Six days later, after his spirit had fully recovered and after the old toad's off-hand "no problem" prophecy, Soren returned to the planar-gate sanctum. [Tenjō Ritsujin] swept the entire grotto in a soft, purple embrace.
This time Soren did not stab through the world's membrane. Instead he leapt to the Dragon Vein's site within Loulan and pushed his almost-solidified spirit deep into the vein. What came back at him was a sight of overwhelming, rolling power — the Dragon Vein in its raw, thundering vastness.
He did not act rashly. Carefully, with patient precision, he encased a knot of the vein's power in a shell of spirit, using the Dragon Vein as a base and his own bloodline as the anchor. The planar array flared its purple glyphs; his spirit no longer had to swim the perilous Void Sea. A world, familiar and foreign at once, blinked into being within his perception.
A moment later the knot of vein-power collapsed. Soren exhaled; danger avoided.
He tried again, but larger this time: he pried a seam in the Dragon Vein's seal and let the river of power pour. As the pump surged, the seal trembled. Soren strained to rebalance the bindings, then forced the excess into the gate.
Under the tug of the pattern, two shin-worlds — mirror images like yin and yang twins — began to glide toward each other. From the opposite side the other world's vein began to quake in reply. Three massive wills rose from that world; each was met by a matching will from Soren's side. For an instant they clashed, then receded into their respective realms as if by unspoken agreement.
A tug at his bloodline yanked Soren through spirit-space. He found himself in a gray, sunless plane — the ground stretched like still water and rippled at his steps. At the center floated an old man seated cross-legged: two horns sprouted from his brow, coffee-brown hair fell around a white robe, six black magatama rested on his chest, and a beard spilled to his breast. A black staff hovered behind him.
The Rikudō, Otsutsuki Hane.
At once Soren knew.
"You have a bold heart," the ancient voice said. The sound reverberated through the hollow space; pressure rolled outward. Soren did not flinch. This realm was made of thought; a strong spirit did not cower.
He bowed, not in fear but in respect for power.
"Ancestor Hane — why have you called me?"
Hane was still a while. Then he spoke.
"Frog-elder told me. What you are doing will drag the shin-world toward an unknowable future. I have been considering whether to intervene."
Soren listened. The old god's gaze swept him — seeing not only the inked lineage of Indra's descendant but the measured restraint that tempered the arrogance. For all the resemblance to Indra's ferocity, there was a softer, cunning craft in Soren that Hane observed with interest.
"I follow your counsel, Ancestor."
Soren bowed again.
Hane waved a sleeve. A diagram unfurled between them: twin spiraling nebulae, blue and turning. Soren felt déjà vu.
"These are two parallel worlds," Hane said. "Their histories diverge. One contains two empires: the Sunlight Empire and the Radiant-Moon Empire."
Soren frowned. Hane continued.
"The Sunlight Empire is ruled by the reborn scion of Hamura's eldest line — Hyūga Tennin, an evolved Byakugan whose 'Reborn Eye' ranks with the Rinnegan. The Radiant-Moon Empire is led by the reincarnations of my own two sons — the Indra and Ashura avatars: Uchiha Madara and Senju Hashirama."
Soren's eyes gleamed. Hane's voice dropped.
"At this pace, six years from now the two worlds begin to converge. War for resources will be inevitable. Will Konoha be able to hold them off?"
"Six years?" The number snapped in Soren's chest like a drumbeat. "Hold them off?" he echoed. Then he laughed — a bright, dangerous sound.
"Ancestor Hane, I grew bored of this tame world long ago. Blood that burns, blades that sing, the razor edge of life and death, and jaw-dropping beauties — these are my pursuit. Another world is merely better soil for me to grow."
Hane's reply was measured, not mocking.
"Time will show. Hope you will not regret it."
Soren answered with the same manic certainty.
Hane withdrew. He slid back into his Nether Pure Realm, a place where shadow-nature chakra pooled into a liquefied sea and a faint thread of yang light trembled at its heart. He thought in long, slow rhythms.
"It will take time. It will take more death," he murmured.
The Nether Pure Realm used the chakra of the worlds as its net — it siphoned the residue of souls, the hearts of the dead, to grow. Hane's plan was patient: cultivate the perfect inversion of Kaguya's power, then ascend. Let Indra and Ashura reincarnate, let their bloodline climb into the Rikudō, and through those hands Hane might steer events without wasting himself.
But lately, Hane noted a worrying change. Fewer souls drifted into his realm than there should be. Souls seemed to slip past his net and rejoin the cycle unprocessed.
"Why are fewer coming?" he wondered. The thought bothered the old god.
Soren's reckless operation, however, had stoked Hane's hope — perhaps fusion would accelerate the flux of life and death, making the harvest richer.
He let his spirit sink back to the world, scanning the chakra web like a lone god watching tides. Indra and Ashura's avatars had already been planted: one in the Uchiha line, the other in the Uzumaki line.
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