Summer, Year 14 of Konoha.
On the surface, Toyotomi Yinglang's original body lived an uneventful life in Konoha.
He attended the necessary meetings on time, dealt with the Inspection Office's toothless inspections, and handled the Toyotomi Clan's increasingly complicated but now routine affairs, playing the part of a promising young clan leader who was somewhat aloof but behaved "properly."
But deep within his heart, where no one could pry, his contemplation and exploration of something far grander and more fundamental than Konoha's power games had never stopped.
Especially after that unrestrained release of power on the British Continent had confirmed that his strength had reached the threshold of Super Kage, a more fundamental question had shadowed him, entrenched in his mind-where did he go from here?
Super Kage was already the stuff of legend in the Shinobi World, the level of Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha.
But that was nowhere near enough. Especially after vaguely sensing that higher beings might exist behind the Shinobi World, like those eyes in the "Pure Land," and after learning of the distant, terrifying threat called the "Ōtsutsuki," a Super Kage was merely a large fish ruling its own pond. Once that pond connected to the ocean, it would become prey.
He needed a more fundamental evolution, one that would let him touch the level of the "Six Paths."
But where was that path?
There were only a handful of known, clearly defined routes to advancement, and almost all were out of his reach.
Receiving power from the Sage of Six Paths? Yinglang scoffed inwardly. *That was a cheat prepared for the children of destiny, the reincarnations of Asura and Indra. What did I, Toyotomi Yinglang, count as? A soul from another world, an Uchiha "traitor," an "ambitious schemer" who established his own clan. An