Orochimaru stood where he was, silent for a long time.
He had once been confident in his talent.
Ninjutsu.
Forbidden techniques.
Bloodline limits.
Souls.
Bodies.
There was almost nothing he could not learn, and nothing he dared not research.
Even after Konoha branded him a missing-nin, even after he abandoned his original body, he had remained convinced that he would one day grasp eternity.
Yet standing before Lie Yang, he felt absurd for the first time.
The talent he took such pride in amounted to nothing.
Lie Yang had not spent years accumulating power.
He had not endured decades of grueling effort.
Nor had he encountered any bottleneck he could not overcome.
Every time they met, the other man stood at an even greater height.
From the formidable Uchiha missing-nin whose strength could still be understood within the framework of shinobi, to the man who defeated the Fifth Hokage and earned the title of Pale God, and now to someone with the power to overpower even the Rinnegan head-on.
Lie Yang's rate of growth could no longer be described as genius.
Even the figure revered throughout the Shinobi World as the God of Shinobi would probably be nothing more than a towering mountain left over from a bygone era before Lie Yang.
And Lie Yang had long since crossed it.
"You've broken through again."
Orochimaru finally spoke.
His voice carried a complexity he could not suppress.
Lie Yang nodded.
"You could say that."
"You could say that?"
Orochimaru repeated the words quietly, then suddenly laughed.
"Every breakthrough you make is like crossing an entire era."
Lie Yang did not respond to that remark.
Orochimaru did not dwell on it either.
He looked toward Amegakure, a hint of curiosity in his slit pupils.
"How is Nagato?"
"He's alive."
Lie Yang's answer