The moment Jiraiya and Adult Sasuke's feet landed on the relatively intact glazed roof tiles of the east side spectator stands, the subtle tremors beneath their feet made them simultaneously lock their gazes on the rooftop they had just left.
That rooftop had been crushed by over a dozen massive black cubes, now a ruin.
Debris piled up like mountains, broken giant tree branches jutted out grotesquely like the bones of dying beasts, and thick smoke and dust still slowly rose, obscuring vision. But the violent, vast Tailed Beast's Chakra lingering in the air was like a beacon in the night.
Adult Sasuke looked up, the Rinnegan beneath his side-swept bangs turning slightly, the purple ripples reflecting the chaotic dust.
He had experienced countless fierce battles, fought against multiple Otsutsuki, and witnessed all kinds of bizarre abilities. Although shocked by the strength Menma was displaying, he didn't think the other party would die so easily.
That kind of effortless, overwhelming power, using vast Chakra to withstand the attacks of Urashiki and Jigen… he had only been able to achieve it when fighting together with Naruto.
"Such an attack..." Cold sweat seeped from Jiraiya's forehead.
If those things had smashed into Konoha Village... it was unthinkable!
Adult Sasuke's voice was low: "That level of attack is not enough to..."
"Yes." Jiraiya nodded gravely, the tips of his white hair stained with drifting ash.
Jiraiya's peripheral vision swept over the other side of the ruins.
"Cough, cough... Really... a brutal way of doing things."
A voice with a mocking tone came from the smoke and dust.
Then, a giant white snake struggled to raise its head from the ruins, opening its huge mouth.
Orochimaru, soaked but unharmed, emerged from the snake's mouth.
His golden vertical pupils swept with interest over the black cubes scattered in the ruins, licking his lips.
"Creations of Yin-Yang Release... and they can interfere with space..."
"Interesting... too interesting..."
Jiraiya glared at him angrily.
'As expected, this bastard, who had maximized his survival skills, wasn't so easy to kill!'
Just then, the smoke and dust in the center of the ruins was suddenly stirred by an invisible force.
Then, a dull 'creaking' sound rang out.
The dozen or so Daikokuten cubes, as heavy as mountains, suddenly shook, and then, as if grasped by ten invisible giant hands, began to slowly but steadily rise!
Ten dark red Chakra Tails, like giant tentacles, ferociously extended from the thickest part of the smoke and dust, respectively bracing against the bottoms and sides of those Daikokuten cubes.
Menma's figure slowly floated up from the depression in the ruins.
The faint afterimage of a fox on his dark red Chakra Cloak now seemed to carry a condescending mockery.
He hadn't even changed his posture much, just slightly raised his head, his gaze calmly sweeping over the behemoths lifted by his tails, as if he were holding up a pile of toy blocks.
Just as the ten tails exerted force, preparing to completely fling away these obstructive cubes, a sudden change occurred!
Behind Menma, less than three meters from his back, the air suddenly rippled like water.
A black elliptical portal abruptly opened wide, revealing a deep, twisted darkness within.
Then, a figure shot out!
It was Urashiki!
But his appearance at this moment was completely different from before.
Those blue Rinnegan, always carrying mockery and greed, had already switched to a more bizarre red Rinnegan with six tomoes in the center.
The frivolous smile on his face was replaced by a ferocious expression. The blood-red fishing rod in his hand was no longer a tool for fishing Chakra, but had transformed into the sharpest thrusting weapon.
A chilling red gleam condensed at the tip of the rod, tearing through the air without any flourish, thrusting straight at Menma's back!
This attack, silent and stealthy, was clearly intended to exploit the subtle gap when Menma's attention was focused on pushing away the Daikokuten cubes, delivering a fatal sneak attack.
"Behind you!" Adult Sasuke on the roof shouted out in urgency.
Although his Rinnegan had sensed Urashiki's portal, the distance was too great to help!
However, Menma didn't even turn his head.
In the thousandth of a second before the red fishing rod was about to touch his Chakra Cloak, his body, as if prescient, moved half a step to the left at a small but exquisitely perfect angle.
At the same time, his right leg shot backward like lightning, a clean kick, precisely striking the side of the red fishing rod.
Clang—!
The red fishing rod was kicked upward, the rod body shaking violently. Urashiki's arm holding the rod visibly trembled, the thrusting trajectory completely disrupted.
And Menma's movements were so fluid without a hint of stagnation. Before his right leg, which had kicked away the fishing rod, was even fully retracted, one of the ten Chakra Tails behind him, carrying an ear-splitting shriek, recoiled and lashed towards Urashiki's face, which was slightly twisted with surprise!
This tail strike was fast, fierce, and precise!
The dark red Chakra was highly compressed at the tail's tip, almost condensing into substance. Where it passed, even the air was whipped into airburst trails.
But Urashiki's figure, phantom-like, drifted backward half a meter just before the tail swept over, precisely avoiding this sure-hit strike.
Adult Sasuke's Rinnegan captured that exquisitely subtle change.
The moment Menma's Chakra Tail was about to hit Urashiki, the time fluctuations around Urashiki showed an extremely brief disorder. His body presented an almost imperceptible 'double image', as if rewinding to its position half a second ago.
'Not pure Space-Time movement...' Adult Sasuke murmured in a low voice, the purple light of his Rinnegan flowing, trying to analyze that strange phenomenon.
"It's time! He rewound the local time of his own body for just a brief instant! To outsiders, it looks like he presciently avoided the attack."
"Time rewind?" Jiraiya gasped. This kind of Space-Time Ninjutsu, even in the Scroll of Seals, which recorded countless forbidden techniques, belonged to the most taboo, most difficult to understand and master.
In the air, Menma raised an eyebrow slightly, looking at the unharmed Urashiki, his gaze falling on his eyes, which had already switched back to blue Rinnegan. Understanding dawned in his heart.
"Time rewind, huh..." He murmured to himself.
By now, Jigen had also adjusted, his figure flashing to appear on Menma's other side, forming a pincer movement with Urashiki, one left and one right.
The Chakra black rod in his hand pointed diagonally at Menma, killing intent like a tide.
Menma's gaze swept over the two.
Jigen had not yet reached his limit. He knew this guy could still reincarnate, briefly restoring Isshiki's peak form.
And Urashiki, who had just switched to the red six-tomoe Rinnegan to launch a surprise attack, then switched to the blue Rinnegan for time rewinding, had also not yet used his real trump card, the Crane Form.
'Both still have hidden cards...' Menma sneered inwardly.
'Perfect. I also need some pressure to push forward that final step.'
He felt the increasingly clear throbbing coming from deep within his left eye.
It wasn't pain, but a feeling of fullness, a vibrant pulsation, as if something was gestating, about to break out of its shell.
This cloned Sharingan, after absorbing a vast amount of Ten-Tails' Chakra and undergoing repeated high-intensity Dojutsu use and mental pressure, had finally reached the critical point of evolution.
The stirring of the Rinnegan was now clearly discernible.
Menma gently cranked his neck, his joints producing a series of crisp 'crackling' sounds, particularly clear in the suddenly stagnant air.
He raised his right hand, fingers spread and then slowly clenched, feeling the endless, ceaselessly flowing Chakra within him, and the increasingly clear heat and stirring from deep within his left eye.
It was a throbbing yearning for release, yearning for evolution.
"The warm-up is about done." Menma's voice carried a kind of pride.
It wasn't deliberate arrogance, but the ant-overlooking flatness brought by absolute power.
With that, he slowly closed his eyes.
This action made Urashiki and Jigen both startled, and even Jiraiya and Adult Sasuke on the distant roof frowned.
'In an aerial battlefield surrounded by two powerful enemies, to voluntarily close your eyes?'
'Was this arrogance to the extreme, or absolute confidence?'
The next second, Menma suddenly opened his eyes!
Those original black eyes were now clearly dyed with blood red.
And within the blood-red pupils, three black tomoes slowly rotated, emanating a chilling Ocular Fluctuation.
Sharingan!
The Uchiha Clan's Sharingan!
But this wasn't all.
The three tomoes in the left eye's pupil suddenly accelerated their rotation. The black lines between them began to extend, interweave, entangle, outlining a complex and strange pattern.
The rotation trajectory of the three tomoes was no longer regular, finally forming a vortex-like pattern that seemed capable of sucking in one's soul, bottomless!
At the pattern's center, a point of deep darkness like the origin of the universe, containing an indescribable mysterious power.
Mangekyo Sharingan!
"That is?!" Boruto exclaimed in shock, suddenly turning his head to look at Adult Sasuke beside him, his eyes full of disbelief.
Adult Sasuke's brow was deeply furrowed, his Rinnegan fixedly staring at the vortex pattern in Menma's left eye.
He had never seen that kind of pattern before. It was neither his brother Itachi's 'shuriken' nor Shisui's 'four-pointed pinwheel'.
This was a Mangekyo pattern he had never seen.
Adult Sasuke slowly shook his head, his voice carrying confusion: "He is absolutely not a member of the Uchiha Clan."
"Then how did he..." Boruto pressed.
"He really isn't an Uchiha." Jiraiya's voice sounded.
"Although I don't know how he got this Sharingan."
"But I can now basically confirm that Menma is the child of the Fourth Hokage, Namikaze Minato. That is, Naruto's older brother." Jiraiya turned to look at Adult Sasuke and Boruto, his voice carrying a deep fatigue.
Many previously fragmented clues, contradictions discovered in investigations, and the earth-shattering words of Hiruzen before his death, had finally connected together, piecing together a truth that made his heart clench.
Boruto was completely stunned, his mouth unconsciously open: "Naruto... Da... he... he has an older brother?"
He barely bit his tongue, not shouting out the word 'dad', but his inner turmoil was like stormy seas.
'In a parallel Space-Time, Dad actually had such a powerful, such a mysterious older brother?'
Adult Sasuke also suddenly turned his head to look at Jiraiya, his eyes full of suspicion.
'The Fourth Hokage's son?'
He had never heard of Naruto having any older brother!
And according to the earlier exchange between the Third Hokage and Orochimaru, the Fourth Hokage in this Space-Time seemed not to have died either, or had used some resurrection Ninjutsu, which also seemed to be the key point of the abnormality in this Space-Time.
And, where did Menma's terrifying strength and that strange Mangekyo Sharingan come from?
Jiraiya, meeting their gaze, bitterly shook his head, without much explanation.