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"Try it?" Sasori mocked with his eyes. "When an illusionist is arrogant enough to think he can use genjutsu on a puppet, he's already close to death!"
Aizen's voice remained gentle. "But you're not a true puppet. There's still a part of you that's human!"
"Is that so? Then go ahead and show me..."
Before his words had even faded, Sasori noticed his surroundings had changed.
The base before his eyes suddenly transformed into a familiar scene from memory—his former home.
"Is this... genjutsu?"
As Sasori felt surprise rising within, the front door suddenly opened, revealing a figure whose form was somewhat blurred in his memories.
"Could this be... Mother?"
Seeing his stunned expression, the figure immediately took his hand. "You silly child, why are you standing outside like that? Hurry inside."
Without resisting, Sasori passively let himself be pulled into the house.
"You're covered in snow. Your father will scold you again when he sees."
Standing awkwardly by the entrance, Sasori let his mother gently brush the snowflakes off him, whispering, "Father?"
Taken by the hand into the living room, he saw a solemn-faced man sitting at the dining table reading a newspaper.
Looking at Sasori entering, the man coughed. "Scorpion, how have you been doing at school lately?"
Sasori remained silent.
"You really know how to disappoint, don't you?" The man shook his head. "If your grades still don't meet expectations, then our family trip promise will be cancelled!"
"A... family trip?"
"Have you forgotten?" His mother lovingly stroked Sasori's head. "If you make it into the top ten on the final exams, the whole family will go to the theme park and have a full day of fun!"
"A real family... for me..."
"Don't pressure the child too much!" Chiyo walked out from the kitchen carrying dishes, saying unhappily. "He's been studying so hard already!"
"Grandmother..."
"Oh!" Chiyo put down the dishes, smiling brightly. "Don't listen to your father. Even if you don't do well on the final exam, I'll take you there myself!"
The man helplessly said, "Mom, you shouldn't spoil the child so much!"
Chiyo glared. "I want to spoil my grandson. Who asked you to butt in?"
With an expression between laughter and tears, the man replied, "Well, he's my son too."
"And aren't *you* my son too?!"
Seeing the two about to argue, Sasori's mother quickly stepped in to mediate.
As he watched the "warm" scene unfold, Sasori—who hadn't smiled in over a decade—felt the corners of his mouth twitch for the first time.
"This kind of life... actually seems pretty good..."
But just then, he noticed himself drifting further and further away from them—as if the space between them was stretching endlessly. No matter how hard he ran, he couldn't catch up.
Eventually, everything before his eyes vanished like a bubble.
Returning to reality, an annoying voice reached his ears.
"It seems you've regained at least some of your humanity!"
After a moment of silence, Sasori's usually calm pupils burned with rare fury. "Damn bastard... you've really pissed me off!"
Aizen smiled, "Don't get so excited. Maybe you—"
Before he could finish, Sasori had already brought out all his remaining puppets.
"Can't you at least let me—"
With cold eyes, Sasori immediately ordered his puppets to attack.
Though his main puppet was destroyed, he could still fight as a top-tier warrior using the Hundred Puppet Army.
"Well then, looks like we'll have to fight before we can talk," Aizen sighed. He flicked his arm, and a long sword slid from his sleeve into his right hand.
Sasori was slightly taken aback when his opponent suddenly drew a weapon, but he didn't show it.
While long swords weren't the standard weapon for ninjas, they weren't unheard of either—examples included the Raijin Sword and the Kusanagi Sword.
What followed, however, confused him completely.
Aizen didn't use any ninjutsu techniques at all. Instead, he strolled leisurely through the puppets, occasionally thrusting his sword forward. Each strike instantly turned puppets as hard as steel into junk.
"Not only is his genjutsu strong, but his taijutsu is this impressive too!" Shocked in his heart, Sasori's real body rushed forward.
Aside from the Third Kazekage puppet, his real body was the second strongest puppet he controlled.
[Puppet Technique: Thousand Hands, All Beating!]
Sasori's right arm detached at the wrist, and in an instant, over a thousand folding arms sprouted from the broken section.
These arms not only spewed poison mist, but their fingertips were also soaked in deadly toxins.
"Poison? That's really not much of a move," Aizen said coldly. He swung his sword forcefully forward. The force of his Blade Wave easily dispersed the toxic mist, and the slash struck the mechanical arms head-on, cutting through them like bamboo.
"You're creating sword slashes with pure physical strength!" Sasori's pupils shrank sharply. He'd never encountered an opponent like this before.
"Troublesome. When I created my puppets, I focused more on defense against lightning and fire chakra natures. For physical attacks, I only considered hardness when selecting materials!"
Thinking quickly, Sasori manipulated his other puppets to shoot toxic needles at his opponent.
Each of his puppets carried a large number of senbon. When all the puppets fired together, it looked like a storm of needles falling like heavy rain.
Even Aizen was forced to dodge repeatedly under this attack. Meanwhile, Sasori's real body retrieved two Spiral Blades from behind and charged forward while Aizen was evading the needles.
[Dual-Blade Style: Spiral Blades!]
Aizen glanced at the attack and immediately understood Sasori's plan.
"You're using your toxin resistance to draw me into close combat?"
He pondered for a moment, then smiled. "Since I still need his intelligence, I guess I'll reveal a bit of my strength."
With that thought, Aizen stopped dodging and charged straight into the hail of needles toward Sasori.
"What is he doing? Does he plan to defeat me quickly and get the antidote?" Sasori thought to himself, charging forward to meet the opponent head-on.
The situation was in his favor now—if he still didn't dare to attack under these conditions, there was no point fighting at all.
As the two closed in on each other, the storm of deadly needles also flew toward them.
"It's over!" Sasori silently muttered. Then his eyes widened in disbelief.
Right in front of his disbelieving eyes, the needles changed course midair the moment they neared Aizen and flew off in a different direction.
Aizen seized the momentary daze in Sasori's eyes and delivered a heavy slash that sent him flying.
Sasori ignored his injuries, unable to resist asking, "What just happened?"
Aizen smirked lightly. "To put it simply, I used genjutsu to deceive this world!"
If the Second Tomoe Sharingan could use bloodline powers to perform Izanagi—a technique that blurred the line between illusion and reality—then naturally, his current pseudo Ten-Tails body could achieve similar results too. Furthermore, he had long been researching the Kurama clan's techniques of illusion and reality manipulation—what they called "the birth of illusion and reality." Of course, he couldn't go as far as resurrecting on the spot; at most, he could slightly influence reality itself.
But even that was impressive enough, especially since he didn't have to pay the price of sacrificing his eyes.
"Deceive the world? Deceive the world?" Sasori repeated the phrase, then asked nervously, "Can the boundary between life and death also be deceived?"
Aizen smirked, sensing the longing in Sasori's eyes. "Actually, this was what I originally wanted to talk to you about, but you insisted on getting a beating before you'd listen! Can't blame me for that!"
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