The tenth step after entering the passage - Boruto later thought it was probably the tenth step, but he was no longer sure. At this point, the concept of "number of steps" itself became suspicious, like trying to measure a dream with a ruler.
The soles of his feet touched the ground, but there was no sound. He tried to exhale, but he couldn't feel the temperature of the air flow. He raised his hand to confirm his position. Where was his hand?
Vision still exists, but there is no "thing" to see in front of us. This is not darkness - darkness is at least a texture, a filling in the absence of light. The "nothing" here is more thorough, it is not even absent, but just... absent. It is like someone trying to describe a concept, but halfway through the description, he finds that even the concept itself has been dissolved.
"Shiki." He shouted deep in his consciousness.
The response came slower than usual, like a signal traveling through some viscous medium. "I'm here."
"How are you doing there?"
"... Affected." Shi's voice carried a rare hesitation, "My existence is dependent on your consciousness, but your consciousness is-"
"Drain?"
"Being assimilated," Shi corrected, "Not dissipating, but being assimilated into this nothingness and becoming a part of it."
Boruto stopped. Or rather, he thought he had stopped - in this place where spatial reference was lost, the boundaries between "stop" and "move" were equally blurred. There should be Naruto, Sarada and Yamada behind him. He shouted, "Dad, are you still there?"
The sound had no echo. It just disappeared, like a drop of water falling into dry sand, being sucked dry instantly without leaving even a trace of moisture.
Then Naruto's voice came from a certain direction. The distance could not be determined, and the tone was filled with suppressed discomfort. "In this place..." He paused, as if looking for a suitable comparison object, "It's more uncomfortable than Infinite Tsukuyomi."
Boruto suddenly wanted to laugh. Infinite Tsukuyomi - It was the largest illusion in history Shinobi World, which once put billions of people into sleep at the same time. And his father used it as a reference, with a bit of complaint in his tone, as if comparing two bowls of unpleasant miso soup which was saltier.
"Dad, you have to keep talking."
"What did you say?"
"Whatever. Say anything. Let me know where you are."
The silence lasted for about two seconds. Then Naruto spoke, with a certain kind of deliberate ease in his voice. "... Your mother asked me to remember to bring things when I go back. I didn't memorize the list, and I can't remember it now. I'll probably get scolded when I go back."
Sarada's voice came out from another direction with an incredible tone. "Uncle, are you talking about this now?"
"It's appropriate," Boruto said, the corners of his mouth raised unconsciously, "It's very appropriate. Continue, Dad."
"There seems to be soy sauce," Naruto was silent for a while, as if he was trying to salvage something from the ruins of memory, "There is also a seasoning that your mother said I couldn't remember the name of, but I didn't listen carefully at the time... It seems to be used to make some kind of soup. She just made it last week, and I ate three bowls..."
In this way, the three of them relied on a grocery shopping list to maintain each other's presence in this void. Yamada was always silent, and his footsteps - if they were indeed footsteps - were as regular as some kind of timing device.
Time loses meaning here. Boruto didn't know how long he walked, it could be minutes or hours. Until some kind of "change" appeared in front of him - not light, but an indescribable "density". The nothingness itself began to show layers, and the "nothing" in one area was thicker than others, pressing on his consciousness, creating a strange illusion: he was not walking forward, but falling inward, sinking into the interior of a certain core.
The guardian is there.
It has no form. In other words, its form is the "formless" thing itself. Boruto stood in front of the denser void and felt that his thoughts were being slowly sorted out and examined by some kind of force. Shi said one word in his mind:
"Ask it."
"What to ask?"
"Whatever. It doesn't care about the content, but it does care about the way you ask the question."
Boruto thought for a while. In a place like this, routine questions seemed ridiculous. He finally spoke, his voice hoarse than he expected. "Do you have a name?"
There was no response from all around.
Then, something passed directly through his consciousness - not a sound, not an image, but closer to a kind of "impression", like a red-hot seal pressed on wax, directly engraved into the bottom layer of cognition:
[Names are tools of distinction. There is no distinction here.]
Boruto digested this information and felt slightly dizzy. "So you think all things are the same?"
[All things end up in the same state. This is not a belief, it is a fact.]
"Then the difference between us now--"
[Temporary.]
Boruto turned back. Yamada didn't know when he was already standing behind him. His white eyes reflected the dense nothingness. His expression was concentration that Boruto had never seen before. It wasn't the piety of a believer facing a miracle, but the gaze of a researcher when facing a precious sample - calm, precise, and with some kind of measurable enthusiasm.
At that moment, Boruto felt an inexplicable palpitation in his heart. He suppressed this premonition and did not say anything.
Boruto didn't express that hunch.
He continued to have that strange "dialogue" with the guardian - if imprinting at the level of consciousness can be considered a dialogue. The guardian's logic showed a terrifying self-consistency: it was indifferent to everything, because in its cognitive system, existence and death are just two ends of the same process, with no distinction between superiority and inferiority, and no distinction between precedence. Birth and death are not opposites, but different scales of the same cycle.
[There are traces of God in your blood.]
Boruto didn't expect it to take the initiative to mention this. "Can you see it?"
[Nothing can be seen here. But you "exist" here, which in itself is proof. The other three are dissipating.]
Boruto turned around suddenly - Naruto and Sarada were indeed still there, but their outlines became blurred, like a photo taken when the camera was out of focus, and the edges began to smudge and melt outward. Naruto pressed his hand on the kunai, and the golden Chakra is circulating on the surface of the body, which is the power of Nine-Tails, which is forcibly anchoring his existence. Sarada's Sharingan is rotating in the dark, and three Tomoe are rotating at high speed, using Dojutsu to maintain the sobriety of consciousness.
"Dad!"
"It's okay," Naruto gritted his teeth and squeezed his voice out from between his teeth, "You continue, this consumption... you can handle it."
Yamada showed no sign of dissipating at all. He stood there, Byakugan staring at the void in front of him, his lips moving slightly, as if he was silently counting some kind of beat, or performing some kind of mental arithmetic.
Boruto turned back and spoke to the thick nothingness, "You mentioned traces of God. Are you a part of God?"
[It is a remnant. After God fell into sleep, his consciousness was fragmented, and I was one of them.]
"Then do you know God's current state?"