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

Yishi's gaze remained fixed on Shengren.

"You know your goals, you don't waste words, you don't hesitate, and you don't harbor illusions about anything beyond power." Yi Shi's tone was as if he were evaluating a tool. "A person like you shouldn't exist in this era."

Sheng Ren looked up at him.

"It happened even though it shouldn't have."

The two stared at each other, like two wild beasts confronting each other on the edge of their territory, each assessing the distance and the risks.

The wind blew from the edge of the ice field, carrying fine ice shards that struck the tattered armor with a soft rustling sound.

Madara's gaze finally left the fallen Obito and fell upon Isshiki:

"Who are you."

He turned his head slightly and looked at Madara.

"The first style," Shengren said for him, "The Otsutsuki First Style."

Ban remained silent for a long time.

The magatama in the Eternal Kaleidoscope was slowly turning. He looked down at Obito, who was curled up on the ice, and then looked up at Isshiki.

"Otsutsuki... Otsutsuki Hagoromo."

His voice was very low.

"The Sage of Six Paths clan?"

Yi Shi did not deny it.

Ban suddenly smiled.

The laughter squeezed out from deep in his throat, carrying something that had been building up for sixty years. He laughed until he was breathless, his filthy body trembling, and fine lines appeared at the corners of his mouth.

"Sixty years," he said. "I read that monument for sixty years, thinking I understood the truth of the world, thinking I had found the only way out, thinking I could bring peace to the world."

He stopped laughing and looked at Yi Shi.

"So that monument was fake too."

He already knew whether the monument was real or fake. The answer came the moment he looked at Isshiki's face, at that face that didn't belong to this world.

Hashirama didn't speak; he watched Madara's retreating figure with his brows furrowed tightly.

Ichishi ignored the freckles.

His attention was always on Sheng Ren.

"You killed Roshi to leave me without any tailed beasts to use." His voice was flat. "You lured me out here so you could finish me off here."

He paused.

"Then what."

Sheng Ren finally spoke.

"Then I'll ask you something."

"ask."

"When did you start noticing me?"

Yishi did not answer immediately.

His gaze shifted from Shengren's face, sweeping across the battlefield, over the allied forces, and over the ninjas who were either terrified or bewildered. Finally, it landed on the pool of icy water that had almost completely melted—the only evidence that the Four-Tails Jinchuriki had ever existed.

"This planet," he said, "was originally the plantation I chose."

His tone was as flat as if he were talking about the weather.

"Thousands of years ago, I came here with Kaguya. She betrayed me and sacrificed me to that tree."

Ban's pupils contracted slightly.

"My remaining power is attached to a certain monk. After waiting for more than two thousand years, I have finally waited for this era."

His gaze returned to Sheng Ren.

"I've always been here; it was you who came up to me."

Sheng Ren nodded after listening.

"Understood."

He didn't ask any more questions.

The two were separated by a distance of twenty feet, separated by the remains of Susanoo kneeling, by the shattered ice on the ground, and by Hashirama's arm that stretched across their path.

Sheng Ren raised his hand.

The pale golden wings behind him reappeared, and the edges of each feather began to shimmer with iridescent light, while the air crackled with the faint sound of electric arcs.

The first move also changed.

He raised his right hand, palm facing the void. Space began to twist and compress at his fingertips, forming a tiny singularity almost invisible to the naked eye. The singularity was only the size of a fingernail, but it sucked in, crushed, and annihilated the air, light, and even dust at its edge.

"His name is Bikanna." His voice was very soft.

Neither of them had made a move yet, but the air was already thick with tension.

Just then, the huddled figure on the ice moved.

Obito.

He used his intact left arm to brace himself against the ice, struggling to his feet. His right arm dragged at his side, bent at an odd angle, with bone fragments piercing through the flesh at the elbow, stark white and exposed. Blood dripped onto the ice, quickly freezing into dark red shards.

He didn't look at the first move, nor did he look at the markings.

He looked at Sheng Ren.

The light in his Sharingan had dimmed considerably, like an oil lamp about to burn out, but he still looked at Seijin.

"You...knew all along..."

Sheng Ren looked down at him.

"Know."

Obito coughed up blood, which dripped down his chin onto the ice.

"...When?"

"The night they took me from the mountain shore to Kirigakure," Shengren said, "I met you on the ship."

Obito was stunned.

He remembered that night: the ferry crossing, the boat, the moonlit night. An eight-year-old child stood at the stern, looking pitiful, and told him that Lin was still alive. He believed him then and let the child go.

That was the thing he regretted most in his life.

"If I had killed you that day," Obito said, "none of this would have happened."

Sheng Ren did not answer.

Obito lowered his head. He looked at his hand, the hand that had once pierced hearts, distorted space, and buried countless lives. Now, that hand rested on the ice, trembling so much it could barely support his weight.

"Rin is dead," he said, "Kakashi is alive, Madara is alive, everyone is alive."

His voice was very soft:

"Only Lin is dead."

Ban didn't speak.

Hashirama did not speak.

Yishi remained silent.

Sheng Ren didn't say anything either.

Obito remained silent for a long time, then he raised his head and looked at Seijin.

"Just kill me."

Sheng Ren looked down at him for two seconds.

no answer.

He lifted his foot, bypassed the spreading bloodstain on the ice, and walked towards Yishi.

Obito knelt on the spot, the light in his Sharingan completely dimmed.

Ichishiki didn't look at Obito. His attention was focused solely on Morihito from beginning to end, like a seasoned hunter estimating the prey's pace and breathing.

"Are you done asking?"

"I'm done asking."

Yi Shi nodded.

Then he made his move.

He raised his right arm, his five fingers pointing towards Sheng Ren in a loose fist, and the space where Sheng Ren was located suddenly collapsed.

The air, ice shards, and light within a three-meter radius all collapsed towards a singularity almost invisible to the naked eye at the center. That was the ultimate application of Sukuna Bikuna's power; it wasn't about shrinking objects, but about directly compressing an entire area until it ceased to exist.

Sheng Ren disappeared from his spot 0.1 seconds before the space closed.

The next instant, he appeared three zhang to Yi Shi's side, a pale blue light blade already formed in his hand, aimed straight at the back of Yi Shi's neck.

There was no turning back.

He raised his left hand, palm facing outward.

"Mahakala".

A thin crack appeared in space, and a black cube the size of a fist silently fell from it. It didn't crash down; it appeared directly in front of Sheng Ren's blade.

The light blade slashed across the surface of the black cube.

There were no sparks, no roar, only a short, muffled sound like metal being cut off by a hard object.

The pale blue light blade broke in half, and the scattered chakra fragments drifted for a moment like dandelion seeds blown by the wind before being completely swallowed up by the black cube.

Sheng Ren leaped back five zhang and landed on a broken hilt of a sword stuck diagonally in the ice. He glanced down at the broken blade in his hand.

He retrieved the black cube into his palm. The thing melted into his skin like liquid and disappeared.

"Your swordsmanship is indeed very accurate," Yi Shi said, "but accuracy is useless."

He paused.

You can't touch me.

Sheng Ren didn't reply. He released his grip, and the broken blade vanished as specks of light.

The seven-colored halo behind him lit up again, this time even brighter than before, and fine arcs of electricity began to dance along the edges of each feather.

Some members of the allied forces unconsciously took a step back.

As Yi Shi looked at him, a slight change finally appeared in her otherwise emotionless eyes.

"...You weren't even using your full strength just now."

Sheng Ren did not deny it.

Yishi remained silent for two seconds.

"it is good."

After he finished speaking, he disappeared from the spot.

It wasn't a fleeting afterimage like in the Instantaneous Movement Technique; it was a true and complete disappearance. At the same time, three inches behind Sheng Ren, a thin crack silently opened in space, and an index finger emerged from the crack, aiming directly at the back of his head.

This finger strike has no chakra fluctuations and isn't particularly fast, but its trajectory is unpredictable because you have no idea which direction it's coming from.

Sheng Ren turned his head to the side.

A gust of wind brushed past his earlobe, severing a few strands of hair. The instant the hair fell, Yi Shi's finger retracted into the spatial rift. At the same moment, another rift opened in Sheng Ren's left rib, and a second finger emerged.

Sheng Ren raised his elbow and struck the side of that finger, knocking it off by half an inch.

A third crack opened behind his knee.

The fourth one was on the back of his neck.

The fifth one is in his heart.

The attacks were relentless, like countless invisible snakes striking simultaneously from different directions. Each finger strike wasn't particularly powerful, but the angles were extremely precise, targeting vital points.

Sheng Ren maneuvered within a three-foot radius.

He sidestepped, bent his knees, raised his elbows, and bent his waist, compressing each movement to the minimum to barely dodge every fingertip that reached out from the void. Sometimes, when he couldn't dodge, he would use the back of his knife, his palm, or the side of his arm to strike hard, deflecting the attack away from vital points.

Neither of them made a sound.

Only the sharp whistling of the wind tearing through the air and the occasional muffled thud of limbs colliding echoed across the ice field.

The exchange lasted no more than three breaths.

Within three breaths, forty-seven fingers were thrust out in one strike.

Sheng Ren avoided the forty-two fingers, but deflected four of them. One finger, however, grazed his left shoulder, slicing off a small piece of flesh. The wound wasn't deep, but the blood flowed quickly, dripping down his forearm onto the ice and seeping into a small patch of red.

With a single move, he withdrew his hand.

He looked down at his fingertips, where a drop of Sheng Ren's blood was stained.

"Your physical strength exceeds my expectations," he said. "That finger should have pierced your shoulder blade."

Sheng Ren didn't look at his own wound. He just glanced at Yi Shi.

"You can try again."

Yi Shi didn't say anything more.

The distance between the two remained three zhang, exactly the same as before the fight. But the tension in the air was completely different.

Finally, someone in the allied forces couldn't help but speak up.

"...What the hell level of combat is this?"

No one answered him.

Jiraiya was still in Sage Mode, but he didn't move or even form hand seals. He couldn't understand the three seconds of fighting just now; he only knew that if he had gone in, he would have died in the very first second.

Onoki stood beside Mu, the old Tsuchikage's hand trembling. He had lived for over seventy years and seen countless powerful figures, from the First Hokage to Madara Uchiha, from the Third Raikage to the Fourth Hokage. He thought he had witnessed the limits of power in the ninja world.

Those three seconds shattered his entire understanding.

"...That's not ninjutsu." His voice was hoarse. "That's not ninjutsu at all..."

There was no answer. He just stared at the constantly breaking and healing gaps in space, wondering if this was still the ninja world.

Hashirama stood still, his hands lowered. He no longer stood between Seijin and Isshiki, because he understood that he couldn't stop that kind of attack either.

Ban didn't speak.

His Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan was locked onto that one technique, the tomoe deep within his pupils spinning faster than ever before. He understood. This guy who called himself Otsutsuki Isshiki was using a space-time technique similar to Obito's but more thorough, faster, more concealed, and more difficult to defend against than Kamui.

At that attack frequency, Sheng Ren was only hit by one finger in three seconds.

Ban suddenly spoke, his voice very low.

"Hashirama".

"Um."

"How long did we fight him just now?"

Hashirama did not answer immediately. He was recalling the events from when Susanoo put on the wooden dummy, to when Mori was injured and coughed up blood, to when the Four-Tails Jinchuriki was killed, and then Isshiki appeared.

"...Fifteen minutes."

Ban remained silent.

Within fifteen minutes, he and Hashirama joined forces, exerting all their strength, and managed to make Shengren bleed a few drops and tear his armor.

In one move, forty-seven fingers are thrust out in three seconds, hitting one finger, though it is still not a fatal spot.

Ban didn't want to think about the gap between them, but he had to.

On the field, Yi Shi suddenly spoke.

"Do you know the biggest difference between you and the other ninjas on this planet?"

Sheng Ren looked at him but didn't reply.

He didn't need to answer.

"They live for something." His tone was calm, as if stating a conclusion he had observed for a long time: "Family, village, companions, ideals. They live to perpetuate these things."

He paused.

"You are not."

He looked at Sheng Ren.

"You live to win."

Sheng Ren did not deny it.

Yi Shi nodded.

"Therefore, you will be the biggest obstacle on my path to godhood!"