Mangekyō Kamui: A Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast's Sacrifice

Madara Uchiha saw that the Golden Hawksbill Turtle King actually had the courage to challenge him, and his interest was piqued.

Unfortunately, this creature was far too weak.

Though he was a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast, Madara Uchiha had already scanned him with his Rinnegan and seen straight through him.

He was all bark and no bite; a green-gold stone had long since drained the essence from his flesh and blood.

This must have been the Gold of Life Lin Chen had mentioned.

At this point, he was like a corpse wearing a shell. Even if he managed a brief burst of power, he would crumble at a single blow.

"With only that much strength, you dare dance before me?"

Madara Uchiha gave a derisive laugh. Ripples spread through his Rinnegan, and an invisible surge of Soul Power poured out like a tide, enveloping the Golden Hawksbill Turtle King in an instant.

The Golden Hawksbill Turtle King's mind went blank. The next moment, he lost all control of his body.

His entire body had slipped beyond his command. He struggled desperately, trying to unleash the might of a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast and break free.

But that ocular power locked his consciousness in place, leaving him unable to move even a single claw.

"Wh-what have you done to me?"

The Golden Hawksbill Turtle King was terrified, his voice trembling.

He had lived for tens of thousands of years and weathered every storm imaginable, but he had never seen anything like this.

This helplessness was more crushing than facing Beast God Di Tian. At least when he sensed Di Tian's presence, he could still flee.

Against Madara Uchiha, he had no room to resist at all.

"Before the eyes of the Uchiha, all resistance is meaningless."

Madara Uchiha spoke evenly, without the slightest ripple in his voice, as though stating a simple fact.

"Now I command you to sacrifice your soul, Soul Ring, Soul Bone, and all the essence of your flesh and blood to my true body."

At those words, resistance immediately flashed across the Golden Hawksbill Turtle King's face.

"Impossible! Absolutely impossible!

A Soul Beast's sacrifice requires its willing consent. I would never willingly sacrifice myself to him."

"Ah, I forgot."

Madara Uchiha shook his head.

"Make it a sincere, wholehearted sacrifice as well."

Madara Uchiha's words fell like an imperial decree.

Under the Rinnegan's absolute control, the Golden Hawksbill Turtle King's gaze gradually went vacant despite his resistance. Then he slowly turned toward Lin Chen, his eyes filled with devotion.

Yes, devotion.

Once the Rinnegan, the higher form of the Uchiha's Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan, forcibly rewrote his will, that devotion was utterly sincere.

"I, the Golden Hawksbill Turtle King, willingly offer myself as a sacrifice."

His voice was slow but clear, each word seemingly forced out, for by then he had completely lost consciousness.

The instant his words fell, dazzling light erupted from the Golden Hawksbill Turtle King's body. The sacrificial domain opened.

His soul and flesh dissolved into crimson blood energy that filled the entire cave in an instant.

The absolute stasis domain of a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast's sacrifice activated, and the whole world seemed to turn black and white.

Lin Chen, Tang Ya, and the weaker Golden Hawksbill Turtles in the cave were all frozen in place.

The only ones who could move were the Golden Hawksbill Turtle King at the heart of the sacrifice and Madara Uchiha, who was not alive. His Impure World Reincarnation body was not bound by such ordinary rules.

As the sacrifice began, the Golden Hawksbill Turtle King broke down into three treasures. Beyond the blood essence filling the air, there was a hundred-thousand-year Soul Ring, a hundred-thousand-year Soul Bone, and a piece of green-gold metal.

A terrifying surge of life energy poured out from it, spreading wildly in every direction.

In the heart of the Star Dou Great Forest, beneath the still surface of the Lake of Life...

An enormous figure lay coiled in the lake's deepest depths. It was Beast God Di Tian.

He was the undisputed overlord of the Star Dou Great Forest: an eight-hundred-and-thirty-thousand-year-old, top-tier Ferocious Beast, the Golden-Eyed Black Dragon King.

He had been cultivating beneath the lake when his eyes suddenly snapped open, blazing with terrifying golden light.

"The aura of the Gold of Life!"

Di Tian's voice rang out, brimming with anger and excitement he could barely contain.

"I've finally found you!

The little thief who stole my Gold of Life was hiding at the very edge of the Star Dou Great Forest?

No wonder I couldn't find you."

Several thousand years ago, while he and all the forest's top-tier Ferocious Beasts were absorbing the Sky Dream Ice Silkworm's life essence, a Soul Beast had slipped into their lair at the Lake of Life and stolen a piece of Gold of Life.

He had turned the forest's core and Mixed Zone upside down, even searched its outer reaches, but found no trace.

Now the aura of the Gold of Life had appeared.

Roar!

Di Tian unleashed a deafening dragon roar. The waters of the Lake of Life exploded skyward.

His dragon body, thousands of yards long, burst from the lake, blotting out the sky.

The next moment, he became a dark figure two meters tall. He tore open space and stepped into the rift. In a few breaths, he had crossed from the Lake of Life to the outer edge of the sacrificial domain surrounding Lin Chen.

He made no attempt to conceal his presence. Every Soul Beast in the outer reaches lay prostrate, not daring to breathe.

Di Tian's aura was simply too terrifying.

His eyes fixed on the crimson sacrificial domain ahead.

Within it, he clearly sensed a presence from the forest: a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast, two humans, and a dead man.

Di Tian's pupils contracted sharply. A dead man?

He sensed no living aura from Madara Uchiha, yet Madara Uchiha was alive right now.

Interesting. Everything here is strange.

The Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast offering himself as a sacrifice had to be the little thief who had stolen his Gold of Life.

His Gold of Life was still intact, and it had even grown larger than it was several thousand years ago.

That creature had failed to refine the Gold of Life after all these millennia. What a worthless fool.

And now he seemed to have lost his chance at revenge. The bastard had already sacrificed himself.

Other than reclaiming his Gold of Life and killing these humans to vent his anger, there seemed to be nothing he could do.

Damn it!

Damn it all!

He had to admit he was truly furious.

This was the first time in a hundred thousand years that he had been this angry.

He could not even tear the creature he had hunted for millennia limb from limb. The thief had already sacrificed himself completely and become a Soul Ring.

Madara Uchiha sensed Di Tian the instant he appeared.

This one was nothing like the turtle before him. The power radiating from Di Tian was more terrifying than Madara's own had been when he was alive.

If Di Tian appeared in the Shinobi World, disaster would follow. Even the Sage of Six Paths probably could not defeat him.

But after his chakra had adapted to this world's system of power, Madara found that his eyes could do far more than before.

The man before him no longer seemed quite so terrifying.

An eager smile tugged at Madara Uchiha's lips.

"He's here. Finally, a worthy opponent."

"Focus on absorbing it, my true body. I'll go meet this one."