Nagato went numb.
It was as though someone had struck his soul with a heavy club, leaving him utterly frozen.
He sat rigidly in his mechanical chair, his frame sickly and emaciated, his eyes vacant, as though his soul had been hollowed out.
He sat there, stunned.
For the first time, he truly understood what it meant to have the will, but not the strength.
It was an almost despairing sense of defeat, the gut-wrenching realization that his ideals could never bear the weight of reality.
At that moment, Nagato finally understood.
This was true power.
Absolute, overwhelming power that could overturn the rules of the entire world without needing tailed beasts as a deterrent.
No need to rely on lightning or Kamui.
Yemu was the embodiment of that power.
By comparison...
The "divine Six Paths" he controlled and his so-called "peace plan" were nothing more than a child's kingdom of building blocks before Yemu-impressive only on the surface, ready to collapse at the slightest push.
"What exactly do you want?"
Deva Path Pain knelt on the ground, his voice thick with barely suppressed, teeth-grinding fury.
But where was his dignity as a "God" now?
He had not knelt in surrender.
Rather-
Yemu's terrifying repulsive force, seemingly descending from the heavens themselves, had already pinned his entire body down.
Like a mountain bearing down on him, it dragged both his body and his will into the abyss.
That repulsive force kept him from lifting even a single finger.
Countless stones tumbled from the collapsed ground beneath him, dust billowing. His knees were already buried deep in the earth, like a shattered divine statue crashing to the ground.
"What do you want me to do?"
Yemu descended slowly, his toes lightly touching the ground, yet he seemed like a deity