Chapter 166: The Disappearance of Aizen Sousuke
The sixty sixth year of Konoha was also the fifty first year of Konoha.
It was a point in time that mattered to both worlds, because in that year, the integration of the worlds stopped at the very last step.
The One Day War ended at its final moment.
Everyone saw what a transcendent being could accomplish once he truly committed to his goal. They also saw what kind of sacrifices and decisions were required to stop a transcendent.
The black fortress in the sky, built from countless Truth Seeking Balls, the enormous Ten Tails signal tower that had resonated through spacetime, and even the shattered space itself, all vanished into the endless expanse of time and space.
Aizen Sousuke and the Ten Tails Divine Tree structure disappeared under the influence of an unknown force. No trace of him could be found within any known range of spacetime search.
Yet before the signal tower vanished, that violent wave of chakra truly spread through the surrounding spacetime, leaving different marks and patterns in countless places. Perhaps that was why so many were affected by intersecting timelines, producing phenomena like time travel and rebirth.
It was a tremor that struck the essence of spacetime itself.
Anyone who possessed chakra, anyone who could gather and shape it, could feel that strange touch and call, regardless of distance or era. The call was, in truth, similar to the energy released by complete annihilation, but it had been transformed into a signal, forced to reverberate through every existing spacetime structure.
Those tremors transmitted information from other worlds to chakra wielders through chakra itself. In a nearly identical Naruto world, someone might suddenly learn about the Infinite Tsukuyomi. Someone might glimpse future events. Someone might witness scenes that had not yet happened. Some might even receive fragments of Aizen Sousuke's memories and knowledge, as if the echo had chosen them as a vessel.
If those distant worlds had already gained so much, then the epicenter, where the two worlds nearly overlapped, produced chaos beyond description.
As the world convulsed, some shinobi gained unfamiliar knowledge, some gained additional memories, and some even swapped bodies through chakra resonance. Strange phenomena erupted among chakra users one after another.
During that period, the ninja world was in total disorder, yet ordinary people in both worlds had no idea what was truly happening.
Ordinary people, less affected by chakra, only understood one thing. From that day onward, another world had appeared in their skies, their shadows, and their dreams.
A second world had become real.
For the people of Aizen's original world, it was easier to endure. In an era of chakra networks and overwhelming information, nothing felt completely impossible. Their cultural depth gave them more room to adapt, and they moved quickly, pushing diplomacy, containment, and appeasement to keep society from cracking.
But for people of the other world, it was unimaginable.
They woke up and found a second world hanging over their lives. What was going on? What happened? Why did they have to blow a whistle to stop things when everything seemed to be heading toward success, when Konoha already looked like a broken house that could be toppled with a single kick?
Soon, the true shock was not the sky itself, but the aftereffects.
They realized, for the first time, what they might look like fifteen years later. They learned of parallel universes and the cosmos as something more than fantasy. And once that knowledge existed, the questions sharpened into knives.
Would their child still face an enemy?
Would it still be their child, or would it be someone else wearing the same face?
Some people suddenly met their fathers. Some friends broke apart overnight. In a world fifteen years ahead, countless lives looked absurd compared to the world they had known.
Hueco Mundo released promotional cases about parallel universes and the non self, but to many, what they experienced in the other world felt no different from their own life.
And in the other world, someone's children looked like their own children.
After all, when feelings were involved, replacements and overlaps were frighteningly easy to accept.
The most notorious example was Dan Kato of Konoha.
In front of everyone, under countless stares, he was pulled into the embrace of a Tsunade from another timeline, a Tsunade who lost control of her emotions.
Dan did not say anything. After all, it was Tsunade.
But the Tsunade of this timeline could not accept it. How could she? Everyone had been living normally, and then suddenly she was forced to watch herself get replaced in the most humiliating way imaginable.
If Aizen Sousuke had already liberated the Pure Land, why not return to your own world, retrieve Dan Kato's soul, and revive him yourself?
Even the Hokage could be dragged into such a scene. It was easy to imagine what it did to everyone else.
And it did not end there.
Because Aizen's research paths differed between worlds, new systems, new institutions, and new ideological conflicts began to brew in the shadows. Even the bizarre and wondrous changes within Konoha, forms reshaped by chakra and will, were not something others could simply reject.
No matter how ugly they looked to outsiders, those forms had been made according to their own desires.
Chakra could connect minds.
After Hueco Mundo revealed the paper on the chakra connection between Ashura and Indra, many people could feel it clearly. Pride and joy flowed from those strange looking Konoha residents. They were pursuing themselves, walking a path of self realization. Form meant nothing to them. They sought completeness, perfection, a philosophical fulfillment that resembled enlightenment.
Their diversity existed because each person believed that form suited them best, and that form allowed them to pursue the truth of self realization most directly.
To the old world, it was a brutal shock.
Most people had never even considered that a path existed where maintaining a human form was not required.
On top of that, the tailed beasts displayed logical thought and immortality, and once the initial panic faded, countless people began producing ingenious ideas and entirely new ways of thinking.
Aizen Sousuke's disappearance did not mean the world stopped.
In a world where seeds had already been sown, life would find its own way.
If anything, it felt as though Aizen had foreseen something from the beginning, deliberately dulling his own presence, deliberately making himself vanish.
In both the new world and the old world, he had always been a passerby.
He adjusted his demeanor so everyone felt him as distant and aloof. His departure created melancholy and confusion, but few felt true grief. Instead, people used his absence like a compass, pushing themselves toward higher realms, toward the unknown.
Was it intentional?
A test?
Even the people of Las Noches could not say.
Those who once considered themselves his enemies, like Madara Uchiha and Danzo Shimura, did not comment.
Perhaps Aizen never viewed anyone as an enemy. They were simply pieces moving within a system he had already built. They acted on their own, told their own stories, declared their own wars, then found themselves hollowly melancholic when the one they hated was no longer there to hate.
It felt like drinking harsh liquor.
When the news spread, and the ruined Seireitei and lingering waves of black Truth Seeking matter remained as proof, everyone fell into a heavy silence.
Then they returned to the lives they still had to live.
Aizen was only a passerby.
Just as he himself said, he left little behind. He scattered seeds, watched them sprout, then drifted away.
"Alien faction and humanoid faction, Grim Reaper faction and flesh faction, alien Grim Reaper faction and alien flesh faction, humanoid Grim Reaper faction and humanoid flesh faction. The arguments never end."
"But no one fought, right?"
"…Yes." The answer came soft, almost relieved. "Just like Aizen said, peace really can come. As long as we, the leaders, set the example, peace will come to us."
Minato sat beside the smiling girl and returned a small smile.
Then, as if remembering something sharp, his expression soured immediately.
"And I will never laugh off what Naruto went through. No matter what I thought in the original world, I want to make up for it here. I want that child to have a complete childhood. For them, suffering became some kind of necessary seasoning. That will not be the case for us."
The girl hummed, her expression complicated.
"I really did not expect the Third Hokage to make such a decision, and for everyone to turn a blind eye to that child…"
"No matter what, he is still my child." Minato's voice hardened. "I will ask Konoha why they went that far when I get the chance. I want to ask the Minato of that world what he did to wrong Konoha so badly that his child was treated like that."
The exchange meeting had left scars in his mind.
A child with his face had spoken of heartbreak like it was nothing, like it belonged to someone else. Naruto had smiled through it. Naruto had said it was fine, that it was all in the past.
Minato could not accept that.
His fist tightened.
Damn it. When did Konoha in that world become such a place? When did it become normal for children to shoulder the malice of adults? Where were the adults? Were they all dead?
Even if Naruto himself refused to call it suffering anymore, Minato and Kushina still carried a sharp hostility toward that world's Konoha.
And such tragedies were everywhere now.
Enemies became friends. Couples became mortal enemies. Friends betrayed each other. Relatives turned into strangers. The pattern repeated endlessly, dressed in new faces.
In terms of spatial perception, the two worlds were almost inseparable, nearly joined, only just short of true fusion.
What fusion would mean, no one dared to claim they understood.
For now, no one possessed the power of a transcendent being.
The only executor, Aizen Sousuke, had been torn away into an unknown void by an unexpected force.
The people of the new world did not know the details, but most of the old world suspected the Otsutsuki clan.
Through continued research and the further integration efforts led by Las Noches, they uncovered more of the Otsutsuki history and its remnants. They even found another surviving reincarnation, Isshiki Otsutsuki.
With Isshiki and the moon as their keys, Las Noches officially stepped onto the path of deep space exploration.
Earth's conflicts gradually became less relevant to an organization built for exploration above all else. After reaching the moon and rapidly gathering Otsutsuki data, Las Noches gained the capability for deep space operations.
Six months after losing Aizen Sousuke's signal, Hueco Mundo launched its first deep space planetary exploration mission within the solar system, departing from the lunar command outpost.
"Deep Space Exploration Team, channel connected. Chakra network is stable. This is Kakashi Hatake, commander of the Las Noches Outpost. Frontline commander, respond."
A voice answered through the signal, steady and dignified.
"This is Fugaku Uchiha, leader of the Deep Space Exploration Team. What are the outpost's observations?"
"No issues. Also, I found communication traces left by Aizen's Ten Tails signal tower. The traces spread far, echoing through the solar system. The signal may become unstable in certain regions, so be careful."
"Understood. We will maintain contact. The team is engaging warp toward Mars, arrival in the Martian region in approximately five days."
"Good."
Another voice slipped in, filled with wonder.
"It is crazy. Not long ago we were struggling on Earth, and now we are about to explore Mars."
On the chakra signal tower, Fugaku's tone carried emotion that he could not fully hide.
"It is strange. Even though Lord Aizen has been gone so long, and everyone knows he may have met misfortune, it does not feel like anything is wrong."
"Because that is simply how he is," someone replied.
"That is true." The same voice sounded frustrated now. "Everyone admires him, idolizes him, but it feels like we never really knew him."
No one got to drink his glass of wine.
Fugaku laughed, but the laughter carried bitterness.
"How pathetic. We only began to understand him after he left."
Kakashi listened from behind the scenes without expression.
In truth, he had known for a long time that Aizen Sousuke was not the saint everyone imagined.
Everything Aizen did served his arrogance and his ideals. He wanted someone who could understand him, and for that, he did things that defied common sense.
To Aizen, this world had been a short distance station.
He stepped off, glanced around, told the locals about the scenery he had seen and the ideals he carried, then boarded the departing train. He waved goodbye with elegant indifference, took his own scenery with him, and left the world with nothing but a direction.
No one truly mourned the departure of such a traveler.
They felt melancholy.
Then they felt something worse.
A strange urge to follow.
They wanted to see if the universe was truly as wonderful as he described. They wanted to know if, in the abyss beyond the stars, the flowers he spoke of really existed.
Even if there was danger, they wanted to carve a path through the wilderness and witness the distant scenery with their own eyes.
Perhaps that was what Aizen wanted to leave behind.
The irony was that you could only feel it once he was gone.
A voice returned through the channel, wistful.
"By the way, I heard Lord Aizen was a traveler from another world, and that his arrival here was just an accident. Do you think that is true?"
"It is probably true," another answered. "When I was with him, he always compared worlds. He spoke endlessly about what it was like there, and what it was like here. Maybe he really was a traveler."
"How romantic," someone muttered, full of envy and sadness. "I wish it were like that."
Then Fugaku's voice rose again, stronger, as if he had decided something.
"When will we wander among the universe and stars like Lord Aizen, always moving forward, always taking the next step?"
"It will be soon," came the reply. "As long as we have the courage to take the first step, it will happen naturally. That device only overloaded. We can trace the remaining marks with new technology. Then it will be our turn to travel."
Fugaku laughed, brighter this time.
"That is right. Expedition team, begin silent travel. I am moving out first. Goodbye."
"…Good luck."
Kakashi looked at the sign marking the entrance to the Silent Zone, a mixture of melancholy and relief passing through him.
Far away, at an unknown distance, a figure stared at a warning device and spoke into the quiet.
"Huh? What is this… a traveler's curse?"
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