Next Bonus, 100PS!!
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"This is the first time I've actually used this technique."
Manji thought these words to himself.
He'd experimented with soul manipulation before. The Rinnegan granted dominion over the spirit realm after all. Now he intended to use that power to force Asura's reincarnation cycle forward ahead of schedule.
There was no huge burst of energy, no shaking, and no flashes of light.
From within Uzuki's preserved body, a warm sphere of life force separated itself and rose into the air. It lingered above Manji's open palm, resembling a liquid chakra given form, glowing soft and steady, radiating with a vitality that appeared bottomless.
Asura's soul of reincarnation.
"It's been a while."
Manji studied the light in his hand, then flicked his finger against it.
The sphere became a flash of light, tore through the fabric of space, and shot toward the Senju's remaining territory at a speed no living shinobi could perceive, let alone intercept.
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At that same moment, in a cramped wooden shack inside the Senju's last stronghold, a middle-aged man was walking like a caged animal.
His Senju uniform was dirty and torn. He clenched his fists so tightly his knuckles became white. Sweat and grief showed clearly on his face.
"OF ALL THE TIMES... WHY NOW OF ALL TIMES!" His voice sounded rough and strained, barely steady. "The Uchiha are tearing through our lines. Half our fighters are dead. We can barely hold the inner compound. And my child decides to come into the world RIGHT NOW..."
A sharp cry rang out inside the shack. The recognizable sound of a newborn's first breath.
The midwife emerged, wiping her hands, and nodded to him. "A boy. Mother and child are both unharmed."
The man's shoulders slumped. There was no joy, only exhaustion and bitterness.
He walked inside unsteadily and looked down at the baby wrapped in rough cloth. The infant's eyes were tightly shut, and its mouth was still finishing that first cry.
The Shinobi world was in turmoil. The Senju were close to being wiped out. This child was born into all of that, with no peace, no safety, and not even the hope of a happy childhood.
The man reached out with rough fingers and gently touched the baby's cheek, careful as if the child might break under the world's weight.
He waited there for a long time before he spoke.
"Your name will be Senju Futen."
"All your father asks... is that someday, you hold up this crumbling sky and keep our clan from falling."
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A ripple in the void, and Manji's figure manifested on solid ground.
He'd landed on familiar soil. This was the same village where he'd first met the Sarutobi Clan, years ago.
"Everything changes."
He looked around. The place was unrecognizable.
"They rebuilt it?"
A village had risen from the remains of the old massacre site. But "Risen" was generous. The settlement was barely standing. Crooked shacks hammered together from scrap wood and dead branches, groaning in the wind like they wanted to lie down and give up.
Manji looked toward the village entrance, and his frown deepened.
A group of villagers assembled near the road. Their skin was tight over their bones, and their garments were just rags. The elders looked dried out, with dirt in every wrinkle. The children looked even worse, with thin arms and legs but swollen bellies and pale faces.
"What happened here..."
Manji walked closer and addressed the group.
"You've rebuilt your village. Why are you leaving it?"
The elder at the front of the group hunched lower. His head swayed back and forth in a slow, mechanical shake. His lips moved, cracked and bloodless, but no noise came out.
Manji frowned. This man had nothing left. Hunger and despair had taken away even his strength to speak.
"This place became a battlefield."
A thin middle-aged man beside the elder spoke instead, his eyes blank, his voice sounding like sand scraping stone.
"Uchiha and Senju, fighting back and forth across this territory. Every time one side passes through, they take whatever's left. Food. Tools. Anything we could eat or use. Stripped clean. We can't survive here anymore. So we walk."
"..." Manji's jaw contracted. Something cold dropped through his chest.
The clan war between the Senju and Uchiha had spilled this far.
Ordinary people, civilians with no chakra, no combat training, no stake in any of it, ground to nothing between two millstones that didn't even know they existed.
He looked over the group. They wore rags and were covered in dirt. Their cheeks appeared hollow, and the elders looked so weak that they seemed barely alive.
And the children. Every one of them bloated at the belly.
That's when a small boy walked forward.
He looked not older than five, with thin arms and legs and a swollen stomach. He held out a handful of yellowish dirt to Manji, his hands quivering. His voice was flat and quiet, showing the innocence of a child who no longer expected kindness.
"Mister... want some Six Paths Dirt? It fills you up real good..."
Manji's heart throbbed.
He knew exactly what "Six Paths Dirt" was.
In this world, there was no Guanyin, only the Sage of Six Paths. When famine forced people to eat clay to stop their hunger, they called it Six Paths Dirt. In his past life, it was called Guanyin Clay. It looked and felt like food, but it killed slowly from the inside. If you ate enough, your stomach would swell until it burst.
Every swollen belly in this group was a death sentence in progress.
"Child... I..."
"GET BACK HERE!" The boy's father lunged ahead and snatched the dirt out of his hands.
"You little idiot! You want to give away the only food we've got?? Look at this old man, he's obviously not starving! What's the point of feeding someone who doesn't need it??"
The shouting hit Manji's ears, and the pressure in his chest pressed harder.
These people were forced to ration poisonous clay and treat it as if it were valuable.
Then he noticed the eyes.
Every villager stared at him, not with curiosity or hope, but with hunger. They looked at his clean robes and healthy appearance with desperate, frantic eyes.
He was alone, looked old and defenseless, and wore clothes far nicer than anything they had seen in years.
Manji understood right away. These people were beyond caring about right and wrong. Starvation had stripped away their humanity, leaving only the need to survive. They looked at him the way wolves look at someone left behind.
"..."
His face showed a blend of emotions, weighed down by what he saw.
The common people were eating dirt named after him. "Six Paths Dirt." Invoking his title just to give a name to the poison they were swallowing to delay starvation by a few more hours.
And he, the man who actually held that title, the Sage who'd appointed himself Guardian of the Shinobi world's order, had sat on his mountain while the people below fell into a hell this complete. Couldn't even guarantee them a full stomach.
"What kind of Sage of Six Paths am I..."
The sigh that left him carried the burden of ages.
He released a thread of genjutsu chakra, erasing himself from the villagers' perception. His image faded from their eyes and their minds, as if he'd never been standing there at all.
He couldn't look at those eyes anymore.
His body flickered, and he left the village.
The way ahead was no better.
Everywhere he looked, the same destruction appeared again and again. Most homes were abandoned, and bleached bones lay in the fields. There were no roosters crowing or dogs barking for miles.
Forests that had previously been thick and green had been hacked to stumps. Even the wild grass had been torn up and eaten. Nothing remained but cracked, barren dirt stretching to the horizon.
Every village he passed looked the same—collapsed walls, empty doorways, and a quiet emptiness where people once lived.
Even worse than the emptiness were the things he saw between villages—signs of cannibalism, remains scattered on burned ground, proof that people had started eating the dead just to survive another day.
"Alas..."
Manji sighed quietly, and his face got darker with sadness.
All of this, because of two people's destined rivalry.
All of this, because two reincarnations couldn't stop fighting.
Indra and Asura's endless fight had pulled the whole Shinobi world into a famine so bad that people were eating dirt and even each other.
Was this really the right outcome?
Their feud, their obsession, and their refusal to stop had cost millions of ordinary, powerless people who never wanted any part of it.
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