Sasuke felt his heart pounding wildly, as if it might burst out of his chest. His palms were icy cold.
"The thing inside me… is it coming out too?"
He muttered under his breath, a faint tremor in his voice.
Within the Sky Curtain, the tension had reached its peak.
Karin was trembling with excitement, urging impatiently, "Hurry up, old fossil! Stop dragging it out! Pull that 'cold one' out already! Let me see!"
Meanwhile, within Sasuke Uchiha's body, that dormant power seemed to sense the intense focus—and hostility—from the outside world. It began to stir restlessly.
A cold, gloomy aura began leaking out of him uncontrollably…
The moment that presence appeared—
Asura's gaze sharpened.
Karin grew even more excited.
"Indra, my brother… have you awakened as well?"
Asura's calm yet complicated voice echoed like a stone dropped into still water, reverberating through the suffocating air—and through the hearts of all who watched.
Brother?
Indra?
Another ancient, unfamiliar name.
Before the shinobi world could even process the shock of the name "Asura," another figure—called his brother—had appeared.
The sheer weight of information made countless minds buzz.
"Hmph."
A cold snort rang out—proud, aloof, carrying an innate disdain. That single sound alone brought a bone-deep chill and oppressive pressure.
Then, before everyone's eyes, a translucent, deep-blue figure—bearing a resemblance to Sasuke's silhouette, yet more solid and ancient—slowly drifted upward from the unconscious Sasuke's body, as if breaking free from invisible chains.
He wore ancient robes similar to Asura's, though his aura was colder and more imposing.
Long black hair fell behind him. His features resembled Sasuke's, but were more mature, colder—his brows perpetually knit with unyielding arrogance.
Once fully formed, Indra did not immediately look at Asura.
Instead, he surveyed the surroundings with icy detachment. A faint flicker crossed his eyes—quickly suppressed.
Then his gaze shot upward like an icicle, piercing toward the one staring at him with blazing excitement—
Karin.
An ordinary person might have been shattered under such a gaze.
But Karin merely raised a brow. Far from afraid, she seemed even more thrilled by his undisguised disgust.
"Wretched fiend," Indra's voice was like eternal frost, each word laced with killing intent. "I dislike the way you look at me."
Faced with his open hostility, Karin did something that left everyone dumbfounded.
She floated upward another few meters, positioning herself slightly higher than Indra, looking down at him from above.
Hands on her hips, chin lifted, she retorted in an utterly disdainful tone:
"Fiend, schmiend—why add 'wretched'?"
"What, did a fiend steal your rice? Or wipe out your clan? Why the long, tragic face?"
"Or what—did your father not like you?"
"Don't think I'll pity you just because you act like that!"
Her words were like pouring oil onto a blazing fire.
"You—seek—death—!!!"
Indra's composure shattered instantly.
Never had he encountered such a brazen, insolent creature daring to provoke him so openly.
His pride—his dignity—had been trampled without mercy.
In his fury, scarlet light flared in his eyes—
The Sharingan.
"Sharingan?!"
Kabuto, who had been tense the entire time while shielding his two unconscious "specimens," went pale and cried out in shock.
"You're… Uchiha as well?!"
His voice warped under the weight of disbelief.
This ancient being emerging from Sasuke—called Indra, addressed as brother by Asura—possessed the Sharingan?
What did that mean?
Kabuto's thoughts raced wildly, and a terrifying speculation escaped his lips:
"Could it be… this so-called Indra… is the progenitor of the Uchiha clan? Or at least… one of the original sources of the Sharingan?!"
The guess struck like thunder across the shinobi world.
The ancestor of the Uchiha? The origin of the Sharingan?
If true, then the mysterious and formidable dōjutsu of the Uchiha clan hid an unimaginably ancient secret.
And Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha—two seemingly ordinary boys—were the reincarnations, or vessels, of such primordial beings?
This was no longer a matter of personal destiny.
It was a revelation tied to the oldest bloodlines and deepest secrets of the shinobi world.
Indra heard Kabuto's outburst—but he did not deign to answer.
All of his killing intent remained locked onto Karin, the "fiend" who dared mock him.
And Karin—facing Indra's Sharingan blazing with destructive power—did not retreat.
If anything, her excitement intensified.
"Whoa! The Sharingan! And a pattern I've never seen before!"
The revelations exploding one after another in the Sky Curtain threw the entire shinobi world into unprecedented turmoil.
"Brothers?! The beings inside Naruto and Sasuke are brothers?!"
"Indra has the Sharingan! Is he the Uchiha ancestor?!"
"Then what about Asura? Is he an ancestor too? He doesn't look like an Uchiha! Does this mean the Uzumaki clan has some ancient origin as well?"
"Wait—Asura said his brother 'awakened' too. They must be from the same era! Does that mean in ancient times there were two parallel bloodlines—the origins of the Uchiha and another clan—and Naruto and Sasuke are their present-day vessels?!"
Speculation ran rampant.
Everyone realized that the roots of Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha ran far deeper than they had ever imagined.
But the events unfolding in the Sky Curtain left no time to dwell on these historical mysteries.
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