'Madara Uchiha?!'
Roy narrowed his eyes. Two suns within his pupils suddenly shot out divine light, piercing through the fog of "history" and "life and death." Following that faint "thread of karma," he looked over... That pair of Rinnegan, overflowing with the vicissitudes of time, locked onto him.
It was as if he had slowly awakened from "life and death," crossing a thousand years of time, piercing through the future, to meet Roy's gaze from afar... A trace of imperceptible surprise appeared on that aged face...
'It is not Madara Uchiha, it is—'
'The Sage of Six Paths!'
Those horns inherited from the Otsutsuki clan, aside from the pair of Rinnegan, his glabella was split open, embedded with a Sharingan.
The white cloak draped over his chest was clearly branded with six magatama... Just a single glance made one feel an immense pressure... Roy recognized the Sage of Six Paths. With another glance, his line of sight moved down... He saw that between him and the other party, there was an invisible, bottomless River Styx separating them...
The river water was dead silent, like an ancient well without ripples. It looked peaceful, but in reality, it isolated him on the other shore.
Roy took a deep breath and looked up at the Sage of Six Paths again. He saw the old man immersed in thought for a long time before faintly speaking, "Young man, do you know this old man?"
The visual prowess of the founder of Ninshu was extraordinary... From Roy's gaze, the Sage of Six Paths detected many emotions.
There was shock, there was astonishment, there was thoughtfulness, but the only thing missing was... curiosity!
It was as if he and the young man had met before and knew each other well... The Sage of Six Paths awakened from the chakra and briefly searched his memories. Over the past thousand years, he truly could not find any instance in his rather long life journey where he had befriended a figure like this young man.
Moreover, judging from the young man's slightly chubby face and his still-childish bone structure, he was obviously quite young... Truly... bizarre!
"Sorry, we... do not know each other," Roy said honestly. "This is also my first time seeing you."
*Splash...* The calm River Styx suddenly began to flow... Vast and mighty, its source unknown, and its destination a mystery...
It carried endless wildness and deathly stillness, bearing snow-white bones as it drifted downstream...
Leaving the old man and the young man on opposite shores, lost in their own thoughts, falling into a brief silence...
After an unknown amount of time, the Sage of Six Paths, with his long brown hair draped behind his head, sat cross-legged on the shore. He looked at Roy again and asked, "Young man, where do you come from, and where are you going?"
Roy's consciousness was immersed, while his physical body in reality still gripped the pendant Tsunade had given him. He broke into a smile and said, "I certainly am not going to die. I am still young and want to see the world."
"My mind coming here is nothing more than a coincidence..."
As the young man spoke breezily, an indescribable aura naturally emanated from him...
The Sage of Six Paths' Rinnegan rippled with light. He stared at Roy for a long while before shaking his head and chuckling. "For you to be able to come here is absolutely not a coincidence."
"This old man can feel the aura of [Yin] and [Yang] from your body."
What was strange was... aside from the [Yin] and [Yang] chakras, as the Sage of Six Paths narrowed his eyes to observe Roy, he felt that the young man carried a trace of something else... Something he could not quite explain, which was truly baffling!
'It seems it really is because of the blending of [Yin] and [Yang],' Roy's eyes flickered as he thought to himself. In the original story, Naruto as [Yang] and Sasuke as [Yin] were able to pierce through the fog of chakra and meet the Sage of Six Paths precisely when their powers blended... And,
Just now, he had just awakened his Sharingan, which was [Yin], and then touched the pendant passed down from Hashirama Senju, coming into contact with the reincarnation of [Asura], which was [Yang]... Thus, this meeting across a thousand years had occurred.
*Buzz...* Two hazy, completely different streams of Nen aura dispersed from Roy's body and then converged...
Konoha, Uchiha clan compound, Fugaku's home.
Fugaku, Tsunade, Shizune, and Itachi sat across from each other across a tatami mat. They suddenly saw that after Roy received the pendant, he abruptly closed his eyes and stopped moving!
The few of them looked at each other in dismay.
"Father... cold..." At this moment, Itachi, who was next to Roy, suddenly sneezed. He shivered and said to Fugaku Uchiha, "Brother is so cold!"
Fugaku Uchiha narrowed his eyes and looked at Roy. On the side facing him, the young man's forehead was clearly emitting hot steam, so how could he be cold? He turned his head and glanced at Tsunade, wanting to ask her what exactly she had given Roy.
However, Tsunade's brows were tightly furrowed. Noticing Itachi reaching out to pull Roy's arm in an attempt to wake him, she quickly signaled Shizune to pull the boy away!
"Do not touch him. His current state is very abnormal... It is best not to move him!"
"Lady Tsunade, did you notice something?" Fugaku asked with a frown.
Tsunade remained silent. Being extremely sensitive to chakra, she was not only intimately familiar with the human body, but in terms of medical ninjutsu, if she claimed to be second in the ninja world, no one would dare claim to be first.
Across the tatami mat, the woman spoke faintly after a long while, "He is experiencing [Yin] and [Yang]."
"As for the specifics, we must wait until he wakes up to be sure."
The modest living room immediately fell into a long silence again. *Clang...* Only the faint sound of Mikoto Uchiha stirring food with a spatula could be heard coming from the kitchen...
*Buzz...* Two streams of Nen aura, one red and one black, each occupied half of Roy's body. They were distinct yet blended with each other...
Immersed in his consciousness... Roy sat cross-legged on his side of the River Styx, imitating the Sage of Six Paths. Resting his chin on his hand, he looked at the Sage of Six Paths on the other shore from afar and said, "You flatter me. My meager cultivation is completely not worth mentioning compared to yours."
"Being able to sit here and speak with you now is nothing more than a clever trick..."
Behind the Sage of Six Paths' white cloak, a red vortex and nine pitch-black magatama slowly rotated. He smiled and said, "Let this old man guess, perhaps it is related to the other power within your body?"
Roy neither admitted nor denied it. Ultimately, the difference lay merely in the nature and scope of "chakra" versus "Nen aura"...
The young man's black hair blew in the breeze sweeping across the River Styx. He nodded slightly and said, "I call it the [Targeted Tracking Technique]. Its purpose is to trace things back to their source!"
Just like the pendant. It seemed to be passed down from Hashirama Senju, containing a strand of chakra he had injected into it years ago. But in reality... its root was not Hashirama Senju, but Asura.
And the one who split his own chakra into [Asura] and [Indra] was... the Sage of Six Paths, also known as... Hagoromo Otsutsuki!
The Sage of Six Paths stroked his beard and murmured softly, "Tracing back to the source... It indeed fits [Targeted Tracking]. What a pity, though."
The old man's prominent horns stood out, and as the blood-red vortex on his glabella slowly rotated, he looked deeply at Roy and said, "You have not 'tracked' the true 'root' yet..."
"Back then, this old man was nothing more than an ignorant child who luckily obtained some power..."
The Sage of Six Paths thought of his younger brother and his mother. The fine wrinkles around his eyes and brows formed deep grooves, densely packed with endless years and vicissitudes...
Just as he said, whether it was [Yin] and [Yang], or [Fire], [Earth], [Water], [Wind], and [Lightning]... when it came to the source of chakra, he, the Sage of Six Paths, could not claim to be the first!
However... Roy looked sideways and blinked at the Sage of Six Paths. "After all, that person is not on this planet, right?"
The Sage of Six Paths was suddenly stunned and abruptly looked at Roy again... This mysterious young man, with a smile on his face, seemed to know nothing, yet also seemed to know everything. It plunged the Sage of Six Paths into a deep state of bewilderment for a moment...
The old man narrowed his eyes at Roy. As his Rinnegan slowly rotated, he asked in a deep voice, "Who exactly are you?!"
Roy laughed it off. He felt that this River Styx and the world of consciousness were faintly collapsing. He figured... this convergence of [Yin] and [Yang] had reached its limit due to his insufficient Nen aura.
He stood up tall.
Letting his black hair sway in the wind, he laughed aloud and said, "Why must the Sage get to the bottom of this? If you really want to know the answer, I can only tell you..."
The young man pointed at the River Styx in front of him and said, "This kid is just an ordinary person struggling to cross the River Styx, fighting to survive..."
*Splash...* The River Styx burst its banks. Accompanied by the intense consumption of Roy's Nen aura, the other shore pulled away, growing further and further apart...
The Sage of Six Paths sat cross-legged on the shore, quietly waiting just as he had for a thousand years. This time, he watched deeply as Roy drifted away, his figure gradually fading. After a moment of silence, the old man suddenly spoke faintly to Roy, "Young man, what is your name?"
"Jin."
"To be honest with the Sage, my name is Jin Uchiha..."
The Sage of Six Paths was slightly taken aback, and then he smiled... It made sense. Indra's descendant was also his descendant.
The old man suddenly stood up and similarly called out with a laugh to Roy, "Junior, you must work hard. Next time, I hope you can hold on a bit longer."
A shallow arc formed at the corner of Roy's mouth. With his back turned, he waved his hand at the old man and simply said, "Got it."
With another blink, his consciousness returned.
Gripping the pendant in his hand, he slowly opened his eyes...
*Phew...* Half of his forehead was sweating profusely, while the other half was covered in frost. Roy woke up as the [Yin] and [Yang] faded away. He slowly exhaled a breath of stale air... rising into the air like a winding dragon... Recalling what had just happened, it felt like he had a brief dream...
As the saying goes, "When false is taken for true, true becomes false; where nothing is taken for something, something becomes nothing..."
'This dream within a dream is quite fresh and interesting...'
The faint smile hanging on the corner of his mouth had not completely faded... After Roy exhaled, he looked up and noticed that Fugaku Uchiha, Tsunade, Shizune, and Itachi were all looking at him with concern.
The young man smiled gently and said, "I got a food coma from eating too much, so I just dozed off for a bit."
Fugaku, Tsunade, and Shizune: "..."
They looked at each other, completely speechless...
Only Itachi carefully leaned closer, poked his arm, and said, "Brother, Mother hasn't finished making breakfast yet."
So how could he have a food coma?
However, before Itachi could finish speaking, Roy grabbed his head and instantly subdued him, making him obediently shut his mouth.
"Oh, Itachi, who says you can't get a food coma without eating?" Roy rubbed the boy's head vigorously, then turned his head to look at Tsunade. "Lady Tsunade, I do not have the habit of accepting gifts from others for nothing. I will take the pendant. Tell me what you need, and as long as I can help, just ask."
The pendant contained a strand of Hashirama Senju's chakra. According to the system panel's prompt, although the effect of absorbing it directly was not as good as [Life Energy] and [Faith Power], but... considering the quality of Hashirama's chakra and the massive "vitality" contained within it,
For Roy, the improvement was undoubtedly... massive!
"I do not need anything!" Tsunade crossed her arms over her chest, raising her chin slightly as she said proudly, "Just take it since I gave it to you. I am not so old that I need the help of a brat like you!"
To the side, Shizune looked on, her gaze shifting back and forth between Tsunade and Roy, hesitating to speak...
*Hiss...* Steam curled up from the teacups... Fugaku sat quietly to the side, pouring tea for everyone... Itachi leaned against Roy, half-sitting in his lap. He looked at Tsunade and then at Shizune. Precocious like a little adult, he vaguely sensed something, his sensitive mind already showing its early signs...
Roy took the tea Fugaku had poured, took a small sip, and nodded in deep agreement. "That makes sense. After all... this is our first time meeting, so we are still somewhat unfamiliar with each other. Then how about this,"
Roy gently placed the teacup on the table. With a pair of clear and bright eyes, he looked calmly at Tsunade and said, "Then let your younger brother and your beloved tell you. After all, they understand you and know what you need..."
Fugaku and Shizune's eyes snapped wide open... Before the two could even cast their gazes onto Roy, a crisp *smack* rang out. The tatami mat groaned under the heavy burden, and two deep palm prints were shockingly left on the smooth tabletop!
Itachi, sitting in Roy's lap, looked up—
Tsunade pressed her hands against the tatami mat and leaned forward, her two massive, snow-white mounds ready to burst out. Her face was almost right in front of Roy's, practically touching his nose, as she glared at him in disbelief and said, "What did you say?"
Up close,
The unique fragrance of the woman's body wafted into his nose...
Roy's expression remained unchanged. Just like before, he smiled and said, "I said, let your younger brother and your beloved tell you. After all,"
"As Lady Tsunade's closest people, they should understand Lady Tsunade's preferences..."
Tsunade's gaze shifted, staring fixedly at Roy.
Her lips trembled and moved... But before she could speak, she was interrupted by Fugaku's words, dragging her back to reality!
"Jin, stop messing around!" Fugaku Uchiha glared fiercely at Roy. "Nawaki and Dan Kato are heroes of Konoha. They absolutely cannot be used as a joke!"
"You shut up!" *Smash!* Tsunade suddenly shouted harshly, slamming her palm down and directly shattering the tatami mat into pieces... The massive commotion startled the kitchen!
The kitchen curtain was pulled open, and Mikoto Uchiha poked her head out, asking in a panic, "Dear, what's wrong?"
Fugaku frowned, not saying a word, staring at Tsunade and Roy.
He saw—
Tsunade staring silently at Roy, asking with a tremble, "Do you really have a way?"
Roy maintained his smile unchanged. He casually glanced over and saw that the chakra naturally dissipating from the top of Tsunade's head showed a flush of excitement and a faint yearning.
The young man spoke seriously, stating solemnly, "Of course!"
"I have always admired the heroes who died in battle for the village, whether they are Senju or Uchiha. Wouldn't you agree, Lord Hokage?"
Roy suddenly cast a glance that pierced through the roof, looking toward the sky!
A hazy gaze trembled violently, and along with it... the crystal ball placed on the large desk in the Hokage's office shuddered on its surface...
The shaking caused Hiruzen Sarutobi's old eyes to ache slightly, twitching fiercely!