Ōtsutsuki Urashiki really lived up to his name—an Ōtsutsuki who could be killed by an all-natural, additive-free Rasengan.
Even in Kaguya's desert dimension, the small God Tree kept growing at a ridiculous speed. In the blink of an eye, it reached a size that could break the wind, pin down the sand, and blot out the sky.
Once Urashiki was completely swallowed, Yūshin tossed Urashiki's gear into the God Tree as well: the red-glowing fishing rod and the red-glowing fish basket. The rod was one thing. The basket was the real prize. It held an unknown amount of chakra Urashiki had hoarded over the years.
That was the fate of hoarders. What was the point of stockpiling, if it only meant stocking up for someone else?
The small God Tree grew past a certain threshold. It began converting energy.
It began to bear fruit.
A pseudo–Chakra Fruit formed quickly.
Yūshin floated up, plucked it, and eyed it for a moment. The thing was "natural," "pollution-free," and fed on nothing but pure, farm-grade fertilizer. No need to wait. He swallowed it on the spot.
Chakra surged inside him.
Yūshin felt it settle, then couldn't help delivering an acceptance speech to the void:
"Weren't you supposed to be way stronger than Kinshiki? Then why did you fight like that?"
If you compared raw chakra reserves, Urashiki had at least twice Kinshiki's amount. Yet in actual combat, Kinshiki—the one who should've been weaker—put on a better performance.
It wasn't surprising.
In terms of status, Urashiki sat on the same tier as Momoshiki. Kinshiki, in contrast, was basically the servant in an Ōtsutsuki duo. A walking ration meant to feed the God Tree.
But fighting wasn't just about energy. At minimum, it also demanded courage and a functioning brain.
For every tournament champion, there was a tournament collapse artist. Urashiki was clearly the latter. Yūshin honestly felt he'd overprepared for this fight and wasted his feelings.
If he thought about it now, he could've solved Kinshiki first, kept Edo Tensei Hashirama on the field, and summoned Urashiki immediately. It would've worked just fine.
He finished digesting the pseudo–Chakra Fruit. He closed his eyes, then opened them again.
The eyes in his sockets had turned into a pair of pale blue Rinnegan.
"Time rewind? What a joke. That's useless to me."
Beyond that "exclusive skill" that he didn't need, Yūshin couldn't feel anything particularly special from these Rinnegan. Maybe they could be used for the Rinne Rebirth Technique?
Oh. One more thing.
The so-called Kekkei Mōra technique, Yomotsu Hirasaka, resided in these eyes.
Even so, Yūshin still didn't think much of it. He already knew space-time ninjutsu. What advantage did Yomotsu Hirasaka have over what he already had?
This wasn't the Kekkei Mōra he wanted.
Or rather—if Kekkei Mōra was the theory, then Yomotsu Hirasaka was just one application under that theory. They weren't the same thing.
Someone who truly grasped Kekkei Mōra could use Yomotsu Hirasaka.
But using Yomotsu Hirasaka didn't mean you had truly mastered Kekkei Mōra.
With Urashiki's strength and his brainpower, being able to use a technique like Yomotsu Hirasaka probably counted as "tech-based poverty alleviation" from the Ōtsutsuki ancestors.
Of course, Yūshin calling Yomotsu Hirasaka trash wasn't really the technique's fault. It was his.
His understanding of it was still shallow.
He'd spent so long thinking like a shinobi that his thought process had become overly linear. Yomotsu Hirasaka wasn't a killing technique. It was a utility technique. Yūshin had subconsciously judged it by how hard it hit.
A head full of fighting and killing wasn't healthy. It wasn't good for longevity.
He finished a job at absurdly low intensity. After that, he actually did start "taking care of himself." All that chakra still needed to be digested and absorbed. It needed time to ferment into something he could use like a limb.
Useful or not—filler or not—one thing was true.
At this point, Yūshin had collected the three great dōjutsu. Byakugan, Sharingan, Rinnegan. All sitting in his own eye sockets.
If you judged purely by "evolution speed," even if he hadn't surpassed the Uchiha Madara hiding somewhere in the shinobi world, the two were at least neck and neck.
Black Zetsu had picked the wrong man and taken a lot of detours. Why chase Madara? It should've chased Yūshin.
Then again, Black Zetsu's IQ was what it was.
The small God Tree withered at last. Urashiki was gone so completely that not even dregs remained. He had, in a very literal sense, met Kinshiki again in a strange era and had a warm reunion.
Yūshin returned to his own dimension first.
Then he returned to the present world.
He reappeared in the shinobi world. His head lifted on instinct. He activated his Rinnegan and looked into the vast, distant sky with his newly swollen dōjutsu power.
He sensed something.
Maybe it was a "haze" above the shinobi world.
"Haze" was the polite way to put it. It showed respect, the way a student might talk about a teacher.
A more objective phrasing would be this:
He seemed to feel a higher-dimensional observer.
"Feels like I'm not far from the point where I can see the Sage of Six Paths—and actually touch him."
Yūshin lowered his gaze and muttered the line to himself.
Nice. A double meaning.
Too bad there was nobody around to play the straight man.
…
The Second Shinobi World War shifted fast. It proved a simple truth.
Once war began, it stopped being controllable.
Even the people who had planned it found what happened next wildly unexpected.
The opening losses were so high—so far beyond the "normal" pattern—that every village got hit stupid. War wasn't supposed to start at the peak. It was supposed to ramp up from low to high, then come back down.
First the cannon fodder died. Then the elites. Then the bosses.
That was the "war logic" shinobi understood.
Starting with bosses dying was too much, even for people used to death.
Several villages went through leadership changes. New officials took office with the usual fire in their bellies. They expanded the fighting immediately. Casualties started climbing fast.
Half a year later, everyone realized they didn't even know how to keep fighting.
They couldn't get what they wanted. The war had barely started, yet every village leader with an intact brain could already see the likely outcome: a long, exhausting stalemate.
The first burst of momentum faded. It left behind a sense of weakness, like a body running low on vitamins and trace elements.
War wasn't a game. It wouldn't stop just because people felt differently.
They kept fighting anyway.
Then they noticed something even worse.
This didn't feel like a war anymore.
It felt like a "special military operation."
They felt like a bunch of middle-aged men with miserable bathroom trips. They couldn't finish peeing. They couldn't finish shitting. The urge stayed loaded like a cocked trigger, stuck at the door, neither coming out nor going back in.
Couldn't one side soften first? Give the other a step down?
No.
Still, the war's outlook was easy enough to predict. Konoha's overall posture was practically turning into "united and tense, serious and lively."
Some shinobi attitudes and behaviors reflected exactly what was wrong with the war.
Take one newly famous shinobi on Konoha's western front as an example.
Out of respect, his name won't be mentioned. In short, he had white hair.
The Second Shinobi World War began in Konoha Year 40. By Konoha Year 41, this white-haired shinobi felt the western front wasn't under much pressure. He had time. He applied to return to the village.
He went back, squeezed in time to get married, and returned to the front.
In Konoha Year 42, he returned again.
His wife had squeezed in time to have a child.
The delivery didn't go smoothly. He had to rush back. The strangest part was that the child was already halfway out when the legs tangled the umbilical cord and triggered a difficult birth.
Konoha Hospital's medical shinobi were professional. Mother and child ended up safe.
Many medical shinobi saw such a case for the first time. They couldn't stop marveling. Half the birth went smoothly, half turned into a struggle. The one who delivered the child said the kid would definitely grow up special—maybe someone who could turn anything into a fifty-fifty outcome.
That strange white-haired man's strange white-haired son was born.
That meant Konoha's "forever lost my love, ruins wherever I look" had been born too.
Ahem.
In short, the Second Shinobi World War was an indecisive war. Plenty of shinobi fought and lived their daily lives at the same time. Who were you supposed to complain to?
They couldn't devote themselves fully to war. They also couldn't truly leave it.
Twisted didn't even begin to cover it.
Elite shinobi, on the other hand, stayed active. Over in Kumogakure, a new AB duo started to rise to fame.
This year should've been a major one. In the original course of events, Tsunade, Orochimaru, and Jiraiya would earn the title "Sannin."
But Hanzō of the Salamander in Amegakure wasn't even a "demigod" here. He really shouldn't be handing out nicknames to other people.
Nawaki—the "explosive tag tragedy"—should've died too. He got age-locked instead. He couldn't even go to the battlefield.
By Konoha Year 43, every major village quietly abandoned large-scale fighting. Combat shifted into small clashes between elite teams. Under that premise, Tsunade's trio finally arrived in the Rain Country.
From that point on, the Rain Country triangle fully evolved into the "Shinobi World Stage."
Even if you ignored Black Zetsu entirely, it still made sense that this place would become the birthplace of Akatsuki. Several major villages all served the Rain Country at once. Imagine how "blessed" the locals had to be.
In a way, Yūshin's earlier "preemptive strike"—grabbing Kage and beating the hell out of them in rapid succession—did accelerate the war's overall pace.
But the more you thought about it, the less it felt like a good thing.
This war's scale and duration kept casualty rates from getting too high.
A harsher way to say it was that the casualties didn't meet quota.
What did that mean?
It didn't mean Yūshin had done something noble.
It meant that if fewer people died this time, more people would have to die next time. The next war would need to bash brains out until nobody could deny the result.
The Third Shinobi World War wouldn't be pretty.
Another year passed. The battles got smaller and rarer. The war still didn't officially end.
In practical terms, though, the Second Shinobi World War was already over. Large-scale combat stopped. Even medium and small engagements became rare.
The major villages stayed silent anyway. Nobody wanted to sign a ceasefire.
They had all held out this long. Who dared be the first to speak? What if everyone else decided that meant weakness and rushed in to take a bite?
Konoha Year 45.
Yūshin was pretty relaxed during this period. He wandered around to "work off his meal," and he occasionally checked the timelines for other unfortunate Ōtsutsuki idiots.
Relaxed wasn't even the right word.
He was idle.
For a while, he even worked as a ramen cook. He helped Master Ku sell ramen in Konoha.
One day, while he was wandering, Yūshin somehow ended up near the place where bromance went to die.
The Valley of the End.
The area should've been quiet. Instead, he heard voices. He heard the clink and crack of stonework.
He faced the waterfall with its dozens of meters of drop.
Craftsmen were working on both sides of it. They hammered away at stone blocks, carving directly into the cliff.
"What's this supposed to be?" Yūshin muttered. "So it still happened. Konoha finally started building wonders. Is the Fire Country budget burning a hole in someone's hands?"
It was obvious what they were making.
A giant stone statue of Senju Hashirama.
A giant stone statue of Uchiha Madara.
Yūshin narrowed his eyes.
"Commemorating the First Hokage's battle at a time like this? That doesn't feel right…"
Then it clicked.
He understood what the Third Hokage was doing.
Everyone knew that in this timeline, the Uchiha clan weren't true founding elders of Konoha. Add their old status as the Senju's mortal enemies. If you weren't part of the original shareholders, the stigma of being the original shareholders' enemy only dug deeper.
That was why the Uchiha didn't stand very high inside Konoha.
Their strength, however, was undeniable.
War would drive up Sharingan awakenings. The Uchiha would play an enormous role on the battlefield.
In short, war would raise the Uchiha's status.
And once you admitted that, the Hokage had to enforce clear rewards and punishments. Merit had to mean something.
The Uchiha would earn war merits. War merits would become leverage for higher status.
We joined Konoha. We've been diligent. We can fight. We have achievements. Why should we keep eating other people's contempt?
On paper, that was reasonable.
Work more. Get more.
The problem was that some Uchiha tended to act a bit extreme.
Because they were Uchiha.
So the Third Hokage decided to build a wonder.
Carve Hashirama and Madara into the Valley of the End, and send a message to the Uchiha who were getting restless.
Behave.
Didn't you see what happened to your old clan leader when he didn't behave? He got slapped to death.
The issue was simple.
The Third Hokage was Hiruzen. He wasn't Hashirama.
And the Uchiha's thinking was straightforward. They weren't exactly good at decoding that kind of political hint.
Yūshin looked at the half-finished statues and shook his head.
"Too soft," he said. "If you want an attitude, you should go harder."
He paused, then added, "As expected. Wonders only lead nations astray. They don't do anything else."
Yūshin didn't know it yet.
It wasn't just the Uchiha inside Konoha who were starting to stir.
The Uchiha outside Konoha were stirring too.
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