Chapter 196: Confusion, Especially Confused
"Other people are geniuses. They have their own paths, so just let them walk ahead first. When they eventually crash into a wall, they can slowly turn back."
"But what Shiromo made is for people like us, people who can't see the road ahead clearly and don't know where we should go."
Tsunade expressed her opinion.
What she said wasn't wrong at all.
Just like her Creation Rebirth, it had already reached its limit. There was no way to push it any further.
Because according to the way she had developed it, no matter what, Creation Rebirth consumed lifespan. Taking it further would just mean dying faster, wouldn't it?
"Yeah, I think Kurotsuchi is very confused."
Shiromo nodded.
"Huh? Oh, right, confused, especially confused."
Kurotsuchi had been staring blankly at the red gemstone. When she heard Shiromo say that, she hurriedly agreed and then put the stone away.
She was afraid that if she argued she wasn't confused, Shiromo would take this good thing back.
Kurotsuchi was a practical-type ninja. If it weren't for the fact that her attributes were water, earth, and fire, making her unable to learn Dust Release, given her personality, she would've already been pestering Ōnoki to teach it to her.
She slipped the stone into the small pocket behind her pants and even patted it twice to make sure it was secure.
"Alright, the mission here is done. I should head back too… huh?"
Kurotsuchi raised both hands, stretched lazily, and was just about to say goodbye when she suddenly felt her butt heat up.
Did Shiromo sneak a touch? No, wait, wasn't this completely out in the open?
Kurotsuchi's body instantly stiffened.
Hold on.
Oh, seems like that wasn't it.
Shiromo reached into the pocket behind her butt, took the stone out, walked to the front, grabbed her hand, and placed it back into her palm.
"Everyone knows this, stuff you put in your back pocket or behind your waist is something you don't really want anymore. This kind of thing has to go in the front."
Shiromo said earnestly.
"Huh? There's a saying like that?"
Kurotsuchi was dumbfounded.
Still, she obediently moved the stone into the front pocket.
"Whew whew whew, all the chakra's been tossed into the Gedo Statue and stored away!"
Uchiha Hikari shut down Susanoo and came jogging back, waving cheerfully.
Just now there was a glowing giant, and now she was running back smiling and waving.
It gave Shiromo the feeling that she had just transformed like Ultraman.
"Good work."
"Hehe."
Watching the "warm" scene among them, Shion felt extremely envious.
Clatter.
Ding.
Shion's bell fell to the ground.
Note: The bell here refers to an actual bell, not a euphemism for a male body part. Shion is not a futanari.
"Ah~"
Shion suddenly began to glow, and a powerful chakra erupted from her body.
As mentioned before, the priestess and Mōryō were a pair of star-crossed lovers.
Both "people" were frogs at the bottom of a well.
Rather than saying the priestess used her power to seal Mōryō, it was more accurate to say Mōryō sealed the priestess's power. They sealed each other.
Now that Mōryō was dead,
the priestess's destiny had ended. With the bell shattered, her power was naturally released.
"Oh, such powerful energy, on par with Mōryō."
Uchiha Hikari turned around, activated skeletal Susanoo, shielded everyone behind her, pulled a piece of candy from her pocket, and tossed it into her mouth.
On par with Mōryō…
You mean that Mōryō who didn't even fight, cried in fear and begged for mercy, and then got turned into fireworks?
"I…"
After the burst of power subsided, Shion felt the "immense" strength inside her after being unsealed and stared at her hands in confusion.
"I'm confused too! I want guidance as well!"
Gathering her courage, Shion ran up to Shiromo and spoke in a pleading tone.
"?"
Of course Shiromo knew Shion would be confused. Someone like her, who understood nothing about what lay ahead, suddenly gained tremendous power, and had no real goal, how could she not be lost?
But what they had been talking about just now was confusion regarding power.
Shion didn't even know how to use this strength yet. Giving her a stone too, wouldn't that just make her even more clueless?
This was a confusion about life itself.
"If you don't know what to do, then come to the Land of Rain first to go to school and study. Learn. Learning makes people happy. 'Learning without thinking leads to confusion; thinking without learning leads to danger.'"
After thinking for a moment, Shiromo gave his suggestion.
"That last sentence sounds pretty philosophical. What does it mean?"
Tsunade asked curiously.
"It means if you study without thinking, you'll end up browsing the internet. If you think without studying, you'll end up taking out loans."
"?"
She knew what loans were, but what was this 'internet'? Who was 'Net'?
Tsunade was confused too.
"B-but what about the Land of Demons? What should happen to it? I'm the priestess of the Land of Demons, the leader of the Land of Demons…"
Shion replied softly.
"?"
Shiromo laughed.
"Little sister, do you want to listen to what you're saying?"
"What do you mean, what should the Land of Demons do?"
"You're talking like before today, you were the Land of Demons' Shang Yang, Li Si, and Zhang Juzheng."
"Like the Land of Demons couldn't function without you, like its entire development depended on you alone, like you were the pillar holding up the sky."
"Tell me, did you ever manage the Land of Demons before? Even one single matter?"
"..."
Shiromo's blunt words made Shion too embarrassed to respond.
Thinking carefully, it was really true.
Whether the Land of Demons had her or not made absolutely no difference.
Before today, there was no way the country's affairs would be handed to a twelve-year-old child like her.
Her daily tasks were eating, sleeping, and doing a bit of indoor exercise to keep in shape, so she wouldn't turn into a shut-in fatty.
"Alright, I'll go study."
Shion accepted Shiromo's suggestion: "I need to go back and tell everyone first."
"Sure."
Shiromo and the others set off on the road back to the Land of Demons together with the awakened priestess Shion.
Along the way, Tsunade raised a question she had suddenly thought of.
"If Ōtsutsuki Kaguya is the progenitor of chakra, doesn't that mean all the chakra in the world comes from her?"
"If the total amount of chakra is fixed, then even collecting the chakra of these monsters would just be a drop in the bucket, right?"
"Not really."
Shiromo had already thought about this before coming.
Kaguya's descent required the Infinite Tsukuyomi to unify everyone's chakra again.
But was it really "everyone"?
Obviously not.
Half of the Nine-Tails, along with all those various things that had been sealed away, weren't caught in Infinite Tsukuyomi and weren't absorbed.
Even those who were caught in it only had part of their chakra drained.
If all of their chakra had been taken, they would've dropped dead on the spot, like Kakashi and the First Love of the Sage of Six Paths.
So one thing was very clear: the total amount of chakra in the ninja world now was absolutely far greater than the amount Kaguya had back when she ate the fruit and became the progenitor of chakra.
"If the total amount of chakra were fixed, then a lot of things would become horrifying to explain."
Shiromo proposed a hypothesis in response to Tsunade's question.
"Think about it, if the total chakra were fixed, and everyone in the ninja world had chakra in their bodies, even civilians who just can't use it, and if draining chakra dry meant death."
"Then that would mean the ninja world's population is directly tied to chakra".
"Your great-grandfather Senju Hashirama occupied too much chakra. As long as he lived, it would mean other people couldn't be born. Only after he died could there be peace, and only then could a large number of babies be born."
"And the Uzumaki clan, with their chakra off the charts per person, so the Uzumaki had to be wiped out, so that the ninja world's population could increase?"
(End of this chapter)