The wind was even stronger atop the bell tower, whipping Naruto's clothes loudly in the breeze. The unlit cigarette between his fingers had already been crushed into a V shape.
"Afraid the world won't be chaotic enough?" Orochimaru repeated Naruto's words as if he had heard an utterly absurd joke. He chuckled softly, his shoulders trembling more and more violently.
"Naruto, you seem to have misunderstood me."
Orochimaru turned around and braced both hands against the railing, looking down at the city below, which had just endured a life-and-death ordeal. His voice was no longer sinister. Instead, it carried an eerie calm, almost like that of a philosopher.
"I seek immortality so that I'll have infinite time to explore the truths of this world, learn every jutsu, and unravel the ultimate mysteries of chakra. This world is my playground, and my laboratory."
He suddenly turned his head, his gaze as sharp as a blade. "If this world turns into a senseless, writhing lump of rotten flesh, then what meaning is there in the truth I pursue? If all its colors are covered by that disgusting purple-black hue, won't my 'immortality' have to be spent in a garbage dump?"
Naruto fell silent.
That was indeed Orochimaru's logic. An extreme egoist could never tolerate his private property—in other words, this "world"—being destroyed by an uncontrollable outside force.
"Something like Kabuto..." Orochimaru's face revealed undisguised disgust, as if he had spotted a fly on a spotless tablecloth. "That's an insult to the words 'evolution.' Crude, chaotic, and utterly devoid of beauty. He thinks it's power granted by a god, but to me, it's nothing more than the excrement of a deranged mind."
"That's why I can't let him destroy this place." Orochimaru extended his slender tongue and licked his lips. "At least until