Ōnoki's gaze fell on Deidara again despite himself, his expression deeply conflicted.
On the Canopy Screen, the Deidara of the future had not only reached Super Kage Level—his ultimate move, C-Negative: Return of All Things to the Void, had enough power to shatter a planet! That was power at the threshold of the Six Paths!
Yet that was precisely why the mysterious and terrifying Nine Nether had placed Deidara ahead of even Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha on its future kill list!
He was considered an uncontrollable "ultimate source of contamination" that had to be eliminated first.
Power itself was neither right nor wrong, but power too extreme and uncontrollable invited destruction.
Ōnoki's heart sank. The Canopy Screen had shown precious little of Iwagakure's future. Apart from Deidara's earth-shaking end, almost no one had even been named.
That silence might itself be an ominous sign.
In a future of exploding technology, rampaging monsters, and secret organizations pulling strings from the shadows, could Iwagakure truly stay safe by clinging to tradition and keeping to itself?
The intelligence Hokage Tsunade had sent through an emergency channel a few days earlier resurfaced in his mind. "Jigen," a suspected member of Nine Nether, had already been sighted somewhere in the Shinobi World.
The invisible weight on Ōnoki's shoulders felt heavier than ever.
He looked at Deidara, still immersed in his own world of art and seemingly unconcerned with the looming danger, then out the window at the ancient, unchanging red cliffs.
The age to come really had changed. Too fast, and into something far too unfamiliar.
How was the lumbering ship that was Iwagakure supposed to find a course through this surging new tide without capsizing?
The Canopy Screen paid no heed to what anyone in the real world thought. It kept playing.
[After