"Hyuga Seigo, who the hell are you?!" Black Zetsu's voice carried a barely perceptible tremor. His shadowy body twisted into an unnatural curve beneath the moonlight, as though he might dissolve into a puddle of ink and seep into the earth at any moment...
Qingwu tilted his head, looking puzzled.
"Hyuga Seigo, quit playing dumb..." Black Zetsu's voice shot up like a snake whose tail had been stepped on, its shrill edge bordering on hysteria. "Who the hell are you?! How do you know who I am?!" Violent chakra fluctuations surged from his body.
"Heh... Take a guess, Blackie." Watching the fear and wariness churn in Black Zetsu's eyes, Qingwu secretly reveled in it. The sudden explosion of negative emotion made the mist of Void on his shoulder sigh in satisfaction. He had clearly just enjoyed a hearty feast.
Black Zetsu roared, "What else do you know?! What else do you know?!"
With the cunning of a thousand-year-old fox, Black Zetsu should never have lost his composure so badly.
But his dread of the Sage of Six Paths and his brother, as well as the Ōtsutsuki Clan, had long since been etched into his very bones—
After all, either side could easily crush him, an "underdeveloped, prematurely created being."
For a thousand years, he had lived as though treading on thin ice, like a lizard hiding in a crack between rocks, carefully pulling strings behind the scenes.
Stirring up wars across the Ninja World.
Survival always came first. The moment anything went wrong, he fled, terrified of exposing himself.
His hand had been behind the Ninja World's wars for a thousand years, especially the conflict between the brothers Ashura and Indra.
And he had succeeded, even spending a thousand years "outliving" the Sage of Six Paths and his brother.
Only