Chibaku Tensei and Shinra Tensei drained all of Nagato's chakra.
His hair, which had just turned red again after absorbing White Zetsu's chakra, now turned white once more. The continuous overuse of chakra, coupled with years of chronic depletion, had left Nagato in a miserable state.
"Still alive?" Obito Uchiha commented, clearly gaining a new understanding of the Uzumaki Clan's chakra reserves. "But at this point, you might be better off dying and being resurrected."
"Trusting you enough to seal Black Zetsu is the highest level of trust I can give..." Nagato spoke slowly. "I only agreed to help because you resurrected Yahiko and Jiraiya-sensei. Don't try to pry into the Rinnegan. No matter what you say, these eyes are essential to me."
Over the years, Akatsuki had managed to enrage the entire ninja world again, recruiting S-rank Missing-nin from major villages, collecting tailed beasts, and amassing wealth. Now surrounded by enemies, Nagato knew these eyes were transplanted into him by Madara Uchiha when he was a child. But he needed them to protect Yahiko and Konan.
The Adult Obito from the mission scroll world shrugged and said nothing more.
This masked Obito, who had been active during the time of Pain's attack on Konoha, still had questions to ask. He had trapped Black Zetsu within his own Mangekyō Sharingan!
The effort to seal Black Zetsu, aided by Nagato, had largely been due to the power of the Kotoamatsukami.
Thus, after Black Zetsu was sealed, the latent consciousness controlled by Kotoamatsukami was also corrected.
This left Obito with a host of questions for his counterpart from the other world.
The same went for Naruto.
Upon learning of the resurrection of Jiraiya-sensei and Kakashi-sensei, Naruto wanted to return to Konoha as soon as possible to confirm if it was true. He also wanted to properly apologize for his earlier outbursts toward the Fourth Hokage—his own father...
Unexpectedly, their delay in sealing Black Zetsu meant that Hatake Kakashi, who had heard that Obito was still alive, and Yahiko, who had learned of Akatsuki's actions after his death, had already arrived, following the guidance of Katsuyu.
"Nagato!!"
Seeing the once serene, beautiful red-haired youth from his memories now reduced to this state, Yahiko struggled to believe the person standing in the wooden cart—unable to walk—was truly Nagato.
Skin and bones, his sternum and ribs jutting out sharply, his cheeks sunken, his lips cracked and dry, his head covered in brittle white hair. Like Konan, his eyes held an unshakeable sadness.
"Yahiko."
Nagato and Konan spoke almost simultaneously.
Seeing Yahiko, still appearing as the fifteen-year-old boy from years past, stirred a flood of emotions within them.
As the three spoke, Yahiko's frustrated voice frequently cut through the conversation, scolding his former teammate who had brought so much suffering to the Ninja World.
"Didn't I tell you before that you were never supposed to meet that masked man again?!"
"That lunatic clearly has ulterior motives!"
"Konan, you too—how could you still be reckless with him?"
Two Obito Uchiha: "...."
Do you really think we don't exist?
However, despite being called a lunatic, the masked man had little interest in paying attention to this matter at the moment. The hypocritical trash across from him was once again giving him that look that said, "Why aren't you yelling at me? I failed to protect Rin. Come on, yell at me."
"What's the point? I've lost all interest in this hypocritical world."
Mission Scroll World's Adult Obito: "Need I remind you again that the Eye of the Moon Plan is a sham?"
Before this world's version of himself could question, Adult Obito had already conveyed the intelligence he had gathered: Rin had been chosen by Madara Uchiha as the successor to carry out the Eye of the Moon Plan because of him. She had no choice but to become the pawn that would awaken his Sharingan. For Konoha and her comrades, she had chosen to sacrifice herself.
"Rin's heart bears the same cursed seal as yours. That's why she couldn't kill herself." Adult Obito continued. "You know this well, don't you? After all, your heart bears the same mark."
Masked Obito: "!!!"
Kakashi listened to their exchange. Though he couldn't understand their words, his formidable analytical skills revealed that Obito hadn't perished during the Kannabi Bridge mission—he had been rescued, only to be exploited.
And Rin's death was precisely one of the necessary steps that person took by exploiting Obito?!
"A cursed seal symbol on Rin's heart?! What does this mean?!!" The face beneath the masked man's Obito mask could only be described as hideous.
Adult Obito didn't spare him either, laying out the entire truth he knew.
"If it weren't for us, or if we hadn't been chosen by Madara to carry out his Eye of the Moon Plan as executors and successors, Rin wouldn't have had to die."
He looked at the stunned Kakashi. "And you wouldn't have to carry the guilt of her death for the rest of your life."
Kakashi: "But..." Wasn't Rin taken away by Kirigakure?!
Obito: "The Kiri Ninja took Rin and implanted the Three-Tails into her—all orchestrated by Madara. If Rin hadn't taken her own life, when we returned back then, we might have found her already rampaging with the tailed beast inside her, destroying Konoha and killing Kakashi. Or perhaps Minato-sensei would have killed her before she fully lost control."
Kakashi: "!!!"
"But Madara probably didn't anticipate..." Obito's expression turned sorrowful, "Even with the cursed seal protecting her heart, Rin didn't want to harm the village or her comrades. So in desperation, she had to use Kakashi's hand to end her own life."
The masked man froze in place upon hearing this!
These words completely overturned everything he had believed.
"If I had truly died beneath the Kannabi Bridge back then, leaving no opportunity for Madara to exploit me... then wouldn't that mean..."
"Exactly. Rin wouldn't have died."
"!!!!"
A storm of rage settled within the masked man. He even wanted to drag out Black Zetsu and Madara and kill them over and over again, thousands, tens of thousands of times!
He had once suffered two greatest agonies. The first was undoubtedly Rin's death.
The second was that Kakashi had killed Rin. His heart brimmed with hatred and fury, finding no outlet.
Just as Naruto and Nagato had discussed before, the chain of hatred's cause and effect could never be severed. If broken, humanity's painful emotions would have nowhere to rage.
Even after revenge was exacted, there was no sense of liberation. Yet at least during that long pursuit, hatred served as a goal. Though it narrowed one's vision, it provided direction to keep moving forward.
But back then, they killed those Kiri Ninja in an instant. After revenge, they still couldn't find release. So much so that he came to believe the false conspiracy theory Madara Uchiha once told him—that the entire world was caught in a grand delusion.
Looking back, before Rin and Kakashi met their end, that plan had seemed so hollow and meaningless to him.
The masked man stood frozen, the alternating waves of hatred and confusion threatening to shatter his fragile psyche.
"How did you do it?"
After a long silence, he finally suppressed the explosive agony within and asked the Adult Obito.
How did you do it....
The Adult Obito didn't know either. He only had a vague notion—to atone, just as Nagato had done before.
"Take your time atoning. The current Minato-sensei in Konoha is from our world. He was previously brought back through the Edo Tensei Reincarnation Technique, arriving in your world where Nagato happened to revive him. This gave me an idea: to continue using this method to resurrect all those who died innocently because of Madara Uchiha's plan."
"Rin, Kushina, Yahiko from our world... the Kirigakure ninja who perished under my tyrannical rule fueled by vengeance these past years... and the ordinary Konoha ninja who died during the Nine-Tails incident..."
These words had never been spoken to anyone.
He hadn't intended to speak of them. His plan was to return to the scroll world, obtain the Rinnegan from Nagato, and proceed step by step, steadily and diligently.
Without nationality, without a place to call home—just like the Sage of the Six Paths once did, walking the path of atonement on foot.
"How did you let go?"
At least the masked man didn't believe he could find such swift release.
"Because of Rin..."
"After learning I was still alive and had become the enemy of the world, she placed a red bean cake at the Memorial Stone in Konoha..."