Yunchuan Hyuga no longer limited himself to manifesting Ninjutsu or objects. He wanted to try planting underlying rules into the Ninja World. It was a vast deception, one that could make the entire Ninja World dance to it.
At the same time, at the border between Land of Grass and Land of Rain, inside a hidden experimental base in a cave, Orochimaru's pale face looked especially cold under the lights. Yet the madness and fervor on that face burned intensely.
"Finally, it is done. Immortality Transfer. I…" Before he could finish, he suddenly flicked out a snake tongue, and his voice changed into that of a woman as she mocked him, "Useless Orochimaru. Even if you develop a technique to change bodies, can you really give up this one that can use sage arts?"
"The more you gain in Ryuchi Cave, the higher the price you must pay," she hissed. "You will never escape this in your lifetime."
"Shut up," Orochimaru snapped as his voice changed again, his eyes filled with hatred. "Tayuyashimeji, one day I will devour your body and soul."
He turned toward the Scroll on the table. It was not accurate to say he walked over. He crawled instead.
At this moment, Orochimaru had lost both legs, replaced by a white snake tail. That day, to survive, he had made a deal with the White Snake Sage. This was the price he had to pay.
By merging with the body of Tayuyashimeji, one of the three great snake princesses of Ryuchi Cave, he gained the ability to use sage arts but could never escape their control. Even so, it was all worth it.
"Hiss." Orochimaru unconsciously flicked his tongue, his eyes burning as he looked at the Scroll in his hands. The contents he could never see before now unfolded easily with a light pull.
"As expected, only by mastering the soul and natural energy can one Remove the Sealing Technique behind the Scroll." His gaze grew even hotter as he scanned the next part, but after reading the first two lines, he froze.
"All beings die, yet their paths are not one. When the body perishes and the soul departs, it may scatter to the wind, return to the Six Paths' Pure Land, or fall into my Void Realm."
"The Void Realm is the resting place of souls, suspended between the living world and the Pure Land, forever covered by endless night."
There was no doubt that any system manifestation had to follow the rules and logic of the world it existed in, and aside from Chakra, it could not create the power system of another world out of nothing. But Yunchuan Hyuga had thought of a solution. He would base it on the existing soul, body, Natural Energy, and Chakra of the Ninja World, and localize and imitate the power systems of other worlds.
In this way, he could construct a logical and believable "Lie." From nothing, rules would be created to deceive the world. This was deception on the level of defying heaven and earth.
"Void Dweller, the resting place of souls in the Ninja World, hangs in the gap between the living world and the Pure Land. It is covered in eternal night, with no sun, only a half moon. The land is vast and empty, winds howl like crying ghosts, sand surges like running bones, and dead trees stand like fields of skeletons."
"The Pure Land was the realm of the dead opened by the Six Paths. Souls that enter have their awareness sealed and fall into sleep, while Chakra gathers there like threads and returns to the control of the Six Paths. It was meant to use the power of the dead to resist enemies from beyond the sky, but the method was crude, and souls fade with time until they scatter into nothing."
"Those who enter Void Dweller are souls stranded in the Ninja World, bound by obsession or entangled by karma. After years of erosion, resentment eats away at them until their minds grow dull. Bone armor covers their faces, their howls sound like countless ghosts crying together, and those who hear it are filled with Lie. Their bodies are hunched and broken, their bellies hollow like caves, and I call them 'Void.'"
"They crave souls to fill the emptiness in their hearts and soon devour one another. Hundreds of weak Void kill and merge together, forming a giant like a mountain, with a long nasal bone mask and the mind of a beast. It devours souls by instinct alone, and I call it a lower Great Hollow."
"Among them, rare individuals devour thousands of their kind, shrink in size, and awaken intelligence, taking on a beastlike armored form. They live in constant fear of regression and must hunt their peers to maintain their shape, or they lose reason if they slacken. I call these mid-level Great Hollow."
"Extremely rare ones shatter their bone masks and shed their Lie, revealing a human form beneath, though the hollow remains. Their power is unmatched, and I call them upper Great Hollow. Yet this body is gone and the being incomplete, so I never witnessed its birth, which is truly regrettable."
"…What is this?"
As Orochimaru continued reading, the expression on his face slowly went blank. The writing on the Scroll was obscure, but he had studied Ninjutsu and read many ancient texts, so he could still understand its contents. The Pure Land was something he naturally knew to be real, given his incomplete grasp of Impure World Reincarnation.
As for souls, the developer of Living Corpse Reincarnation understood them better than most. Precisely because he knew so much, this mix of truth and falsehood shattered his worldview. Yet his trust in the Scroll and his reverence for its owner rebuilt that worldview in an instant.
The legendary Sage of Six Paths actually existed, and even the Pure Land had been opened by him, drawing all the dead there to face some so-called enemy from beyond the sky. The owner of this Scroll directly called the Sage of Six Paths the Six Paths, and his words showed clear disdain for the way the Pure Land was created. He had even opened an independent world called the Void Realm.
"The Otsutsuki Clan actually have the power to create worlds?"
Orochimaru flicked out his long, thin tongue and licked his dry lips as he murmured, "Could the Sage of Six Paths also be one of the Otsutsuki Clan, like the owner of this Scroll?"
Judging from the effects of Impure World Reincarnation, the Sage of Six Paths' Pure Land could only preserve the power the dead had in life, and weak vessels could not use that power fully. The Void Realm created by the owner of the Scroll was far more cruel, taking in souls that could not enter the Pure Land due to obsession and resentment. Those souls were forced to kill and devour each other to give birth to stronger beings.
It was just that the owner of the Scroll never lived to see the birth of an upper Great Hollow. "With such power, is immortality still impossible?" The thought surfaced in Orochimaru's mind, but he quickly realized that the text only said "this body is gone."
That meant the owner of the Scroll was still alive, but had been forced to change bodies for some reason. The Sage of Six Paths was likely not dead either, probably existing as a soul hidden within the Pure Land while gathering powerful souls to await the so-called enemy from beyond the sky. "Then the corpse I took from that Hyuga brat must be a discarded body of the Scroll's owner."