Chapter 398: Hooked and Reeled In

The way he fled contained none of the dignity or composure of an Otsutsuki. He was like a dog that had lost its home, desperate to tear open space and escape this world, which had suddenly become more terrifying than hell itself!

"He's trying to escape the world!!"

The people of the Shinobi World were shaken to their core. Although they had no idea what was happening, the soul-deep terror with which Haibai fled declared more clearly than any words just how terrifying the existence behind that "fishing line" was!

And on the battlefield, the Sage of Six Paths felt his heart sink the moment the fishing line appeared. A sense of mortal danger a hundred—no, a thousand—times stronger than what he had felt facing Otsutsuki Haibai seized his soul!

It was an instinctive terror—the fear of facing a natural predator, of facing some incomprehensible higher-dimensional existence!

Instinctively, even he felt the urge to retreat. The force field formed by the resonance of his Three Corpses Technique wavered for an instant.

Yet that dangling fishing line seemed completely uninterested in the fleeing Otsutsuki Haibai.

Its cold, gleaming hook seemed to "look" around—or perhaps it simply turned casually and indifferently in midair.

The next moment—

Whoosh—!

A faint sound of something cutting through the air.

The fishing line moved.

Not with speed, but with a kind of "arrival" that transcended the very concept of speed, as though it ignored the barriers of time and space altogether.

With the gentlest flick, it had already "appeared" before the chest of Hagoromo's true body. The purple radiance surrounding him, the Three Corpses force field, even the insight of his Rinnegan—all of it might as well have been completely transparent.

"How is this possible?!"

Hagoromo's face instantly turned pale as paper, his pupils contracting to their limits.

He hadn't even managed to see how the fishing line had approached. All he felt was a chill against his chest, followed by an absolute sense of helplessness—as though his very soul had been locked down and anchored in place!

The hook had silently and firmly "pierced" his body—not his flesh, but something deeper, as though it had hooked directly into the essence of his existence.

His soul core.

The source of his being, where chakra, natural energy, and his own will had fused together!

Life and death hung by a thread!

"AAARGH—!!!"

Under the unprecedented shadow of death, the Sage of Six Paths erupted with the most desperate resistance of his entire life!

The purple radiance of his true body blazed so fiercely it seemed ready to burn him away completely. His Rinnegan spun madly as he desperately tried to analyze and resist the invisible lock upon him.

His Good Corpse and Evil Corpse, whose auras had been thrown into turmoil, also gathered their strength again without regard for the cost, unleashing torrents of pure senjutsu light and destructive power at their absolute limits!

Countless powerful techniques—each capable of splitting mountains, shattering seas, even shaking space itself—rained down from three directions upon that slender fishing line and the silver ripples at its end!

This was a counterattack that staked everything—even the fate of the world!

And yet—

Faced with their combined assault, powerful enough to make even Otsutsuki Haibai take it seriously, the fishing line merely gave an extraordinarily casual little twitch.

There was no flash of light. No deafening explosion.

An invisible, indescribable, irresistible force suddenly descended, like a higher-dimensional crushing pressure born from the laws of the world themselves.

Boom! Boom!

The Good Corpse and Evil Corpse were like two people struck head-on by an invisible hammer. Their gathered power instantly collapsed, the clear radiance and destructive torrents vanishing without a trace.

The two figures were sent flying like meteors, crossing an unknown distance in an instant. They smashed through several towering mountains along the way before crashing deep into the earth, their auras rapidly weakening until they were on the verge of dissipating.

And Hagoromo's true body—

"URRGH—AAAH!!!"

A shriek erupted from his throat, so agonized and desperate that it scarcely sounded human.

The hook embedded in his very existence suddenly tightened!

He felt everything that made him who he was—his power, his memories, his will, his very existence—

being firmly caught by that icy hook and forcibly torn away from this world!

He struggled desperately. Purple light flickered wildly around him, while bloody tears streamed from his Rinnegan.

But like an insect caught in a spider's web, all his efforts were pale and laughable before that seemingly slender fishing line.

Whoosh—!

There was no further struggle.

The line reeled in.

Hagoromo's true body was dragged by that irresistible force, becoming a blurred streak of light as he shot toward the ring of silver spatial ripples high above.

His screams still echoed through heaven and earth, filled with despair, but his figure was already being erased like a mark wiped from a page.

In the blink of an eye, he vanished completely into the ripples.

The silver ripples quietly subsided as though they had never existed.

The fishing line disappeared without a trace.

The sky returned to its normal, clear expanse.

Only the shattered mountains in the distance, the lingering chaotic energy currents, and the nearly dissipated phantoms of the Good and Evil Corpses proved that the scene that had just unfolded—brief as it was, yet terrifying beyond measure—had not been an illusion.

Heaven and earth fell silent.

The Shinobi World, too, sank into an unprecedented, frozen silence.

The Sage of Six Paths Hagoromo—the founder of the Ninja Sect, the one who had repaired the world, divided himself into the Three Corpses, and shocked an Otsutsuki—

had just been effortlessly... fished away by an unknown fishing line, like a fish caught on a hook.

He had vanished without a trace.

Beneath the skies of the Shinobi World, that silence was heavier and more suffocating than the darkest night.

The final image remained frozen in everyone's minds: Hagoromo's true body screaming in agony and despair, filled with unwillingness, as the silver fishing line mercilessly dragged him into the spatial ripples.

It was like a red-hot brand seared directly into the soul of every witness.

Silence.

An absolute silence, so profound that even heartbeats and breathing seemed frozen, lasted for dozens of heartbeats.

Then, like a volcano suppressed to its breaking point, the crowd finally erupted!

"The... the Sage of Six Paths' true body... was... was hooked and reeled in by that fishing hook?!"

The first trembling voice rang out, hoarse and broken, filled with incomprehensible terror.

It wasn't a question. It was an attempt to use words to confirm the horrifying reality unfolding before their eyes—a reality beyond everything they knew.

"The Angler! It really was the Angler!" Someone suddenly clutched his head, his face as pale as a ghost.

"Sakura mentioned this before! The pond owner! Could this be the 'pond owner' Sakura was talking about?! Has he turned our world... into a fishpond?!"

The thought was like a bucket of ice water dumped over their heads, making even more people shudder with cold and chatter their teeth.

"This isn't some supreme secret technique! They've turned our entire world into a damn fishpond!"

A middle-aged ninja pointed at the Heavenly Screen, his voice trembling with the verge of tears, as though he could still see that fishing line hanging in the sky.

"The Three Corpses Technique! Senjutsu! Chakra! They're all... they're all fucking bait!"

"It's all to raise a big fish like the Sage of Six Paths, and then..."

"And then reel him in with a single cast!"

"Right! Right! Sakura said so before!" someone beside him cried out in agreement, desperately trying to find some logic amid the chaos.

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