The air in the Alternate Space abruptly froze. Isshiki slowly relaxed in the darkness, but his lowered hand still gripped the chakra rod.
He had confirmed the identities of the two presences!
His clansmen!
"These two presences feel a little unfamiliar, yet a little familiar. Who could they be?"
He slowly paced over to the chair at the center of the space, rested his fingertips on its back, and bent his knuckles slightly to tap it twice.
For the moment, he really could not remember who these clansmen were.
The arrival of his clansmen should have been what he longed for in his most desperate days, when he had been gravely wounded by Kaguya's surprise attack and was living inside Jigen.
Back then, day and night, he had hoped the Ōtsutsuki Main Family would sense something amiss and send someone to investigate.
Yet only now, a thousand years later, had two clansmen arrived.
"What a coincidence," Isshiki murmured, his expression cold.
Neither earlier nor later, they had arrived at precisely this moment.
Having experienced Kaguya turning against him, he no longer naively believed that clansmen could simply form alliances.
The rules of the Ōtsutsuki Clan were etched into their very bones and blood!
Power was authority, and the fruit was the goal!
Had he been at his full strength, he might have greeted these two juniors with a superior air.
But Jigen's shell was close to giving out, and the God Tree had not been successfully planted. Though the Karma mark remained, it ultimately could not restore him to his prime in the shortest possible time.
If his clansmen saw through his wretched condition, their seizing everything he had by force was an almost foreseeable outcome.
Isshiki closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he had