Nagato gritted his teeth, forcing out a cold voice through his throat. "Zetsu, what are you trying to do?!"
Black Zetsu ignored his question.
"Now, it's time for you to take the final step."
Black Zetsu's voice was abnormally clear amid the raging airflow, every word piercing his heart. "Once you finish this step, you can leave the stage first."
"What do you mean?" Nagato's eyes widened in fury.
The next second.
Black Zetsu's body peeled directly away from White Zetsu like a pool of viscous black tar.
The black substance raced along the Demonic Statue's surface, instantly climbing up Nagato's ankle and spreading wildly upward along his calf, thigh, and back.
In the blink of an eye.
Nagato's entire right side was completely covered by the pitch-black substance.
Nagato felt as though half his body had plunged into an ice pit. The force forcibly controlling his hand seals surged severalfold in an instant.
The Uzumaki Clan physique he had always been so proud of had become a puppet at someone else's mercy!
"Bastard!" Nagato roared.
A slit opened in the black substance covering the right half of Nagato's face, like a mocking mouth.
"Confused?"
Black Zetsu pressed close to Nagato's ear, his voice low, yet it exploded in Nagato's mind like thunder from the heavens.
"You thought the White Zetsu Cells you fused with were merely meant to strengthen your body and free you from that wheelchair?"
"That was a collar I put on you long ago!"
Nagato's pupils contracted violently.
White Zetsu Cells!
Back then, to make up for the life force he had overdrawn, he had followed Obito's advice and fused with Hashirama Cells and White Zetsu Cells.
So from that moment onward, he had handed his lifeline over to someone else!
"The Rinnegan in your eyes."