The instant Li sent out his chakra, his expression changed. He sensed that Nagato was not hiding atop the mountain as he had in the original story. Instead, Li could clearly feel it—Nagato's chakra was directly beneath his feet. That was right. The source of the signal was beneath his feet!
At that same instant, Li's vision blurred. When he came back to his senses, he was no longer standing amid Konoha's ruins. He was now perched atop a tree.
Li twitched his nose and pulled out the iron rod that had just pierced his body.
This was not the real world, so many things could not be explained through ordinary logic. Now that he had killed Pain, had the environment directly dragged him here?
But what use was there in placing him here? Nagato, whose body was already half-crippled, plus Konan.
Could they stop Li? If Nagato had been in his prime, Li figured he would have needed to avoid him. But now... Hmph!
Li stomped down, and the enormous tree below, formed from Konan's paper Ninjutsu, instantly turned into countless scraps of paper. Konan and Nagato were immediately exposed before Li.
Yet what made Li's expression shift slightly was that Nagato was not inside that special apparatus at all. He was slowly pulling the spikes of the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path from his body.
There was no trace of frailty or age on his face. His complexion was rosy, and his entire body seemed full of vitality.
At the same time, massive amounts of chakra continuously spilled from his body. This feeling...
Nagato in his prime? According to the normal storyline, when Nagato was young, he had forcibly used the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path against Hanzo of the Salamander, severely draining his life force.