Simultaneous Time Travel: What Villain? I'm the Protagonist!

There was no trace of panic in Sheng Ren's voice; instead, it revealed a long-lost interest.

He even had the leisure to turn his head and glance at the master and apprentice Mu and Onoki not far away. After seeing the two of them looking alert, he smiled and looked up at the sky, raising one hand with his five fingers spread, aiming at the crushing star.

"Sage Art: Dust Escape - Limit Demise Technique!"

As soon as the sound fell, the void three feet above his palm silently distorted.

The crimson flames almost licked Sheng Ren's hair, and the scorching heat distorted the air. Everyone instinctively held their breath, their eyes bulging as if they would see the white figure crushed into powder in the next second.

The massive celestial body crashed into that distorted void.

There was no sound, no explosion, no deafening roar of an impact. The meteorite, powerful enough to plow through an entire plain, vanished silently at its tip.

The rocks were breaking down, the flames were dying out, and the process was incredibly fast.

In the blink of an eye, the colossal object that blotted out the sky was reduced to a mere half, and in the next blink, only burning remnants remained, their edges still melting. The last wisp of crimson flame flickered and struggled before vanishing completely into the void.

A few scorching fragments that escaped the net trailed black smoke as they stumbled and crashed into the distant ice field, hissing and splashing up small plumes of ice mist and ice shards.

Sheng Ren lowered his arm and shook his wrist, as if he had just finished a trivial matter.

The plain was eerily quiet, with only the sound of the wind and the heavy, unnatural breathing of some people.

Wu looked at his own hands, then looked up at Sheng Ren, whose cracked face was blank. The Dust Escape technique he had studied all his life was not like this.

Onoki stood there, stunned, staring silently at the spot where the meteorite had dissipated, lost in thought.

Just then, four figures appeared out of nowhere on the ice hill to the north.

Hashirama Senju crossed his arms, glanced at the deathly silent battlefield below, and then fixed his gaze on Sheng Ren, raising an eyebrow: "Looks like we missed the most exciting part? This wrap-up was quite efficient."

Standing beside him, Tobirama Senju frowned deeply, his sharp eyes fixed on Morihito, his expression not looking good.

Madara Uchiha stood slightly ahead, arms crossed, his Rinnegan slowly rotating, sweeping across the still-shaken faces of the Allied Forces, finally settling on Mori. A wild, almost savage smile spread across his face.

"Skilled? Hashirama, are you blind?" Madara's voice wasn't loud, but it drowned out the wind and reached everyone's ears clearly. "This isn't skillful; this is completely disregarding these small fry and my meteorite."

He tilted his head slightly, the tomoe in his Sharingan seemed to spin faster, and his gaze swept towards Shengren like a knife:

"Hey kid over there, give me your name."

He paused, a hint of cold, pure excitement creeping into his smile.

"My Heavenly Obstruction Star is not something that can be released for someone to extinguish at will."

Sheng Ren withdrew his gaze from the sky and landed on the figures on the ice hill. His face remained expressionless, but the interest in his eyes deepened slightly.

"Sheng Ren," he answered simply, his voice not loud, but it reached everyone's ears steadily, "the master of the Feathered Immortal Sect."

"The Feathered Immortal Sect? Never heard of it," Madara raised an eyebrow, his gaze sweeping over Sheng Ren several times, a scrutinizing light flashing in his Rinnegan. "Your Dust Release technique is quite interesting. Who taught you that?"

"I figured it out myself," Sheng Ren said.

Madara paused for a moment, then burst out laughing: "Figure it out yourself? Hashirama, did you hear that? These kids these days are even more arrogant than we were back then."

Hashirama didn't smile. He looked closely at Shengren, then at the frozen ninjutsu marks on the battlefield below, his brows gradually furrowing.

"Madara," his voice deepened, "something's not right. His chakra is strange. It's different from everyone else's, and those ice energies aren't ordinary water-style transformations either."

Tobirama, who had been observing, suddenly spoke up, his voice cold and hard: "Brother, pay attention to how he activated Dust Release just now. There were no hand seals, no obvious chakra gathering process. This doesn't belong to any existing ninjutsu system."

Ban, however, seemed even more excited. He took a step forward, and spiderweb-like cracks silently spread across the ice beneath his feet. "Different? That's better! What's the point of killing the same kind of trash?"

He stared at Sheng Ren. "Kid, that last move doesn't count. Let me see just how good your self-taught stuff really is."

He didn't wait for a reply, nor did he form a hand seal. He simply raised one hand, facing Sheng Ren's direction, with his five fingers loosely clenched.

"Universal Heavenly Pull!" A powerful suction force was generated out of thin air.

Sheng Ren's white robe was pulled back straight by the suction, fluttering loudly. He simply stood still, without even moving a step, while the faint golden wings on his back fluttered slightly.

Gravity vanished abruptly, as if it had never existed.

Madara's Rinnegan flickered slightly.

"Oh?" His grin widened, a genuine surprise in his eyes. "Even the Universal Guidance..."

Before he finished speaking, the afterimage of the ice hill where he was standing remained in place, but he had already arrived directly in front of Sheng Ren.

The two were only about ten meters apart. Ban hovered in mid-air, looking down at Sheng Ren. "That's more like it," Ban nodded, his tone carrying a sense of satisfaction that "it wasn't a wasted trip after all."

He casually pressed his right hand down.

"Shinra Tensei!"

Centered on him, a violent, invisible repulsive force exploded outwards in a spherical shape. The ice field beneath his feet suddenly caved in and cracked, and countless huge blocks of ice were blown away, as if slammed by an invisible giant hand.

The repulsive force swept across with unstoppable momentum, instantly engulfing Sheng Ren's figure.

Ice dust billowed into the sky, obscuring everyone's view.

Many in the allied forces instinctively closed their eyes, and even the resurrected powerful warriors tensed up.

The ice dust slowly dissipated.

In the center of the sunken ice pit, Sheng Ren still stood in the same spot. The ice within a three-meter radius of his feet was intact, forming a stark contrast with the broken and sunken ground around him, and even the hem of his white robe was not disturbed much.

He looked up at the spots in mid-air, and finally a look that could be described as "serious" appeared on his face.

"The Rinnegan," Sheng Ren's voice rang out, "as expected of the Sage of Six Paths, its power is indeed extraordinary."

Ban raised an eyebrow but didn't reply.

Shengren continued, his tone as calm as if stating a fact: "But in the end, it's still a certain application of chakra that's useless to me. Nagato is like that, and so are you."

He paused, looking at Madara's slowly rotating Rinnegan.

"Your eyes are essentially just a highly condensed special kind of chakra."

These words were spoken softly, but when they reached Ban's ears, they caused the smile on his face to falter slightly.

No one has ever dared to describe him in such a tone.

"Ha..." Madara chuckled, but the relaxed and playful tone from before was gone. "Kid, you're even more arrogant than I thought."

He stopped talking nonsense and slammed his hands together in front of his chest!

"Planetary Devastation!"

This time, the black sphere appeared less than 100 meters above Shengren's head. It was smaller than the one before Nagato's, but its gravity was even more concentrated! Because it had locked all its suction force firmly onto Shengren below!

The ice beneath Sheng Ren's feet groaned under the strain and instantly shattered. Rock fragments, ice chunks, and even the remains of several broken puppets in the distance were forcibly torn from the ground, converging into a chaotic torrent that surged wildly towards the black core in the air!

Sheng Ren's body also involuntarily floated upwards, his robes fluttering violently in the turbulent gravitational currents.

"I told you," he clasped his hands together, "it won't work on me!"

"Immortal Technique - Yin Yang Void - Return to Nothingness!"

As soon as he finished speaking, an invisible ripple spread out from Sheng Ren's body. Wherever the ripple passed, the violent gravity was forcibly calmed down.

The torrent of rubble rushing toward the black sphere suddenly lost speed, ice blocks scattered in mid-air, and the puppet's remains crashed back to the ground.

He landed steadily back on the ice, without even leaving a footprint.

The newly formed core of the Earth-Exploding Star, hanging alone above, was spinning but unable to attract anything, which looked somewhat comical.

Madara's Rinnegan froze. He looked at the solitary black sphere, then at the composed Sheng Ren below, and the wild smile on his face gradually faded.

"Even the Earth-Exploding Star..." he muttered to himself.

"I said," Shengren looked up at him, "Nagato is like that, and so are you."

These words, spoken in a plain tone, were more jarring than any provocation.

Nagato, who had witnessed all of this from a distance, gripped his wheelchair tightly, looking utterly incredulous: "What... what is this? Is this still ninjutsu?"

Konan remained silent, and the Akatsuki members beside her were equally speechless; no one could answer him.

Madara was silent for two seconds, then suddenly laughed. This time, the laugh was filled with a chilling killing intent.

"Useless, haha, useless?" He repeated, his voice not loud, but it seemed to lower the temperature of the entire battlefield by several degrees. "Kid, do you know who I am?"

Sheng Ren looked at him quietly, and in the softest of tones uttered the words that enraged Uchiha Madara: "Uchiha Madara, a loser!"

The last trace of a smile on Ban's face vanished completely.

The air seemed to freeze instantly, even the wind stopped. Everyone on the battlefield—the Allied Shinobi Forces, the reanimated ninjas, and even the Akatsuki members watching from afar—felt a suffocating sense of oppression.

"Loser..." Madara repeated in a low voice, his tone unusually calm. He hovered in mid-air, looking down at Mori, the ripples in his Rinnegan slowly turning like a bottomless vortex.

"Hashirama," Madara suddenly spoke, without turning around, "did you hear me?"

Hashirama Senju frowned, remaining silent. He knew Madara all too well; this calm was the worst possible sign.

"So many years have passed," Ban's voice wasn't loud, but it clearly penetrated everyone's ears, "and someone actually dared to say those three words to my face."

He slowly raised his right hand, palm up, fingers slightly curled, as if he were holding something.

Sheng Ren extended his five fingers, his palm shimmering with silver light. Silver moon-colored runes intertwined and eventually converged into a small square. But it was this small square that made Uchiha Madara's loosely clenched fingers tremble instantly.

"Black Zetsu?" For the first time, a look of near astonishment appeared on that arrogant face, though it was only fleeting.

Sheng Ren didn't answer; he simply held the square and quietly looked at Ban. The meaning was clear.

Ban stared at the square, then looked up at Sheng Ren, his expression changing: "You captured Black Zetsu," he said slowly, as if confirming a fact.

"Project Eye of the Moon, isn't it?" The mention of Project Eye of the Moon caused even the last trace of expression on Madara's face to vanish. He hovered there, like a cold statue, with only his Rinnegan eyes revealing a storm brewing deep within.

Below, the allied forces were completely bewildered, and the reanimated beings looked at each other in confusion, as this was equally unfamiliar to them.

On the ice hill not far away, Hashirama and Tobirama's expressions were also extremely solemn. Tobirama lowered his voice and said, "Big brother, that Black Zetsu has some kind of Eye of the Moon plan. There's definitely something wrong with it."

Hashirama slowly shook his head, his gaze fixed on Madara and Morihito: "I'm afraid it's not as simple as just 'there's a problem'..."

Nagato and the others, who were further away, couldn't hear Madara and Seijin's conversation because they were too far away, but as colleagues, they were quite familiar with Black Zetsu's chakra.

"It seems that Zetsu and Madara Uchiha knew each other?" Konan asked softly, looking at Nagato's calm face.

"They are using Madara Uchiha's name, so they must be connected," Nagato said, but his murderous tone revealed that he was not indifferent.

"Where's Obito?" Shengren continued, "Why can't we see him?"

Upon hearing the name Obito, Kakashi's expression changed drastically, and the other Konoha ninjas also frowned.

Ban remained silent for a moment, then burst into a low laugh.

"Ha, ha, interesting, very interesting." His laughter subsided, and his Rinnegan locked onto Sheng Ren. "You brat, you seem to know more than I thought. So much so that... it's a little unpleasant."

Before he could finish speaking, Ban's figure suddenly blurred.

In the next instant, he appeared in front of Sheng Ren, less than three meters away from him.

"However," Madara's right hand seemingly casually reached forward, fingers spread, grabbing at Mori's face, "knowing more is useless once you're dead."

"If you still want to fight," Sheng Ren said, stepping to the side, Madara's fingertips almost brushing against his nose, "I suggest bringing Senju Hashirama along."

Sheng Ren's body, which had been leaning back, suddenly snapped back. His right hand, with fingers pointing like a sword, had a highly condensed light blue light swirling around its tip. Without dodging or avoiding, he thrust straight at Ban's fist!

"Because," just as their fists were about to meet, Madara's fist suddenly accelerated, "you are no match for me."

boom!

A massive gust of air erupted and rapidly spread outwards. The ice beneath their feet cracked, creating a shallow crater several hundred meters in diameter. Outside the crater, fine cracks spread outwards like a spiderweb.

Ban's hand stopped in mid-air; just before his fist made contact, it transformed into countless white paper scraps flying everywhere.

Sheng Ren's fingertips, already penetrating his fist, a faint blue sharpness pressed against the spotted skin.

"Isn't that right?"