The Real Mastermind

"Do you also think there's something wrong with the Sage of Six Paths?" Nagato said with a bitter smile. Before, he'd thought he was just overthinking things. "There are some things I hadn't planned to tell you at first because they're very difficult to explain. As far as I know, Naruto is supposed to be the reincarnation of the Sage of Six Paths' younger son."

Strictly speaking, Naruto only had Asura's Chakra. But in this world, Chakra and the soul were intertwined, so either way of putting it worked.

"I see." Konan closed her eyes and thought for a while. "Then what impression did the Sage of Six Paths leave on you?"

In Konan's eyes, Nagato had witnessed the Sage of Six Paths' will with his own eyes, so his impression of it mattered most.

"My impression?" Nagato gave a cold laugh and shook his head.

To him, as someone who'd crossed over, the Sage of Six Paths had always been a positive figure: an old man who gave the protagonist cheat codes and saved the world at a critical moment.

But after becoming Nagato and gaining all his memories, he'd started to feel more and more like the Sage of Six Paths was the biggest mastermind behind this world's events. His reaction was much like Konan's when she learned that the Sage of Six Paths' will still existed.

He'd discovered a strange fact: those who'd never fallen into the trap and those who'd been in it all along had completely different experiences.

Black Zetsu had told Sasuke and Naruto that he'd shaped the entire history of the world's shinobi by altering the stone tablet the Sage of Six Paths had left behind. Since Sasuke and Naruto had never fallen into the trap, they'd immediately believed him and accepted that Black Zetsu was the real mastermind. But the truth was, they weren't involved themselves, so they couldn't know what those who'd been manipulated into the trap had really felt.

There was a huge gap between the objective facts and people's subjective understanding of them. People like Sasuke and Naruto knew about the Sage of Six Paths and Black Zetsu, but they weren't involved like Nagato and lacked the firsthand understanding that came with it. Meanwhile, people like Madara and Obito had been involved, but didn't know the full story about the Sage of Six Paths and Black Zetsu. So in the end, none of them could see the whole plan. Only Nagato, who had both all the information and the firsthand understanding of someone involved, could see the entire scheme.

Put simply, when Nagato realized Black Zetsu was bragging about having tricked everyone, he understood that the people he was bragging to—Sasuke and Naruto—had never been tricked in the first place. They had no firsthand experience or understanding of what had happened, so they believed him immediately.

But people like Nagato, who'd actually been tricked, knew very well that they'd trusted the Sage of Six Paths from beginning to end. It was only after thinking things through with "sound" logic that they came to believe in and carry out the Eye of the Moon Plan. Black Zetsu had nothing to do with it. That was the key to understanding the whole affair.

What was Black Zetsu, anyway? Just a shadow lurking in secret. Nobody took him seriously. Madara had only brought him out at the very end, when he was on the verge of death. Nagato and Obito had never trusted him either. And what was the stone tablet? Just a lifeless object. Nagato and Obito hadn't even seen it at first, so how could they have believed in it?

So in truth, they hadn't trusted Black Zetsu or the stone tablet at all. Naturally, they couldn't have been deceived by either of them.

That was the key to making sense of all the information based on the understanding of those who'd been involved.

Looking at his past experiences, why had he and his companions never thought the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path might bring disaster upon them, even though any normal person would have seen it and thought it was evil? Why, even when Nagato had suffered because he summoned the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path, had nobody ever thought of destroying it?

Was it because of Black Zetsu or the stone tablet? How could it be? They'd never even seen those two things.

The reason was simple: the statue had been summoned by Nagato's Rinnegan, and the Rinnegan was the same kind of eye the Sage of Six Paths had possessed. That was why people trusted the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path. It was also the real truth behind this entire scheme.

The Sage of Six Paths held a position of such lofty stature that everyone who knew of him regarded him as a god. He had founded the Ninjutsu Sect and was the first person to unravel the truth of Chakra. He was a monk, a saint who had spent his life working for peace in the world.

That was the halo surrounding the Sage of Six Paths, and the established impression everyone in this world had of him.

Even though a thousand years had passed and the Sage of Six Paths' deeds had become legends, his image had still been passed down through the ages, taking root in the hearts of everyone who knew of him.

So for people like Madara and Nagato, who possessed the Rinnegan, how could the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path, summoned through the power of that eye, possibly be a problem?

After all, the Sage of Six Paths stood for justice, and his Rinnegan had been used to save the world. How could the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path, summoned through the Rinnegan, not be just? And since the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path was the Ten-Tails' husk, its only purpose was to revive the Ten-Tails. Bringing the Ten-Tails back to life was the obvious next step. The Sage of Six Paths had been the first Ten-Tails Jinchuriki, after all. What could possibly be wrong with someone who possessed the Rinnegan trying to become a second great Sage of Six Paths?

Then came the implementation of the Eye of the Moon Plan. Infinite Tsukuyomi was a technique cast by the God Tree summoned by the Ten-Tails Jinchuriki.

If they started with the premise that the Sage of Six Paths was righteous and thought it through, everyone involved would see that there was nothing wrong with any of it. The Infinite Tsukuyomi Plan couldn't possibly be flawed. That was the logic those involved followed.

So if someone had told Madara Uchiha in advance that his plan was flawed and he was being led into a trap, Madara might have let out a Uchiha-style laugh and said the person's words were hilarious—that he, Madara Uchiha, would name that joke the strongest of all. Then, the moment he finished laughing, Black Zetsu would have stabbed him in the back and killed him.

When Nagato thought of how Black Zetsu had finally stabbed Madara in the back and given him the "Black Zetsu heart-piercing," leaving him wide-eyed with a vacant expression, Nagato nearly burst out laughing, even though he was still in the middle of serious thought.

And when he recalled that Madara had been loudly proclaiming himself the savior just a second before Black Zetsu stabbed him to death, Nagato found it even harder to hold in his laughter.

The Uchiha Clan really was easy to trick. Black Zetsu had gotten that part exactly right. Whenever they got taken down a peg, they had a strangely satisfying air about them. To put it bluntly, the Uchiha Clan was just born to get smacked around.

As Nagato kept thinking, he suddenly snorted with laughter. Seeing Konan look at him in confusion, he could only shake his head and say, "Sorry, I just remembered something funny." After doing his best to regain a serious expression, he answered Konan's question. "I think your intuition is right. There's definitely something wrong with the Sage of Six Paths."

He could now say with absolute certainty that the Sage of Six Paths was the real mastermind. Nobody else in this world was qualified to be.