Naruto only felt his eyelids grow heavy, and gradually lost consciousness.
When he opened his eyes again, he discovered that he was neither in that laboratory nor in the sealing space where the Nine-Tails was imprisoned.
He was in a darkness.
He looked around. There was no sky, no ground, yet he could see roughly ten meters ahead of him.
"Strange, where exactly is this?" Naruto scratched his head and muttered to himself, "Shouldn't I be lying on an operating table, undergoing Gene Modification Surgery?"
Naruto looked down and saw that the blue surgical gown he had just changed into had also turned back into his usual orange tracksuit.
Naruto had no idea what was going on.
Then, the scene around him suddenly changed.
Naruto suddenly found himself inside a village.
"This is—" Naruto looked around. It was far too familiar.
He looked up and saw Hokage Rock in the distance, as well as the Hokage Office Building beneath it.
"This is—Konoha?" Cold sweat beaded on Naruto's forehead.
Yet the villagers on the surrounding streets seemed not to see him at all and walked straight past him.
"Um—" Naruto wanted to stop a villager and ask what was going on, only to find that the person passed directly through his body.
Every hair on Naruto's body stood on end.
Tap, tap, tap—
A set of footsteps came from behind him, and Naruto turned to look.
He saw a familiar figure walking alone down the road.
The surrounding villagers avoided him as though he were a rat in the street, then gathered in twos and threes to whisper among themselves.
"Why is this guy still in the village—"
"Exactly. He's the Demon Fox who killed Lord Fourth Hokage—why does Lord Third Hokage still allow him to live in the village?"
"Damn