The instant Uchiha Keizumi's indifferent gaze swept over the three Snake Princesses—
A quiet murmur escaped his lips: "Three red-named evildoers."
"You brat!"
Suppressing her unease, Tagorihime didn't yet realize she had been marked.
The devastated surroundings and Manda's miserable death ignited her fury.
A surge of powerful Senjutsu chakra burst from her body, lifting her weightlessly into the air. Her ornate kimono billowed without wind as a suffocatingly cold pressure emanated from her entire being.
Her voice, sharp and hissing like a serpent's cry, pierced through the searing air: "You who trespassed into Ryūchi Cave's sacred ground—not only did you destroy it to this extent, but you also killed Manda, and even disturbed the Great White Snake Sage's meditation…"
Her vertical pupils locked firmly onto Keizumi atop the wooden giant's head: "Since the shinobi world's order stabilized a thousand years ago… no one has ever dared treat Ryūchi Cave with such contempt!"
"You little—"
However, before her words of fury and threat could even finish—
[Whoosh!!!]
Without warning, the wooden giant at the center of the battlefield swung its massive left arm—woven of countless giant trunks—downward with terrifying force toward the hovering Tagorihime.
A vast shadow engulfed her small form.
"What?!"
For the first time, true horror surfaced on Tagorihime's beautiful face.
She had never expected that this human brat would be so utterly unreasonable—attacking her before she could even finish speaking.
That blow, containing enough power to crush a mountain—
Filled her with an overwhelming sense of death!
...
Consciousness sank as if plunging into a deep, lightless sea of ice, only to be violently dragged back at some hazy and indistinct point.
Orochimaru opened his eyes in bewilderment.
What filled his vision was an endless, dense gray expanse. There was no sky, no ground, no sense of direction—only a suffocating nothingness slowly flowing by, utterly devoid of even the faintest trace of life.
A faint, uncertain light, weak as a candle flickering in the wind, barely outlined some indistinct shapes—carrying a deathly stillness that seemed like the end of all things.
"Where… is this? Does Ryūchi Cave have such a strange place? Why do I have no memory of it at all…"
Instinctively, Orochimaru tried to take a step forward, but he felt no tangible ground beneath his feet. The sensation was deeply unpleasant.
At that moment, a silhouette began to form within the depths of the gray mist ahead.
It was a young boy.
Short, wearing the green vest of a Konoha genin, his face carried that vibrant and hopeful smile Orochimaru vaguely remembered.
The boy stood there, waving at him energetically.
Orochimaru's pupils contracted sharply the instant he saw that face.
A surge of emotions—shock, realization, and something long buried and complex—rose like a cold tide, engulfing him completely.
"…Nawaki?"
He uttered the name hoarsely, his voice unusually weak in that deathly stillness, trembling faintly.
Nawaki! Tsunade's younger brother—one of the disciples in whom he had once placed great hopes—the boy who had forever fallen on the battlefield in a pool of blood!
And at the very moment he saw Nawaki, all of Orochimaru's confusion dispersed like mist blown away by the wind.
The memory of his soul and body being consumed by the Heaven's Punishment Flame surged back with searing clarity.
All the fragments of memory crashed together at once.
"…So that's how it is." For the first time, the face that was always pale and coldly calculating showed a blank emptiness, soon replaced by a deep melancholy.
He lowered his head, looking at his unblemished hands unstained by blood, and let out a quiet sigh.
His tone carried endless weariness and a touch of fated irony. "So this… is the price of pursuing immortality? There will always be self-righteous fools who try to stop me… and every time before, I managed to slip away. But this time, I didn't."
"Orochimaru-sensei!" Nawaki's voice rang out, clear and youthful, tinged with urgency.
He seemed to want to run toward him, but some invisible boundary held him back; he could only stand at the gray edge, waving with all his might. "Sensei! Over here! Here—"
Yet just as Nawaki called out, trying to say something more—
"Urgh—!!!"
Orochimaru's half-raised step froze; his spectral body shuddered violently.
Then, without warning, a pain he knew to the marrow—one that seemed to tear his very soul apart—stabbed into every inch of his being like ten thousand red-hot steel needles.
"Shhhh—Aaaaahhhhhhhh!!!"
A piercing scream—so shrill it could tear apart that deathly silent space—burst out from deep within Orochimaru's throat.
He suddenly arched his body, his face contorting grotesquely from unimaginable agony. His hands clawed madly at his own chest, as if trying to dig something out from within his very soul.
The despair and pain contained in that scream were tenfold, a hundredfold worse than what he had felt at the bottom of Ryūchi Cave!
This Pure Land could not isolate that curse at all!
Nawaki's face turned deathly pale at the sudden change; he stumbled backward several steps, his young face written full of fear. "Orochimaru-sensei?! You… what's happening to you?!"
He didn't dare take another step forward, because as Orochimaru writhed in agony, an eerie flame suddenly began burning out of thin air upon his body.
That fire had no heat, yet it released a presence that made Nawaki's very soul tremble.
It clung to Orochimaru's phantom body, silently scorching him, making his screams even more wretched.
"No, impossible… this is the Pure Land, why—hsss—Aaaaahhhhhh!!!"
Amid that ceaseless, soul-rending torment, a cold voice echoed clearly in the depths of his consciousness.
—"The pain you now feel will cling to your bones like maggots, following you for eternity. Whether you crawl on in your wretched existence or your soul returns to the Pure Land, you will never escape. Every second, every moment, you will sink into an abyss of endless agony."
Orochimaru understood—those words weren't threats, nor curses. They were reality!
He would meet the exact same end as Danzō!
"Uchiha Keizumi!!!"
Filled with absolute despair and hatred vast enough to burn the heavens themselves, Orochimaru unleashed a soul-shattering roar with the last of his strength.
"Hssss—Aaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!"
From a short distance away, Nawaki could only watch in terror and helplessness as the sensei he had once revered rolled and howled in an agony beyond death—falling forever into the eternal torment of the infernal depths.
…
"What's wrong, little Jiraiya?" When Jiraiya stepped out from the Uchiha Police Force headquarters, he suddenly froze for a moment, prompting Fukasaku on his shoulder to glance at him in concern.
Jiraiya took a deep breath, then shook his head blankly.
"I'm not too sure," his voice carried a rare tone of confusion and heaviness. "It's just… this strange feeling all of a sudden. It's not the kind of danger sense you get before a fight, but calling it a bad premonition doesn't feel quite right either."
"It's more like…"
He raised a hand unconsciously to press against his chest, his brows tightening further. "Like some vital part inside my body was forcibly torn out. My whole self feels hollow… uneasy."
He paused, his expression growing graver, as though digging through the depths of his memory. "Come to think of it… this feeling—it's not the first time."
Fukasaku and Shima, the other Toad Sage perched on his opposite shoulder, exchanged a glance. In each other's eyes they saw the same heaviness.
"The last time…"
Jiraiya's voice dropped low, tinged with a faint, imperceptible sigh. "The last time I felt this hollow, this restless… not long after that, I received the news of Minato and Kushina's deaths."
The small body of the Great Toad Sage Fukasaku suddenly tensed, his froglike face more solemn than ever. "Little Jiraiya! This feeling is anything but ordinary! Your intuition has always been sharp—especially when it comes to people important to you! This could very well be… connected to the Child of Prophecy, or to someone bound to your fate! You must take it seriously!"
Just as the atmosphere grew heavy—
"Gero! Gero-gero!"
A small toad, its entire body a gleaming emerald green like jade, suddenly leapt swiftly from the shadow of a nearby flowerbed and landed on the stone path before Jiraiya.
It hopped anxiously, croaking in rapid, urgent tones.
"That's one of our Mount Myōboku messenger toads," said Shima Sage at once, recognizing its origin.
Fukasaku immediately jumped down, his expression focused as he listened intently to the series of rapid croaks.
Shima also concentrated, and as the croaking continued, both Sages' faces grew darker and darker, their brows furrowing tightly.
Seeing their reaction, the strange feeling in Jiraiya's heart only grew stronger. Unable to hold back, he asked anxiously, "What… what is it saying?"
Fukasaku raised his head. His wide frog eyes were filled with worry and complexity as he spoke slowly, his voice heavier than ever before. "Little Jiraiya… this messenger was sent personally by the Great Elder. It carries a vision the Great Elder saw in a 'prophetic dream'…"
Fukasaku took a deep breath and continued. "The Great Elder said—he dreamed of a gigantic purple serpent, rolling and thrashing about… before being completely melted in searing, crimson magma!"
"At the end of the dream, the Great Elder suddenly felt that the melting serpent… didn't seem to be entirely a snake. Its aura carried a strong trace of humanity."
"Upon waking, the Great Elder was struck by a powerful intuition—this dream is deeply connected… to you, little Jiraiya!"
At those words, Jiraiya's expression turned grave. "Magma… a purple serpent… a serpent carrying a human presence—and related to me…"
Those three clues alone were enough for Jiraiya to realize what it meant.
"Uchiha Keizumi!"
"Orochimaru!"