The Ōtsutsuki God lay sprawled in the Dark Matter Cloud, cracks splitting half his body as streams of divine light leaked out.
Those streams should have been dark red, but now they resembled diluted blood, so faint they were almost invisible.
For the first time, his enormous golden eyes held none of a god's arrogance. Only one thing remained: bewilderment.
He had lived for hundreds of thousands of years. He had devoured stars, harvested civilizations, and left legends of the Divine Tree and Karma across countless universes.
Yet now he lay in a Dark Matter Cloud he had torn apart himself, like a stray dog with its spine broken.
Naruto's figure was reflected in his enormous golden eyes. Naruto stood in the void, his blond hair whipping through the currents of chaos.
Five Eternal War Generals stood arrayed behind him, their oppressive auras piling into an invisible wall.
But what truly filled the god with dread was something deeper behind Naruto.
He could neither see nor touch it, yet his Heavenly Heart was frantically warning him that it came from Fire Cloud Cave.
"Your ancestors... who exactly were they?" The Ōtsutsuki God's voice was hoarse, each word forced through clenched teeth with flecks of blood. "The beings within Fire Cloud Cave were certainly not creatures of the Heavens! I crossed worlds and spacetime, traversing all the ages, yet never encountered powerhouses who transcended every rule like that!"
Naruto stood with his hands behind his back, the irreverent smile on his face slowly fading.
He remembered that old man, dressed in coarse hemp clothes and holding a wooden staff, who had sent the Ōtsutsuki God back with a casual wave.
The old man had not even given the Ōtsutsuki God a proper glance. It had been like shooing away a fly,