A single slash swept past.
Despair.
This was the true feeling in Uchiha Itachi's heart when he saw Ryosuke swing a blade that split the sky.
Facing this strike, besides waiting for death, Itachi couldn't think of a second path.
In this heaven and earth, in this span of time and space, all of his paths had been sealed shut.
But Ryosuke wasn't satisfied. After cutting him in half at the waist, he didn't intend to wait for Itachi to die on his own. His wrist flicked, the blade reversed, and he brought it down on Itachi from top to bottom.
'Sorry… Father, Mother… I failed to atone. I failed to bring you back.'
Uchiha Itachi closed his eyes, waiting for his consciousness to fade as he stepped into death with regret in his heart.
Suddenly, his left eye opened against his will.
Amaterasu Heavenly Fate activated on its own. The Mangekyō spun faster than its limit, fresh blood flowed from his eye socket, and images flashed before Itachi's eyes.
Uchiha Itachi saw it.
A narrow path, he didn't know where it led, or who it was for.
But no matter where it led, he would walk it.
"Thank you… Father…"
The despair in Itachi's eyes faded.
Only his upper body remained, being destroyed by rippling waves. At most two or three more seconds and he would die, yet Uchiha Itachi, feeling his father's love, rekindled his fighting spirit.
Itachi stared at Ryosuke.
To break Susanoo, Ryosuke had already used that strange time–space ability.
In Itachi's intel, that ability required a short rest afterward.
Which meant, no one could stop him.
Ryosuke's blade drew closer.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Uchiha Itachi exploded.
The Moon's Power threads exploded.
The Dragon Vein seal exploded.
Explosions roared everywhere, as if the world had entered its end, everything within sight was being destroyed in the blasts.
The Moon's Power threads were blown into dense, white dust. It radiated an intense vitality and obscured all sight.
Within that dust, the White Zetsu cells originating from Uchiha Itachi blocked everyone's ability to sense Itachi.
The falling dust became Itachi's camouflage.
And at the same time, it became the fuse that ignited the Dragon Veins across the entire city.
The ground trembled and split open; from the cracks surged blazing purple Dragon Vein flames.
Ryosuke knew this scene all too well.
When he fought Obito and Deidara, they had detonated the underground Dragon Veins, creating a chasm hundreds of kilometers long.
But back then, the Dragon Vein had already been half exhausted.
Most importantly, the ruins of Roran had no living people at that time.
A full-power Dragon Vein detonation could expand its range to a thousand kilometers, everyone in Roran would be blown into pieces.
Minato used Flying Thunder God, bringing everyone to a high ridge overlooking Roran.
Collapsed buildings were everywhere. Purple flames surged from underground like the fires of hell.
Sara grabbed her mother, the Queen of Roran, by the collar, "What kind of array did you draw on him?!"
The Queen's eyes were blank.
The array wasn't the problem.
The key was in the materials used to draw the array.
They were her blood, flesh, and bone.
That was why Itachi's authority over the Dragon Vein surpassed Ryosuke's. Even with Sara and Minato, experts in space–time ninjutsu and sealing, working together, they still couldn't fully seal it.
The Queen never expected Uchiha Itachi to really choose to kill all of them before he died.
The dense white mist covered a wide area. Minato looked around, tightening and loosening the grip on his kunai, then slowly shaking his head,
"This country… is done for."
Sara stared blankly at Roran.
One hour ago, she had heard from Ryosuke that she would become a ruined-nation princess in the future.
She thought it was nonsense.
Even if it were true, she already knew the future, couldn't she rewrite history?
She couldn't.
Sara's heart sank into the abyss. She felt her soul being pulled down, her vision darkening. Her awareness blurred. Her hands loosened from her mother's collar, and she was about to collapse to the ground,
A brilliant star tore through the darkness around her.
Sara's eyes flew open.
She saw it clearly.
It wasn't a star, it was the Dragon-Serpent Pearl floating in Ryosuke's palm.
A fierce gust swept across the land, scattering the white mist and fanning the purple ground-fire.
High in the sky, Ryosuke stood with his hands behind his back. Torrents of flames surged from the earth into the Dragon-Serpent Pearl and, after being transformed, were fully absorbed by Ryosuke.
The momentum of the Dragon Vein explosion…
'It actually stopped!'
"Madman!"
The white mist dispersed, revealing Itachi lying on the ground, his lower body gone, wriggling like an insect.
He stared fixedly at Ryosuke in the sky.
His eyes held shock, confusion, and envy.
Uchiha Itachi could tell, Ryosuke was trying to absorb all the explosive Dragon Vein energy, and once the ground stabilized, Sara could perform a secondary seal on what remained.
But this power was far too enormous.
It wasn't something a human could absorb or control.
Sss~ Ss~
The sound of skin and flesh tearing echoed in the night. Everyone saw irregular cracks spreading across Ryosuke's skin.
The cracks glowed a ghostly violet, as if they would rip him apart at any moment.
But Ryosuke still didn't stop.
The raging flames poured into him, along with the dense life force scattered in the sky from the Moon's Power explosion, and even the remaining half of Wang Liang's demon-god power was drawn out, absorbed, and converted into Ripple energy.
Ryosuke didn't know if this would work.
But…
He couldn't just watch people die.
This was what shocked and confused Itachi.
Was it worth it?
For Kirigakure, Kyoto City, and the institute's people, Itachi understood. Those were Ryosuke's closest friends.
But Roran?
They were strangers to him.
The only friend here, Queen Sara, was perfectly safe under Minato's protection.
Uchiha Itachi couldn't understand why Ryosuke would go this far.
He stared dazedly at Ryosuke, at the spreading cracks on his skin, and murmured unconsciously, "So this is… a 'hero who shoulders everything'."
Uchiha Itachi raised his head and met Ryosuke's gaze.
At this moment, he truly accepted him.
Not mockingly.
But with genuine, heartfelt submission.
"Past, present, and future, Ryosuke, you are a shining hero."
"And I…"
"I'm leaving."
Shu!
A Flying Thunder God kunai flew toward him, but passed straight through Uchiha Itachi's body.
It couldn't hit him.
Time-space travel had begun.
Using the Dragon Vein's release and explosive power, Uchiha Itachi activated time–space travel again. But because of the instability caused by the explosion, he had no way to know what time or place he would end up in.
"Anywhere is fine."
"Goodbye, Ryo..."
Before he finished speaking, a purple vine wrapped around his neck.
The Hermit Purple was a chain that linked cause and effect. As long as the causal link between Ryosuke and Itachi wasn't severed, it could reach him.
Ryosuke yanked hard, gripping Itachi's throat.
The next second, the two of them fell into the river of time.
Perhaps because they were entangled, or because the Dragon Vein explosion disrupted the transmission, they didn't land in a specific moment in history. Instead, they drifted through the long river of time.
Occasionally, they jumped above the water surface. For a brief moment, people or animals from that era saw Ryosuke beating the life out of Itachi, then the two vanished again.
No one knew how much time passed, but for those drifting along the current of time, time had no meaning.
Finally, they leapt fully out of the river of time. Under the collision of temporal currents, they were thrown in different directions.
Uchiha Itachi crashed heavily to the ground.
'Ryosuke shouldn't have fallen more than ten kilometers away… With his speed, he'll be here in at most ten seconds…'
Halfway through thinking, he grabbed his head.