"When a child goes out into the world, how he fares is up to him. As long as he survives, we needn't interfere too much. Send him back."
Inside Fire Cloud Cave, the old man in coarse linen waved a hand as though shooing away a fly.
The Ōtsutsuki God stood in the cave, bewilderment filling his enormous golden eye.
He looked around. Murals were carved into the cave's stone walls.
Their rough, ancient lines depicted giants, floods, dragons, and fire.
A few people sat around a stone table atop a mountain, apparently drinking tea and chatting.
"He's called the Ōtsutsuki God, is that right?" The old man turned toward him, his gaze calm. "I see that young fellow's sword has some connection to my Xuanyuan Sword. I'll give him a little help."
He raised a hand and waved it once, as casually as if he were shooing away a fly.
The Ōtsutsuki God felt an irresistible force envelop his body.
The force had no attributes, no fluctuations of law, not even any form of energy he could comprehend.
It simply existed and pushed him out.
"No..." The Ōtsutsuki God tried to resist. His Root Algorithm ran at full power. Omnipotence, Clairvoyance, Malice Rebound, Divine Karma—he activated every ability at once, but against that force, they were like a sheet of paper set before a bulldozer.
"Ant." The old man did not spare him another glance.
The Ōtsutsuki God was pushed out of Fire Cloud Cave. Then he felt the entire world rushing backward.
Time reversed, space folded, and dimensions contracted. His body was compressed into a streak of light that raced upstream along the River of Time, crossing 1.2 billion Causality Threads, endless barriers of ages, the void, Star Domains, and Black Holes.
He was back in the present,