Forbidden Lands

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Inside the Land of Hot Water.

In a narrow cave, the unconscious Guy and Kakashi lay side by side on the ground. Naoki sat alone against one wall, while only Shisui busied himself beside the campfire.

Stirring the small pot over the flames, Shisui said quietly, "Senior, the soup is almost ready."

Naoki nodded. He really was hungry.

He still had quite a few military ration pills on him, but their taste was truly hard to swallow. If he had a choice, he naturally preferred fresh fish soup.

Before long, Shisui handed Naoki a steaming bowl of fish soup.

Naoki accepted it and drank while looking at Guy and Kakashi, who were still unconscious.

It was almost funny. Naoki and Shisui had clearly been the ones responsible for covering the rear, yet after Team Eleven regrouped at the retreat point in the Land of Hot Water, Guy and Kakashi, who had retreated first, were the ones with the worst injuries.

Guy, surrounded and intercepted by Kumogakure shinobi during the retreat, had been forced to use the Eight Gates, a forbidden technique.

Forbidden techniques like the Eight Gates injured the user almost as much as the enemy. Although Guy had successfully repelled the pursuers, his body had been overdrawn so severely that he fell unconscious.

Kakashi's situation was more complicated.

Aside from his wounds and severe blood loss, his coma seemed to have another cause. As for what that cause was, Naoki could not figure it out for the moment.

Of course, Naoki did not have much energy to investigate it right now. He had not even resolved the trouble with his own body.

Crack.

Naoki's brows suddenly tightened. The bowl in his hand fell to the ground and split into two pieces.

Shisui quickly asked, "Senior, what happened?"

Naoki shook his head with a heavy expression. "Nothing."

After brushing Shisui off, he turned and looked outside the cave.

The night sky outside was breathtaking. Bright stars scattered across the darkness like diamonds, while the moonlight was clear, gentle, and beautiful enough to feel like a dream.

Looking at that scenery, Naoki sighed inwardly. 'In the end, I still alarmed them.'

Just now, another hidden stream of Tenseigan chakra had swept past. If Naoki were not so familiar with Tenseigan chakra, he almost would not have noticed it.

Shisui, beside him, showed no reaction throughout the entire process and knew nothing about it.

That was enough to show how advanced and secretive the giant Tenseigan's chakra detection from the Moon was. Unless someone was familiar with Tenseigan chakra, even the ocular power of the Mangekyo Sharingan would not detect it.

'Counting this one, that should be the seventh sweep over the past few days. Why haven't they given up yet? I only used some chakra. Do they really need to be this relentless?'

Naoki was somewhat irritated.

But he also knew that the remaining Otsutsuki descendants on the Moon were all radicals from the branch family.

Those descendants had misunderstood Otsutsuki Hamura's will. They believed the shinobi world created by the Sage of Six Paths was a failure, and their minds were set on destroying it and remaking the world from the beginning. Once such people learned about him, Naoki felt the consequences would be extremely unpredictable.

More importantly, after borrowing the giant Tenseigan's chakra, Naoki understood better than anyone how powerful the giant Tenseigan on the Moon truly was. It could be called a genuine divine artifact, the supreme treasure belonging to Otsutsuki Hamura's lineage.

The Otsutsuki descendants could control the giant Tenseigan freely, while Naoki could only barely trigger resonance with it when his life was in danger.

That proved that, in terms of authority over the giant Tenseigan, the Otsutsuki descendants on the Moon far surpassed Naoki.

If both sides fought, Naoki would have to face a giant Tenseigan superior to him in both quality and quantity.

The outcome was obvious.

For that, he even felt a little fortunate.

Fortunately, because his chakra had been exhausted, his Tenseigan had temporarily regressed into the Byakugan and entered a short dormant state. Otherwise, he truly would not have been able to hide from the giant Tenseigan's repeated scans.

On the Moon.

Cough, cough...

After a rapid bout of coughing, the Great Elder lowered his hands from the seal and slowly shook his head.

Seeing this, the Second Elder's brows nearly squeezed together. "Still nothing?"

The elderly Great Elder calmed his coughing before saying slowly, "Yes. Aside from the nine Forbidden Lands on the surface, there are no other abnormalities."

The Otsutsuki descendants on the Moon had actually planned to destroy the shinobi world long ago.

However, after using the giant Tenseigan to investigate, they had discovered that the shinobi world seemed to hide many secret places even they did not understand. They collectively called these places the Forbidden Lands.

Some Forbidden Lands were protected by wondrous natural energy. Some were concealed by strange power from beyond this world. Others were stained by evil, mysterious forces.

Because of that, the Otsutsuki descendants on the Moon had delayed taking action.

At present, only a handful of Otsutsuki descendants remained on the Moon. Aside from the three elders, all of whom were already near the end of their lives, there was only one three-year-old child named Toneri Otsutsuki.

Such strength was obviously not enough to sweep the entire shinobi world clean. So no matter how radical they were, they had no choice but to endure for now and wait for a suitable opportunity.

Or wait for Toneri to grow up.

The Third Elder asked, "What about the Gedo Statue? Any clues?"

He asked because several years earlier, they had briefly sensed the Gedo Statue. However, that sensation had disappeared quickly, and they had failed to lock onto its precise location.

The Great Elder shook his head again.

The most radical Second Elder stood from his cushion. "Are we simply going to watch and do nothing?"

The Great Elder said flatly, "We are old. We no longer have enough power to fulfill the ancestor's will. This heavy task should be left to Toneri. He is the most talented child of our clan. If it is him, he will surely fulfill our ancestor's will."

The Third Elder probed carefully, "Perhaps we could contact the Hyuga. After all, they share the same bloodline as us."

The Great Elder snorted coldly. "No. They are fallen. They are not worthy of the Otsutsuki bloodline. They deserve only to be destroyed with the failed world created by the Sage of Six Paths."

The Third Elder wanted to say that if everything was annihilated, then the few remaining Otsutsuki on the Moon would likewise be unable to escape extinction.

But looking at the Great Elder's resolute expression, he opened his mouth and could not bring himself to say it.

In truth, at the root of it all, even the Third Elder felt that the Hyuga Clan on the surface was unworthy of being compared with the Otsutsuki Clan on the Moon.

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