Uchiha Minamoto sighed and said helplessly.
"This isn't the Pure Land. This is the Land of Iron.
"Those two across from you are your real companions, too, not illusions you imagined after your death.
"Yahiko, welcome back to the cruel reality of the Shinobi World."
"Reality?"
Yahiko turned his head.
Before he even saw Uchiha Minamoto, he first caught sight of a tuft of orange hair beside him.
And a face that was ninety-nine percent identical to his own.
Someone was imitating his companions, and someone else was imitating his face?
"How could this possibly not be a dream?"
Yahiko reached out a finger and poked the three [Chakra Black Rods] inserted across the bridge of Deva Path Pain's nose.
"Whoa~ What a cool look!"
Perhaps the sight of "Yahiko playing with Deva Path Pain" was simply too nightmarish.
So much so that even Konan's earlier fury faltered.
Even Uchiha Minamoto could barely bear to look.
Utterly speechless, he simply pulled Yahiko into a Genjutsu world and, in a compressed "this happened, then that happened" format, fed him everything Akatsuki had experienced in the years since his death.
Once he returned to the real Shinobi World.
Yahiko finally understood everything.
"So, Nagato, Konan..."
The complexity of Yahiko's expression went completely beyond what words could describe.
"It really is you, right?"
Uchiha Minamoto had never seen the expression on Naruto Uzumaki's face when he saw the resurrected Jiraiya.
But he felt that Yahiko's expression right now was probably much like Jiraiya's.
In other words.
Nagato's expression was much like Naruto Uzumaki's...
"Yahiko..."
The self-proclaimed god, the Second Leader of Akatsuki, seemed to turn back into that shy, introverted young man from years ago before the First Leader who had "returned from the dead," unable to get out even a complete sentence.