On the Ōtsutsuki Homeworld, inside the towering Temple that seemed capable of piercing the starry vault itself, an eerie silence hung in the air.
The air was filled with a faint, cold fragrance, incense refined from pure chakra. It smelled expensive, but carried a suffocating, deathly stillness.
That silence was like a sinister wind trapped in a graveyard for thousands of years, chilling people to the marrow.
At the center of the Temple hall, an interstellar projector crafted from some unknown translucent crystal, a hundred meters long and wide, flashed with urgent red light.
The points of light flickered wildly, as red as pools of freshly spilled ox blood that had yet to congeal.
"What is going on?"
A figure seated high above suddenly slammed a hand against the armrest.
The armrest, polished from some kind of pure white alien jade, shattered with a crack beneath the blow. Several irregular fragments fell to the floor with piercing clatters.
This was Yume, a "Divine Envoy" of the Ōtsutsuki Clan.
His face was as white as freshly applied wall putty, and his flawless Byakugan were fixed on the coordinates of the rapidly fading red dots.
"Momoshiki and Kinshiki, those two pieces of trash, took an entire expedition squad with them. How the hell did they all go dark ten minutes ago?"
Several Ōtsutsuki attendants below were kneeling on the ground, each too terrified to even breathe loudly.
One of them had taken a sip of the specially supplied energy slurry with its cloying sweetness. Now, out of nerves, he let out a burp that carried a chemical stench.
The moment the smell emerged, a guard in a long black robe beside him glared it back down.
"Lord Yume, the signal sent back from the planet marked as a 'low-grade chakra source' appears