The Truth

An old tree at the edge of the training ground rustled as Black Zetsu's main body darted through its branches.

Only a third of his mangled body remained, more than half of it torn away as he fled wildly through the night.

"Tenseigan?! It actually has the power of the Six Paths level!" A piercing roar erupted from the shadows.

Black Zetsu's battered body twisted violently, the viscous black substance glistening with a sickly sheen. Even now, he cast a venomous gaze toward the Hyuga Clan Compound.

How could those fools, clinging to the old rules of the Main Family and Branch Family, awaken the Tenseigan when they couldn't even guarantee the purity of their Byakugan?

Much less reach a terrifying level comparable to Hagoromo Otsutsuki's.

This definitely wasn't the Hyuga Clan's Tenseigan! Was it the Main Family on the moon?

The pureblood descendants of Hamura Otsutsuki?

A thousand years of lying dormant had long since carved patience into Black Zetsu's bones.

He felt the pulse of Princess Kaguya's bloodline within him as wisps of black smoke rose from the wounds scorched by the Truth-Seeking Orbs.

The immortality he had inherited from his mother meant that even after losing most of his body, he would still slowly regenerate.

As long as I outlast this Tenseigan wielder's brief lifespan, what does it matter if I have to lie low for another thousand years?

The pulse of Chakra from underground told him that the God Tree's roots were still growing slowly.

In the gaps between shadow and rock, the twisted black shadow split into dozens of slender snakes.

They wound around the ruins of an ancient altar, slithered through passageways covered in sealing runes, and finally converged on a safe nest at a Dragon Vein node.

In the gaps between shadow and rock, the twisted black shadow squirmed toward the most concealed nest.

Utsusemi descended gracefully, clad in a feathered robe formed from Six Paths Senjutsu Chakra, its iridescent streamers billowing in the rushing air like clouds at dawn.

The instant her toes touched the ground, a sacred halo rippled outward in waves.

The Chakra gathered in her palm collapsed into a vortex. A new Ninjutsu awakened through Tobirama's special training, the Mind Sphere took shape amid tremors in the vacuum.

Blue light flowed through the translucent Chakra sphere like a network of nerves. It served as a mind reader, compensating for Utsusemi's inability to use Genjutsu.

When the Mind Sphere invaded the black shadow's core, the viscous darkness suddenly boiled, and a hoarse voice seeped out of the twisted substance. "I am Princess Kaguya's son... Black Zetsu."

Utsusemi demanded sharply, "Was the Uchiha's thousand-year curse all your doing?"

The Mind Sphere suddenly swelled, tearing the black shadow into a human-shaped outline.

"Without brothers killing each other, how could there be an Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan?" Black Zetsu laughed shrilly. "The Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan gives rise to the Rinnegan. Without the Rinnegan, how could Mother break free of her seal?"

His body began to expand and contract unnaturally, like a slime squeezed by an invisible hand. Forced to reveal its secrets, the cursed thing twisted and warped in the bright light.

"I curse you, Hagoromo Otsutsuki! Your descendants will become sacrifices for Mother's resurrection!"

As the Mind Sphere probed deeper, Black Zetsu's very existence began to self-destruct wildly.

During his thousand-year scheme, he had driven the Sage of Six Paths' sons, Indra Ōtsutsuki and Asura Ōtsutsuki, apart and spent a thousand years inciting the Senju and Uchiha to fight.

He had inscribed false prophecies on the stone tablet, injected Yin Chakra into Izuna as he lay dying, and even controlled White Zetsu to impersonate Uchiha clansmen and stir up infighting.

All the clues intertwined within the Mind Sphere into a blood-colored web, ultimately pointing to a single conspiracy: to bring forth the Rinnegan by making the Senju and Uchiha slaughter each other.

As Madara Uchiha read the memories with his Mangekyō, the thousand years of bloody history nearly made him sick.

The altered missions, the deliberately fostered misunderstandings, the carefully engineered death traps, the disguised dead, the meticulously planned confrontations between brothers...

Every crucial point in the thousand-year scheme had been meticulously engineered.

In the flood of memories Madara Uchiha saw through his Mangekyō, the altered secret orders and the Genjutsu used to drive clansmen to kill one another all bore traces of the same chilling presence.

When Genjutsu gave form to projections of the memories of that thousand-year bloody history, an enormous three-dimensional panorama unfolded above the training ground.

A gifted Uchiha youth staggered and fell beneath the setting sun, a Senju ninja's Kunai piercing his chest.

But the image suddenly froze and enlarged. A pitch-black arm reached out from the shadows, using Chakra Threads to control the Kunai's trajectory.

Next came the image of an elite Senju squad ambushed in a canyon. Just as a Kunai was about to cut the captain's throat—

An Uchiha Clan Crest, deliberately made to look aged, flashed in the bushes, while Black Zetsu, the one truly behind the technique, seeped out of a crack in the rocks with a sinister grin.

The ninja of both clans saw the truth behind their ancestors' deaths in "accidents."

The orphaned child of the Senju Third Elder recognized the black shadow writhing in the earth behind his father when he died in battle.

Those glorious deaths in battle honored at the ancestral shrine, those victories of vengeance recorded in the clans' histories, all showed signs of tampering.

In the corner of every projected memory, a shadow always lay in wait, stirring up hatred.

It turned out that most of the blood debts accumulated between the two clans over generations were forgeries repeatedly painted by the same hidden hand.

An Uchiha youth who had yet to awaken his eyes suddenly opened a blood-red, single-Tomoe eye in grief and outrage, tears congealing into drops of blood in his eyes.

Senju clansmen fell to their knees and tore at the clan crests on their chests, their metal Forehead Protectors striking cracks into the bluestone paving.

The Senju brothers were even more shocked to learn the truth behind the attack on Itama. Trembling, Hashirama reached out to touch the scene of his youngest brother Itama being attacked in the memory projection.

Seven-year-old Itama had been meant to carry out an ordinary escort mission, but Black Zetsu had tampered with it so that the information was simultaneously leaked to the Uchiha. He had almost died there.

If Utsusemi hadn't saved him...

The noisy clamor at the scene surged like a tide. Utsusemi entered Six Paths Mode, and the Six Paths Staff suddenly burst with golden light like the sun.

Nine Truth-Seeking Orbs formed a barrier around her. When the Tomoe-studded staff struck the ground heavily, an echo burst from the web of cracks.

"Silence!"

The pressure poured down as though it were tangible, and the nearest ninja's knees slammed uncontrollably into the ground. Awed by this power beyond the mortal realm, everyone fell silent at once.

She hovered in the center of the pillar of light in the posture of a judge. Her gaze passed over Hashirama Senju's ashen face and Madara Uchiha's tense body as she said, "In the name of the Six Paths."

Her voice reverberated in the depths of every soul. "Today, this thousand-year conspiracy will come to an end."

She tapped her staff, and a three-dimensional projection made of Chakra appeared on the ground. The entire process of Black Zetsu tampering with the stone tablet unfolded like a scroll.

How that pitch-black shadow had infiltrated the shrine late at night, how he had used Yin Release Chakra to distort the inscription, and how he had disguised himself as the ancestors of the Uchiha and Senju to spread lies.

In the posture of a judge, she ordered the Senju and Uchiha brothers to convene a trial to trace the memories to their source.

They were to reveal to the world Black Zetsu's thousand years of crimes, from tampering with the stone tablet to sowing discord.

This trial was not only the prelude to the alliance, but also the key to her carefully laid plans: the healing ritual that had lasted two hundred days and nights.

In truth, it was a sacred preparation made to sever the thousand-year curse of kinship entwining the Uchiha clan.

When Black Zetsu's sinful memories were fully unearthed, it would be time for her to lift the Uchiha's curse.

Only then did the Senju brothers understand that those seemingly ordinary hours of treatment had long since silently rewritten the course of fate.