Another 6k word chap!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!
Chapter 104: The Incarnation of a Miracle, The Birth of the Strongest
As always, major events on the battlefield could not be kept quiet for long. Within hours they had reached every great village, and from there they spread across the entire shinobi world.
The moment a jonin-level confrontation broke out, reconnaissance squads and ANBU were invariably somewhere nearby in the shadows, because that was where complete fighters met and the outcome could reshape a frontline. The clash between Yoru and Han was exactly that kind of contest, and Han had even succeeded in catching Yoru completely off guard.
Without intangibility, Yoru would have died.
To pay that debt back in full, Yoru had released both Yin Seals without hesitation and used his strongest technique. He had not wanted to give Stone Village a window to provide support or complete a Reverse Summoning.
Every ace combatant was one of the foundational pillars of their village's strength. Losing one was a severe blow, as Sand Village had learned with Ebizo and then with Chiyo's son and daughter-in-law.
A jinchuriki, for any village, was a pillar that stood at the same level as a Kage. In terms of strategic deterrence, nothing short of a Five Kage peak-tier fighter could be compared to a jinchuriki.
The death of a jinchuriki was headline news across the entire shinobi world.
From the moment Han entered the battlefield, not only Konoha and Stone Village had eyes on him. Every watching faction from every nation had installed their own form of surveillance. Some used the Byakugan's long-range penetrating vision. Some used Yamanaka clan techniques, projecting minds into animals nearby. Some shared visual senses with birds. Some worked through summoning beasts with human intelligence who could speak or relay what they observed. The shinobi world had no shortage of strange and creative methods for collecting information at a distance.
In any case, every form of observation present had captured the entire sequence of Yoru killing Han.
A jinchuriki's distinctive chakra and the sight of Han's bisected body dissolving into nothing, in two separate moments, could not be faked. Even if Stone Village had wanted to suppress the news, there was no mechanism to do it.
The equally undeniable image that had been witnessed, of Yoru taking a direct hit from Onoki's Dust Release: Detachment of the Primitive World Technique and standing completely unharmed, had also been seen by more than a few pairs of eyes watching from the shadows.
Onoki understood clearly that Han's death could not be concealed. Losing a jinchuriki created vulnerability. It was likely to invite interest from the Land of Lightning. Suppressing the story was impossible, and attempting it would only invite worse speculation. So Onoki swallowed the grief, and made the choice to use Han's death, and his own standing as one of the shinobi world's foremost powers, to give Yoru the stage himself. He shifted every pair of eyes in the shinobi world toward Konoha and toward Yoru directly.
And so it spread.
Yoru possessed a Space-Time bloodline limit. He could convert his chakra into a Space-Time nature transformation. The black and white laser had never been Storm Release Black Lightning at all. It was Space-Time Release.
The news swept the shinobi world like a storm.
Later records would call this moment the birth of the Strongest Bloodline.
Suddenly everything made sense.
While other children his age had still been sitting in the academy, Yoru had mastered Flying Thunder God at age eleven, a super S-rank technique that no one in Konoha had managed since the Second Hokage. Everyone had assumed this was because he had some exceptional aptitude for space-time ninjutsu. The truth was simpler and far more staggering. He could convert his chakra into Space-Time nature transformation himself. For him, learning Flying Thunder God was as natural as eating or drinking.
The black meteor in Yoru's very first battle that had severed the salamander's tail and stopped the shinobi world's most lethal creature from returning to the summoning realm, everyone had assumed it was the incomprehensible speed of the strike that had made it possible. In reality, the meteor had been a Space-Time technique. It carried the ability to interfere with space itself. If not for Hanzo of the Salamander's Body Flicker being in a class entirely its own, so refined that he could take his summoning beast into a Water Body Flicker, the salamander might not have merely lost a tail. It might have died on the spot.
The technique Yoru had used to plant Flying Thunder God seals under the noses of fifty-five Sand ninja, and to conceal his chakra presence so completely that no sensing technique could locate him, had never been a secret art at all. He had simply merged himself into the space around him, making his existence cease to register.
The noiseless Body Flicker, the survival of Dust Release unharmed, all of it came from the same source.
His Storm Release Black Lightning, the reason his attacks left no trace of electrical discharge, no smoke, no scattered debris, had not been the result of Storm Release and Black Lightning combining to produce destructive properties. His Space-Time Release carried the same annihilating force as Dust Release's Kekkei Tota. The difference was that Dust Release decomposed objects into their base atoms. Yoru's Space-Time Release erased them through spatial annihilation.
If this battle had been Yoru's first time making a name for himself, even with witnesses present, most factions across the shinobi world would have assumed Onoki had lost his mind after losing a jinchuriki and was spreading desperate disinformation to smear Konoha.
The shinobi world was full of jutsu extensions and secret arts and bloodline limits. Who could say with certainty that Yoru's survival hadn't come from some other ability? What gave anyone the right to immediately brand him with a Space-Time bloodline?
Everyone in the shinobi world had encountered Space-Time in some form. Sealing scrolls involved Space-Time. Summoning techniques involved Space-Time. The Heavenly Transfer Technique involved Space-Time. Even the Second Hokage's Flying Thunder God and Summoning: Impure World Reincarnation involved Space-Time.
But every single one of those applications was supplementary. Assistive. External.
How could offensive Space-Time abilities exist? How could there be a bloodline limit that allowed someone to convert chakra into Space-Time nature transformation?
If such a bloodline truly existed, it would be nothing short of turning the impossible into reality, a miracle in the truest sense. Wouldn't someone with that power be completely unbeatable?
Set against a bloodline like that, what would the legendary Mangekyou Sharingan of the Uchiha clan amount to? What would the First Hokage's Wood Release that had brought peace to a world at war amount to?
Perhaps only the Rinnegan, the greatest of the three legendary dojutsu from ancient myth, the eye said to have been used by the Sage of Six Paths to create the moon itself, a technique that most people believed had never existed outside of stories, could be spoken of in the same breath.
Under any other circumstances, statements like these would have been ridiculed as the ravings of a man in shock.
But this was Onoki, the man who possessed Dust Release, a Kekkei Tota that transcended ordinary bloodline limits. A figure who, in terms of both age and raw power, sat at the absolute peak of the Five Kage tier and was acknowledged as one of the current era's foremost shinobi.
Mockery was not forthcoming from anyone.
And this was not Yoru's first time shaking the shinobi world. It wasn't his second, third, or fourth either.
This battle, the one that history would come to call a defining engagement of the Second Shinobi World War, had Yoru as its most brilliant figure from start to finish.
His first battle alone had achieved something no one had managed in decades, becoming the first person to wound both Hanzo and the salamander. A historic debut for someone who hadn't yet graduated from the academy.
He had then become the first to kill an enemy commander and the first to eliminate fifty-four high-tier combatants in a single instant, establishing himself as a top-tier assassin. He had matched Hanzo of the Salamander in raw Body Flicker speed and defeated him, earning both the title Shinobi World's First Divine Speed and the respect of the Demigod himself.
In under two years he had broken the fastest promotion record in Konoha's history, becoming the youngest ace combatant among the five great villages, and was unanimously regarded as someone who would reach the absolute pinnacle of the shinobi world once he came of age.
The techniques he had shown across those two years were too numerous to fully catalogue. Beyond Flying Thunder God and the Yin Seal, nearly all of them were either original jutsu he had developed himself or extensions built on existing techniques with his own distinctive character.
His silent, traceless Body Flicker that left no sound and no detectable chakra signature. The Earth Body Flicker and Lightning Release Chakra Mode combination that concealed his chakra while moving. The black meteor that had appeared only once in two years. The unmarked Rasengan that Jiraiya had used to defeat and kill multiple enemies. The Black Lightning with properties entirely unlike the Third Raikage's. The Chidori series that had made Rain ninja flee at his name. And the laser beam that had defeated the Demigod, which the shinobi world had tentatively labeled Storm Release.
While his peers at twelve years old were still in the academy, or had just graduated and could barely form basic elemental jutsu at C-rank, Yoru had already mastered S-rank and super S-rank techniques, developed an entire series of A-rank jutsu and their extensions, created secret arts, and synthesized what appeared to be a bloodline limit.
His jutsu talent had been acknowledged across every corner of the shinobi world as a genius on the level of the Second Hokage. Every middle-ranked ninja or higher with any leadership or command ability had memorized his known technique roster.
So when Onoki, a Five Kage peak-tier figure who held no regard for appearances or dignity, had laid a trap alongside a jinchuriki at the cost of that jinchuriki's life and released entirely new intelligence to the world, a significant portion of the shinobi world had their understanding click into place all at once.
Many people had previously theorized that before the Black Lightning, Yoru had developed something similar to the Second Tsuchikage's Dustless Bewildering Cover, a transparency technique that perfectly concealed his chakra. Now that the explanation was chakra conversion into Space-Time nature transformation that allowed a body to merge with space itself, the pieces all fit cleanly.
Those who had some personal knowledge of Black Lightning's properties, who had witnessed the Third Raikage use it, and who had encountered Storm Release firsthand, found their lingering doubts finally resolved. Storm Release and Black Lightning both had fixed, specific properties. No combination of them could produce that kind of all-annihilating laser. And both were rooted in Lightning Release. The damage they caused could not, under any possible mechanism, leave absolutely zero trace of electrical discharge.
The reason Yoru's techniques could do that was because they were not compound ninjutsu at all. They were the same category of absolute, rule-level force as Dust Release. Space-Time annihilation.
Outside of genin and chunin who lacked deep familiarity with Space-Time, every jonin with specialized or all-around abilities, and every faction's senior leadership, went completely silent.
Including Konoha's own camp.
"Orochimaru. Is this what you've been keeping from us this whole time? The secret behind why you were so certain Yoru would become the next generation's God of Shinobi?"
On the White Fang's frontline, Jiraiya stared at Orochimaru with eyes that had gone wide as bells, unable to conceal the shock filling them.
Tsunade and Sakumo Hatake looked at Orochimaru with the same expression, both of them visibly waiting for him to confirm it.
Taking in their faces, Orochimaru finally lost the battle to keep the smile off his face. His expression shifted into something deeply, privately satisfied.
This. Exactly this expression. He had been looking forward to this moment for a long time.
His only regret was that Hiruzen Sarutobi and Danzo Shimura, and the rest of Konoha's elder council, weren't in this room right now.
If this scene had been playing out in front of the full assembled jonin leadership during a formal meeting, with every member of Konoha's inner circle present, that would have been a truly beautiful picture.
Orochimaru wasn't certain what Hiruzen-sensei had felt when he was appointed Hokage. What he could say with certainty was that even if the title of Fourth Hokage were placed in his hands right now, it still wouldn't come close to how he felt at this moment.
Outwardly, he simply smiled. "So now you understand why I was unwilling to say anything."
With Orochimaru's confirmation, the three of them stopped even trying to hide their shock. Every one of them wore the same expression: jaw slightly dropped, words temporarily unavailable.
After a long silence, Tsunade was the first to find her voice. It came out as something closer to a murmur. "No wonder Lady Katsuyu called him the new miracle of the shinobi world. A Space-Time bloodline limit. Can something like this actually exist in the shinobi world? Of the five elemental natures, plus Yin and Yang, is there any combination that could synthesize a bloodline like this? Or is Space-Time a completely separate eighth nature transformation that appeared alongside Yoru at birth? Is that why they called him a miracle?"
She paused, and her voice shifted into something she almost never showed, genuine uncertainty. "If his chakra can truly be converted into Space-Time nature transformation, doesn't that mean he can develop any jutsu into a Space-Time Release version, the same way a jutsu inventor would? No, he's already doing it. No wonder his ultimate techniques are so powerful. Compared to the Space-Time bloodline, can Grandfather's Wood Release really be called a miracle of the shinobi world?"
Sakumo Hatake let out a quiet breath. "Perhaps we have just witnessed the birth of the strongest bloodline limit."
Jiraiya's thoughts had taken a different direction entirely. He was becoming increasingly convinced that the Great Toad Sage had made a prediction error, or that Myoboku Mountain had grabbed the wrong person all those years ago and accidentally selected Orochimaru instead of himself.
Space-Time had always been understood as something external. Something that existed outside of shinobi and could only be leveraged through specific techniques. The only way any of them had ever been able to use Space-Time at all was through Reverse Summoning. Only a once-in-an-era genius like the Second Hokage had been able to reach out and catch an invisible thread of Space-Time energy and turn it into Flying Thunder God.
And Flying Thunder God was nothing more than the principle of summoning applied to the user's own body. Just that single application had made the Second Hokage the fastest shinobi in the world, and had made Yoru the Shinobi World's First Divine Speed.
For ace combatants and Kage-level fighters alike, Space-Time was power from a different dimension entirely.
And now the shinobi world had produced a person who could convert chakra into that higher-dimensional force. Orochimaru had not lied. Lady Katsuyu had not been wrong. Yoru was the future's God of Shinobi, and a miracle made flesh.
The only thing preventing him from being called that right now was that his chakra reserves were still too limited. He didn't yet carry the strategic deterrence of a Tailed Beast Ball or Hanzo's salamander. But even as things stood, he was already among the shinobi world's strongest.
And if the space-merging intangibility was a passive ability rather than something he had to actively activate, then even the qualifier "among" might be unnecessary. Something that could not be harmed by Dust Release, the technique that dismantled every other bloodline limit, made a person invulnerable to anything Jiraiya could imagine. Regardless of who the opponent was, Yoru already stood in a position that could not be threatened by any conventional means.
Once merged into space, his chakra disappeared from all perception. No sensing technique could locate him. No barrier could detect him.
The thought of being targeted by someone like that made Jiraiya's skin crawl. How was that different from being marked by death itself?
That old man Onoki was probably going to struggle with sleep for a long time. And even when he managed to fall asleep, nightmares seemed like a reasonable expectation.
So that was how her brother was killed.
On the Sand frontline, Chiyo's face had gone ash-grey.
She finally understood why that photograph, reproduced across the entire shinobi world, had always seemed so wrong to her. Her brother's death, and those fifty-four high-tier combatants, had indeed been strange. The truth behind their deaths was more hopeless than the strangeness had been.
Chiyo could not find a single trace of hope for revenge.
The same way Hanzo of the Salamander had reached a point where his fire simply went out, Chiyo had reached that point now. The will to fight was gone.
"Chiyo-sama. Lord Kazekage wishes to speak with you."
A voice came from outside the tent.
Not long afterward, the dispersed combat and logistics units received the order to regroup and pull back to the border base and the Land of Wind.
Sand Village was done fighting.
It was the same principle as always. A shinobi's battle was a battle of information.
If Onoki hadn't used the cognitive trap, and hadn't personally entered the field at the cost of his dignity, Yoru's ability to merge with space might not have been exposed until much later, perhaps not until his wings had fully grown. But it was exposed now.
Whether or not every nation fully believed the Space-Time bloodline was real, until they could determine exactly what Yoru's merging ability was, and whether any counter to it existed, continuing this war made no sense. Yoru had been choosing to hide this ability because his overall strength hadn't yet reached its ceiling and he didn't want to risk a trap like the one Onoki had laid. That restraint had, in fact, saved his life.
But it also meant that every ninja on every active battlefield now had to reckon with an enemy who could ignore every form of attack.
Worse, that enemy's offensive capability was equally terrifying. The Five-Tails jinchuriki had been annihilated before he could even attempt a complete tailed beast transformation.
Yoru had now exposed his greatest secret and his strongest technique. He would not be holding back again.
Continuing to fight only meant accumulating more casualties to no purpose. Unless all four nations coordinated a blitzkrieg assault on Konoha and overwhelmed this Space-Time ninja before he could be everywhere at once, breaking through the Land of Fire's defensive lines was not achievable. And even if the four nations somehow set aside their mutual hatreds and broke through, even if they destroyed Konoha itself, killing someone who could teleport at any range and merge into space was a different problem entirely. After the war ended, the surviving leadership of those four nations could very well find themselves on Yoru's personal list of assassination targets.
Just as Jiraiya had thought, high-ranking officials across every nation were going to have difficulty sleeping for a long time.
From this point forward, the question of how to deal with Yoru would be the shinobi world's greatest unsolved problem.
In the black market, Yoru's bounty had already broken one hundred million ryo, placing him at the top of the active bounty list.
Not only because assassination was currently the only method with any realistic hope of ending someone who needed a moment's preparation to merge into space. But because Yoru had demonstrated the same potential the First Hokage had once carried, the potential to break the rules of the world itself. He was no longer simply a ninja.
He had already caused panic in certain circles that watched the shinobi world from further away.
"Well. I was right all along. This kid has always been hiding a secret I couldn't identify. I just never imagined the thing he was hiding was Space-Time itself, something every ninja has encountered in some form, yet which has always been unreachable."
In a dimly lit underground space, Madara Uchiha received the intelligence and did not show a trace of wariness. Instead he laughed quietly.
Even with a face mapped in deep lines, hair gone white and sparse, a body so emaciated that standing under his own power was a serious difficulty, surviving only through what the Demonic Statue was keeping alive in him, the sharingan eyes in Madara's face, transplanted from who knew what source, burned with unmistakable fighting spirit.
Outside of Hashirama Senju, the one man who had held him down regardless of how Madara escalated, how many trump cards he played, how many times he found a new technique or called in the strongest tailed beast to tip the balance, only to be defeated again and again, and who had ultimately killed him, Madara had never looked at another person as a true equal. Not even Tobirama Senju.
And he had certainly never looked at anyone with eyes like these.
Now there was a second person.
If his body had allowed it, Madara genuinely wanted to reclaim his Rinnegan and go test himself against Yoru directly. He wanted to know whether the Rinnegan from the pages of ancient myth was stronger, or whether the Space-Time bloodline that truly deserved to be called a miracle came out on top.
"Madara-sama, I witnessed it personally. That kid completely ignored Onoki's Dust Release." Black Zetsu spoke with an expression of visible wariness. "At the time his chakra signature disappeared entirely. I thought Onoki had finished him. Then the Dust Release faded and his chakra reappeared in my sensing. That was absolutely his real body."
"Exactly as Onoki's published intelligence described. The kid's body merged with space."
"I strongly suspect his Black Lightning was never Lightning Release at all. It was Space-Time nature transformation. Every technique he has that carries annihilation properties has been black at its core."
Madara listened and couldn't entirely suppress the urge to curl his lip. "Since when do you analyze things so well? Wasn't it you who told me it might just be that simple and I was overthinking it?"
"Madara-sama, you're practically dead. How are you still this petty?"
"Get lost."
Madara closed his eyes, not bothering to continue.
Watching the two of them bicker, Black Zetsu, concealed within the Demonic Statue, felt something it had not felt in a very long time. Wariness. Killing intent. And beneath both of those: fear.
It had not anticipated being wrong.
To be precise, Black Zetsu had never imagined, across its millennium of observation, that a lower life form could gain command of Space-Time's power.
If it had not seen the evidence directly, it would not have believed a word of White Zetsu's account or a single piece of Onoki's published intelligence.
Because Black Zetsu knew exactly how high-dimensional and how powerful Space-Time force was. According to the memories its mother had encoded in it, this was a level that only the Otsutsuki clan itself could truly access, a higher-order power that even the Kekkei Mora and the supreme dojutsu could only barely touch, in limited, inflexible applications, with no capacity for free development.
And now a being who was not a descendant of Asura or Indra, who carried not even a trace of Otsutsuki bloodline, this lower life form, was able to convert chakra into Space-Time nature transformation and develop Space-Time jutsu freely, doing something even its mother had been unable to do?
Impossible.
A creature that had scraped a few wood shavings from the God Tree and called it divine power had no right to stand above the one who had eaten the God Tree's fruit itself, the progenitor of all chakra.
Black Zetsu did not believe it. Did not want to believe it.
But the killing intent toward Yoru was genuine.
Regardless of whether this was truly a Space-Time bloodline or an extension of Flying Thunder God that produced space-merging capability, the ability was real, and it was a fact.
This young ninja had become the plan's greatest obstacle.
And by a convenient coincidence, sensing was currently his weakest point. What he feared most was assassination conducted from the shadows.
Black Zetsu was the shinobi world's most capable assassin.
As a being born from Yin and Yang, it carried inherent high-dimensional shielding. Without the Mayfly Technique, nothing could detect its presence. Including those two disappointing sons, Hagoromo and Hamura. Once it possessed someone, the will of the chakra's progenitor encoded in its being could control any body completely, directing it to self-destruct or eliminating it through Wood Release.
Black Zetsu very much wanted to go and kill Yoru.
But it did not dare.
Even Onoki's airtight plan had failed to land a killing blow. That kid's space-merging speed was certainly extreme. And Black Zetsu still didn't know whether the intangibility was a passive ability or something that had to be actively triggered.
If the assassination attempt failed, it would be exposed. Once exposed, it would enter Yoru's sights permanently.
Unless it remained hidden. Because when the time came for it to step into the open as Madara Uchiha's will made manifest, it would certainly be hunted by Yoru from that moment on.
A millennium of patience to cultivate the shinobi world's second set of Rinnegan. It could not allow itself to be drawn out of the shadows prematurely, not unless the Infinite Tsukuyomi was already in motion. As long as it stayed concealed, as long as the fated battle between Asura and Indra's reincarnations remained unresolved, even if the second set of Rinnegan was destroyed, there could be a third set, a fourth, however many were needed. More time would pass, but it could wait.
If this generation failed, there was always the next. Or the generation after that. A hundred generations from now if needed.
Even if Yoru was a miracle of the shinobi world with a Space-Time bloodline, one fact remained unchanged.
He was not immortal.
If this generation fell short, the Rinnegan could be recovered and hidden in the deep dark, waiting for Yoru to die of old age before emerging. Black Zetsu quickly settled its killing intent and set aside that tempting, dangerous thought. It would continue to wait.
What it didn't realize was that its careful restraint had let the optimal moment pass.
"Not Black Lightning and Storm Release. Space-Time?"
In Kumogakure, the Third Raikage examined the intelligence with a focus entirely different from everyone else's. "Then that black and white slashing force, the one that nothing can withstand, isn't coated in Lightning or Storm Release nature transformation. It's Space-Time nature transformation?"
"So then, which is stronger? His Space-Time slash or the side effects of Heavenly Transfer? And could it break my ultimate shield?"
He paused. "That space-merging intangibility is actually a stronger kind of ultimate shield than mine."
"A strange alternative to both the ultimate shield and the ultimate spear in one existence. Konoha truly is a cradle of exceptional talent."
At this moment, Yoru's name was finally recorded in the Third Raikage's memory for the first time.
Before this, despite Yoru having shaken the shinobi world multiple times, the Third Raikage had never given him a second thought. To be precise, the Third Raikage looked down on every Lightning Release user, Yoru included, and Sakumo Hatake alongside him. From the position of a Five Kage peak, the Third Raikage held the conviction that he was the shinobi world's greatest Lightning Release practitioner, and that Lightning Release had reached its absolute ceiling in him. If your Lightning Release attack couldn't match his ultimate spear, it could not break his ultimate shield. The logic was that simple.
In the current shinobi world, only three types of power could injure him. Onoki's Dust Release, since they shared the Five Kage peak tier. Hanzo of the Salamander's salamander toxin. And Uzushiogakure's sealing techniques, which was precisely why he had chosen to destroy that nation.
Not even Konoha's Third Hokage rated as a concern in his assessment.
Now, following Onoki and Hanzo of the Salamander, Yoru had become the third person the Third Raikage regarded as a genuine rival. And the first one ranked.
Just like Madara, the Third Raikage's eyes at that moment were filled entirely with fighting spirit.
He wanted to know whether his ultimate shield and ultimate spear were stronger, or whether Yoru's ultimate shield and ultimate spear came out on top. Whether Yoru's silent ghostlike movement and Flying Thunder God were faster, or whether his own Lightning Release Chakra Mode was quicker.
"Danzo-dono, since Stone Village has already pulled its forces back from this frontline, I'll take my leave."
At the Danzo frontline, Yoru made his farewell.
Just as Sand Village had done, Onoki had made no attempt to gather forces for revenge after losing a jinchuriki. He had pulled back immediately and decisively. Continuing to fight only meant mounting casualties for nothing. Yoru, having nearly been killed, would not be merciful on the battlefield now. The Dimensional Slash and the space-merging intangibility, no longer needing to be concealed, made him just as unworkable to fight as the Third Raikage, but harder to deal with since Flying Thunder God allowed him to disengage at will. There was no attrition strategy that could grind him down. Onoki would not send his people to die for a battle he couldn't win.
Danzo looked at Yoru with an expression layered with things he couldn't fully keep beneath the surface and asked the question the entire shinobi world wanted answered. "Your Storm Release Black Lightning. Is it a Space-Time bloodline?"
"That's right. Exactly as everyone suspects." Yoru looked at Danzo with a faint half-smile and confirmed it without any attempt at deflection.
The Second Shinobi World War had ended early because of his Space-Time bloodline.
Unless Sasori of the Red Sand still managed to kill the Third Kazekage, and unless Cloud Village remained reckless enough to pick fights with the Land of Wind followed by the Land of Fire and the Land of Earth simultaneously, the Third Shinobi World War might simply never happen. Not before someone developed a reliable method to counter Yoru. And even if it did eventually break out, it would come about through Madara Uchiha covertly steering Kirigakure to declare war on the Land of Fire, as part of his plan to push Obito Uchiha down the path of darkness.
Kakashi Hatake was not yet three years old. Without additional butterfly effects, Obito Uchiha was still nine years away from his defining tragedy.
In nine years, Yoru would have completed his third evolution. Both his Space-Time chakra capacity and his talent would have grown again.
Even at his current stage, his only genuine weaknesses were limited endurance from chakra depletion and a sensing ability that wasn't up to par. With the war drawing to a close, he would dedicate himself entirely to closing that gap. When the idea he had been developing in his mind took shape and he produced his own sensing extension technique, the only weakness remaining would be the preparation time required to go intangible from his base state. His neural reaction speed and Flying Thunder God already compensated for it. And once he developed formula-free Space-Time teleportation, that weakness would disappear entirely.
When that day came, the shinobi world would transform into something resembling a Jujutsu Kaisen-style arena, with Yoru as the unkillable, impossible-to-deal-with final boss. The only answer would be to resurrect the ancient powers of old.
Taking one last moment to appreciate the darkened expression on Danzo Shimura's face, Yoru teleported away.
In terms of composure, Danzo actually recovered faster than the three jonin and Sakumo had. Perhaps it was the years of careful expression management he had cultivated. He appeared outwardly unmoved.
The inside of his head was a different story entirely.
The dream of Hokage, which he had carried his entire life, had just made a sound like glass hitting a stone floor and shattered.
Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi, plus personally trained student Orochimaru, plus Senju Tsunade, plus the Black Flash Gojo Yoru, plus the Nine-Tails jinchuriki. That combination alone had already made Danzo's ambitions feel like a shadow reaching for something it could never touch.
Now Yoru had exposed a Space-Time bloodline, a miracle power unprecedented in all of shinobi history. His path to Hokage was not merely blocked. It was sealed completely.
From this point forward, Yoru's influence within Konoha would stand as high as Tsunade's, which was already unreasonably high.
As Yoru's teacher, who had also grown up alongside Tsunade from childhood, Orochimaru's path to the Fourth Hokage title was equally sealed.
The Fourth and Fifth Hokage candidates had essentially been decided.
Danzo Shimura had no possibility left. Not even a fraction of one.
For the first time in longer than he could remember, Danzo's eyes held something that looked unmistakably like being lost.
Unfortunately for the entertainment value of the moment, Yoru had already teleported away. If he had seen that expression, he would certainly have regretted leaving too early.
Back in Konoha, Yoru inevitably found himself sitting across from Hiruzen Sarutobi for another conversation. Just as he had with Danzo, Yoru acknowledged the truth plainly, leaving Hiruzen in a state of stunned silence that lasted considerably longer than he was accustomed to.
Then, somehow, word got out.
Gojo Yoru did indeed possess a Space-Time bloodline. He was the incarnation of a miracle.
Whether the various factions across the shinobi world believed it completely or held some lingering doubt, whether they were currently devising traps or assassination strategies to deal with Yoru, nobody knew.
But within Konoha, the status that Yoru had already held as a top-tier member of the village's inner circle broke through any ceiling that had seemed applicable and simply kept rising.
In the eyes of every shinobi clan in the village, he had become something very precious. A Space-Time bloodline was a bloodline limit. Bloodline limits were hereditary.
If not for the fact that Kushina Uzumaki's identity was no secret to those at the upper levels of Konoha's leadership, and that her relationship with Yoru was equally well understood by those same people, the gates of the Gojo household would likely already have been worn flat by representatives of every major clan arriving to discuss arrangements.
The same way Konoha had been unable to resist the temptation to quietly run experiments aimed at recreating Wood Release, no one with ambitions for their clan's future could resist the pull of Space-Time.
The Gojo family might once have had a moment of modest prominence or wealth somewhere in its history, but by the time Yoru's generation arrived, it had been an ordinary civilian family with a surname and nothing else. Yoru didn't even have cousins.
But now, Yoru alone was a shinobi clan. Yoru alone was a dynasty.
If he chose to, he could marry into any number of shinobi clans, have as many children as he wanted, and not a single clan would object. Not even Hiruzen Sarutobi would object.
That was what adding the word "bloodline" after Space-Time actually meant.
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