale gold network frantically clashed, collided, and annihilated each other at the microscopic level!
Every impact erupted with endless chaotic chakra flows and spatial ripples!
The entire shrine shook violently, metal tracks emitting high-frequency shrieks of distress, while huge gray stone walls continuously crumbled, scattering debris and dust!
The massive Chakra impact pressed down on everyone, making it difficult to breathe!
Shisui, Kimimaro, and the others couldn't help but raise their hands to shield themselves from the dazzling light.
"Ahahaha! Ignorant fool! The power of the Giant Tenseigan is not something that-" Shuto, pinned to the metal pillar, greedily 'witnessed' this destructive collision with his [Mind's Eye], letting out a burst of triumphant laughter.
But his voice cut off abruptly.
The all-devouring white light did not continue to expand and explode… on the contrary, after reaching a glorious peak, it suddenly collapsed inward and converged!
Like a waterfall flowing backward, the blazing white light that had illuminated the entire shrine… even penetrating matter to light up the outer void, was instantly completely devoured and absorbed by the core of the Giant Tenseigan!
The shrine instantly plunged from extreme brilliance into absolute darkness!
Crack... Crack... Crack...
In the silence, only faint, rapid cracking sounds came from within the Giant Tenseigan.
Its originally smooth, vast pale golden glow now flickered intensely, covered with countless fine cracks!
The light flickered unsteadily, like a heart on the verge of shattering!
The slowly rotating six-petaled flower core at its center was now tightly entangled and corroded by nine deeply embedded crimson 'thorns'!
The Nine-Tails' Chakra, like a stubborn poison, had already taken deep root within it!
And Menma himself remained in that forward-reaching posture.
His dark red Nine-Tails' Chakra Cloak resembled solidified crimson glass, with nine massive tails drooping down, emitting a faint yet dangerous glow in the shrine's gloomy light.
Like a soulless husk.
Hikari could no longer hold back. She took a step forward, a giant red Chakra Hand condensing beside her, ready to pull Menma back at all costs!
"Don't move!" Hizashi's hoarse voice rang out sharply, filled with unprecedented alarm.
His Byakugan was fixed intently on Menma's body, his voice trembling slightly. "His spirit has been pulled into that eye!"
Beneath the bulging veins at Hizashi's temples, blood trickled down his pale cheek, a startling sight.
It was a wound left from his Byakugan overexerting itself to perceive the high-dimensional energy conflict.
…
Gray.
Boundless, solidified chaos-like gray.
No sky, no earth, only endless, mist-like suspended gray.
The air carried the cold, heavy silence of a tomb's depths.
The light was dim, its source unknown, barely outlining the surroundings.
This was a graveyard.
Innumerable low tombstones stood like neat rows of soldiers, silently stationed in this deathly silent space shrouded in gray mist, stretching as far as the eye could see into the gray horizon.
Each tombstone was simple, devoid of inscriptions or decorations, radiating only a primal desolation.
The moment Menma's consciousness descended into this bizarre space.
Hum-
A faint but clear ripple spread out silently from his feet.
The gray mist began to flow, the silence broken.
The surfaces of those low tombstones silently began to emanate hazy figures.
They shared unified features: pale skin, pure white pupils, no Caged Bird's mark on their foreheads, wearing a kind of ancient headdress.
They were dressed in standardized, strangely ancient white linen robes, their expressions either calm, sorrowful, or blank.
These were the souls of the descendants of Otsutsuki Hamura, the long-perished members of the Otsutsuki Clan's main family on the moon!
Thousands upon thousands of souls emerged beside the tombstones, like a silent army.
Their forms were composed of pure soul substance, emitting a faint, dim glow, particularly conspicuous in this gray world.
Each ancient soul's aura carried a faint, lingering sorrow that refused to dissipate.
Their hollow eye sockets, without exception, focused on Menma, who had suddenly intruded.
Just then.
Tap... Tap... Tap...
Clear footsteps sounded, unusually piercing in this silence.
Countless souls slowly parted to both sides, then knelt on one knee, revealing a straight path down the middle.
At the end of this path of souls was endless gray haze.
And a hunched figure, emitting a far more solid soul light than the surrounding spirits, was slowly stepping out from that gray mist.
The newcomer was extremely ancient, with a pair of pointed horns, his face carved with the marks of hardship and endless time. His body was small and thin, dressed in a plain, faded, coarse gray linen robe.
Only his eyes, pure white and flawless, were filled with a weariness profound to the bone.
Otsutsuki Hamura!
He walked forward step by step. With each step, the gray mist beneath his feet solidified and firmed slightly.
He walked very slowly.
Each step seemed to tread upon the river of time itself.
The tens of thousands of ancestral souls knelt on the ground, lowering their heads silently as he passed, as if worshiping their progenitor and deity.
Finally, Hamura stopped about ten steps away from Menma.
Those pure white eyes, like swirling galaxies, scrutinized Menma's mental projection, wrapped in pure Chakra and brimming with inhuman, violent power, with a mix of examination and deep confusion.
Although the person before him was well disguised, using some method to even disguise his soul, Hamura's eyes could vaguely see...
the figure of a child.
"I noticed you from the moment you stepped into this forgotten prison…" Hamura's voice rang out, ancient, calm, utterly devoid of worldly airs, yet seeming to resonate deep within the soul.
"On your body, you carry my brother's bloodline, but that Tailed Beast within you… it's... different." He tilted his head slightly, as if trying to identify something.
"I can sense that it is not the Nine-Tails born from the one Brother separated back in the day."
"Chaotic, disordered, filled with a malice that transcends life itself, yet forcibly restrained by your will. Like a forcibly shaped cosmic chaos. Very strange-"
"A second Nine-Tails? How is that possible?"
The confusion in Hamura's eyes deepened as he stared at Menma's mask.
Menma's mental projection remained motionless in the gray stillness. Only the dark red Nine-Tails' Chakra on its surface flowed like living magma, slowly undulating, resisting the pervasive cold erosion of this soul space while simultaneously feeling the oppressive rules of this realm.
"Strange?" Menma removed his mask, revealing his young face.
His voice echoed through the gray mist.
This tone of omniscient condescension and mockery seemed to come from a higher dimension.
"Your mother, Otsutsuki Kaguya, left behind a far bigger mess than this Nine-Tails when she arrived with that fruit all those years ago." His words were like invisible spikes, piercing directly into the tranquil depths of Hamura's heart.
"Of course, she probably never imagined that after you sealed her away, that 'Third Child' she temporarily gave birth to would endure humiliation and lie dormant on this planet for a full thousand years."
"What?!" For the first time, Hamura's impassive face showed violent shock!
The muscles on his ancient, stone-like face twitched violently!
His originally calm, solidified-galaxy-like pure white pupils constricted abruptly!
A tremendous will powerful enough to overturn the entire soul space erupted violently, causing the surrounding gray mist to churn madly. Even the countless distant souls trembled and rippled in unison!
"A Third Child?! Mother's… another child?! Lurking on the planet—for a thousand years?!" Hamura's voice lost its transcendent calm for the first time, filled with disbelief, shock, and a trace of absurd anger at being deceived!
"Impossible! Before Brother and I resolved to seal Mother, she only had..." His words cut off abruptly as those pure white eyes stared fixedly at Menma, trying to discern the truth from his mental fluctuations.
But Menma's spirit was like a bottomless black ice plain… cold, solid, devoid of a ripple that should accompany a 'lie'.
What made him compelled to believe even more was the secret Menma casually revealed about Kaguya's seal, about an ancient war unknown to any.
"Then, how do you know-"
Hamura forcibly suppressed the storm of shock in his heart.
When he spoke again, his voice had regained its evenness, but now carried an unprecedented heaviness and a trace of inexplicable inquiry.
Those pure white eyes, containing starlight, seemed to want to see straight through Menma's mental imprint.
"Sir… just who are you? Such ancient secrets, even pertaining to Mother..." His gaze seemed to pierce through the frenzied surface of the dark red Nine-Tails' Chakra, looking toward the vaster unknown deep within Menma's consciousness.
"Me?" Menma's mental projection raised its head slightly amidst the endless gray.
An indescribable aura began to quietly emanate from him,
an aura utterly distinct from any power Hamura had ever perceived… it seemed deeper, more primordial.
"You can understand me as a child born of this planet's 'will'. Conceived to cleanse the calamities left behind by your clan, and to resist the predators of the Otsutsuki Clan who will eventually arrive." His voice carried the indifference of stating established fact.
The name [Otsutsuki Clan] made the aged skin on Hamura's face tighten instantly.
He knew the other was not speaking of the scant few Otsutsuki remaining on the moon.
"Planet's will..." Hamura murmured the term, one that almost surpassed his understanding. For the first time, complex, human-like emotions surfaced in the depths of his pure white eyes… shock, doubt, a faint glimmer of relief and hope.
"So, you perceive those past events? Including the true purpose of this moon?" His voice was probing.
"The seal here is still relatively stable. A millennium has passed, and Kaguya shows no signs of breaking free." Menma's response seemed to confirm Hamura's conjecture.
Yet Menma's words did not stop: "Oh, and that Otsutsuki who was mortally wounded by your mother yet managed to escape… he's been lurking in the shadows, licking his wounds for these thousand years."
Another secret caused Hamura's form to sway almost imperceptibly.
Menma paused slightly, his gaze falling upon the aged soul of Hamura.
"So, discard your self-righteous notion of peaceful slumber in the Pure Land."
"I will consolidate all the forces of the Ninja World, whether they reside in the present world or are bound to the underworld. You and Hagoromo need only continue your sleep, and cease causing further disturbances. Cleaning our own house, resisting the external enemies…" He calmly declared the future landscape.
"That is my mission."
Hamura was silent for a long time.
Two mysterious enemies hidden within the Ninja World, foes that even he and his brother had failed to detect... If this were true, then the heavy suspicions he and his brother once held, the conflicts that had plagued the Ninja World for a millennium without cease, could finally be explained.
The gray mist ebbed and flowed like a tide behind Hamura, silhouetting his stooped figure.
The vast information contained in Menma's words struck his soul again and again,
rendering the figure before him even more enigmatic.
"The Otsutsuki Mother wounded… the arriving Otsutsuki Clan… unifying the Ninja World…" He whispered, each word seeming to weigh a thousand pounds.
He lifted his head, staring at Menma. The doubt in those pure white eyes had not completely dissipated: "Why should I believe you can achieve the wish that my brother and I, over a thousand years, could not fulfill?"
His soul's intuition told him the other was not lying, but this war spanning millennia allowed for no carelessness, no reliance on chance.
What he needed to see was tangible power, substantial enough to shift the very situation.
"Heh." Menma's voice seemed to take on a hint of mockery.
His outstretched right hand slowly withdrew, palm facing upward, held in a loose grip.
Whoosh—
Space seemed to silently split open a fine seam, and an object emitting a faint red glow materialized out of thin air!
It was a bamboo scroll.
Its entire form flowed with a hazy, pale red luminescence.
The surface of the bamboo strips was exceedingly smooth, devoid of the countless complex and mysterious seals one might expect, resembling a wordless heavenly text.
The moment it appeared, an irresistible sensation of spatial and temporal stagnation ruthlessly enveloped the entire gray space!
It was as if an invisible force field had abruptly expanded outward from it as the center!
Buzz-!
A silent oscillation swept through!
A strange scene unfolded!
The silently burning, pearl-like dim soul auras of the surrounding ancestral souls around Hamura and Menma, the instant the scroll appeared, seemed frozen by an intangible cold current!
The light of their soul bodies instantly grew extremely dim and blurry, their movements halted. Even their ethereal aura of sorrow was completely solidified!
It was as if the entire world now consisted only of that scroll emitting its faint, subtle glow, and the two figures illuminated by it.
The bamboo scroll is the Red Moon Scroll!
Hamura's pure white pupils contracted violently once more!
His ancient face was carved with extreme astonishment!
He attempted to reach out with his consciousness, to touch and analyze that bamboo scroll.
'Not Chakra from this planet!'
'Nor was it any tool Brother had ever used, within the scope of my understanding!'
'It more closely resembled a segment of sealed cosmic law, an absolute foreign... spatial-temporal anomaly!'
"This-" Hamura's throat seemed constricted by an invisible hand, only managing to force out a single, dry syllable.
His gaze was locked onto the Red Moon Scroll, trying to brand it into the depths of his soul, but each attempt felt like sinking into cold, stellar quicksand.
'Unprecedented!'
'Beyond cognition!'
'From the unknown!'
These three thoughts flashed through his consciousness like lightning.
It was a forbidden creation that seemed to come from outside the world itself, capable of distorting and sealing even time!
That Menma possessed this object instantly lent his claims, his ambition to unite the Ninja World, a terrifying, mountain-crushing weight of persuasion!
In this absolute silence where objects were frozen and souls silenced.
Menma's gaze swept past the speechless, shocked Hamura, landing on the distant, countless arrays of ancestral tombstones, slumbering as if behind a gray curtain.
"Time's up."
No farewell. No explanation.
Menma's figure began to grow blurry, transparent.
The dark red Nine-Tails' Chakra Cloak, that scroll emitting a pale red glow and an aura of alien Space-Time… all of it, along with his very presence, rapidly faded and dissipated.
As if he had never appeared in this desolate soul graveyard.
Only the endless, vast gray remained, the cold tombstones, and the tens of thousands of souls whose ghostly wails had been forcibly stifled, returned to silence.
Hamura stood alone where he was. Having observed the Ninja World for a thousand years, his heart was stirred by more turmoil than ever before.
Menma's final glance toward the depths of the tombstones firmly tied an indescribable, hidden apprehension around Hamura's heart.