Orochimaru slipped away like a silent shadow. He moved with extreme caution, afraid Uchiha Yue would notice him, and then death would be swift and inevitable. But his worries were needless. The monster, clad in the ghostly armor of Susanoo, was too self-absorbed to notice the scurrying at his feet.
Within the colossal avatar, Yue was in a state near trance.
"The absorption efficiency is growing... Now I can even absorb sound."
He raised his hand. A beam of light, piercing Susanoo's energy cocoon, touched his palm and dissolved without a trace.
His absorption ability evolved along with him. The more energy he accumulated, the stronger his body and spirit became, the more greedily he absorbed the world around him. Once, he could only absorb light energy and chakra, the latter only from the bodies of enemies he'd killed. His effectiveness against other forms of energy was negligible.
But killing, absorption, and constant evolution honed this gift to monstrous perfection. Having destroyed thousands of Konoha shinobi, he made a quantum leap. What others would call a "field" of total absorption was, to him, no more than a breath. The radius within which a person draws in air—that was the essence of his "field."
What field? Just a breath.
Yue felt this was only the beginning. He saw a dead, desiccated space before him, but he knew it was an illusion. In the very atoms that made up matter, inexhaustible power slumbered. Energy on a much deeper level. Sooner or later, his evolution would reach the point where he could draw it out as well. Dry up matter itself, reduce everything around him to nothing.
"Well then..." Yue let out a quiet, humorless laugh. "Come, O world. In the end, we will become one. All that exists will return to me, for I am the Origin and the End."
He opened his eyes slightly, and a predatory spark flickered in his gaze.
"Flutter, specks of dust. Resist. Show me you can kill me." He closed his eyes again, plunging not into slumber, but into an abyss of calculation. What could be more captivating than watching someone else's agony? Their helpless struggle in the face of tangible, embodied death, which he was.
Mount Myōboku.
"KWAAAH... KONOHA! DANZŌ!"
In the depths of the shrine on Mount Myōboku, the Great Toad Sage opened his eyes. A furious roar shook the ancient walls. For several days now, his prophetic dreams had revealed nothing but gloom and despair. Not a single glimmer of hope. This all-consuming darkness reminded him of the time of Kaguya Otsutsuki's coming.
He had also been blind to the future then, until her sons were born. Only with their arrival did the Sage see the path to salvation.
Just recently, he had predicted a new great crisis for the shinobi world, one that only the Child of prophecy could resolve. So he sent Jiraiya to find him.
But the Child was never found, and instead of the predicted disaster, another, incomparably more terrible one struck. The appearance of Uchiha Yue was not the crisis of his visions. It was a catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions, born of a distortion in the very fabric of fate.
And the Sage knew the name of the one who held those fateful scissors.
Shimura Danzo. This short-sighted fool, obsessed with power, destroyed the Uchiha clan—and the predetermined course of history collapsed. How could such a worthless man change the fate of an entire world? But he did so, giving birth to a monster whose threat was comparable to the coming of Kaguya herself.
This should not have happened. There was no place for such a monster in the original destiny.
"Damn Danzo!" the Sage seethed mentally. "All I had to do was follow the plan! Find the Child, prepare, save the world! And now what?!"
He still had no idea how to defeat Uchiha Yue. All he could do was wait and hope that Jiraiya would continue his search. But the stubborn man wouldn't listen! The Sage told him to just look at Yue from afar and run without looking back. But he'd rushed headlong into the thick of it, almost dying himself and nearly killing Fukasaku and Shima.
The Great Toad Sage could only sigh in sorrow. However, it was hard to blame Jiraiya. The blow had been too strong. Imagine: you're peacefully traveling the world... well, gathering material for a book... that is, searching for the Child of the prophecy, when suddenly you learn that your village is gone, and your teacher is dead. Who would keep their cool in such a situation? Besides, Jiraiya, one of the Legendary Sannin, had always been strong and willful. This willfulness had cost him his health and nearly cost him his life.
Now all that remained was to wait. Time would tell. Just as in Kaguya's time, when he saw only impenetrable darkness, he waited for the Otsutsuki brothers to appear and seal their mother.
The sage prayed that fate would grant peace a chance this time too.
Going on reconnaissance himself? Out of the question. He was too old, and most importantly, too important. What if he attracted Yue's attention and Yue killed him? No, he was the last hope of the shinobi world. If he died, then even when a chance for salvation arose, no one would recognize him.
Sometimes fate needed to be guided so that it would flow in the right direction. Having discovered the saving spark in the Otsutsuki brothers, the Sage realized they couldn't let things slide. He intervened, he guided them. If not for that, the shinobi world might look completely different now.
And now his duty is to wait for the new spark and not let it fade.