Chapter 621: Huh? Prehistoric?
"So what exactly did Mother say to you?"
Hagoromo looked curiously at Kenichi.
The corner of Kenichi's mouth twitched.
To be honest, he really did not want to answer that question.
But Kaguya was Hagoromo's mother, after all. Refusing to explain anything would seem inappropriate.
After thinking about it for a moment, Kenichi decided to answer.
Still, when he remembered Kaguya's behavior earlier, his expression became somewhat strange.
He genuinely had not expected her to make that particular choice.
Even Kenichi had been somewhat surprised.
"Actually, your mother didn't say much."
Kenichi sighed helplessly.
"She just told me that after we deal with Isshiki, she'll settle the score with me."
"So I'm actually in a rather troublesome situation right now."
Kenichi had not expected Kaguya to react that way.
But from another perspective, this seemed to prove that his experiments on Kaguya's consciousness had achieved some degree of success.
If the implanted memories had failed to influence her at all, Kaguya should have possessed overwhelming hostility toward him.
She might even have attacked him the moment she was released.
But she had not.
That alone suggested that the conditioning had affected her to some extent.
Still, the thought made Kenichi's expression increasingly subtle.
If Kaguya truly developed that kind of relationship with him in the future...
If she genuinely began treating him as a lover...
Then Kenichi would need to seriously consider what he was supposed to do.
In Kenichi's view, a person's existence was formed from countless complicated things.
Memory was one of the most important.
Suppose someone's memories were completely erased, and then an entirely different person's memories were implanted in their place.
To some extent, Kenichi believed the original person would already be dead.
The body might remain.
But the person who originally inhabited it would be gone.
What lived afterward would effectively be someone else.
Of course, accomplishing something like that in real life would be nearly impossible.
Kenichi understood that perfectly well.
If complete memory replacement were genuinely practical, then the billionaires and powerful people obsessed with eternal life in his previous world would have poured unimaginable resources into developing it long ago.
The problem was the human brain.
The brain itself was extraordinarily complicated.
Even studying it properly through conventional methods was difficult.
Completely erasing a person's memories was even more unrealistic.
To do that, every memory stored in the brain would first need to be identified and removed.
But what exactly created human memory?
Where was it stored?
How did storage work?
How were memories recalled?
Even in modern science, those remained extremely complicated research problems.
There had been progress, certainly, but nowhere near enough to casually erase and replace a complete human identity.
So Kenichi knew that something like what he had done to Kaguya could only truly happen in a world like this one.
And even then, he had not actually erased Kaguya's memories.
He had done something different.
Kenichi had inserted a massive collection of additional experiences into her consciousness.
A carefully constructed false world.
Something almost like The Truman Show.
To a certain extent, Kenichi had forced Kaguya's consciousness to experience an entire artificial reality.
But even Kenichi himself had not been confident that such an environment could truly influence her.
After all, Kaguya still possessed her original memories.
What Kenichi had overlooked was something else.
Kaguya had been sealed for an unimaginably long time.
And while sealed, she could barely experience the normal passage of time.
Under those circumstances, her psychological state was naturally very different from that of an ordinary person.
What would happen to someone trapped in endless isolation?
It was an interesting question.
If an intelligent being remained isolated in an almost completely empty environment for too long, their consciousness could gradually become blurred.
Eventually, subtle changes would inevitably occur.
Kenichi suddenly remembered a certain ultimate life-form from a classic anime.
After drifting through outer space for an impossibly long time...
Eventually, he stopped thinking.
Extreme isolation could be terrifying.
Normal intelligent creatures possessed an instinctive desire to interact with others.
Even people with severe social anxiety usually found some substitute.
Watching television.
Watching movies.
Reading stories.
Communicating online.
Even observing fictional characters could provide a feeling of indirect social contact.
Kenichi had failed to consider that point.
For Kaguya, who had been sealed away for countless years...
The false memories Kenichi implanted might have become the only vivid experiences she had felt in an unimaginably long time.
"Hm..."
Hagoromo remained silent for a moment.
Then his expression became solemn.
"Kenichi, after thinking about it carefully, I still believe Mother's current mindset is too dangerous."
"If we manage to resolve the problem with Isshiki, I think we should seal her again."
His gaze became heavy.
"I know that sounds cruel."
"But I don't see another option."
Hagoromo did not particularly doubt Kenichi's account of what Kaguya had said.
In his mind, it was entirely possible for his mother to speak that way.
In fact, it sounded very much like her.
What bothered Hagoromo more was something else.
After being sealed for so long...
Kaguya apparently still had not completely abandoned her old plan.
That was difficult for him to accept.
"I understand what you're worried about."
Kenichi looked at him.
"You think Kaguya still wants to transform everyone in the Shinobi World into mindless weapons like White Zetsu, right?"
Hagoromo did not deny it.
Kenichi understood his reasoning.
Hagoromo had once chosen to seal his own mother for the sake of the people living in the Shinobi World.
That alone revealed where his priorities ultimately lay.
Even if Kaguya was his mother, Hagoromo would still choose the world over her if forced into that decision again.
To some extent, Kenichi admired him for that.
Still...
Kenichi thought Hagoromo might be jumping to conclusions too quickly.
Kaguya had clearly been angry when she spoke earlier.
Statements made in anger did not necessarily represent someone's final decision.
More importantly, after that fragment of Kaguya's consciousness had been separated from her, she had indirectly come into contact with the modern Shinobi World.
She knew how much the world had changed.
So what did Kaguya genuinely think now?
That remained uncertain.
Kenichi believed they should observe her before making a final judgment.
There was also the matter of Number Three.
Kenichi did not dare communicate too deeply regarding some of Number Three's thoughts.
And as for the plan of using White Zetsu to fight the Otsutsuki Clan...
Kenichi still found it ridiculous.
He knew perfectly well how weak the White Zetsu were compared with genuine Otsutsuki.
Forget fighting the entire Otsutsuki Clan.
Even against the severely wounded, dying Isshiki they were currently preparing to attack, ordinary White Zetsu probably would not survive a single exchange.
That alone showed how unrealistic Kaguya's old plan had been.
But Kenichi also understood why she had chosen it at the time.
Back then, Kaguya had almost no alternatives.
The supernatural creatures native to the Shinobi World, the beings later worshipped as gods, were little more than trash from the perspective of the Otsutsuki Clan.
The rest of humanity was even weaker.
Ordinary people.
No chakra.
No ninjutsu.
No extraordinary combat abilities.
The civilization of that era was probably still fighting wars with cold weapons.
Under circumstances like those, what options had Kaguya actually possessed?
If she knew powerful Otsutsuki would eventually arrive, turning humanity into White Zetsu might genuinely have seemed like the only available method of preparing an army.
It was not necessarily because Kaguya had looked at several excellent choices and deliberately selected the worst one.
There simply had not been anything better to choose.
Kaguya could never have predicted what her descendants would eventually create.
She had no way of knowing that the powerless humans of that ancient era would one day become shinobi.
Nor could she have imagined that the Shinobi World would eventually produce monsters like Hashirama, Madara, Naruto, Sasuke, and countless other extraordinary individuals.
"I think Kaguya may have other thoughts now."
Kenichi looked at Hagoromo.
"We don't need to rush into resealing her."
"Why don't you talk to her properly again?"
Kenichi genuinely believed Kaguya's current position might be different from her old one.
She was not stupid.
After personally witnessing what the Shinobi World had become, stubbornly insisting that an army of White Zetsu was still the best solution would be absurd.
So Kenichi wanted to give her a chance.
Besides...
Kaguya could potentially become his ally in the future.
Naturally, Kenichi cared a great deal about what happened to her.
Hagoromo stared at him strangely.
"Why do I feel like your attitude toward this matter has become increasingly suspicious?"
Kenichi remained silent.
He certainly had his own reasons.
After all, if Hagoromo simply sealed Kaguya away again...
Then what had been the point of all Kenichi's experiments?
Wouldn't everything he had done to her consciousness have been wasted?
So Kenichi still wanted to see whether Kaguya could make a different choice.
If she could...
She would become an incredibly powerful ally.
"Ahem."
Kenichi cleared his throat.
Then he looked seriously at Hagoromo.
"Hagoromo."
"Yes?"
"If there comes a day in the future when I ask you to call me Father..."
Kenichi paused.
"Would you agree?"
Hagoromo stared at him.
For several seconds, he did not speak.
His expression became increasingly strange.
He looked at Kenichi as though Kenichi had just told him that a lizard had married a man from some bizarre foreign country, the kind of absurd news story Kenichi remembered seeing in his previous life.
Then Hagoromo's gaze became even more complicated.
"You..."
He narrowed his eyes.
"You didn't actually do anything with Mother, did you?"
Kenichi remained perfectly calm.
Hagoromo rubbed his forehead.
"If something really happened, then all I can say is that you are genuinely impressive."
"My mother's way of thinking is extremely unusual."
"To some extent, if you could actually gain her acknowledgment in that way, then I would have to admit that you accomplished something remarkable."
He paused.
"But I will never call you Father."
Kenichi raised an eyebrow.
Hagoromo continued.
"I may be Mother's child, but the circumstances of my birth are completely different from what you normally mean when you say someone is another person's child."
Kenichi showed no surprise.
He already knew Hagoromo was right.
Kaguya had never experienced that kind of relationship.
She had never united with a human and then conceived children in the conventional sense.
So even though Hagoromo and Hamura were unquestionably Kaguya's sons, their birth had not occurred through ordinary reproduction.
That naturally made the relationship different from what Kenichi jokingly implied.
"So how exactly did Kaguya give birth to you?"
Kenichi suddenly became curious.
Unfortunately...
Hagoromo himself knew very little.
Both he and Hamura were male.
Neither of them had ever experienced the process involved in producing Otsutsuki offspring.
Naturally, they had never fully understood exactly how Kaguya had created them.
Black Zetsu offered little useful comparison.
His creation had clearly been an emergency measure.
As a result, Black Zetsu's body was incomplete compared with Hagoromo and Hamura.
Kenichi fell into thought.
One idea suddenly came to mind.
Kaguya's situation almost resembled the concept of severing the Three Corpses from old cultivation mythology.
Separating humanity from herself.
Discarding part of her mortal nature.
Leaving only divinity behind.
And through that process, becoming stronger.
"Huh?"
Kenichi's expression became peculiar.
Why did this suddenly sound like something from prehistoric cultivation mythology?
Still...
That was only speculation.
The far more likely explanation remained the same.
The chakra fruit of the Divine Tree.
....
https://discord.gg/KvMN2CFsMR
[If you don't want to wait for the next update, read 50 chapters ahead on P@treon.]
[[email protected]/FanficLord03].