Uchiha Jian Zhen was stunned.
Itachi Uchiha could not help taking a step back.
"This is..."
"The Rinnegan."
Ren looked at the two eyes floating before him.
"The eyes Madara Uchiha once possessed."
Soft gasps rose all around them.
Jian Zhen stared at the two Rinnegan, shaken to his core.
Of course he knew what the Rinnegan meant.
They were the eyes of the Sage of Six Paths, a power capable of reshaping the Shinobi World.
With those eyes, no one had been able to stop Madara Uchiha.
Yet Ren held them suspended before his palm without showing the slightest fear.
Jian Zhen still could not understand.
"If you're confident you can stop Madara, why did you deliberately let him out?"
"Because stopping him isn't what I want."
Ren withdrew his hand, and the two Rinnegan vanished with it.
"I want to use him to draw out the real enemy."
Jian Zhen's frown deepened.
"The real enemy?"
"Madara isn't the source of this thousand-year conflict."
Ren looked toward the distant curtain of rain, his voice turning cold.
"Since the Sage of Six Paths died, the Shinobi World has endured countless wars."
"The Senju and the Uchiha fought. Villages slaughtered one another. Ambitious men rose in every era."
"But have you ever wondered why hatred always survives?"
"Why does every generation repeat the path of the last?"
Uchiha Jian Zhen fell silent.
He had lived through the Warring States Era.
Back then, the great ninja clans had killed one another over missions. Children had begun training almost as soon as they were born, then gone to war when they came of age.
Brothers died at the enemy's hands. Fathers died at the enemy's hands. Those who survived sought revenge.
Hatred flowed from one generation to the next.
"You're saying none of