Next Bonus, 100PS!!
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"Agh! Teacher is always like this. He drops a riddle, acts mysterious, then leaves!"
Gamamaru stomped his foot and muttered in frustration. Still, his mind kept spinning, and suddenly, a bold and surprisingly reasonable guess struck him.
"Could it be... could Teacher be from a previous era?!" The moment the idea appeared, Gamamaru's whole body shook, and a chill crept down his back.
The more he thought about it, the more sense it made.
Maybe, in the distant past, long before Mount Myōboku was founded and even before Kaguya appeared, people had already built a highly advanced civilization. Cameras, machines, even the periodic table Gamamaru was now trying to invent might have already existed back then.
And that glorious era had most likely been wiped out by some unknown catastrophe, buried so deeply in history that no trace remained.
Manji might be the only survivor of that age, a man who had chosen to hide in Mount Myōboku and withdraw from the world.
That would explain why Teacher forbade him from developing lethal weapons.
Not because he was against invention, but because he had seen those weapons bring ruin with his own eyes. He knew exactly how terrifying they were.
And the reason Teacher was so familiar with every invention was even simpler. In that previous era, he had seen them, used them, and perhaps even handled them countless times.
"Then how long has Teacher been alive...? Thousands of years? Or... tens of thousands?!"
The idea made Gamamaru's skin crawl. But at the end of the day, it was all just guesswork. He didn't have a shred of proof.
In all of Mount Myōboku, the only person who might have known Teacher Manji's true origin was Grand Sage White-Brow.
But White-Brow had been dead for centuries. Who else could know?
The White Monkey King might have known as well, but he had also been dead for centuries.
"Forget it. Teacher has a good saying: the more you know, the less happy you become."
Gamamaru shook his head, trying to shove all those crazy theories out of his mind.
No point obsessing over where Teacher came from. He had work to do—better to focus on his inventions and the strange knowledge that kept showing up in his dreams.
..............
Elsewhere, inside Mount Myōboku's Grand Sage Hall.
Manji's figure slowly formed out of thick mist. He brushed his sleeve with one hand, a faint smile tugging at his lips.
"Heh. Gamamaru's dreams are getting interesting."
Manji couldn't care less about Gamamaru's little test or all the wild guesses that came after. As far as he was concerned, it was just a kid letting his imagination run wild.
Just then, soft footsteps came from outside the hall. A White Zetsu stood respectfully at the doorway and bowed deeply to Manji. "Grand Sage, the Dragon Vein investigation is complete. Sage Shima and Tobi found nothing abnormal."
Manji gave a slight nod, his tone calm. "Good work. Send the order. Have them seal off the Dragon Vein site. No one is allowed to approach or investigate. No mistakes."
"As you command!" White Zetsu answered at once.
The Grand Sage always treated people who got things done with respect. He never saw the White Zetsu as just tools—they were real subordinates to him. That kind of respect made them loyal to the core.
"Oh, right. One more thing." Manji spoke and handed over a drawing he had prepared in advance. "Organize a search for a time-space artifact called Karasuki. It looks like a turtle. Use your abilities and make sure you find it."
It looked a lot like a summoned beast, at least at first glance.
[Note: For readers who haven't seen it, though most should know it, this is the turtle artifact involved when Sasuke and Boruto traveled into the past.]
Manji had a single reason for locking down the Dragon Vein and hunting for Karasuki.
Eliminate every possible path to time travel.
Manji would never allow people from the future to break into this era.
He would not tolerate the timeline falling into chaos. Any power capable of interfering with time and space had to be kept under his control.
He planned to cut the timeline off for a thousand years, no exceptions.
In a sense, he was setting himself up as the only ruler for the next thousand years. No time travel, no loopholes—he'd make sure of it himself.
"As you command!" White Zetsu accepted the drawing with both hands, bowed again, then turned and withdrew quickly to arrange the search.
After White Zetsu left, silence returned to the hall.
Manji walked slowly to the center of the chamber. His eyes narrowed, and his thoughts turned to the Dragon Vein.
Manji wasn't trying to control the Dragon Vein on a whim. He had two big reasons for it.
First, he had to make sure nobody else could use the Dragon Vein for time travel. If he wanted to keep the timeline stable, he had to deal with the problem at the root.
Second, he had something bigger in mind.
He wanted to use the Dragon Vein's endless chakra to build a new space from scratch.
Ever since gaining the Rinnegan, Manji had been studying the King of Hell, the Pure Land, the Death God from the Reaper Death Seal, and other such entities... These things had truly appeared in Naruto's legends. He had wanted to use the Rinnegan's power to locate their origin, but the deeper his research went, the more confused he became.
He'd stumbled onto something that didn't add up.
None of these things seemed to actually exist.
The Pure Land, the King of Hell, the Death God—none of them had a real body, and none of them showed up in any one place.
Still, Manji couldn't bring himself to believe they just weren't real. They'd shown up in the legends. There had to be something to them.
..............
"Then why don't I think about it from the opposite direction?"
An idea hit him.
If he couldn't find them, maybe he was looking at it the wrong way.
Maybe it was up to him to create them in the first place.
Perhaps only after he personally created the Pure Land, personally shaped the Death God and the King of Hell, would these legendary existences truly be born into this world.
The idea made Manji's eyes narrow. He muttered to himself, almost in disbelief. "That explains it... That explains everything..."
Why waste time chasing after some mythical Pure Land? He could just build the border between life and death himself.
"Better to create the Pure Land than search for it." Manji nodded, the idea settling in.
He'd use the Dragon Vein's endless chakra as the base, and the Rinnegan's power over life and death to guide him. The Pure Land would be his own creation.
"Right. There's one more issue to solve." Manji spoke quietly. By now, he'd collected more than a few souls. "Hagoromo's original soul. The Yatagarasu's dedicated soul. The remnant souls of the brothers Asura and Indra..."
"Senichi, Shūichi, Kitsune, Uzuki, Futen... I have all of their souls too."
"Oh, right. There's also that kid Ōtsutsuki Hamura's soul."
That one was a long story—and a total accident.
One afternoon, on a whim, Manji used his senses to check out Ōtsutsuki Hamura's body. He hadn't expected much, but tucked away in Hamura's core, he found a hidden scrap of chakra and soul.
"Well, damn." Manji nearly lost his composure.
He had thought Hamura was steady, honest, and simple by Ōtsutsuki standards. After all, Manji himself had once praised Hamura as a good man.
Back when Manji first took him down, he hadn't bothered to check Hamura's soul that closely. Who would've thought he was just like his brother Hagoromo, hiding a piece of his soul for a rainy day?
Luckily, Manji's sealing technique had kept that soul fragment locked down from the start. It hadn't made a peep since.
"So the two brothers were both hiding cards. Not one honest man between them." Manji curled his lip, muttering to himself. He had no idea why Hamura kept that soul fragment hidden, but it was probably just a backup plan.
Maybe Hamura planned to pop up later and hand out a power-up, or maybe he had some unfinished business stashed away.
"Kaguya, your whole family... Every last one of you is shady... Have some decency."
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