A fine gray rain shot from Rei Kaguya's fingertips. Under the effect of the Wind Release attached to it, it rotated at high speed, silently piercing the air—and piercing the humanoid puppets that attacked without dodging.
There were no massive explosions.
No brilliant flashes.
Those humanoid puppets were still charging toward the enemy they had locked onto. Then, bit by bit, they dragged gray trails behind them, finally collapsing as their structures broke apart. Like smoke and dust swept up by wind from somewhere far away, they scattered sparsely across the ruins of the city that had once belonged to the Otsutsuki main family.
One strike.
All destroyed.
Except for the gigantic Hamura statue.
With its largest body, it had naturally suffered the greatest number of attacks. However, under the remote influence of Tenseigan chakra, although the struck parts of its body had briefly turned into ash and vanished, they regenerated in an unbelievable way after dispersing. Between destruction and restoration, its advance speed had not been affected too obviously.
"It looks like a physical entity made of matter, but its essence is closer to an energy body like Susanoo. It can use chakra to reconstruct destroyed sections?"
After roughly determining the nature of the Hamura statue controlled by Tenseigan chakra, Rei Kaguya lost interest in continuing to entangle himself with it. He planned to directly create a bone clone to wrestle with it. But before he could finish forming the hand seals to create a bone clone, the enormous Hamura statue suddenly erupted with unimaginable speed and rammed into him, sending him flying before he could react.
"Wha—"
Having completely failed to anticipate the other party's sudden burst of speed, Rei Kaguya crashed somewhat awkwardly through many ancient ruins before standing up amid the wreckage with furrowed brows. He used a technique similar to Rotation to shake a little dust off his Six Paths robe, then looked with confusion at the giant stone statue whose eyes were glowing as it charged toward him once more.
"What is going on? Are you trying to use this boring toy to hold me back, unknown Otsutsuki—"
Boom!
The enormous stone statue pounced down like Mount Tai bearing down. With an unimaginably huge body relying on pure weight and the acceleration from an eruption of chakra, it directly smashed a massive crater into the area where Rei Kaguya had just stood.
Spiderweb-like cracks spread outward from the deepest point of impact, bringing collapsing earth and stone in all directions. At the bottom of the crater, Rei Kaguya, who had forcibly stopped the Hamura statue with one hand and halted its attempt to drag him backward through the ground, narrowed his eyes and whispered,
"Sage Art: Vajra Earth."
Chakra fused with natural energy suddenly surged into the collapsing earth and stone beneath his feet. In an instant, starting from his feet, which had been half-buried, a ring of crystalline light began spreading across the crater and the surrounding earth.
All mud, sand, soil, and stone touched by that light transformed under an unbelievable power into a flat crystal ground of astonishing strength—strong enough to withstand Rei Kaguya's full exertion.
After confirming that the earth beneath his feet would not fail to support even the force needed for him to start moving, Rei Kaguya took a deep breath, raised eighty percent of his strength, and stomped hard against the ground. Then he gathered momentum and punched fiercely toward the giant stone statue pressing down above his head.
"Sage Art: Heaven Shaker!"
Bang!!!
Heaven and earth shook.
Stone split and the sky trembled.
Under the dual amplification of Six Paths transformation and Sage Mode, Rei Kaguya, who already used taijutsu as his main combat method, threw a punch that instantly pierced through even the drifting clouds of the false sky.
Under this strike, the gigantic Hamura statue had eighty percent of its body destroyed in an instant. Its remaining head flew into the sky with the shockwave of Heaven Shaker, breaking straight through the azure sky and into the black sea of stars beyond.
"Hoo…"
Having warmed up slightly, Rei Kaguya looked at the false firmament he had punched through. He looked at the cosmic scenery revealed through that enormous hole, then looked at the surrounding landscape, which showed no change at all—not even the vacuum suction phenomenon commonly seen in space-themed works from his previous life.
He frowned in confusion.
Leaving aside how exactly the Otsutsuki clan transformed the moon, a barren artificial satellite, into something almost no different from the shinobi world, there was clearly something wrong with that gigantic stone statue that had so recklessly attacked him just now.
"Even with the Giant Tenseigan's chakra supporting it, allowing Hamura's stone statue to regenerate almost endlessly, using it only to perform such brainless charges is far too wasteful… What exactly are you trying to do, unknown Otsutsuki?"
…
A little earlier.
Inside the moon, within the lunar palace where the descendants of the Otsutsuki clan lived.
Obito Uchiha walked past humanoid puppets that had been shredded into pieces by Wood Release: Cutting Sprigs. With a cold expression, he headed toward the Chamber of Rebirth that they had protected even at the cost of being destroyed.
"Are you certain there is living chakra here, Zetsu?"
"There is no mistake. It is right here."
Black Zetsu's voice carried a slight tremble produced by excitement. It stared at the Chamber of Rebirth before them, which was firmly sealed by layers of barriers and a tightly interlocked architectural structure, and said hoarsely,
"When I first stepped in here, I only discovered two sources of living chakra. One disappeared here along the path we just passed through. The other vanished somewhere outside, in a place drifting endlessly."
"The Otsutsuki clan, which lives in an isolated place without external conflict or entanglement of interests and inherited the blood of the Six Paths, still slaughtered one another until only two people remained?"
Obito Uchiha looked at the huge stone door in front of him and murmured to himself.
"Who knows what the reason behind that was? Perhaps humans are simply beings like that. As long as they live, they will inevitably fall into conflict. Even if only blood relatives from the same clan remain in the world, they will still not hesitate to exterminate each other in order to carry out their ideals."
Black Zetsu, who had never had the ability to lay schemes on the moon, shook its head with some emotion as well. Then it turned and used a bewitching voice to speak to Obito Uchiha, who stood before the stone door.
"If it were anyone else, perhaps they would need to think of every possible way to break the barriers and traps before them. But for you, Obito, these things are nothing more than meaningless decorations… As expected, choosing you to become my successor was the correct judgment. You were reborn precisely to cross these difficulties ordinary people cannot cross."
"Crossing difficulties? Perhaps."
After Obito Uchiha's figure twisted slightly, he brought Black Zetsu, who was in contact with him, through the barrier carefully reinforced by generations of Otsutsuki branch family heads and arrived, under Toneri Otsutsuki's disbelieving and stunned gaze, inside the Chamber of Rebirth.
This was the chamber built to fulfill Hamura's heavenly mandate and provide a sleeping place for the god of the new world.
"Who are you people!? How did you—"
Thump.
Toneri Otsutsuki's unfinished words came to an end. Obito Uchiha's merciless punch landed squarely in his abdomen. The young Toneri had almost no strength to resist and fainted on the spot.
Obito Uchiha looked at this unbelievably young child and slowly withdrew the surprise in his eyes.
"Oh? So the one hiding here is actually such a young brat? In that case… the other person you sensed, Zetsu, should be the culprit who previously sent puppets to attack the Hyuga clan head and guided the moon toward the shinobi world, correct?"
"That should be the case."
Black Zetsu looked at Toneri Otsutsuki, who had completely lost the ability to resist, and even stronger, more obvious emotion burst out in its eyes.
"But all of that is already smoke in the past… After we take this child into our hands, he will merely become a puppet we use to fight Rei Kaguya."