The rescue ship did not take the white vessel away.
The crew rescued only the people aboard the merchant ship that had struck the reef, then deployed three buoys outside the turbulent currents.
The buoys did not emit chakra into the ruins.
They recorded only the tides, sounds, and fluctuations that naturally escaped above the sea.
This was the boundary set by the Land of Rivers Maritime Guild.
Until they had confirmed whether the other party wanted to leave, no Shinobi Village could turn a rescue into containment.
The six survivors were questioned separately.
The details they had seen differed.
One said the white figure had crawled out of the stone.
Another said it had been standing inside the hall all along.
Someone else insisted that when moonlight fell, the entire island seemed to come alive.
The recorder did not remove the contradictions.
He simply listed separately the parts that were identical across all six accounts.
The white vessel had rescued two sailors.
It had not attacked unprovoked.
It had said "moon," "unification," and "await the return."
When the shipowner asked what it was called, it had fallen silent for a long time.
Then it had asked a question in return.
"Who wrote the name into me?"
When Gen saw this sentence, he did not classify it as one of Black Zetsu's commands.
The first three phrases were fixed repetitions, and their order had never changed.
The final sentence, however, was a response to an outside question.
The two might have come from different levels.
One was a command that had been instilled in it.
The other might have been a judgment the vessel itself had only just formed.
Unable to make contact with the body itself, the medical team could only build a model from the sailors' close-range observations,