There was no doubt that any system manifestation had to follow the rules and logic of the world it existed in, and aside from Chakra, it could not create the power system of another world out of nothing. But Ryuji Hyuga had thought of a solution. He would base it on the existing soul, body, Natural Energy, and Chakra of the Ninja World, and localize and imitate the power systems of other worlds.
In this way, he could construct a logical and believable "Lie." From nothing, rules would be created to deceive the world. This was deception on the level of defying heaven and earth.
"Void Dweller, the resting place of souls in the Ninja World, hangs in the gap between the living world and the Pure Land. It is covered in eternal night, with no sun, only a half moon. The land is vast and empty, winds howl like crying ghosts, sand surges like running bones, and dead trees stand like fields of skeletons."
"Pure Land was the realm of the dead opened by the Six Paths. Souls that enter have their awareness sealed and fall into sleep, while Chakra gathers there like threads and returns to the control of the Six Paths. It was meant to use the power of the dead to resist enemies from beyond the sky, but the method was crude, and souls fade with time until they scatter into nothing."
"Those who enter Void Dweller are souls stranded in the Ninja World, bound by obsession or entangled by karma. After years of erosion, resentment eats away at them until their minds grow dull. Bone armor covers their faces, their howls sound like countless ghosts crying together, and those who hear it are filled with Lie. Their bodies are hunched and broken, their bellies hollow like caves, and I call them 'Void.'"
"They crave souls to fill the emptiness in their hearts and soon devour one another. Hundreds of weak Void kill and merge together, forming a giant like a mountain, with a long nasal bone mask and the mind of a beast. It devours souls by instinct alone, and I call it a lower Great Hollow."
"Among them, rare individuals devour thousands of their kind, shrink in size, and awaken intelligence, taking on a beastlike armored form. They live in constant fear of regression and must hunt their peers to maintain their shape, or they lose reason if they slacken. I call these mid-level Great Hollow."
"Extremely rare ones shatter their bone masks and shed their Lie, revealing a human form beneath, though the hollow remains. Their power is unmatched, and I call them upper Great Hollow. Yet this body is gone and the being incomplete, so I never witnessed its birth, which is truly regrettable."
"…What is this?"
As Orochimaru continued reading, the expression on his face slowly went blank. The writing on the Scroll was obscure, but he had studied Ninjutsu and read many ancient texts, so he could still understand its contents. Pure Land was something he naturally knew to be real, given his incomplete grasp of Impure World Reincarnation.
As for souls, the developer of Living Corpse Reincarnation understood them better than most. Precisely because he knew so much, this mix of truth and falsehood shattered his worldview. Yet his trust in the Scroll and his reverence for its owner rebuilt that worldview in an instant.
The legendary Sage of Six Paths actually existed, and even Pure Land had been opened by him, drawing all the dead there to face some so-called enemy from beyond the sky. The owner of this Scroll directly called Sage of Six Paths the Six Paths, and his words showed clear disdain for the way Pure Land was created. He had even opened an independent world called the Void Realm.
"The Otsutsuki Clan actually have the power to create worlds?"
Orochimaru flicked out his long, thin tongue and licked his dry lips as he murmured, "Could Sage of Six Paths also be one of the Otsutsuki Clan, like the owner of this Scroll?"
Judging from the effects of Impure World Reincarnation, Sage of Six Paths's Pure Land could only preserve the power the dead had in life, and weak vessels could not use that power fully. The Void Realm created by the owner of the Scroll was far more cruel, taking in souls that could not enter Pure Land due to obsession and resentment. Those souls were forced to kill and devour each other to give birth to stronger beings.
It was just that the owner of the Scroll never lived to see the birth of an upper Great Hollow. "With such power, is immortality still impossible?" The thought surfaced in Orochimaru's mind, but he quickly realized that the text only said "this body is gone."
That meant the owner of the Scroll was still alive, but had been forced to change bodies for some reason. Sage of Six Paths was likely not dead either, probably existing as a soul hidden within Pure Land while gathering powerful souls to await the so-called enemy from beyond the sky. "Then the corpse I took from that Hyuga brat must be a discarded body of the Scroll's owner."
Orochimaru's tail lightly tapped the ground as he thought aloud, "With power great enough to create a world, no one could bear that true body. It probably does not even have organs in the usual sense."
However, when he thought of the brat named Ryuji Hyuga, killing intent rose in his eyes. If not for that scheming little bastard, how could he have ended up in such a miserable state? That day, while gravely wounded, he had been suddenly summoned to Ryuchi Cave by the White Snake Sage using a reverse Summoning Jutsu, escaping the pursuing forces from Konoha but falling into even greater danger.
The giant snakes, the Three Snake Princesses, and the White Snake Sage were all greedy and cold creatures, unlike Tsunade's Shikkotsu Forest or Jiraiya's Mount Myoboku, which treated contractors kindly. Just as Orochimaru thought he was about to die, the usually aloof White Snake Sage reacted as if he had seen something unbelievable. Its attitude turned warm, instantly healing his fatal wounds with a stone and even offering to teach him senjutsu.
The price he paid was becoming something neither fully human nor ghost, neither clearly male nor female, and remaining under constant surveillance in Ryuchi Cave. "That old white snake must have seen something in me," Orochimaru frowned. "My fate was changed, it said. Why does it sound as meaningless as Jiraiya's talk about a chosen child?"
He could not understand it. Whether it was Ryuji Hyuga's sudden change or the White Snake Sage's schemes, Orochimaru could not grasp the reason. He hated the feeling of everything being hidden in fog, impossible to see clearly.
"What matters now is what I can gain from this Scroll."
Orochimaru shook his head to clear his thoughts and lowered his gaze to the rest of the Scroll. The later sections recorded the owner's notes from the Void Realm, and Orochimaru even saw some familiar yet distant names that appeared in ancient legends. In the owner's words, those people had truly existed, but had already been fed to the Void.
When Orochimaru reached the final pages, the remaining text was once again sealed by a Sealing Technique. His eyes stopped on the last visible sentence. "The passage between the Void Realm and the Ninja World is called the Hole of Space-Time, hidden on a solitary overseas island, guarded by my servant Greil for generations."
"I once strictly warned him that the Void is born of violent resentment and must never be cultivated by human hands, nor should the passage be opened, otherwise…"
The final line was cut off by the Sealing Technique, and Orochimaru could not see the rest. Even so, he understood one fact from that single sentence. "There is a passage between the Void Realm and the Ninja World, and it can still be opened."
His hand trembled slightly as he held the Scroll, greed and calculation flashing in his eyes. "The Void can be cultivated by humans." At that moment, Orochimaru quietly made a decision.
The choices of the Scroll's owner and Sage of Six Paths had already proven that flesh would eventually decay, and only the soul had a chance at eternity. Yet a simple spiritual form was far too fragile, and if an upper Great Hollow could be called incomparably powerful, then its strength must be unique. "Only souls bound by obsession and filled with resentment can become Void after long erosion?"
Orochimaru raised his head, his eyes flickering. "Then I will try, whether by cultivation or by summoning." He would attempt to cultivate Void, steal their power, search for the overseas island, and find the Hole of Space-Time.
If the Second Hokage could use Impure World Reincarnation to summon the souls of the dead from the Pure Land, then why could he not use Impure World Reincarnation to summon Void from the Void Realm? It was only a matter of connecting the summoning location, which meant finding the Void Realm itself.