Hagoromo and the Sage

Setsuna rode piggyback on Shōgatsu as they entered the clan territory, glancing around without spotting any traces of battle.

The thatched roofs were completely intact, the pounded-earth paths were clean, and bamboo drying trays holding herbs still rested on the wooden racks to both sides. Sunlight streamed in from the east, coating the clan territory in a warm golden halo.

Everything appeared completely peaceful.

Only the lingering scent of burning in the air reminded Setsuna that a Fire Release technique had indeed recently run amok in this place.

Setsuna figured it out within a moment: this was the result of Spatial Distortion. Buildings were rendered intangible, allowing the flames to pass through the outlines of the structures without leaving any marks behind.

Carrying him, Shōgatsu walked with extreme caution.

Everything in the clan territory had turned into a maze under the influence of an array. The wooden corridors quietly shifted their direction, and familiar alleys instantly led to unfamiliar paths.

As he walked, he released chakra, letting those ripples spread out along the ground to notify the elders maintaining the array of his arrival.

The scene before his eyes suddenly shifted like a stirred curtain, revealing the real road.

An Uchiha ninja with three-tomoe Sharingan appeared before them.

"Follow me."

Carried on Shōgatsu's back, Setsuna felt that looking like this in front of a fellow clansman was extremely humiliating. He squirmed, leaned close to Shōgatsu's ear, and lowered his voice: "Put me down."

Shōgatsu lightly patted Setsuna's bottom: "I'll put you down when we get there."

Setsuna puffed out his cheeks in dissatisfaction.

Shōgatsu chuckled softly.

Carrying Setsuna, Shōgatsu followed the Uchiha ninja through several gates.

Every time they passed through a gate, the scene before them quietly transformed.

Beyond the first gate lay a long wooden corridor. Beyond the second gate stood an empty courtyard, and beyond the third gate was a row of abandoned storehouses...

Setsuna clung to Shōgatsu's back, his one-tomoe Sharingan slowly spinning as he rapidly analyzed the structure of this array in his mind.

This was a maze formed by the overlapping of five layers.

Each gate was an independent illusory maze, and within each maze, there was only a single gate of life.

Taking a single wrong turn would result in being teleported to another space, trapping one forever in the crevice between reality and illusion.

Only by continuously passing through five gates of life and finding the sixth gate leading to reality in the fifth maze could one reach the true Hagoromo Clan Territory.

Six gates.

Six Paths.

And the name of the Sage of Six Paths was Hagoromo Otsutsuki.

Setsuna's pupils constricted slightly.

The Hagoromo clan truly were descendants of the Sage of Six Paths. This clan name was not chosen at random; it pointed directly to the man who had created Ninshu.

However-

In the game's background lore, the Sage of Six Paths had only two children: Indra, who inherited the Yin Power, and Asura, who inherited the Yang Power.

Indra's descendants were the Uchiha, while Asura's descendants were the Senju and the Uzumaki.

Where on earth did this "Hagoromo," who inherited the name of the Sage of Six Paths, come from?

Setsuna's brow furrowed tighter and tighter.

No, that wasn't right.

He had seen other characters related to the Sage of Six Paths in the game-Kinkaku and Ginkaku of Kumogakure.

Those two brothers, clearly labeled in their character card art as possessing the "bloodline of the Sage of Six Paths," not only inherited the treasures of the Sage of Six Paths, but had also consumed the flesh and blood of the Nine-Tails, using the power of the Nine-Tails as their own.

In other words, other bloodlines of the Sage of Six Paths existed.

Pushing further back-

The Sage of Six Paths distributed chakra to the members of Ninshu, thereby giving rise to ninjas. All the clans left their clan crests on the stone wall of Ninshu. That was the starting point of the ninja clans, and so many clans had been there from the very beginning.

The Hagoromo should have existed since that time as well.

Judging by their power, the Hagoromo were indeed not as formidable as the Uchiha and the Senju.

Although their intangibility ability was strong, it leaned toward defense and support, lacking front-line overwhelming destructive power. Compared to the Uchiha's Sharingan Perfect Susanoo and the Senju Sage Body's Wood Release: True Several Thousand Hands, they fell short by more than a single order of magnitude.

Could the Hagoromo therefore be illegitimate children of the Sage of Six Paths?

But if that were the case, how did the Hagoromo become in-laws with the Uchiha?

The Uchiha and the Senju were mortal enemies, yet the Uchiha and the Hagoromo were allies through generations of intermarriage.

The objects with whom the Uchiha were willing to have two successive clan heads intermarry had to share compatible bloodlines-they had to be clans that provided bonuses to Sharingan pupil power and enhancements to Uchiha bloodline traits.

Therefore, a bloodline resonance existed between the Hagoromo and the Uchiha.

Setsuna felt like his brain was about to overload.

The events of a thousand years ago were hardly explained in the game, and the background story of the Hagoromo clan did not mention a single word about it. The full picture of the truth had likely been smeared, altered, and mythified countless times by the clan histories of various families over those thousand years.

Forget it, he wouldn't think about it anymore.

Anyway, this was already a tangled mess of past accounts from a thousand years ago, utterly useless to him now.

His attention returned to the array before him.

Five mazes plus a sixth gate of life, with six spatial layers nested inside one another.

Maintaining an array of this magnitude required not only chakra, but also an extremely precise perception of space.

The coverage areas and specialized spatial types of the Heavenly Eyes belonging to the five Hagoromo elders differed, and only by combining the five of them could this great net be woven.

Being able to trap Fuma elites to their deaths inside it proved that the foundation of the Hagoromo was indeed profound.

After passing through yet another gate, the Uchiha ninja pushed open a wooden door, allowing Shōgatsu and Setsuna to enter.

Setsuna was finally let down from the back.

The world before them was the real world.

The buildings had been ravaged by Fire Release, the ground was pitch black, and the air was filled with the scent of scorched flesh.

The scale of this Fire Release was almost comparable to Madara Uchiha's Majestic Demolisher Flame.

Tsk, what was so great about Madara Uchiha? Setsuna curled his lip in disdain inwardly.

It seemed that even though intangibility made things appear capable of passing through everything within its domain, the effects of Fire Release still persisted in reality.

Setsuna saw the corpses of the Fuma clan ninjas.

The sixteen Fuma ninjas whom Izuna had let in to lure the enemy deep, except for the three sent out as bait, were all right here.

Setsuna counted carefully-only seven were still alive.

The rest had suffered utterly gruesome deaths, instantly burned to cinders.

Setsuna swallowed hard.

For the first time, he truly confronted the power of this jutsu.

In the game, when Blast Wave Wild Dance hit a target, the health bar merely dropped by a chunk, and the character emitted a muffled groan-nothing more.

He had even turned the tables on opponents while at death's door; as long as the health bar hadn't hit zero, the combat power of the character would not suffer any discount.

Right now, however, what he saw was a Fuma ninja whose Water Formation Wall had been burned right through by Fire Release.

Not even ashes remained of that person, leaving behind only a single charred human silhouette on the ground.

Setsuna's eyelids twitched.

Shōgatsu performed hand signs.

Moist, soft soil surged up from beneath the charred ground, covering those surviving Fuma ninjas.

The soil adhered to the scorched skin, rapidly solidifying into a layer of grayish-white mud upon contacting the blood and oozing fluids.

Setsuna looked at him in confusion: "What are you doing?"

"Stopping the bleeding, easing the pain, and preventing them from escaping," Shōgatsu explained.

"They're the enemy." Setsuna widened his eyes.

"Not necessarily," Shōgatsu said. "The truce agreement between the Hagoromo and the Fuma hasn't been torn up."

Before Setsuna could speak, another voice had already spoken for him.

"They launched an unprovoked attack against the Hagoromo Clan Territory first-didn't they tear it up unilaterally?"

Izuna's voice rang out.

Setsuna turned his head to look.

Izuna nodded in greeting to the guiding Uchiha ninja and walked toward them.

Facing Izuna, Shōgatsu remained neither servile nor overbearing: "This is the purpose of my coming here. First, I hope the clan head will consider signing a peace treaty with the Senju. Second..."

"I do not agree to turning the clan territory into a trap and executing an ambush to slaughter the Fuma or the Blood Horse."