Chapter 627: Naruto: I Want Revenge!

The Sage of Six Paths was genuinely confused.

All he wanted to do was give Naruto the Six Paths Yang Power so that, after reviving, Naruto could stop his mother from returning.

So why was Naruto resisting so desperately?

But beauty was always in the eye of the beholder.

To the Sage of Six Paths, Naruto was the Child of Prophecy destined to bring peace and create a world where humans and Tailed Beasts could coexist harmoniously.

He was also the reincarnation of Asura, Hagoromo’s favorite son.

So in Hagoromo’s eyes, if Asura’s reincarnation spared an enemy, that was compassion and kindness.

If Asura’s reincarnation killed an enemy, that was decisiveness—eliminating future trouble before it could grow.

If Indra’s reincarnation spared an enemy, however, that was foolish softness and hypocritical sentimentality.

And if Indra’s reincarnation killed an enemy, then clearly he had been blinded by hatred and violence and failed to understand the importance of unity and love.

Thus, after staring at Naruto’s terrified refusal for a moment, the Sage of Six Paths actually smiled in satisfaction.

“Good. Very good.”

“As expected of Asura’s reincarnation. You aren’t remotely tempted by power.”

“If this were Indra, he probably would have accepted immediately.”

“Naruto, you’re doing very well.”

“…”

Naruto couldn’t care less about whatever nonsense the old man was saying.

He just kept backing away while frantically looking around for a way out.

Under his breath, he was muttering things like “character creation” and “confirm,” leaving Hagoromo completely unable to understand what he meant.

Watching Naruto lose focus reminded Hagoromo of Asura from long ago.

Compared to his diligent, talented older brother Indra, Asura had indeed been careless and lazy.

“Naruto, look at me.”

“I’m going to pass the Yang Power to you. You must use it properly and stop my mother, Ōtsutsuki Kaguya, from being revived!”

The Sage of Six Paths raised his staff.

An invisible force seized Naruto’s body and forced him to face forward.

The instant Naruto felt himself being restrained, memories of the cavern returned—

the Adamantine Sealing Chains pinning him in place,

his body completely unable to move.

And then Naruto processed what the Sage had just said.

He wanted to give him what?

Yang Power.

That phrase sounded suspicious as hell!

Naruto might not have read as much questionable material as Kakashi, but he had definitely read at least half as much.

Otherwise, there was no way his signature techniques would have developed into so many bizarre variations over the years.

So Naruto was quite familiar with the vague euphemisms novels sometimes used when they wanted to avoid saying certain things too directly.

And Yang Power sounded exactly like one of those deliberately suggestive terms.

“NO!”

“You creepy old bastard! Let me go!”

Naruto thrashed wildly, shaking his head.

“What do you mean, ‘creepy old bastard’? That’s going too far!”

The Sage of Six Paths immediately looked displeased.

He could tolerate nearly anything from Asura’s reincarnation and the Child of Prophecy—

but Naruto couldn’t just insult his character like that!

Even if Hagoromo might once have done some questionable things, he was appearing now as a dignified sage beyond worldly concerns.

How could Naruto immediately drag up embarrassing implications from the past?

“Too far?! I’m going too far?!”

Naruto snapped.

“You old bastard, let me go and fight me one-on-one!”

He was furious.

He had already been subjected to enough suspicious nonsense involving the Sage of Six Paths, and now the old man wanted to forcibly inject some so-called Yang Power into him—

yet somehow Naruto was the one being accused of going too far?

Was there no justice left in the world?

“Oh?”

“So that’s what you’re thinking, Naruto.”

The Sage of Six Paths misunderstood completely.

He assumed Naruto was deliberately provoking him.

Still, Hagoromo decided to play along.

It would be useful for Naruto to experience Six Paths-level power firsthand anyway. That kind of experience might help him against future enemies.

And once Naruto understood just how overwhelming Six Paths power was, surely he would stop resisting the Yang Power Hagoromo intended to give him.

“Very well, Naruto.”

“Within this mental space, I’ve restored your strength to the strongest state you’ve ever possessed.”

Hagoromo waved his staff.

The force restraining Naruto vanished, and at the same time, Naruto’s condition was completely restored.

Naruto landed on the ground.

He rolled his shoulders, clenched his fists, and felt power surging through his body.

Then he slowly looked up at the Sage of Six Paths.

“You creepy old bastard…”

“You want to give me your Yang Power?”

Naruto’s eyes burned with fury.

“Then let me clear out your channels first!”

Naruto was genuinely angry now.

The Sage had given him a chance to retaliate.

There was no way Naruto was wasting it.

Outside the illusion, the audience immediately became excited.

Was Naruto finally—

finally—

going to actively fight back against someone bullying him?

Even if this particular incident was mostly a misunderstanding?

If that was all it took, they wished they had known sooner.

If this kind of situation was enough to make Naruto genuinely angry, they could have arranged it ages ago instead of wasting so much time.

Kushina in particular regretted everything.

She had been responsible for designing much of the early storyline, yet almost all of her elaborate scenarios had accomplished absolutely nothing.

Even with Heaven’s Will guiding events so that Naruto discovered his mother in all kinds of suspicious situations, it had failed to produce even the slightest desire for revenge.

Naruto had actually gone out of his way to help push things along.

So after all that—

his mother could do whatever she wanted, but the moment something happened directly to him, suddenly that was unacceptable?

Kushina didn’t necessarily think that meant Naruto was selfish.

After all, her Engraved Tsukuyomi counterpart hadn’t been forced into anything.

Everything had been consensual—

or perhaps not even mutually consensual in that direction, considering there was a decent chance illusion-Kushina had been the one pressuring Makoto.

So when Kushina thought about it carefully, Naruto really hadn’t had much reason to be angry on her behalf.

As for why Naruto was furious when his own dignity was threatened…

Maybe it wasn’t selfishness at all.

Maybe he was simply enraged that something reserved exclusively for Sasuke was about to be taken away.

As for Naruto experiencing something unpleasant inside Engraved Tsukuyomi, Kushina didn’t find that fundamentally unacceptable either.

For a fictional character, certain irreversible humiliations could be worse than death.

Death could be undone through resurrection.

But once something irreversible became part of their history, it remained there permanently, even across time and space.

That was why those kinds of plot developments were so universally hated.

Naruto, however, wasn’t a fictional character to them.

He was real.

For him, Engraved Tsukuyomi was ultimately just an extremely stupid dream—

or perhaps a nightmare.

Possibly both.

Either way, nobody would treat what happened inside an illusion as literally real.

Even Naruto himself only experienced it as real while trapped inside the illusion.

Once he woke up, he would understand that none of it had actually happened.

The only meaningful difference between an illusion and an ordinary dream was this:

A dream could only show you things your own mind already had some basis for imagining.

Genjutsu had no such limitation.

What appeared inside a genjutsu depended not on the victim, but on the person casting it.

That meant genjutsu could genuinely expose someone to unfamiliar situations, knowledge, and experiences.

Dreams generally couldn’t change a person in that way.

Genjutsu could.

That was precisely why Naruto and Obito had been sent into Engraved Tsukuyomi in the first place.

As for whether the experience might leave behind some strange preferences or psychological scars?

Nobody particularly cared.

When Itachi repeatedly blasted Sasuke with Tsukuyomi, he certainly hadn’t stopped to consider his younger brother’s mental health.

In a shinobi world where people could be physically wiped out at any moment, worrying too much about psychological well-being almost seemed extravagant.

“Prepare yourself, you creepy old bastard!”

Naruto formed countless shadow clones.

In an instant, the entire mental space was packed with Narutos.

Every single clone formed the same hand seal.

And every single one had only one target—

the exact same point.