Don't Stir Up Trouble

Not long after Shin left, within some inexplicable dimension...

It was abnormally gray and dim, seemingly devoid of any light. It was a cold world where everything had lost its proper warmth; even the sparse vegetation exuded a gray, deathly stillness.

A Long River of unknown origin ran across the entire world. A small boat ferried back and forth upon it without pause, receiving batch after batch of the dead.

Far along the riverbank stood a radiant mountain peak, perhaps the only place on this side of the river that possessed any light.

At the summit, an old man holding a staff looked at his younger brother and asked in puzzlement, "Just now, you rejected the summons from the mortal world?"

The sage in white glanced at his elder brother and replied calmly, "I wasn't interested. I'm already dead—I don't want any more ties to the mortal world. Besides, that ninjutsu just now gave me a bad feeling. I don't like people manipulating the dead without permission."

"Heh." The old man chuckled and did not pursue the matter. Yet inwardly, he murmured, That ninjutsu just now was rather interesting. Those little ones of the later generations aren't completely worthless after all. "Come to think of it, the chakra you left inside the moon reacted last time as well. The Otsutsuki Clan seems to have disappeared. You should have been able to use the chakra you left behind to send down some power, yet you made no move either." The old man spoke as though chatting casually, gazing into the distance. There, new dead constantly appeared, joining the ranks of the undead in a daze and heading toward the River Styx.

The sage in white sat cross-legged, his entire body floating in midair. His pure white eyes gazed toward the River