Merin sits cross-legged in the hollow, his eyes shut but his will wide awake, and the illusion space stirs as if awaiting command.
The single landmass, surrounded by ocean, begins to ripple like water struck by unseen hands, as mountains bend and rivers carve their paths, forests blooming in bursts of green.
He threads memories from Earth into the fabric, shaping the vast continent into something unmistakable—villages hidden among trees, deserts stretching endlessly, snowy peaks, and bustling cities—an echo of the Naruto world.
Sky deepens into the same blue he remembers from the anime, clouds drifting with a lifelike weight, and winds shifting as if carrying chakra through the very air.
He does not stop at landscape; he lays the blueprint of shinobi society—hidden villages, training grounds, and monuments—though hollow for now, waiting to be filled with souls.
The illusion trembles, straining under the weight of such complexity, but Merin's imaginary eyes glow brighter, his will pushing against the limit.
He knows this is only the beginning: scenery and structure are the bones, belief will be the flesh, and the souls he draws inside will be the breath to turn this crafted vision into something alive.
But creating the world's backdrop is not enough—living beings are necessary.
He can craft them with illusion, yet when absorbed souls begin to interact, the hollowness of repetition will expose the lie.
To control every word and gesture would mean fragmenting his consciousness endlessly, a burden even he cannot sustain.
So he turns his focus inward, to the very source core of the illusion space, the heart that governs its laws and flow.
He begins reshaping it, inscribing countless interlocking runes of formation, each one pulsing with principles of thought, response, and growth.
The source core shifts, glowing like a crystallised brain of light, and under his steady hand transforms into an artificial intelligence of saint rank, a construct capable of weaving countless threads of interaction without faltering.
Into this newborn intelligence, he pours the entire memory of the Naruto anime, every character, every relationship, every battle, every subtle quirk of personality, so that when it animates the illusion, no soul will see stiffness—only life.
With this, the world is no longer just a landscape; it breathes with possibility, ready for its first true inhabitants.
The artificial intelligence hums to life, running the timeline from the arrival of the goddess of Mao, unfolding the story in rapid succession.
Merin slows the flow when Uchiha Sasuke is born, carefully controlling the pace.
He summons the soul of the black crystal race, erasing all memories, returning it to the state of a newborn.
With the consciousness and power of a half-step Great Dao Lord, the soul would quickly dominate the ninja world, become curious about the Otsutsuki clan, and inevitably venture beyond the confines of the illusion—a path Merin cannot allow, as he lacks the power to sustain a complete universe on that scale.
He reassigns the soul to a ninja family in Iwagakure Village, monitoring its growth within the carefully structured illusion.
Following the script of his memory, the ninja world unfolds naturally, with one significant alteration: Iwagakure now has a new prodigy.
Despite having no memory, the soul's innate spiritual strength marks it as a genius.
By the age of six, it graduates from the ninja school and is taken as a disciple by none other than Onoki himself.
Its soul remains sealed at the strength of an ordinary mortal, preventing any premature surge, but its spiritual essence ensures extraordinary talent.
Satisfied, Merin retracts his consciousness from the illusion space, adjusting the temporal ratio: one hour in the illusion space now stretches to ten hours in the real world.
Time in the illusion flows slowly, giving him room to weave more souls into its fabric before the story reaches its conclusion.
Back in his body, he stands and murmurs to himself, "From now on, I must act like a devil."
To fill his illusion with countless souls, he needs them alive, and for that, he must hunt.
High-rank beast cores are his immediate target—for the toll into Jinji City and for feeding souls into his illusion space.
In only a week, Merin slaughters ten Dao Lord realm beasts, but he does not stop.
His hunt stretches further, leaving behind a trail of devastation as he collects the cores of a hundred beasts in total.
Each crystal heart pulses with raw energy, not only currency but potential seeds for his growing false world.
Now prepared to face Jinji City, he whispers, "But before that, I need my aura masked."
Closing his eyes, he threads his Dao through his flesh and spirit, weaving a veil over the devil's taint.
His skin regains a healthy glow, his eyes turn a deep natural black, and even the faint shimmer in his hair fades into ordinary lustre.
When he opens his eyes, nothing betrays the truth.
Satisfied, he strides toward the city. At the towering gates, two figures bar his path. He studies them—stone-faced, still as statues—then realisation sparks.
"Puppets," he thinks. "And not weak ones. Even Dao King realm puppets."
With no resistance, he hands over ten high-rank beast cores and steps inside.
The city opens before him, bustling with buildings, markets, and streets no different from a human capital—yet not once, in the shifting crowds and open avenues, does he see a single human face.
More than geniuses of a hundred races walk these streets, their unique auras colliding and weaving like a storm of power.
Merin's first priority is shelter.
He finds an inn, its walls carved with runes, and learns the price—one low-rank source stone per day.
He has none.
With calm steps, he leaves and makes his way to a store to sell the beast cores.
Inside, the air is thick with negotiations. Merchants of scaled, horned, and feathered races haggle fiercely over rare goods.
At the counter, Merin waits for his turn, but his ears catch a conversation nearby.
Two cultivators, their skin as pale as polished jade, are speaking to a store guide.
"…the ruins just beyond the northern ridge. The tomb of a Tao King."
His interest sparks, only to dim a moment later. A Tao King's tomb holds treasures for many, but his Dao already walks the Saint rank.
To him, such ruins are little more than relics of the past.
He finishes the transaction, exchanging beast cores for neat stacks of source stones, then returns to the inn.
Sliding the payment across the counter, he books a room for a month, his mind already shifting to deeper plans.
Inside his room, he checks the illusion space and sees that only a month has passed.
No drastic changes have occurred yet, as the hundred new souls he introduced are still only babies.
Some have even died, victims of the natural dangers of the ninja world.
The saint-rank array simulates not only the great villages but every human, beast, insect, the flow of time, and the weather across the entire ninja world.
The souls, stripped of memory, perceive no flaw—spirituality guides them like newborns, and at the saint level, the illusion is seamless.
He wonders what changes these newly seeded souls will bring to the world as they grow.
Before leaving the illusion space, he examines it for flaws. His thoughts linger on the final resting place for the souls.
At present, the souls of the dead remain there indefinitely, which feels like a waste.
Yet one essential aspect of Naruto is the Impure Reincarnation technique. Because of that, he decides not to alter the resting place for now.
After the Naruto story concludes, he will open it to allow reincarnation, letting the dead return to life within his world, memories erased, yet renewed for another cycle.
From the innkeeper, he hears of a store that sells Tao techniques.
His Destruction Fist technique itself is a Tao technique.
To advance his spiritual body and refine the Destruction Fist further, he must deepen his understanding of the five elements.
Comprehending them alone has grown slowly.
He wonders if practising Tao techniques crafted by others might grant new insights, pushing both his spiritual body and his fist toward greater perfection.
He leaves the inn, walking the streets of Jinji City.
All around, voices buzz with news.
A genius defeating another.
New ruins uncovered.
Divine-rank medicines discovered.
Inheritances of Saint-realm cultivators unearthed.
And some have even already advanced to the Tao King realm, racing toward Saint rank.
"Oh! Even with my Tao reaching the Saint realm, I am slower than these people in cultivation."
"I have to increase my cultivation quickly… for that, I must advance my illusion space first."
With turmoil stirring in his heart, he steps into the Tao store.
He exchanges for several five-element Tao techniques and returns to his inn.
He shuts himself in and begins practising, letting the foreign insights spark against his own.
One day, standing on the inn's balcony, he gazes over the city.
A dangerous thought rises.
"What if I absorb the souls of everyone here into my illusion space?"