Beneath Amegakure in the Land of Rain lay the hidden stone grotto where Nagato, Yahiko, and Konan were temporarily staying.
The air was still damp, carrying the scent of earth and stone, but compared with the despairing silence of before, there was now a faint yet genuine stirring of new life.
Nagato sat against the stone wall, his face still pale. He had yet to recover from the enormous strain of having his eyes gouged out and new ones grown.
But his new eyes, with their dark red base and three slowly revolving, dim black tomoe, no longer held the Rinnegan's hollow divinity. Instead, they were filled with exhaustion and pain, yet also carried an unusually resolute light, as though the fog had parted and he could see the road ahead.
He had just briefly explained to Yahiko and Konan some of his reasons for making the insane decision to "gouge out his eyes and replace them"-mainly the Rinnegan's hidden dangers and the possibility of being controlled-leaving them deeply shaken and filled with lingering fear.
"Now..." Nagato's voice was still somewhat hoarse. He looked questioningly at Toyotomi Yinglang, who stood quietly nearby. "You said... the Evil God has temporarily deterred the outside world, giving the Land of Rain a chance to breathe? Because of that... 'blasphemous' aura?"
Toyotomi Yinglang nodded slightly. "Correct. The Evil God's very existence is a 'foreign body,' a 'source of contamination,' to the Shinobi World's current chakra system and the Pure Land. The nature of his power-chaos, blasphemy, pain, distortion-is incompatible with the relatively 'orderly' chakra circulation and Pure Land reincarnation system established by the Sage of Six Paths, even if that order rests on a cruel truth. It could even be regarded, to some extent, as a 'natural enemy' or a 'rejection reaction.'"
He paused,