The Real Body Arrives

Xiaonan's real body stood inside the Paper Tree. Her eyes widened slightly as she watched the Animal Path suddenly appear before her amid the rising white mist. She had no idea where Nagato's real body had gone.

"Nagato, what are you doing?" Xiaonan asked, frowning in confusion.

The Animal Path stood motionless, ignoring Xiaonan. Nagato needed to focus his attention on Konoha right now and had no time to explain.

At that moment, inside Konoha, a red-haired Nagato suddenly appeared before Naruto, who was undergoing a Tailed Beast Transformation. Looking at the nearly solid Nine-Tails Chakra enveloping Naruto, he stretched out both hands and activated his ability.

"Preta Path!"

A suction force far greater than Pain's erupted from his hands. The Nine-Tails Chakra surrounding Naruto turned into streams of blood-red vortexes, which Nagato absorbed. They flowed through his hands and into his body.

The sound of the Summoning Technique as Nagato appeared made Toad Shima, not far away, struggle to lift her head. When she saw someone new on the battlefield, her startled gaze briefly held a glimmer of hope, but quickly turned to terror.

Shima had been hoping that reinforcements had arrived to help Naruto. Instead, she saw Nagato in profile: his emaciated body, the long Black Receivers embedded in his back and forearms as if in some form of self-torture, and the skull-like side of his face beneath his dry red hair. His sunken eye sockets held the fearsome Rinnegan.

"That's the real body behind the Pains!"

The moment she saw those eyes—the ones that sent a chill deep into her bones—Shima immediately recognized Nagato.

What terrified her even more was the slight curl of Nagato's lips. He looked almost as if he were happy about something.

The Nine-Tails Chakra that had been surging skyward from Naruto and radiating powerful waves in every direction had now become a colossal vortex, red with black at its heart. With terrifying suction, Nagato drew it into himself like a whale sucking in water.

Compared to the immense mass of Chakra pouring from the Nine Tails, Nagato's body looked tiny. Yet he absorbed the Nine-Tails Chakra like a bottomless black hole, and as it poured into him, his presence grew more and more overwhelming.

Before Shima's horrified eyes, Nagato's body, once little more than skin and bone, rapidly filled out as he absorbed the Nine-Tails Chakra. It gradually became solid and powerful.

His muscles grew increasingly vigorous, radiating vitality, and even his skin became lustrous.

The dry red hair on his head seemed to come alive. It grew longer and longer, moving without any wind. Gradually, it took on the same sinister red glow as the Nine-Tails Chakra, black at its core, filling anyone who looked at it with dread.

Even more terrifying to Shima was the fearsome Rinnegan on his face. As his body recovered, the power of his eyes grew stronger and stronger.

That oppressive ocular power seemed almost tangible. A cold metallic glint shone from the Rinnegan, giving Shima the dreadful feeling that one look from those eyes would kill her.

"No, this can't go on! Naruto, wake up!"

Ignoring the Black Receivers still stuck in her body, Shima shouted with all her might, trying to rouse Naruto's will and make him stop Nagato from absorbing the Nine-Tails Chakra.

Unfortunately, Naruto had long since lost his reason. His vacant eyes were like two enormous white holes, and he didn't react at all to Shima's cries.

"How could this happen?"

Watching Naruto become a miniature Nine Tails, pinned to the ground as Nagato absorbed his Chakra, Shima finally understood why the Pains had deliberately provoked Naruto earlier. They had wanted to make him unleash the Nine-Tails Chakra sealed inside him so their real body could absorb it.

The Nine-Tails Chakra had originally been sealed inside Naruto using the Uzumaki Clan's Four Symbols Seal. Unless someone broke this powerful Sealing Jutsu unique to the Uzumaki Clan, they couldn't take the Nine-Tails Chakra inside it. But Pain's provocations had made Naruto release the Nine-Tails Chakra himself, which was tantamount to opening the Four Symbols Seal of his own accord.

It was like taking the treasure inside a safe and placing it right in front of an enemy. He had fallen completely into their trap.

The Pains were already so powerful that there seemed to be no way to deal with them. Now their real body had gained the Nine-Tails Chakra and was growing even stronger. To Shima, the sight was like a nightmare.

"Could the prophecy be wrong? Could little Jiraiya be wrong too? Is Pain's real body the Child of Prophecy?" Shima had never been entirely convinced by the Great Toad Sage's prophecy. Now, seeing Nagato's strength and ruthlessness, she couldn't help wondering whether Mount Myoboku had been right or wrong to put its faith in Naruto.

No matter how she looked at it, Nagato, with his Rinnegan, was far stronger than Naruto.

"As expected of the Nine Tails!"

While Shima's spirits sank lower and lower, Nagato's smile gradually widened.

Just as he'd expected, if his body in the Impure World Reincarnation state in the original story could recover by absorbing the Eight Tails' Chakra, then his body, still alive now, would benefit even more from Tailed Beast Chakra.

In both quality and quantity, the Nine-Tails Chakra was far superior to the Eight-Tails Chakra. All you had to do was compare the presence of the two Jinchuriki when they unleashed six tails to see that the Nine Tails and the Eight Tails were in completely different leagues. The vitality contained in the Nine-Tails Chakra was also beyond anything the Eight-Tails Chakra could match. Once Nagato absorbed this powerful, vibrant life force, it quickly made up for his body's deficiencies.

If an ordinary person tried this, they would likely be unable to withstand the overwhelming power of the Nine-Tails Chakra. But Nagato possessed a Sage Body. He could even endure the side effects of having two Rinnegan, let alone this amount of Nine-Tails Chakra.

Now, stimulated by the Nine-Tails Chakra, the cells in Nagato's body were like withered trees in spring, once more brimming with vitality. Some of his tissues and organs had grown numb and partially lost sensation after being connected to the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path for so long, as well as operating through the Pains. They, too, began to warm up again, growing sensitive and active.

His back and arms in particular, the places where Black Receivers had been inserted for so long, began to itch and ache more and more as his body awoke. He felt an overpowering urge to pull every Black Receiver out of himself.

"Not yet. I have to endure a little longer."

He had wanted to pull out the Black Receivers in his body for a long time, but this clearly wasn't the moment. The Nine-Tails Chakra was powerful, but it still hadn't healed his legs. Since he still lacked mobility, he needed the Pains' assistance for now.