The Telescope Technique wasn't originally created by Hiruzen. Mount Myoboku had it long ago.
"This move… it's the first time I've used it.", Arisu murmured silently.
He had previously tried manipulating souls before. After all, the Rinnegan possessed the ability to control souls.
Arisu intended to use this power to make Ashura's reincarnation appear ahead of time.
There were no earth-shaking phenomena.
In the next second, from within Senju Maoyue's body, a warm life aura, a glowing mass resembling liquid chakra, was forcibly stripped out from the corpse and steadily floated in Arisu's palm.
The light mass was gentle yet heavy. Inside it contained vast, endless vitality. It was precisely the soul of Ashura's reincarnation.
"Long time no see…"
Arisu lowered his gaze and stared at the power of Ashura in his palm. His fingers curved slightly as he flicked it lightly.
The glowing mass instantly turned into an almost imperceptible streak of light. It tore through the barrier of space and shot straight toward the remaining territory of the Senju clan, so fast that no ninja in the world could possibly catch it.
At the same time, inside a crude wooden house in the last remaining stronghold of the Senju clan, the atmosphere was suffocatingly oppressive.
A middle-aged man wearing tattered Senju clan clothes was pacing anxiously back and forth in the room.
His rough hands clenched so tightly that his knuckles turned white, and his face was filled with panic and grief he couldn't hide.
"Of all times… it had to be now…!"
The middle-aged man growled in a low voice, helplessness filling every word.
"The attacks from those madmen of the Uchiha are getting more and more insane. Most of the clan's elites have already fallen."
"Even the ancestral land is about to fall. And my child just has to be born right when this disaster is about to arrive…"
Before the man finished speaking, a clear baby's cry suddenly rang out inside the house, tearing through the suffocating silence.
The midwife hurried out and nodded to the man.
"It's a boy. Both mother and child are safe."
Hearing this, the middle-aged man's tense body suddenly relaxed, but there was not even the slightest joy of becoming a father. His face only showed bitterness and sorrow.
"Sigh…"
The man staggered into the room and looked at the infant wrapped in cloth, eyes tightly shut. Endless pain surged in his heart.
War raged across the ninja world. The Senju clan stood on the brink of destruction. His child had been born into endless chaos and smoke of war. He might not even get the chance to have a single peaceful childhood.
The man reached out his rough finger and gently touched the baby's soft cheek.
After a long silence, he finally spoke slowly. His voice was hoarse but carried a stubborn hope.
"From today onward, your name will be Senju Futian."
"As your father, I only hope that one day you can hold up this collapsing sky and support our storm-tossed Senju clan…"
———
Ripples stirred lightly in the void.
Arisu's figure quietly descended onto the ground. The place he stepped onto was the very land where he had once taken Sarutobi as a disciple.
"Sigh… once again, things have changed and people are gone.", Arisu sighed.
Looking around, everything had long changed. Everywhere his eyes fell was ruin and desolation.
"I didn't expect a village to be rebuilt here again."
Arisu looked forward.
This land had once suffered a complete village massacre. Before the bones of the dead had even gone cold, people had barely gathered again to rekindle life. Yet the newly rebuilt village was still unbearably shabby.
Crooked wooden houses were pieced together with broken logs and dead branches. When the wind blew, they creaked as if they might collapse at any moment.
Arisu looked ahead, and his brows furrowed.
He saw a group of emaciated villagers curled up near the village entrance. Their ragged clothes could barely cover their bodies. The old people's skin was wrinkled like dried tree bark, dust packed deep into every crease.
The children's limbs were thin like sticks, but their bellies were swollen round. Every one of them looked sallow and weak.
"This…"
Arisu frowned slightly. He slowly stepped forward and asked the withered group of mortals, "This place has already rebuilt a village. Why are you abandoning it and leaving instead?"
The thin old man at the front hunched his back and only shook his head numbly. His cracked, pale lips moved several times, yet not even the faintest sound came out.
Arisu's brows sank even deeper.
It was obvious that this man had long been drained of his last bit of strength by hunger and despair. Only lifeless numbness remained. He couldn't even speak anymore.
Just then, "This place… has already become a battlefield for the slaughter between the Uchiha and the Senju."
"Ninja from both clans come here one after another. They seize grain, take supplies. Anything that can be eaten or used has been taken. We… can't survive anymore. We can only leave."
A thin middle-aged man beside him lowered his hollow eyes. His voice was hoarse and dry.
As the words fell, Arisu's brows suddenly jumped, and his heart sank heavily.
The clan war between the Senju and the Uchiha had actually spread this far. Even the most ordinary villages of the mortal world had been dragged into suffering. The impact on ordinary people had reached such a miserable level…
Arisu's gaze slowly swept across the crowd.
The villagers were ragged and filthy. The old people were so thin they looked like walking skeletons.
The children all had bellies swollen like drums.
Each one looked like they had eaten too much Six Paths Soil…
At that moment, a child with a round swollen belly and limbs so thin they seemed like they might snap raised the yellow soil clutched in his hand and timidly offered it to Arisu.
"Grandpa, do you want to eat Six Paths Soil? It keeps hunger away and fills your stomach…"
Arisu's heart suddenly trembled.
How could he not know this so-called Six Paths Soil?
When the mortal world suffered famine and people gnawed on yellow soil to survive, that soil was called Six Paths Soil.
It looked like it could fill the stomach, but in reality it was poison that tore through the intestines. If eaten too much, the belly would swell and the person would die.
"Child… I…", Arisu had not even finished speaking...
"Get lost!", The man beside the child suddenly rushed forward and snatched the Six Paths Soil from the child's hand.
"You little bastard! Wasteful thing! This stuff is our last remaining food! That old man looks like he doesn't lack food. What's the point of giving it to him!", The man cursed angrily.
Hearing the angry shouting, Arisu's brows tightened even more, and a heavy feeling churned in his heart.
Had the common people already fallen to the point of relying on Six Paths Soil just to barely stay alive?
At that moment, one pair after another of greedy and vicious eyes locked onto Arisu all at once.
Those sallow villagers suddenly had flames like starving wolves burning in their hollow eyes. They stared fixedly at his clean and spotless clothing. It was a kind of dignity they had never possessed in their entire lives.
Arisu instantly understood.
His clothes were far too neat, completely out of place among these starving people who were on the brink of death.
On top of that, he was alone and looked old and helpless. These villagers, driven mad by hunger, had already begun thinking of robbery, perhaps even cannibalism.
"Sigh!"
Arisu's expression became complicated.
Common people in the mortal world had fallen to the point of filling their stomachs with yellow soil that carried the name of "Six Paths."
And he, the so-called Sage of Six Paths who bore that name and governed the order of the ninja world, had been watching helplessly as countless living beings fell into such a hell, unable to even give them the basic stability of a full meal.
"As the Sage of Six Paths, I've truly been far too irresponsible…"
A heavy sigh escaped Arisu's throat.
Invisible genjutsu chakra quietly spread out, completely erasing his presence from the perception of those starving villagers.
Arisu no longer wished to face those eyes driven insane by hunger. His figure flickered and turned into a faint shadow as he left the place.
Along the way, everything he saw was desolation to the bone.
Arisu truly witnessed what it meant for nine out of ten homes to be empty, white bones scattered across the wilds, and across thousands of miles not even the sound of a rooster or dog.
The once lush and dense forests had already been completely cut down. Even the wild grass on the ground had been eaten clean by starving people.
Only cracked and barren yellow earth remained, stretching naked toward the horizon, scars everywhere.
The villages along the road had all become deserted ruins of broken walls.
What gripped Arisu's heart even tighter was the horrifying sight of cannibalism everywhere in the wilderness.
Broken bodies were scattered across the ground, blood staining the scorched soil, displaying the true face of a human hell in the most vivid way.
Arisu sighed silently in his heart, gloom covering his brow.
It was only the destined struggle between Indra and Ashura.
Only the obsession and rivalry between two reincarnations.
Yet it had plunged the entire ninja world into a monstrous chaos where people ate one another.
Was this kind of outcome truly correct?
Their conflict had ultimately dragged innocent, unarmed mortals from all over the world into suffering.