Madara looked at Ryuto, his eyes with their six concentric rings showing little emotion.
Hashirama shouted from behind him, "Madara! What the hell are you trying to do?!"
Madara ignored him.
Izuna called out too, "Brother! Your eyes... those are..."
Madara still ignored him.
He just watched Ryuto.
"Ever since you turned into that golden-haired form," Madara said, "I knew I couldn't beat you anymore."
Ryuto said nothing.
Madara continued, "I couldn't accept it. But there was nothing I could do. That power of yours is completely different from chakra. I tried analyzing it, tried finding a weakness. I couldn't find one."
He took a step forward.
"After we went to the moon and entered that Otsutsuki place, I saw something in the Ancestral Shrine." Madara pointed at his eyes. "The stone statue of Hamura Otsutsuki was holding a stone tablet. I looked at it with my Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan. There was writing on it."
Hashirama frowned. "A stone tablet?"
"Yes," Madara said. "I could read it. It said, 'Only by combining the sage body and the sage eye can one become a complete sage and transcend the cycle of reincarnation.'"
Izuna froze. "The sage body... and the sage eye?"
Madara nodded. "You and that Tobirama speculated before that the Senju Clan and the Uchiha Clan were probably both descendants of the Sage of Six Paths. Taking what those Otsutsuki on the moon said into account, that should be right."
He paused.
"The sage eye is our Uchiha Sharingan, evolved to its limit. The sage body is your Senju Clan-or rather, that absurd vitality and physique of yours, Hashirama."
"I asked Izuna. He couldn't see it. Only my Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan could decipher it. I thought something was wrong. There was definitely something fishy about that tablet. But..."
He clenched