"So?"
Madara looked at Kabuto, sandwiched between two others, and asked flatly with his arms folded.
"I want to know a great many things."
Orochimaru looked at Madara without a change in expression, a flash of fervor crossing his golden snake eyes.
"You? A great many things?"
Madara's fingers lightly traced Kabuto's neck, as though he could crush it in his hand at any moment.
Black Zetsu was not particularly worried about that. In a sense, he was a liquid organism, after all, and was not all that afraid of physical attacks.
He also had no neck in the true sense.
Compared with having control of the body stolen by a snake, he was actually more inclined to have Madara kill Kabuto outright.
After all, if word got out that Orochimaru had outmaneuvered him despite his thousand years of life, it would be rather embarrassing.
Still, that thought was only a momentary impulse. Both Madara and Black Zetsu clearly understood one thing.
Kabuto could not die.
The battles ahead still required Madara's presence.
If Kabuto died, the Impure World Reincarnation would be undone, and Madara was not certain whether he could remain here then.
He did have an inkling of a solution. It seemed he could retain his soul using the Rinnegan.
But he did not know whether his body would collapse once the technique was undone.
"That's right."
There was no fear in those golden snake eyes, though that made sense, since this was not Orochimaru's real body.
"How exactly were creatures like White Zetsu created?"
"What exactly is the origin of the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path?"
"What is this guidance from the Sage of Six Paths you spoke of?"
"And..."
Orochimaru paused, then slowly asked his final question.
"How did your Rinnegan come into being?"
As