He gently pressed the tip of his blade against the Three-Tails' brow.
There lay the tailed beast's chakra core-and the center of his consciousness.
"Relax."
Liuyu's voice traveled through his reiatsu, reaching directly into the depths of the Three-Tails' consciousness.
"Let me see..."
"What color your 'heart' really is."
The blade of Kyoka Suigetsu lit up with an eerie purple glow.
The Three-Tails' single eye flew wide open.
He felt something forcibly invading his consciousness.
It was not genjutsu.
It was not hypnosis.
It was something more brutal, more direct-
Spiritual Invasion.
Uchiha Ryūha's consciousness sank.
It crossed the boundary between reality and the mind, plunging into a deep, lightless sea.
Isobu's mental world was an ocean of ruins shrouded in eternal darkness.
Jagged coral stood silently in the undercurrents like the skeletons of colossal beasts.
Broken shells and white bones littered the seabed, each piece carrying fragments of memories from a thousand years of being sealed, exploited, and hated.
A thick mist permeated the water. It was not water vapor, but loneliness and resentment made tangible.
Liuyu's spiritual body floated at the center of this mental ocean, his white robes drifting gently in the invisible currents.
His presence was like a star cast into stagnant water, instantly stirring the entire sea.
"ROAAAR!!!"
A low roar came from the deepest reaches of the abyss, shaking the coral apart and sending the currents surging backward.
Isobu's true form manifested in his mental world-larger and more ferocious than he was in reality.
Phantom black chains coiled around his body, scars left on his soul by generations of seals.
His single eye fixed on Liuyu, burning with a thousand years of accumulated rage and hatred.
"Uchiha brat..." His voice sounded like ten thousand tons of seawater grinding together, muffled and terrifying. "You'll