Aoba did not hurry back to the base in the Land of Bears. Instead, he planned to stop by Orochimaru's place and see whether there were any surprises.
It was also time to inform Orochimaru of his next plan.
However, just as he was about to reach the Land of Rice Fields, he received a summons from Akatsuki.
If his guess was correct, Nagato was about to show off his strength.
Aoba smiled faintly, changed into the [Crimson Blademaster] skin, and injected chakra into the ring.
His Astral Projection immediately appeared on the finger of the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path.
He looked around. Almost everyone had arrived.
The Eight-Tails Jinchuriki was lying in the empty space to one side.
What surprised Aoba more was that Pain's Heavenly Path had already been repaired so quickly. He just did not know whether the other Paths had found suitable replacements.
But it probably had not been difficult. Given the abilities of Nagato and Konan in this world, finding several roughly suitable ninja corpses should have been easy.
As Aoba's thoughts wandered, he felt Pain's gaze pause on him for a moment before Pain said, "Since everyone is here, let's begin preparing to seal the Eight-Tails."
Kakuzu immediately chimed in, "As expected of the leader. You completely destroyed Kumogakure with a single move and captured the Eight-Tails Jinchuriki. That was truly frightening."
After all these days, everyone present had heard something about what happened to Kumogakure. Some had even witnessed its miserable state firsthand, so naturally, none of them contradicted Kakuzu.
To be honest, quite a few people had been waiting to see the result of the leader acting personally.
They just had not expected it to be so shocking.
With that, Yasuo's earlier defeat of the Five Kage no longer seemed