"Uchiha Madara?!"
Roy's eyes narrowed. The twin suns in his pupils suddenly shot out two beams of divine light, tearing through the mists of history and the cycle of life and death as they followed that faint, half-hidden thread of causality...
Those Rinnegan, overflowing with ancient age, were fixed squarely on him.
It was as if someone had slowly awakened out of life and death itself, crossing a thousand years, piercing through the future, and meeting Roy's gaze from impossibly far away.
On that weathered old face, the slightest trace of surprise appeared...
Not Uchiha Madara—
The Sage of Six Paths!
Those horns inherited from the Ōtsutsuki bloodline, the Rinnegan, and the Sharingan embedded in the opened slit at the center of his brow...
The white robe draped over his body was stamped with six tomoe. Just one look at him was enough to make a person feel crushing pressure.
Roy recognized the Sage of Six Paths. Then his gaze dropped, and he saw that an invisible river lay between them.
A bottomless River of the Dead.
Its waters were silent, still as an ancient well. It looked calm, but in truth it cut him off completely from the opposite shore.
Roy took a breath, looked back up at the Sage of Six Paths, and after the old man pondered him for a while, he finally spoke in a low voice.
"Young man... do you know me?"
The founder of Ninshū had extraordinary eyesight. From Roy's expression alone, the Sage had already read a great deal.
Shock. Surprise. Thoughtfulness.
Everything was there—
except curiosity.
It was as if he and this boy had met before, as if they already knew one another.
The Sage of Six Paths awakened from within chakra and quickly searched his memory. A thousand years had passed, yet nowhere in that long life could he find any trace of ever knowing a boy like this.
And besides, judging from the baby fat still lingering on the boy's face and the youth still present in his bones, he was clearly very young...
How strange.
"Sorry," Roy said frankly. "We don't know each other. This is my first time meeting you too."
The previously still River of the Dead suddenly began to move.
It surged onward, vast and mighty, with no visible source and no visible destination.
It carried endless desolation and deathly silence, bearing drifting white bones as it flowed past...
Leaving one old man and one young man on opposite banks, both of them fell into a short silence, each lost in thought.
No one knew how long passed before the Sage of Six Paths, his long brown hair falling behind him, sat cross-legged by the shore and looked at Roy again.
"Young man," he asked, "where have you come from, and where are you going?"
Roy's consciousness remained immersed here, while his real body in the waking world still clutched the pendant Tsunade had given him. He smiled.
"At the very least, I'm not headed for death. I'm still young. I still want to see more of the world."
"This little detour here is just a coincidence..."
Something indescribable clung to the boy in that moment.
Ripples flickered through the Sage's Rinnegan. He studied Roy for a long while, then shook his head and laughed softly.
"The fact that you are here is absolutely not a coincidence."
"I can feel both Yin and Yang within you."
What was strange was that, beyond Yin and Yang chakra, the Sage of Six Paths kept sizing Roy up and still felt that there was something else in him as well—
something even he could not clearly define.
It was baffling.
So it really was because Yin and Yang fused together...
Roy's eyes shifted slightly as realization dawned on him.
In the original story, Naruto as Yang and Sasuke as Yin had only been able to pierce the fog of chakra and meet the Sage when the two came together.
And just now, his Sharingan awakening had made him Yin, while the moment he came into contact with the pendant passed down from Hashirama Senju—the chakra of Asura's reincarnation—that became Yang.
That was what had made this meeting across a thousand years possible.
Back in Konoha, two utterly different currents of aura spread from Roy's body, then gathered again.
In the Uchiha compound, inside Fugaku's house, Fugaku, Tsunade, Shizune, and Itachi were all seated around the low table when Roy suddenly closed his eyes the moment he took the pendant—and stopped moving.
They all looked at each other in confusion.
"Father... it's cold."
Sitting right beside Roy, Itachi suddenly sneezed and shivered. He tugged at Fugaku's sleeve and said, "Nii-san feels really cold!"
Fugaku narrowed his eyes and looked at Roy. The side of the boy facing him was clearly steaming with heat from the crown of his head. There was no way he should feel cold. He turned and glanced at Tsunade, wanting to ask her exactly what kind of thing she had just handed Roy.
But Tsunade's brow was tightly furrowed. The moment she noticed Itachi reaching out to shake Roy awake, she quickly gestured for Shizune to pull the boy back.
"Don't touch him. There's something very wrong with his state right now... it's best not to move him."
"Lady Tsunade," Fugaku said with a frown, "do you see something?"
Tsunade stayed silent.
Her sensitivity to chakra was extreme. She understood the human body intimately, and when it came to medical ninjutsu, she would have dared say no one in the ninja world ranked above her.
After a long pause across the low table, she finally said, "He's going through Yin and Yang..."
"As for the details, we'll have to wait until he wakes up."
The not-so-large living room sank into silence once again. The only sound was the faint metallic rhythm of Mikoto stir-frying in the kitchen.
One red current of aura and one black one each occupied half of Roy's body, distinct from each other and yet blending together at the same time...
Meanwhile, across the River of the Dead, Roy copied the Sage and sat cross-legged on his own bank, propping up his chin as he looked over at the old man.
"You flatter me. Compared to you, my little bit of practice isn't worth mentioning at all."
"The fact that I can sit here and talk with you now is only because I happened to catch a lucky break..."
Behind the Sage's white robe, a red spiral and nine black tomoe slowly revolved. He smiled.
"Let me guess. Perhaps it has something to do with that other power inside you?"
Roy neither admitted it nor denied it. At its core, the difference was nothing more than the differing nature and reach of chakra and aura...
A breeze swept across the River of the Dead, stirring Roy's dark hair. He nodded lightly.
"I call it [Targeted Tracking Technique]. It means tracing something back to its source."
Like the pendant.
On the surface, it had come from Hashirama Senju—a sliver of chakra he had once infused into it.
But in truth, the root of it did not lie with Hashirama.
It lay with Asura.
And behind Asura and Indra stood the one who had divided his own chakra into those two—
the Sage of Six Paths himself.
Ōtsutsuki Hagoromo.
The Sage stroked his beard and murmured softly, "Tracing something back to its source... that does fit the name [Targeted Tracking]. Unfortunately..."
The blood-red spiral at his brow turned slowly as the old man looked deeply at Roy.
"You haven't traced it back to the true root yet."
"Back then, I was only a hasty little child myself, one who happened to obtain a bit of power..."
The Sage of Six Paths thought of his younger brother. He thought of his mother.
His face was full of fine wrinkles, deep as carved ravines, layered with more years and more weariness than words could ever explain.
Just as he said—
whether it was Yin and Yang, or fire, earth, water, wind, and lightning...
if one truly spoke of the source of chakra, even the Sage of Six Paths could not claim to be the first.
Roy tilted his head and blinked at him.
"But that person isn't on this planet, right?"
The Sage froze.
He looked at Roy again all at once.
This mysterious boy wore a smile on his face, as if he knew nothing—
and yet as if he knew everything.
For a moment, even the Sage of Six Paths found himself deeply confused.
Narrowing his eyes, his Rinnegan turning slowly, he asked in a heavy voice:
"Who exactly are you?"
Roy gave a light laugh. He could already feel that this River of the Dead and this consciousness-world were starting to collapse. He guessed that the meeting of Yin and Yang had already reached its limit this time, since his aura reserves were no longer enough.
He rose to his feet.
His dark hair swayed in the wind as he laughed aloud and said:
"Why dig all the way to the bottom of it, Sage? If you really want an answer, then all I can tell you is this..."
He pointed at the river in front of him.
"I'm just an ordinary person struggling to stay alive while trying to cross the River of the Dead."
The River of the Dead burst its banks.
As Roy's aura drained away at high speed, the far shore was pulled farther and farther away...
The Sage of Six Paths remained seated cross-legged by the bank, just as he had waited for so many years. This time, he watched Roy recede into the distance, his figure gradually fading. After a moment of silence, the old man suddenly called out:
"Young man, what is your name?"
"Well... to be honest, Sage, my name is Uchiha Ren..."
The Sage paused, then smiled.
That did make sense.
As a descendant of Indra, the boy was also his descendant.
The old man suddenly stood up and called out in return with a long laugh,
"Then work harder, young one. Next time, I hope you can hold out longer."
A faint smile curved at Roy's lips.
With his back still turned, he raised a hand and waved.
"Got it."
Then, with one final glance, his consciousness returned.
Still holding the pendant, he slowly opened his eyes.
Half his forehead was beaded with hot sweat. The other half was rimed with frost.
Roy woke. Yin and Yang faded away. He slowly exhaled a long breath of turbid air, and it rose twisting into the air like a great dragon.
Looking back on what had just happened, it almost felt like a short dream...
As the saying goes: when the false seems true, the true seems false; where there is nothing, something appears.
A dream within a dream...
That was definitely new.
The faint smile at the corner of Roy's lips had not fully faded yet. After exhaling, he looked up and saw that Fugaku, Tsunade, Shizune, and Itachi were all watching him with concern.
The boy smiled gently.
"I got sleepy after eating. Just nodded off for a bit."
Fugaku, Tsunade, and Shizune all fell silent.
They looked at one another, speechless.
Only Itachi cautiously scooted closer and poked Roy's arm.
"Nii-san, Mom hasn't even finished making breakfast yet."
So how could you possibly have gotten sleepy after eating?
But before he could finish, Roy grabbed him by the head and instantly shut him up.
"Itachi," Roy said as he vigorously rubbed the boy's head, "who says you can't have a carb crash without eating?"
Then he turned back to Tsunade.
"Lady Tsunade, I'm not in the habit of accepting gifts for nothing. I'll take the pendant, but if there's anything you need—anything I can help with—just say the word."
The pendant contained a strand of Hashirama Senju's chakra. According to the panel's prompt, even if absorbing it directly would not be as effective as Life Energy or Power of Faith, the sheer quality of Hashirama's chakra—and the immense vitality packed inside it—
would still mean a huge boost for Roy.
"I don't need anything." Tsunade folded her arms over her chest and lifted her chin proudly. "I'm not so old that I need help from some little brat."
Shizune glanced between Tsunade and Roy, clearly wanting to say something but holding it back.
Steam rose lazily from the tea.
Fugaku sat there quietly, refilling everyone's cups.
Itachi leaned against Roy, half-sitting in his lap, looking from Tsunade to Shizune. Mature beyond his years, he vaguely sensed that something was going on. The first stirrings of his sharp instincts were already beginning to show.
Roy took the freshly poured tea from Fugaku and sipped it, then nodded as if he agreed.
"That's fair. After all, this is our first time meeting. We're not exactly familiar with each other yet. In that case..."
He set the teacup down lightly on the table and looked at Tsunade with calm, bright eyes.
"Then let your younger brother and the man you loved tell me what you need. They knew you best."
Fugaku and Shizune both looked over sharply.
Before either of them could even speak, there was a sharp smack. The tatami groaned under the force, and two deep palm prints appeared in the polished surface of the table.
Sitting in Roy's lap, Itachi looked up—
Tsunade had both hands braced on the table, her body leaning so far forward that she was nearly nose-to-nose with Roy. She stared at him in disbelief.
"What did you just say?"
She was close enough now that the natural scent of her body reached him clearly.
Roy did not change expression.
Just like before, he answered with an easy smile.
"I said, let your younger brother and the man you loved tell me."
"They were the people closest to you, Lady Tsunade. If anyone knows what you want, it would be them."
Tsunade stared at him, her eyes locked on his.
Her lips trembled.
Before she could say anything, Fugaku snapped harshly, dragging the room back to reality.
"Ren, don't fool around!" Uchiha Fugaku shot Roy a fierce glare. "Nawaki and Dan Kato were heroes of the village. This is not something to joke about!"
"Shut up!"
Tsunade's furious shout cracked through the room. Her palm came down again with a bang, smashing part of the tatami into fragments. The huge noise startled the kitchen.
The curtain was pulled aside and Mikoto poked her head out anxiously.
"Anata, what happened?"
Fugaku said nothing. He simply stared at Tsunade and Roy.
And then—
Tsunade looked at Roy in silence and asked, her voice shaking,
"You really have a way?"
Roy kept his smile in place and casually glanced at the chakra naturally wafting from the crown of Tsunade's head. It carried a flush of excitement—and a barely hidden trace of longing.
Then the boy answered, serious and solemn.
"Of course."
"I've always respected heroes who died for the village, whether they were Senju or Uchiha. Wouldn't you agree... whoever the Hokage sent?"
Roy suddenly lifted his gaze and looked straight through the roof into the sky.
Far above, an indistinct gaze jolted violently.
At the same time, back in the Hokage's office, the surface of the crystal ball on the wide desk trembled.
The shake sent a sharp sting through Hiruzen Sarutobi's old eyes, making them twitch hard.
~~~
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