Chapter 326: Time Reset
"Then why don't we just follow that kid? Wouldn't that make completing the mission faster?" Akimichi Chōji asked in confusion.
Their mission was to stop Mukade from continuing to use the power of the Ryūmyaku to create a puppet army that would pose a threat to Konoha.
Since that kid could find Mukade, why not follow him and kill Mukade? That way, the mission would be completed quickly.
"Killing Mukade is easy, but to avoid causing a temporal disturbance and drastically changing the future, it can't be us who do it."
A gleam flashed in Minato's eyes as he said, "For this mission, we just provide assistance from the sidelines. The rest should be left to that child."
The future and the past—while the past cannot be changed, the future can be altered through the present.
Mukade was from the future, while they were from the past.
If someone from the past kills someone from the future, the timeline would undoubtedly be thrown into turmoil, and the future would change on a massive scale.
Minato didn't want to change the future because he had already guessed who that child with the same blond hair and blue eyes as him was.
If he was right, that child should be named Naruto—his future son.
To avoid any drastic changes to the future that might prevent his son's existence, Minato and the others, as people of the past, couldn't kill Mukade.
Only Naruto, who like Mukade belonged to the future, could kill him without causing significant effects on the timeline.
"Got it!"
Though he still didn't understand Minato's temporal theory, Akimichi Chōza nodded out of trust in Minato.
The three of them continued to search for Mukade's whereabouts in Loran, always staying alert to any movement, but without deliberately focusing on Naruto.
The fewer their interactions with Naruto now, the less impact it would have on the future.
In the blink of an eye—
Night fell.
At the bottom of the Ryūmyaku's deep pit, Li Yao suddenly furrowed his brows. The Ryūmyaku chakra was fluctuating again—not as violently as when Naruto appeared, but still far more than usual.
As expected, the one who had just appeared outside Loran was likely Yamato.
"It seems the degree of temporal fluctuation caused by the Ryūmyaku chakra depends on the chakra level of the person traveling through time."
Naruto's chakra was astounding, and he also had the Nine-Tails' chakra, so the spatial-temporal disruption was much stronger.
Yamato had less chakra, so the spatial-temporal effect was weaker.
Under normal circumstances, Yamato's appearance wouldn't have caused such fatal instability.
But now, when the Ryūmyaku chakra was about to enter its periodic disappearance phase, Yamato's arrival undoubtedly accelerated its instability.
Although the surface of the Ryūmyaku chakra looked calm, it was already becoming increasingly unstable inside. Li Yao felt that it would disappear entirely in less than a month due to the instability.
With so little time, it would be very difficult for him to replicate the Ryūmyaku chakra.
"No, I must find a way to keep sensing the Ryūmyaku chakra."
Li Yao's eyes shifted. Then it struck him: if the Ryūmyaku of this world was about to vanish, then he should go to a world where it still existed.
In Naruto's future world where he became Hokage, the Ryūmyaku still existed—it was just sealed. Perhaps if he traveled there and unlocked Minato's seal, he could reconsolidate the Ryūmyaku's power.
With that in mind, Li Yao flew up from the deep pit of the Ryūmyaku, his body liquefying and phasing through the wall, heading toward the top of the tower.
Mukade was indeed a puppet genius—a ruthless man who dared to embed a space-time sealing technique into his own body and succeeded.
Over the past six years, he had studied the Ryūmyaku chakra and developed several of its properties, transforming it into a fixed chakra he could apply to his own body.
At the top of the tower where the Ryūmyaku was located, there was an antenna-like device that could absorb the chakra and convert it into a plasma-like form.
This plasma chakra was still Ryūmyaku chakra, but not complete—it only contained one temporal attribute: the time reset feature.
This time reset feature was somewhat similar to the temporal characteristic in Edo Tensei that granted undead ninja unlimited chakra.
Mukade's puppets, no matter how damaged or how much chakra they lost, would immediately reset to their original form upon injection with the plasma-type Ryūmyaku chakra.
What do puppet masters fear most?
They fear their puppets being broken.
The stronger the puppet, the more intricate its internal structure. The more precise it is, the more vulnerable it is to even the slightest damage, which would hinder its abilities.
But with the time reset effect of the Ryūmyaku chakra, the puppets no longer feared damage—they could be restored to their original form at any time.
Mukade's ambition to rule the world single-handedly stemmed from this time-reset property granted by the Ryūmyaku chakra.
Moreover, he had even transformed his own body into a puppet.
As long as he had Ryūmyaku chakra, he was invincible—like an Edo Tensei ninja: infinite chakra, a body that resets in time, impossible to kill.
With his puppet army, it was understandable that Mukade didn't see the Five Great Nations as a threat.
Unfortunately, Mukade was ultimately only a puppet genius, not a jutsu genius.
He could develop plasma-type Ryūmyaku chakra with time-reset properties, but he couldn't produce time-reset Ryūmyaku chakra on his own.
To him, the Ryūmyaku was like the Nine-Tails chakra inside Naruto.
Mukade could only use it—he couldn't create it.
Li Yao was different. What Mukade couldn't do, he could.
Standing atop the tower, Li Yao stared at the antenna device that transformed Ryūmyaku chakra into its plasma time-reset form.
The conversion hadn't begun yet, but it was close.
Through soul-sensing, he detected that Naruto and Queen Sāra of Loran had entered Mukade's puppet factory through the ventilation system.
Mukade was hiding in a secret chamber within the factory.
Ten minutes later—
A rumble came from the tower where the puppet factory was located. It collapsed, and a giant Sasori -like puppet crawled out from underground—it was Mukade, now fully puppeted.
Sāra led the rescued civilians of Loran to the central plaza, the same place where Naruto first appeared and where the Ryūmyaku was located.
Mukade chased after Sāra.
Naruto and the others didn't understand why he was pursuing her.
But Li Yao knew very well—only Sāra, who could seal the Ryūmyaku's power, posed a threat to Mukade.
Once the Ryūmyaku was sealed, and he lost access to the time-reset chakra, even with a fully puppeted body, he would still be killable.
Only by killing Sāra could he ensure that no one would stop him.
Chasing and blocking.
Soon, Mukade was defeated by Akimichi Chōza and a ninja from the Aburame clan.
Szzzt!
Atop the tower, the antenna device suddenly released plasma-type Ryūmyaku chakra, striking Mukade's giant Sasori puppet body.
In an instant, all the chakra that had been absorbed by the Aburame clan's insects was restored to peak levels by the time-reset effect, and the damaged puppet parts were fully repaired.
(END CHAPTER)
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