Chapter 185: Hagoromo Otsutsuki: A Second Nine-tails?
Menma’s outstretched right palm tip formed a torrent of violent dark red Nine-Tails Chakra, ruthlessly piercing into that pale golden core halo!
Boom!!!
At the collision point of dark red and pale gold, a blinding white light more dazzling than the sun’s core erupted!
It instantly devoured everything inside the Hamura Shrine!
The flowing metal tracks, ancient massive stone walls, and everyone in the room…
All scenes distorted and faded in the pure white light, leaving only the absolute clamor of energy collision!
It was not an explosion.
But a deeper, rule-level annihilation and roar!
Hum—
Boom!!!
In the blinding white light, Menma’s figure wrapped in the Nine-Tails Chakra Cloak instantly stiffened!
Time seemed to freeze on him.
Uchiha Hikari’s heart clenched in that instant!
The Mangekyo Sharingan ignored the sharp pain from the strong light’s burn, locking dead onto that chaotic light domain swallowing Menma!
She clearly “saw” that the nine streams of dark red Chakra torrents were suffering unimaginable tearing and annihilation inside the Giant Tenseigan core!
Light and darkness, order and chaos, unfolded the most primal and cruel slaughter in the depths of this “God’s Eye”!
And Menma’s body became a fragile bridge for the fierce clash of two terrifying energy sources, hovering on the edge of destruction!
She could feel the Chakra in her body surging madly, her right arm almost uncontrollably lifting, the condensed red bone hand virtually gripping, instinctively trying to drag Menma out of that hell!
But the next second, she forcibly stopped this action.
The Mangekyo’s pattern spun wildly, and she captured a trace of something more hidden lurking in the core of that violent energy clash—a massive mental power beyond imagination, following the Nine-Tails Chakra’s passage, reversely locking onto Menma’s consciousness!
Menma himself had actively entered it!
“Lord!” Uzumaki Kushina’s cry was drowned in the energy’s roar.
Her Adamantine Sealing Chains binding the Tenseigan User trembled violently.
Hyuga Hizashi grunted, two lines of blood tears flowing from his eyes!
His Byakugan pierced through that terrifying light burst with all its might, staring straight at the energy’s core collision point!
It was not chakra clash as ordinary people understood!
In his vision, that pale golden Giant Tenseigan was like a massive, precise living energy organ beyond cognition, each pulsation drawing the energy tide of the entire Lunar Space!
And the invasion of Nine-Tails Chakra was like detonating a violent energy new star deep in its core!
The dark red disordered storm and pale gold order network madly twisted, collided, and annihilated at the microscopic level!
Each impact burst into infinite Chakra turbulence and space ripples!
The entire shrine shook violently, metal tracks emitted high-frequency wails, massive gray-white stone walls constantly crumbled gravel and dust!
The massive Chakra shock made everyone’s breathing difficult!
Shisui, Kimimaro, and others couldn’t help but raise hands to shield from this brilliant light.
“Ha… hahaha… Ignorant fool! The power of the Giant Tenseigan is not…” Otsutsuki Sakuya, nailed to the metal pillar, greedily “witnessed” this destructive collision with his “Mind’s Eye,” just letting out a bout of delighted mad laughter.
But his voice abruptly stopped.
That white light devouring everything did not continue to expand and explode.
On the contrary, after reaching a glorious peak, it suddenly collapsed inward and converged!
Like a reverse waterfall, that blazing white light illuminating the entire shrine and even penetrating matter to light the outer void was completely devoured and absorbed by the Giant Tenseigan’s core in an instant!
The shrine instantly fell from utmost brilliance into absolute darkness!
Crack… crack… crack…
In the silence, only a faint yet urgent cracking sound came from inside the Giant Tenseigan.
Its originally plump and majestic pale yellow halo now flickered violently, with countless fine cracks appearing on the surface!
The light flickered uncertainly, like a heart on the verge of shattering!
That originally slowly rotating six-petal flower core was now tightly entwined and eroded by nine dark red “thorns” deeply embedded in it!
Nine-Tails Chakra, like stubborn poison, had already deeply taken root within!
And Menma himself still maintained that forward-reaching pose.
The dark red Nine-Tails Chakra Cloak was like solidified blood-colored glass, nine massive tails drooping, emitting faint yet dangerous light in the shrine’s dim glow.
Like a shell that had lost its soul.
Uchiha Hikari could no longer suppress it, stepping forward, a red Chakra giant palm suddenly condensing at her side, about to pull Menma back regardless!
“Don’t move!” Hyuga Hizashi’s hoarse voice suddenly rang out, carrying unprecedented shock.
His Byakugan stared dead at Menma’s body, voice slightly trembling: “His spirit has been pulled into that eye!”
Under the bulging veins on Hizashi’s forehead, blood trickled down his pale cheeks, shocking to behold.
That was the trauma left by the Byakugan overexerting to peer into high-dimensional energy conflict.
…
Gray.
Boundless, solidified chaos-like gray.
No sky, no earth, only endless fog-like gray suspended.
The air carried the icy heavy deathly silence of a deep tomb.
Light dim, source unknown, barely outlining the surroundings.
This was a graveyard.
Countless low stone tablets, like neatly arrayed soldiers, quietly stood in this gray fog-shrouded deathly space, extending to the gray horizon beyond vision.
Each stone tablet was very simple, no inscriptions, no decorations, only an eternal desolation.
The instant Menma’s consciousness descended into this eerie space.
Hum……
A faint but clear ripple silently spread from under his feet.
Whoosh—whoosh—whoosh—
The gray fog began to flow, silence broken.
The surfaces of those low stone tablets silently manifested hazy figures.
They had uniform characteristics: pale skin, pure white pupils, no Caged Bird mark on foreheads, wearing ancient headpieces.
They wore uniform, strangely archaic white hemp long robes, faces calm, sorrowful, or bewildered.
These were descendants of Otsutsuki Hamura, souls of the long-vanished Otsutsuki Main Family members on the moon!
Thousands, tens of thousands of souls emerged from beside the stone tablets, like a silent legion.
Their figures composed of pure soul matter, faintly emitting dim halos, standing out starkly in this gray world.
Each ancient soul’s aura carried an indelible faint sorrow.
Their hollow eye sockets unanimously focused on the suddenly intruding Menma.
At that moment.
Step… step… step…
Clear footsteps were abnormally piercing in this silence.
Countless souls slowly parted to the sides, then knelt on one knee, revealing a straight passage in the middle.
The end of this soul path was endless gray haze.
And a hunched figure emitting far denser soul light than surrounding souls was slowly stepping out from that gray fog.
The arrival was extremely aged, with a pair of pointed horns, face etched with wind, frost, and endless years, small stature, wearing a plain, washed-white gray coarse hemp long robe.
Only those eyes, pure white and flawless, yet filled with bone-deep exhaustion.
Otsutsuki Hamura!
He walked step by step, each step making the gray fog underfoot slightly solidify and firm up.
He walked very slowly.
Each step felt like treading on the river of time.
Those tens of thousands of Main Family departed souls knelt on the ground, silently lowering heads as he passed, like paying homage to their ancestor and deity.
Finally, Hamura stopped ten steps from Menma.
Those pure white pupils like starry sea vortices carried scrutiny and a thick bewilderment, looking up and down at Menma’s mental projection wrapped in pure Chakra, containing inhuman violent power.
Though the person before him was well disguised, somehow even his soul disguised, Hamura’s eyes could vaguely see the figure of a child.
“From the moment you stepped into this forgotten prison, I noticed you.” Hamura’s voice rang out, aged, calm, without any worldly tone, yet resounding in the soul depths.
“Your body carries Brother’s bloodline, but that… Tails… in you… is not quite the same.” He slightly tilted his head, as if identifying.
“I can feel it is not the Nine-Tails born from the one Brother separated back then.”
“Chaos, disorder, filled with malice beyond life itself… yet forcibly bound by your will. Like a forcibly shaped cosmic chaos. Very strange…”
“A second Nine-Tails? How is that possible?”
Bewilderment deepened in Hamura’s eyes, staring at Menma’s mask.
Menma’s mental projection stood unmoving in the gray deathly silence, only the dark red Nine-Tails Chakra on his surface like living magma, slowly flowing and fluctuating, resisting the omnipresent icy erosion in this soul space, while also feeling the rule-heavy pressure of this space.
“Strange?” Menma removed his mask, revealing a young face.
His voice rang out in the gray fog.
This omniscient overlooking and mockery seemed from a higher dimension.
“The mess left by your mother, Kaguya Otsutsuki, when she descended with that fruit back then, was far stranger than this Nine-Tails.” His words like invisible sharp thorns, directly piercing Hamura’s calm heart lake.
“Of course, she probably didn’t expect that the ‘third son’ she temporarily birthed would endure humiliation and lurk on this planet for a whole millennium after being sealed by you.”
“What?!” Hamura’s calm face showed violent shock for the first time!
The muscles on his aged, stone-carved face twitched fiercely!
His originally calm, solidified starry sea-like pure white pupils suddenly contracted!
A majestic intent enough to overturn the entire soul space erupted, stirring the surrounding gray fog into mad surges, even distant countless departed souls quivered uniformly, rippling!
“Third son?! Mother’s… another child?! Lurking on the planet… a millennium?!” Hamura’s voice lost its transcendent calm for the first time, carrying incredulous shock and a trace of absurd anger at being deceived!
“Impossible! Before Brother and I decided to seal Mother, by her side there was only…” His words abruptly stopped, because those pure white eyes stared dead at Menma, trying to discern truth from his mental fluctuations.
But Menma’s spirit was like an unfathomably deep black icy plain, cold, solid, without any ripples of “lie.”
What forced him to believe even more was the secret Menma casually pointed out, about Kaguya’s seal, about an unknown ancient war.
“Then, why do you know…” Hamura forcibly suppressed the stormy waves in his heart.
When he spoke again, his voice restored calm, yet carried unprecedented heaviness and an indescribable probing.
His pure white pupils containing starlight seemed to thoroughly see through Menma’s spirit brand.
“Your Excellency… who exactly are you? Such ancient secrets, even involving Mother…” His gaze pierced through the Dark Nine-Tails Chakra’s violent facade, projecting toward the vaster unknown in Menma’s consciousness depths.
“Me?” Menma’s mental projection slightly raised his head in the endless gray.
An indescribable aura was quietly releasing.
This aura differed utterly from any power Hamura perceived, seeming deeper, more primal.
“You can understand me as offspring nurtured by this planet’s ‘will.’ To clean up the calamity left by your clan, and more to resist the impending… Otsutsuki Clan’s hunters.” His voice carried the indifference of stating established fact.
The term ‘Otsutsuki Clan’ made Hamura’s aged cheeks instantly tense.
He knew the other meant not the scant remaining Otsutsuki Clan on the moon.
“Planet’s will…” Hamura lowly chewed this term almost beyond his cognition, pure white eyes bottom first showing human-like complex emotions: shock, awe, a faint glimmer of relieved hope.
“So, you know those pasts? Including… this moon’s true mission?” His voice carried probing.
“The seal here is still stable; a millennium passed, Kaguya shows no sign of breaking free.” Menma’s response seemed to answer Hamura’s guess.
Yet Menma’s words did not stop: “Oh right, that Otsutsuki your mother desperately wounded but luckily escaped has been lurking in the shadows licking wounds all these thousand years.”
Another secret made Hamura’s figure imperceptibly sway.
Menma paused slightly, gaze falling on the aged Hamura soul.
“So, put away your self-righteous Pure Land slumber.”
“I will unite all power in the Ninja World, whether in the Living World or confined to Yomi. You and Hagoromo need only continue sleeping, cause no more trouble. Clean house, resist outer enemies—” He calmly declared the future vision.
“That is my mission.”
Hamura was silent for a long time.
Two mysterious enemies lurking in the Ninja World, ones even he and Brother failed to detect…
If so, then the heavy suspicions he and Brother once had, the Ninja World’s millennium unending strife, could be explained.
Gray fog surged like tides behind Hamura, accentuating his hunched figure.
The massive information in Menma’s words struck his soul repeatedly.
Making the one before him even more mysterious.
“The Otsutsuki Mother wounded… the impending Otsutsuki Clan… uniting the Ninja World…” He murmured lowly, each word heavy as a thousand jun.
He raised his head, staring at Menma, doubt in those pure white eyes not fully dissipated: “Why should I believe you can accomplish what Brother and I failed to after a millennium.”
Soul’s intuition told him the other spoke no lie, but this millennium-spanning war allowed no luck.
What he wanted to see was substantial power enough to shift the pattern.
“Heh.” Menma’s voice seemed to carry a mocking tone.
His outstretched right hand slowly withdrew, palm up, virtually gripping.
Hum—
Space seemed to silently crack a fine seam.
An item emitting faint red light appeared out of thin air!
It was a bamboo scroll.
The entire thing flowed with a hazy pale red halo.
The bamboo surface very smooth, no dense intricate profound runes, like a wordless heavenly book.
The instant it appeared, an irresistible spacetime stagnation sensation fiercely enveloped the entire gray space!
Like an invisible force field suddenly expanding from it!
Hum…!
Silent shockwave swept!
A bizarre scene occurred!
The silent burning, pearl-like dim Main Family soul halos around Hamura and Menma, the instant the bamboo scroll appeared, were like frozen by invisible cold current!
Their soul body shadows instantly became extremely dim and blurred, movements stagnated, even that ethereal sorrow aura thoroughly solidified!
As if the entire world left only that bamboo scroll emitting dim light, and the two figures enveloped by this light.
Book of Crimson Moon!
Hamura’s pure white pupils contracted fiercely again!
Extreme shock etched on his aged face!
He tried to touch and analyze that bamboo scroll with consciousness.
Not this planet’s Chakra!
Nor any ninja tools his Brother used within his cognition!
It was more like a sealed segment of cosmic law, an absolute foreign… spacetime singularity!
“This…” Hamura’s throat seemed gripped by invisible hand, squeezing out only a dry syllable.
His gaze locked dead on the Book of Crimson Moon, trying to imprint it into his soul depths, but each attempt like sinking into cold starry sand flow.
Never seen before!
Beyond cognition!
From the unknown!
These three thoughts flashed like lightning through his consciousness.
It was a taboo creation seemingly from beyond the world, even able to twist and seal time itself!
Menma possessing this, his words, his ambition to unite the Ninja World, instantly gained mountain-crushing terrifying persuasiveness!
In this all-things-stagnant, souls-silent absolute silence.
Menma’s gaze passed the shocked speechless Hamura, falling on the distant uncountable Main Family stone tablet array like slumbering in gray curtains.
“Time’s up.”
No farewell, no explanation.
Menma’s figure began to blur and turn transparent.
That dark red Nine-Tails Chakra Cloak, that Book of Crimson Moon emitting pale red halo and spacetime otherworldly aura, all faded and dissipated with his existence itself.
As if never appeared in this deathly silent soul graveyard.
Leaving only endless vast gray, cold stone tablets, and those tens of thousands souls forcibly silenced in soul chant, returning to silence.
Hamura stood alone on the spot; observing the Ninja World for a millennium, his heart fluctuated more than ever for the first time.
Menma’s final glance deep into the tombstones firmly tied an indescribable hidden worry to Hamura’s heart.
