Chapter 563: A Time Machine?
Kenichi looked at the girl before him and could not help scratching his head.
Of course he recognized her.
Claiming otherwise would be ridiculous.
In his original timeline, he and Hikari had been extremely close, almost like siblings.
What he had never expected was to encounter Hikari here, in this timeline, sealed beneath an abandoned Uchiha prison.
And this little girl had actually used a Mangekyo Sharingan genjutsu on him.
Thinking back on the memories he had just relived about his early days with Orochimaru, Kenichi found the whole thing somewhat amusing.
Still, Hikari's ability had proven one of his ideas possible.
If genjutsu could be used to dig through memories, could Kenichi use a similar method to recover fragments of Naruto that he had once seen through short videos, discussions, and commentary in his previous life?
If so, perhaps he could obtain more information about future events.
Kenichi had never paid much attention to Boruto, but while scrolling through videos in his previous life, he had inevitably come across clips from it from time to time.
He could try digging through those buried memories.
Even a few scattered clues about Boruto would be better than knowing absolutely nothing.
"But this timeline..."
Kenichi scratched his head again and looked at Hikari.
In his original timeline, she had never appeared here.
Kenichi had even searched for Hikari before, only to discover that she was no longer in the location where he had originally found her.
That was when he became certain that this timeline had diverged in more ways than he first assumed.
At the very least, Hikari's circumstances had changed.
He had never encountered her anywhere near Konoha before.
Yet here she was now.
And Hikari herself also seemed different.
The way she looked at Kenichi contained traces of vigilance and annoyance, which left him completely puzzled.
In his original timeline, after Kenichi rescued her, Hikari had been extremely excited and deeply grateful.
Why was she behaving so differently now?
"Who are you?"
Hikari stared directly at Kenichi.
"You seem to know me."
She could immediately tell from his expression that something was unusual.
This man clearly recognized her.
That left Hikari confused.
She glanced around.
Naruto and Sasuke were still frozen like a pair of wooden statues under her genjutsu.
Her gaze paused on Sasuke for slightly longer.
Naruto, on the other hand, received only a brief glance before she looked away.
"My name is Amamiya Kenichi."
Kenichi sighed.
"As for you, yes, I know you."
His expression softened.
"Hikari, you've suffered for a long time."
Kenichi instinctively raised a hand, intending to pat her on the head.
Hikari only stared at him in confusion.
She had absolutely no memory of this person.
Yet he somehow knew her name.
That left her completely lost.
Then Kenichi reached into his belongings and pulled out a pair of hideously ugly gloves.
He handed them to her.
Hikari accepted them.
Her first thought was immediate.
Ugly.
These gloves were unbelievably ugly.
However, the moment her fingers brushed over the weaving pattern, a strange sense of familiarity surfaced.
If she had made a pair of gloves herself...
They probably would have looked exactly like this.
Back when she lived with the Uchiha Clan, whenever their clothes developed small tears, her parents would repair them personally.
Naturally, Hikari had learned how to sew and mend things as well.
Unfortunately, her skill had never been particularly good.
Her handiwork always came out somewhat ugly.
Because of that, she had only ever made gloves for herself.
She never wore them outside and certainly never showed them to other people.
Yet the man standing before her somehow possessed a pair made in exactly the same style.
"What... year is it now?"
Hikari slowly looked up at Kenichi.
Although she still did not understand why this man knew her name or why he possessed gloves identical to something she would have made, the resistance in her heart had weakened considerably.
"That's a long story."
Kenichi glanced toward Naruto and Sasuke.
After confirming that they were still trapped in the genjutsu, he briefly explained the current state of the Shinobi World to Hikari.
When Hikari heard that the Uchiha Clan had been massacred and that only the boy named Sasuke remained in Konoha, her expression became extremely complicated.
"Then what about you?"
Hikari lightly bit her lip.
"Why do you know my name? According to what you just said, all of that happened a very long time ago."
The more she thought about it, the more impossible the situation seemed.
If Kenichi's story was true, then why did this man still remember her after so many years?
"That... is also a long story."
By the time Naruto and Sasuke regained consciousness, they were already lying on the grass outside.
The sunlight shining overhead made their heads feel slightly dizzy.
Sasuke abruptly sat up.
He had already awakened the three-tomoe Sharingan.
Although Hikari had caught him completely off guard, he had still clearly seen her eyes before falling into the genjutsu.
Those eyes...
They were similar to that man's!
"You're awake?"
A cold, clear voice came from nearby.
Sasuke instantly turned his head.
The girl from the cave was sitting on the trunk of a nearby tree.
She held several wild fruits in her hands and calmly looked down at him.
"You..."
Sasuke stared at her cautiously.
Who exactly was this girl?
Why did she possess the Sharingan of the Uchiha Clan?
That should have been impossible.
As far as Sasuke knew, there were no other surviving members of the clan.
That man had supposedly killed everyone back then.
Hikari looked down at the boy.
In truth, Sasuke was far, far younger than her.
If they calculated things purely by age and clan generation, perhaps Sasuke should call her grandmother.
No...
That was not quite right either.
Hikari and Sasuke did not share a direct blood relationship.
The Uchiha Clan had once been enormous, with many different branches and later intermarriages between families.
Sasuke simply happened to belong to the clan head's lineage.
Even so, Hikari could not help looking at him with the attitude of an elder observing a younger clansman.
That gaze only made Sasuke even more confused.
"I'm Uchiha Hikari."
She paused.
"You can just call me sister."
She had no intention of making Sasuke call her grandmother.
After all, Hikari herself still felt extremely young.
Although she had been sealed away for an incredibly long time and countless years had passed outside, her own mind had effectively stopped at the moment she was sealed.
Deep down, Hikari was still a child herself.
"Huh?"
Naruto scratched his head.
"Where's my big brother?"
He did not pay much attention to Hikari.
He was far more concerned about Kenichi's disappearance.
At that same moment, Kenichi was sitting inside the Hokage's office in Konoha.
Across from him sat the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi.
"Kenichi, take a look."
Hiruzen chuckled.
"Is this the object you were searching for?"
Kenichi stared at the strange object placed before him.
It looked somewhat like a turtle.
In his memory, the mysterious object that had struck him before sending him into this timeline had indeed looked vaguely turtle-shaped.
However, the shell rose high in the center, almost resembling a miniature volcano.
Kenichi scratched his head.
Was this really it?
He could not be completely certain.
Still, he understood why Hiruzen had brought it to him.
The object closely resembled the sketch Kenichi had drawn.
And although it looked like a turtle, it clearly was not a living creature.
It seemed more like some unusual machine.
"You already studied it, didn't you, Hokage-sama?"
Kenichi spoke with absolute certainty.
Hiruzen's expression became slightly awkward.
He did not deny it.
After all, Hiruzen had naturally been curious.
Kenichi was already an extremely mysterious person.
So when Konoha found something resembling the object he had requested, Hiruzen had immediately ordered people to investigate it first.
If Danzo were still alive, he undoubtedly would have been interested as well.
Unfortunately for Danzo, he was already dead.
So Hiruzen had handled the investigation himself.
The result was disappointing.
They had learned absolutely nothing.
The object looked like a strange turtle, but it did nothing.
No matter how they manipulated it, there was no response whatsoever.
It behaved like a completely dead object.
Hiruzen had not dared to test destructive ninjutsu on it.
If the object were damaged, Kenichi might become furious.
Hiruzen did consider the possibility that Kenichi would never know if they secretly experimented on it.
But he had no interest in gambling on that small possibility.
If Kenichi somehow discovered what they had done, the consequences for Konoha could be catastrophic.
So after failing to learn anything useful, Hiruzen had simply handed the object over.
"Ahem."
Hiruzen coughed.
"I did investigate it a little. But nothing happened. No matter what we tried, the object never reacted."
Kenichi nodded.
That was exactly what he had expected.
A machine capable of traveling through time...
What level of absurd technology was required for something like that?
Even Doraemon's time machine belonged to the realm of ridiculous black technology.
Yet the moment Kenichi considered that the object before him might genuinely be capable of traversing time, his expression became complicated.
The concepts of time and space stood at an extremely high level even within science.
Modern science in his previous life had never proven that practical time travel into the past was possible.
There had once been popular claims that exceeding the speed of light might allow someone to travel backward through time, but such ideas had never developed into a realistic method of building a time machine.
People had even proposed simple thought experiments about the concept.
For example, leave behind a message saying:
"If humanity eventually invents a time machine, please return to this moment and inform us."
If future humans possessed the ability to freely travel to the past, then theoretically someone might eventually appear.
Yet no one ever had.
Then there was the concept of Laplace's Demon.
That idea suggested that if an intelligence could perfectly know the state and movement of every particle in the universe, then the future could theoretically be predicted from the present.
In that sense, predicting the future seemed easier to imagine than physically returning to the past.
Of course, even that was only a theoretical concept.
All of this demonstrated just how outrageous the technological requirements of a genuine time machine would be.
If Hiruzen had managed to understand this thing after a few days of investigation, Kenichi would have been genuinely impressed.
Unfortunately, Kenichi himself was now facing exactly the same problem.
He had never studied time machines either.
And seeing this object in front of him made Kenichi seriously question the technological level of the Otsutsuki Clan.
A civilization capable of producing a machine that traveled through time...
Just how advanced were they?
If they possessed time travel, could they simply travel between different eras and timelines to plant Divine Trees?
And why had Kenichi's own actions apparently left no trace in the timeline he remembered?
Could separate timelines exist independently rather than overwriting one another?
"Unbelievable."
Kenichi rubbed his forehead.
"When you can't explain something, just blame quantum mechanics. Now we've got actual time-space travel."
If the Naruto world had ended with the original series, Kenichi's problems would have been much simpler.
Kill Madara.
Deal with Black Zetsu.
Then he could stop worrying.
But Boruto had to exist.
And judging from the ridiculous object now sitting in front of him, Boruto clearly involved storylines connected to time.
Otherwise, how could something this outrageous exist?
Kenichi felt a headache coming on.
Anything involving time was never simple.
Even though he finally possessed the object he had been searching for, he did not dare casually dismantle or experiment with it.
This was a time machine.
Kenichi genuinely did not dare recklessly study something like this.
"My research project still isn't finished."
Kenichi scratched his head.
"Otherwise, I could use the power of my ability to analyze it."
His special ability was currently occupied with research into antimatter.
That process could not simply be canceled halfway through.
So for the moment, Kenichi would have to study the time machine himself.
"Then I'll take it."
After informing Hiruzen, Kenichi reached out and picked up the strange turtle-shaped object.
The moment he lifted it, he noticed something unusual.
It truly was strange.
It resembled a turtle.
But it clearly was not a turtle.
And it was astonishingly heavy.
Hiruzen silently smoked his pipe while watching Kenichi leave.
He still had no idea what the object actually was.
However, he did not mind giving it away.
It had been completely useless to Konoha anyway.
More importantly, by helping Kenichi locate the object he wanted, Konoha might now have an opportunity to ask for Kenichi's assistance in return.
The Shinobi World was relatively stable at present.
But small conflicts between hidden villages continued to occur.
Kumogakure in particular had never been especially well behaved.
Perhaps Kenichi could be persuaded to deal with that problem.
Of course, that depended on whether Kenichi was willing to act.
Hiruzen suspected it would not be too difficult.
Kenichi might behave somewhat unreasonably at times, but after observing him for this long, Hiruzen had begun to understand his personality.
If Konoha genuinely needed help, Kenichi would probably lend a hand.
Then Hiruzen remembered the colossal Buddha statue he had witnessed that day.
A trace of excitement appeared in his eyes.
If the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, had not died so early, perhaps the history of the Shinobi World would have developed very differently.
But that no longer mattered.
Konoha now possessed an even more terrifying powerhouse.
Perhaps it was time for the village to firmly reclaim its position at the top.
....
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