Naruto Immersive Replay, The Curse of the Sharingan

The wind swept across the desolate territory, swirling up a few withered leaves. In the distance, the outline of the Thousand Hands territory was clearly visible in the setting sun, but there were no traces of the scorched earth from the war as I remembered.

Izuna suddenly shivered. Madara didn't notice his younger brother's face turn pale instantly. In the boy's hazy childhood memories, there was indeed a woman who always wore a black assassin's outfit.

But the figure who always protected his people on the battlefield never returned after one of his missions.

The adults said it was just a hallucination he had when he had a high fever, and over time, even Izuna himself couldn't tell the difference between reality and illusion.

"Shall we go back first?" Izuna tentatively took his brother's hand, the skin as cold as a corpse. "You've been unconscious for three days, you need..."

Madara abruptly shook off his younger brother, his gaze falling on a corner of the shrine where Nagi's favorite stone lantern should have stood, but now it was piled with withered branches.

The overlapping of memories and reality gave him a splitting headache, and his Rinnegan manifested uncontrollably.

"This is not my world." Madara's voice suddenly became eerily calm, chakra coalescing into a hurricane around him. "A world without her..."

Izuna was thrown to the ground by the shockwave. He watched in horror as his brother floated into the air, with the nine Truth-Seeking Balls arranged in a circle of despair behind him.

The sky began to distort, the clouds were stained blood-red, and the water of the entire Namga River flowed backward.

Amid Izuna's gasp, Madara coughed up a mouthful of blood.

In the Uchiha clan's intelligence room late at night, Madara's fingertips traced the yellowed scroll of the clan genealogy, lingering on the erased names.

Uchiha Reige, Uchiha Suku—these names, which should have been intertwined with Nagi's fate, are now just subtle blank spaces on the pages, as if they have been forcibly removed by some force.

"It's not a dream..." Madara's Sharingan glowed crimson in the darkness, his nails digging deeply into his palms.

"The Uchiha and Senju Alliance Treaty... The marriage alliance between Mito Uzumaki, the daimyo of the Land of Whirlpools, and Hashirama Senju..." Madara's fingers trembled on the scroll, the ink so fresh it was almost blinding.

The pre-dawn wind, carrying the scent of dew, rushed into the intelligence room. Madara stood by the window, looking at the statue of the First Hokage on the Hokage Rock in the distance.

Hashirama's foolish smile was faintly visible in the morning light, and even more absurdly, the names of Watama and Itama appeared in the recent patrol log.

"Resurrection? Or..." Madara's Sharingan glowed crimson in the shadows, "Someone has rewritten reality."

He recalled what Nagi had once said, when she stood on the banks of the Naka River: "Memory is the most fragile truth, Madara. When everyone forgets, existence itself will vanish."

The obituary scroll of the Hyuga clan chief confirmed another anomaly—Hyuga Hatozaki died of illness three years ago, not from a coup as he remembered.

The most fatal evidence came from a secret report from the Land of Wind: Rin Shikaga, Nagi's adopted son in the Land of Wind, committed seppuku in the palace at the age of seventeen.

"Only I remember..." Madara's fingernails dug into his palm, and blood dripped from between his fingers. The pain was real, so the Nagi who was erased must have truly existed.

The walls of the Thousand Hands territory gleamed coldly in the morning light. Ban's intrusion was like a sharp blade slicing through the tranquility. The guards were knocked down by illusions before they could even raise an alarm.

His black robe swept past the white plum blossoms in the courtyard, the petals fluttering like snowflakes in the air.

"Madara!" Hashirama's Hokage robes billowed behind him, his voice filled with confusion rather than hostility, "What's happening—"

The moment Madara turned around, Hashirama's words came to an abrupt halt, and the darkness surging in those Rinnegan eyes made his former best friend instinctively take a half-step back.

Chapter 165 The Pursuit

When the laboratory door was violently pushed open, Tobirama Senju was bent over in front of the sophisticated instruments.

Amidst the azure chakra light, his silver hair gleamed coldly. The moment he saw who it was, the test tube in his hand shattered with a "crack," and bright red liquid dripped down his pale knuckles.

"You still remember her, don't you?" Ban's voice seemed to come from the depths of hell.

The test tube rack clinked crisply against the lab table. Blood seeped through his fingers, blooming like tiny red plum blossoms on the white lab coat. "Who are you talking about?"

"Uchiha Nagi".

The name was like a dull knife, slowly cutting away at his reason. He thought he had buried her deep in his memory, but now his heart was throbbing uncontrollably.

Tobirama remained silent for a long time before finally speaking, his voice hoarse as if he hadn't spoken in a long time, "...Why do you remember?"

Ban's pupils suddenly contracted.

—As expected, Tobirama remembers her too!

"I don't know." Madara's voice was filled with suppressed rage and pain. "When I woke up, I found that everyone had forgotten her... Her name wasn't on the family tree, and her tombstone in Namikawa was empty..."

His fingernails dug deeply into his palms, "as if she had never existed."

Hashirama stood bewildered between the two. "Who are you talking about? Uchiha Nagi is..."

"Get out, brother." Tobirama removed his lab gloves, a faint glow of chakra flickering between his pale fingers. "This is between him and me."

When the laboratory door closed again, silence engulfed the space like a tidal wave.

Amidst the ticking of the instruments, Tobirama turned to face the culture chamber, where the embryo of some kind of organism floated in the transparent liquid.

“She has broken a taboo.” Tobirama suddenly spoke, his voice dry. “Existence Correction… is the ultimate sealing technique left behind by the Sage of Six Paths.”

Madara's Susanoo skeleton was faintly visible behind him. "What does this mean?"

"It's like erasing a wrong line with an eraser." Tobirama's fingers traced the surface of the incubation chamber, leaving a trail of mist. "When an entity causes too much disturbance to the world, spacetime will spontaneously correct its errors, and all related memories, records, causal chains... will be completely reorganized."

The blue light from the incubation chamber illuminated Tobirama's sharply defined profile, the scar appearing higher than Madara remembered.

“Three years and four months.” Madara’s voice suddenly became eerily calm. “Three years and four months have passed since she died.”

Tobirama's back froze.

Ban slammed his fist on the lab table, cracks spreading like a spiderweb. "Why are we the only ones who remember?"

“Because…” Tobirama’s voice suddenly choked up. He raised his hand to his chest, where there was a scar that had long since healed, “the last two people she came into contact with were the two of us.”

Madara's chakra suddenly went berserk, shattering all the glass in the laboratory. He grabbed Tobirama by the collar, and the pattern in his Sharingan began to transform into the Rinnegan. "You knew all along! Why didn't you tell me!"

"What's the use of telling you!" Tobirama finally snapped, punching Madara in the face. "Even the power of the Six Paths couldn't hold her back, do you think you can change things with your obsession!"

Tobirama Senju's memories are always frozen on that day—

Beneath the cherry blossoms blooming out of season, Madara Uchiha's Rinnegan sheds tears of blood. The runes of the Six Paths Forbidden Technique spread across the ground, and the dark curse marks coiled around his arms like snakes. He knelt there, his voice hoarse as if it came from the depths of hell.

“Come back... Nagi.”

The air froze in that instant.

Then, the cherry blossoms began to fall.

It didn't fall, but withered and turned to ash at an eerie speed, as if its life force had been drained away by some irresistible force. And in that desolate expanse of ashes, a slender figure slowly emerged—

Her long hair was as dark as night, her assassin's robe fluttered slightly in the still air, her skin was so pale it was almost transparent, and her Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan stared silently at Madara, without joy or sorrow, only a kind of almost divine calm.

Madara's fingertips trembled as he touched her cheek. The power of the Rinnegan forcibly materialized her soul, and his palm finally felt warmth, even though that warmth was so cold it didn't feel like that of a living person.

“Then let’s fall into hell together…” Madara hugged her tightly, his voice low and hoarse like a broken bellows, “My… deceased wife.”

Nagi did not resist; she simply closed her eyes gently and let him embrace her.

The next second, all the cherry blossoms suddenly withered and fell to the ground as ashes.

Time seems to stand still at this moment.

Tobirama stood at a distance, his silver hair whipped about by the chaotic flow of chakra, his red eyes narrowed. He saw a strange phantom appear behind Nagi.

It was an existence that could not be described in words; it was neither a god nor a demon, nor a ghost, but a "concept" itself that transcended cognition.

Nagi raised her hand and gently covered Madara's eyes. "Sleep, Madara."

Her voice was extremely gentle, yet it sent chills down Tobirama's spine.

—The ground began to twist.

Countless souls crawled out from the ground, their figures blurred and distorted, yet still vaguely discernible.

Tobirama saw the tile-roofed rooms and the wooden rooms, the Senju clan members who had died from the plague, and even the long-dead Uchiha clan members... They all stared with empty eyes in Nagi's direction, as if awaiting some kind of judgment.

"What exactly are you trying to do?!" Tobirama demanded sharply, his fingers already gripping the Flying Thunder God kunai.

Nagi tilted her head slightly to look at him, her eyes filled with pity and distance, yet a faint smile played on her lips.

“Senju-kun, isn’t this the truth of fate?” Her voice was as light as the wind. “Forgetting and love... can coexist.”

Tobirama suddenly realized that the Six Paths Seal within her body was fluctuating violently! It was a forbidden technique powerful enough to distort reality; she was burning her own existence to forcibly rewrite cause and effect!

"No! You will completely... completely disappear!"

He rushed forward, but the next second, several golden chains shot out from the void, wrapping around his limbs like venomous snakes and dragging him away violently.

Nagi's figure had begun to fade away, her outline gradually becoming transparent in the moonlight, like a faded painting.

"Perhaps disappearing is a good ending," she said softly, a bittersweet smile playing on her lips.

Tobirama struggled and roared, but could only watch helplessly as she gradually turned into specks of light and dissipated.

"Uchiha Nagi—!!!"

His voice was swallowed by the storm.

At the last moment, Nagi turned back and glanced at him. The patterns in the Eternal Kaleidoscope slowly rotated, like a silent farewell.

The world falls silent.

When Tobirama awoke again, the ninja world had changed.

The war between the Senju and Uchiha never happened, Kawashima and Itama are alive and well, and Hashirama and Madara's ideal world seems to have become a reality overnight.

There was no death, no pain, and no Sharingan curse.

—Except for that name that has been completely forgotten by the world.

She chose the cruelest kind of tenderness.

In a world where everyone is happy... she herself is not included.

The laboratory door closed silently behind him, and Madara Uchiha's steps did not falter for a moment.

"I'm going to find her."

His voice was eerily calm, as if he were stating a long-established law rather than a momentary impulse.

Tobirama Senju's fingers dug deeply into his palms, blood seeping from between his fingers and dripping onto the cold lab table.

As he watched Madara's departing figure, he suddenly recalled that rainy night when Nagi stood on the steps of the shrine, her black hair soaked by the rain, her Mangekyou Sharingan reflecting the dim light of the sky.

"Senju-kun, some bonds... are destined to become regrets."

He didn't understand back then, but now the pain is so intense that he can hardly breathe.

He didn't even have a suitable identity to look for.

The stone gate of the Uchiha Forbidden Pavilion slammed shut behind Madara, raising a cloud of dust accumulated over a thousand years.

Madara took out a prepared scroll from his sleeve and slowly unfurled it on the altar. The ink was specially made, mixed with his blood and chakra.

The brush was made from reeds from the banks of the Naga River, and Nagi once used it to paint a portrait of him.

Madara's hand hovered above the paper, then suddenly began to tremble violently—he was horrified to discover that Nagi's face in his memory was becoming blurry.

“Black hair...black eyes…” Madara muttered to himself through gritted teeth, his forehead pressed against the cold stone platform.

The sound of dripping water echoed from the depths of the forbidden pavilion, like someone's tears falling into the abyss of time. "No, that's not it... her eyes should be more..."

The candlelight on the stone wall suddenly flickered, and Ban looked up sharply, seeing a slender figure leaning against the bookshelf in the swaying shadow.

Nagi was wearing the black samurai robe she wore when they first met, her hair still damp with water droplets from the Naka River, and she was looking at him with that calm gaze that broke his heart.

"Anagi!" The illusion vanished as Madara lunged forward, his knees slamming heavily against the stone bricks. The pain brought him back to his senses, but a twisted smile crept onto his lips.

He returned to his desk, and the pen finally fell, the ink spreading across the paper, first outlining a cool and aloof silhouette. Nagi always held her chin slightly raised, her innate arrogance hidden beneath her sharp demeanor.

A sudden downpour outside the window caused Ban's pen to hover in mid-air, and a drop of blood splattered onto his lips, which were just beginning to form, creating a small flower-like pattern.

He couldn't paint her smile.

In my memory, Nagi rarely smiled. Even in the most intimate moments, her eyes held an unyielding iciness.

Ban's pen tip began to tremble, and bloodstains meandered like a river on the scroll. He viciously bit his other wrist and used the fresh blood to smear the curve of the corner of her eye.

“You’re always like this…” Blood dripped down his wrist bone onto the family crest, “You won’t even smile at me in your dreams.”

The moment the portrait was completed, all the candles went out at the same time. In the darkness, the scroll began to burn spontaneously, and dense ancient characters emerged from the eerie blue flames.

Madara's Sharingan automatically transformed into the Rinnegan, revealing a warning left by the Sage of Six Paths: "The Wedge of the World, those who willingly sacrifice themselves, their names will not survive, their shadows will not remain."

"No!" Madara's roar shook the dust off the roof. He frantically tore off the edge of the burning scroll and wrote crooked words on the remaining scraps of paper: Uchiha Nagi, Madara's beloved.

After finishing writing, he bit his wrist and used his blood to repeatedly trace the words on the stone wall.

As his memories continued to fade, Madara suddenly burst into laughter, his laughter echoing like the howling of a demon in the collapsing Forbidden Pavilion.

Madara no longer felt the meaning of the name Uchiha Nagi, but he remembered that he had to find someone, someone more important than life itself.