"That was something to look forward to, then."
Shengu Xuan closed his eyes after saying that, treating the silence on the moon's surface as natural white noise. His chaos-colored eyes slowly rolled twice behind his eyelids.
Toneri said nothing more. Leaning against a rock, he watched the blurred figures of the two distant Otsutsuki inch toward the fissure, thinking that this farce was finally about to end.
But Momoshiki stopped.
His hand on Urashiki's shoulder suddenly tightened. The remaining Rinnegan patterns in his sole left eye flickered rapidly. He had sensed something: energy fluctuations rising from inside the moon beneath his feet, immense and steady, a hundred times more substantial than his total chakra reserves at his peak.
"What is that?" Momoshiki's voice rasped like grinding glass.
"Lord Momoshiki, we should leave." Urashiki's golden vertical pupils swept toward the fissure. He was far more clearheaded than Momoshiki.
"That's the power of the Ten-Tails." Momoshiki did not move. His left eye fixed on the lunar rock beneath his feet, his damaged Rinnegan desperately analyzing the energy signal surging up from underground. "The Ten-Tails' chakra core is right below us, and its energy output is completely open."
Urashiki's pupils contracted slightly.
"Lord Momoshiki, you're not thinking of..."
"As long as I absorb that core..." Momoshiki's voice trembled, whether from pain or some mad craving was impossible to tell. "I can recover-no, more than recover. The Ten-Tails' power is enough to awaken my Golden Rinnegan again."
"He won't allow it." Urashiki lowered his voice to barely a whisper.
Momoshiki turned to glance at the black-clad figure lying on the distant boulder, eyes closed, a grass stem between his lips, breathing as evenly as though he were asleep.
"He's resting." Momoshiki released Urashiki's shoulder and used what strength he had left to steady himself.