Black Zetsu Was Puzzled: How the Hell Had History Changed?

Drip.

In the cold, damp underground cavern, droplets struck the protruding stalactites with heavy splashes.

The faint candlelight flickered.

Black Zetsu's half of a body, black as ink, lounged lazily against the stone wall.

It was in a good mood.

Ever since its mother, Kaguya, had been sealed away by those two unfilial sons, it had endured for a full thousand years in the ninja world like a rat in a gutter.

Tampering with the stone tablet, driving a wedge between Indra and Ashura, fooling Uchiha Madara.

The Eye of the Moon Plan.

This was the perfect script it had written with a thousand years of painstaking effort.

Now, all the pieces were in place.

That foolish kid Nagato was raising the Rinnegan for it in the Hidden Rain Village.

That idiot Obito, blinded by hatred, was using Madara's name while doing its dirty work outside.

"The Uchiha Clan over in the Leaf Village should be nearly driven mad by now, right?"

An ugly smile split Black Zetsu's mouth.

"Give them a little more heat. Have Obito fan the flames, and the night of the clan massacre will be just around the corner."

Pop.

The earth churned.

A head that was half black and half white, with leaves like a Venus flytrap, emerged from underground.

"Hey! Black Zetsu!"

A carefree smile covered the pale half of White Zetsu's face.

"I just came back from gathering intelligence outside. Guess what? It was even more exciting out there than having diarrhea!"

Black Zetsu frowned in displeasure.

"Shut your mouth."

"No matter how chaotic things are outside, they're all within my calculations."

Black Zetsu extended a pitch-black hand. "What about the intelligence from the Leaf Village? Hand it over."

White Zetsu spat out a thick stack of scrolls from its pitcher plant, still covered in some unidentified slime.

"Here, it's all here."

"But I suggest you prepare yourself first. This intelligence... is a little strange."

"You're making a fuss over nothing."

Black Zetsu snorted coldly, wiped away the slime in disgust, and tore open the first scroll.

Its eyes quickly swept over the page.

After reading only two lines—

The black half of Black Zetsu's face suddenly twitched.

It rubbed its eyes, leaned closer, and read it again.

"The Uchiha Clan... defected en masse?!"

Black Zetsu shrieked, its voice as shrill as a rooster being strangled.

"They fled to the Hidden Stone Village?! And Ōnoki gave them houses and money?!"

It grabbed White Zetsu by the collar.

"How the hell did you useless trash gather intelligence?! You dared send back such bullshit?"

"Are the Leaf Village higher-ups dead?! What about Danzō? He let the Uchiha leave?"

White Zetsu aggrievedly pried Black Zetsu's hand away.

"The intelligence is absolutely genuine!"

"Not only did Danzō fail to stop them, his arm got stomped to pieces in public, and he shit himself."

Black Zetsu stopped breathing.

What the hell was going on?

If the Uchiha had fled, how would Obito collect Sharingan in the future? How would he create the hatred born from the clan massacre?

It frantically tore open the second scroll.

The next second, Black Zetsu felt as though its brain was aching.

"The Nine-Tails jinchūriki, Minato Namikaze... isn't dead?!"

"Not only is he alive, he took that newborn Nine-Tails brat and defected to the Stone Village together?!"

Black Zetsu collapsed onto the ground.

The script was wrong!

It had clearly been secretly fanning the flames behind the Nine-Tails incident. How could Minato have survived?

If the Nine-Tails was protected by the Stone Village's thorny turtle shell, how would the Akatsuki Organization catch the tailed beasts in the future?!

"There's more, there's more!"

White Zetsu, delighted by the spectacle, eagerly handed over the third scroll.

Black Zetsu accepted it with trembling hands.

After one glance, it was so furious that it nearly spat blood.

"Orochimaru fled the Leaf Village, moved into the Stone Village, and became the chief of the Supreme Scientific Research Institute?"

Black Zetsu viciously smashed the scroll onto the ground and stomped on it twice.

"Wasn't that bastard Orochimaru supposed to be recruited by Obito and become a lackey for the Akatsuki Organization?!"

"Why did he run under Ōnoki to do some bullshit research?!"

Everything was a mess.

All of it was fucking chaos.

Black Zetsu clutched its head and spun around the cavern like a headless fly.

A thousand years of scheming.

A thousand years of planning!

It had even slipped past the Sage of Six Paths' watchful eyes. How had the plot turned into an unleashed wild dog that could not be pulled back at this final step?

"No, something is definitely wrong."

Black Zetsu forced itself to calm down, its yellow eyes fixed on the scrolls on the ground.

It picked up the three intelligence reports again and cross-referenced them word by word.

The Uchiha's defection.

Minato's rescue.

Orochimaru's recruitment.

At the end of every report concerning these three seemingly unrelated major events, there was one name that could not be avoided.

Uchiha Yoru!

"Who is this kid?"

Black Zetsu gritted its teeth as it frantically searched its memories for that name.

Nothing.

In the Uchiha Clan genealogies of the past several decades and the intelligence archives on ninja throughout the generations, this person named Yoru seemed to have appeared out of thin air.

Before the Nine-Tails incident, he had merely been an insignificant genin in the Guard Force.

But after that night, he seemed to have become a different person. Not only had he torn the Death God apart with his bare hands, he had even dared to confront the Third Hokage head-on.

Even an old fox like Ōnoki, who would not act without profit, had been completely brought to heel by him.

"Could he be some monster that crawled out of nowhere?"

Black Zetsu's heart lurched, and an unprecedented terror crawled up its spine.

It had lived for far too long. What it feared most were unforeseen variables.

And this Uchiha Yoru was practically the ancestor of table-flippers!

"No matter who he is, I cannot let him ruin Mother's grand plan of resurrection!"

Black Zetsu's gaze turned incomparably sinister.

The Eye of the Moon Plan had reached its most critical stage, while the Akatsuki Organization had yet to gather enough money and manpower.

If the Stone Village was allowed to grow at a time like this, they would never get their hands on the Nine-Tails in this lifetime!

"White Zetsu."

Black Zetsu turned its head, its voice as cold as ice chips.

"Where is that idiot Obito right now?"

White Zetsu scratched the white half of its head.

"He's been hiding in the Kamui dimension lately, sulking."

"Apparently, because Minato didn't die, he thinks his plan has suffered a setback, and he's gotten a little depressed."

"Sulk my ass!"

Black Zetsu cursed irritably.

"The mess is already piled up at our doorstep, and he's still wallowing in self-pity!"

Black Zetsu's body began to slowly melt into the rock beneath its feet like molten asphalt.

It had to act personally.

"No. I have to make Obito test Uchiha Yoru's true capabilities—and take back that Nine-Tails brat while he's at it!"