Arisu hovered in midair, his calm gaze settling on the obviously frozen Uchiha Katsu below. His voice was not loud, but carried a hint of lazy teasing, "Had enough?"
Uchiha Katsu's whole body jolted.
That familiar voice, that familiar presence, that familiar tone... all of them completely crushed the last bit of his self-consolation that he had merely "lost control of his cultivation."
It was not an illusion.
It was not his cultivation going out of control.
Arisu from this world... had really appeared before him.
"Yes..."
Uchiha Katsu's body began trembling almost instinctively. His knees went weak, and he dropped directly to his knees.
"Lord Arisu..."
Uchiha Katsu instantly knelt halfway, his manner respectful.
Arisu subconsciously nodded.
That "Lord Arisu" had come so naturally that he did not even feel anything was wrong.
But in the next second, Arisu suddenly stopped.
His brows furrowed slightly.
Something was wrong.
He had never revealed his real name in this world.
The people from his previous life might have known, but in this life... even Otsutsuki Hagoromo only regarded him as the "Observer."
How did Uchiha Katsu know the name "Arisu"?
Arisu's gaze instantly sharpened. He stared straight at the person kneeling on the ground, his voice turning colder by a few degrees. "How do you know my name?"
Uchiha Katsu stiffened, then quickly raised his head. There was a hint of complicated respect in his eyes as he explained rapidly, "My lord, I come from another parallel world."
"In that world, you are the Great Immortal of Mount Myoboku, secretly maintaining the order of the entire world. I, Uchiha Katsu... was also taught by you."
The more Arisu listened, the deeper the look in his eyes became.
Then a strange expression appeared on his face.
'This isn't right. How could...'
This tone, this way of addressing him, these faintly revealed memories of his previous life... No matter how he listened to it, it sounded like someone who had come from the first cycle.
Great Immortal... It had been a long time since anyone had called him that...
Arisu frowned slightly and pressed further. "What did you see before you came here?"
Uchiha Katsu thought for a moment and honestly shook his head. "I didn't see anything. I only remember that you from the other world held a party, and I went to attend it. After that... I don't know what happened. I came straight here."
Arisu's heart sank.
Not a transmigrator.
Arisu instantly understood.
This Uchiha Katsu had come directly from the first cycle with his memories.
Arisu immediately asked in a deep voice in his mind, 'System, what's going on? Why did Uchiha Katsu come into this life carrying the memories of the first cycle?'
The system's voice soon sounded in his mind.
[Baby, don't be angry. Any program can inevitably have bugs. Uchiha Katsu may have happened to run into that bug, so he escaped the cycle and retained his memories.]
The system answered.
After hearing this, Arisu subconsciously rubbed his brow.
'A bug.'
Arisu looked at Uchiha Katsu again.
Only this time, Arisu's gaze was different.
Since they were acquaintances, he naturally could not treat him the way he had before.
After all, he and Uchiha Katsu were very familiar with each other.
The other party was still kneeling where he was, looking respectful, but there was also a hint of nervousness in his eyes that he could not hide.
Arisu helplessly sighed and waved his hand slightly. "Get up. Katsu, sit down and talk."
As soon as he finished speaking, he condensed two simple but sturdy chairs out of thin air. He pushed one in front of Uchiha Katsu and casually sat down himself.
Uchiha Katsu rose somewhat blankly and sat down.
He looked at the Arisu before him who clearly had "met him" before, but a trace of doubt rose in his heart.
Arisu from this world, logically speaking, should never have met him.
Why... did he seem to have known him for a long time?
Arisu leaned back in his chair, his calm gaze resting on him, and spoke. "Katsu, our world... is in a cycle of reincarnation."
Uchiha Katsu froze for a moment.
He raised his head and looked at Arisu before him. For the first time, genuine confusion appeared in his eyes.
Arisu did not rush to explain. He merely turned slightly and calmly explained, "This world... has already gone through reincarnation many times."
"Every time the timeline reaches its end, the world automatically reincarnates. Everyone's memories are completely erased, and everything starts over from the beginning. And that endpoint... is the birth of a child named Uzumaki Boruto."
"As long as the timeline reaches the moment Boruto is born, the system will reset everything with a single click. Everyone will forget everything that happened in the previous cycle and start a new cycle all over again."
Arisu slightly raised a finger and pointed at himself.
"But I'm the exception."
Uchiha Katsu froze completely.
He opened his mouth, but for a moment, he could not say anything.
'This world... was in a cycle of reincarnation?'
'And Lord Arisu is the only person who retained his memories?'
Uchiha Katsu could not help but furrow his brows tightly, his voice carrying a hint of rough disbelief. "In other words... these people aren't people from parallel worlds at all, but the same people from the previous life, except their memories have been erased?"
Arisu nodded, his tone calm. "That's right."
Uchiha Katsu fell silent.
He lowered his head, his hands subconsciously gripping the edge of the chair, his knuckles turning slightly white.
An inexplicable sadness suddenly welled up from the depths of his heart, slowly drowning him like a rising tide.
He had never imagined that the world he lived in... was actually like this.
Those people he had once desperately protected, those nights when he had fought with everything he had, those moments when he had gritted his teeth and held on through despair...
It turned out that all of it was merely a reincarnation that had been predetermined.
"Then... what meaning is there in everything we've gone through?"
Uchiha Katsu raised his head. For the first time, genuine confusion appeared in his blood-red Sharingan.
He believed in the will of heaven. He believed in fate.
But he had never imagined it would be like this...
"Pain, sorrow, loss, struggle... again and again. What was it all for? Why do we have to go through reincarnation over and over? Why make us forget again and again, start over again and again, and then suffer the same pain again and again?"
Katsu's voice gradually lowered, carrying a bitter self-mockery.
In his previous life, he had thought about the word "fate" countless times while in the Pure Land.
Yet now he discovered that even fate itself was nothing more than a repeated playback after someone pressed the reset button.
Arisu looked at him like this and did not find it strange.
Anyone who suddenly learned the truth about the world would have some difficulty accepting it.
Especially someone like Uchiha Katsu, who had lived long enough and seen enough in the previous life. The impact would only be greater.
He leaned against the back of his chair and quietly watched the other person. He did not immediately offer comfort, nor did he hurry to explain anything else.
He merely sighed softly in his heart.
Fortunately.
He still had not revealed the deeper truth.
This world was actually a manga.
Everyone, every story, every life and death, every reunion and separation, was merely a plot written on paper.
If he told Uchiha Katsu at this moment that they were living inside a manga, the other party would probably completely break down.