Preparing to Start Round Two

Everyone filed through the passage Uchiha Chen had opened and entered Kaguya Otsutsuki's dimension. Hashirama Senju, the First Hokage, was the last to go. Once everyone else had entered, he turned to Uchiha Chen with a complicated expression.

He had deliberately waited until last because there were still some things he wanted to ask Uchiha Chen. Standing at the entrance to the black hole, he hesitated, then finally said, "Anyway, thank you for everything you've done for the Ninja World."

Uchiha Chen looked at Hashirama Senju indifferently and replied casually, "You don't have to thank me. I have my own reasons for doing all this. It wasn't simply because I wanted to help you."

"Whatever kind of person you were in the past, at least you're on the side of the Ninja World now. That's enough." Hearing Uchiha Chen's words, Hashirama Senju let out a wistful sigh. As if something had come to mind, he nodded in agreement.

Chen remained calm and said nothing in response to Hashirama Senju's sigh.

That was true. Who in the Ninja World didn't have a past? Forget everyone else—even he and Madara Uchiha each had their own baggage.

As the Sage of Six Paths had said, they had fought for more than a thousand years as the reincarnations of Asura and Indra. They had struggled endlessly, and so much time had passed. Hashirama Senju was dead, and Madara Uchiha was dead too. What was there left that they couldn't let go of?

As a dead man, what position did he have—or what right—to demand that Uchiha Chen do even more? He wasn't like Tobirama, who couldn't rest even in death and was always looking for trouble.

What Tobirama hadn't considered was just how much the dead could really accomplish. The younger generation had its