"The signal has already been sent."
Shengu Xuan stopped at the edge of the fissure. He glanced back at Toneri, who lay on the lunar surface, as the golden ripples in his chaos-colored eyes slowly completed a turn.
"When was it activated?"
"The day Kaguya died." Toneri stared at the stars overhead, his voice flat, as though it had nothing to do with him. "The Tenseigan and the Altar are linked. The fluctuations produced when Kaguya's chakra dissipated triggered the Altar's emergency protocol, automatically sending a distress signal to the nearest Ōtsutsuki Homeworld."
"Distress?" Shengu Xuan spun the white sphere of light in his hand twice on his fingertips. "Whose help were you asking for?"
"Momoshiki Otsutsuki and Kinshiki." When Toneri spoke those two names, his tone was remarkably level, as if he were mentioning two strangers who had nothing to do with him. "They're this generation's harvesters from the Homeworld, specifically responsible for collecting the God Tree Fruits grown on various planets."
"Harvesters." Shengu Xuan repeated the word, one corner of his mouth twitching. "So your Ōtsutsuki Clan plants God Trees on different planets, then sends people to pick the fruit once it ripens?"
"That's an accurate understanding."
"Then roughly when will they arrive?"
Toneri fell silent for a few seconds, then gave an answer that would have stopped an ordinary person's heart.
"At the speed of interstellar teleportation, three days at the earliest."
"Three days." Shengu Xuan nodded without any particular reaction, as though he had merely heard that a package would arrive in three days. "All right. Let's sort out the Moon first."
He stopped looking at Toneri and turned toward the enormous fissure. After two steps, he stopped again and took the deep-purple Ten-Tails Orb and the white Tenseigan sphere of light out of his pockets,