Naruto: Sasuke Uchiha Returns from Soul Society

Having figured this out, the coldness in Sasuke's eyes slowly faded, and he regained his composure.

"nothing."

He simply replied with that, then looked away from the monk.

"Really? That's great news." Hyosube Ichibei seemed to genuinely believe Sasuke's words.

"Alright, now that Lord Spirit King's gift has been delivered, my mission is complete."

He turned around, gesturing for Sasuke and Aizen to follow. "I suppose you two have been lingering here for quite some time. I'll see you off now..."

"No need."

"Hmm?" Hyoninbe Ichibei turned around, somewhat surprised.

"Then let's say goodbye here."

As Sasuke spoke, the golden Rinnegan in his eyes gently rotated.

"Sizzle—!!!"

A dark, swirling vortex silently opened.

"this......"

Hyobu Ichibei's simple smile froze slightly.

Sasuke said nothing more, nodded slightly to Aizen, and stepped into the vortex first.

Aizen turned around and gave Hyosube Ichibei an elegant farewell.

"Then, Lord Hyosubu, please excuse me."

After saying that, he also turned around and followed the silver-white figure, disappearing into the chaos.

The dark vortex slowly closed after the two entered, until it disappeared completely.

...........

Sasuke's figure stepped out from the distorted void, and at the same time, the sealed space within his body exploded.

"Finally back from that awful place!"

Yin Jiuwei felt like crying. Staying in that ghostly place was too stressful. She was afraid that she would die at any moment, and in that place, she didn't even know if she could be resurrected after dying.

Sasuke ignored it and looked around.

It was the same secret room, exactly the same as it had been before he left.

But something felt very wrong.

"Sasuke-kun, it seems we have successfully arrived in your world." Aizen's calm voice came from behind him. He raised his hand, as if wanting to touch the air of this world.

"That's truly astonishing," he exclaimed. "Does this world even have 'spiritual particles'?"

"Although the concentration is much thinner than in Soul Society, its essence is no different."

“But what’s even more interesting is…” Aizen slowly closed his eyes, as if savoring the moment, “the ‘structure’ of this world seems to be much more stable than ours.”

The stability he speaks of is a sense of resilience stemming from the very laws of the world.

If the three worlds of Soul Society, the Human World, and Hueco Mundo are like a dilapidated wooden building barely supported by three main beams, which could collapse at any moment due to the imbalance of souls.

So, this world felt more like an indestructible, massive foundation to Aizen.

“Without any wedges, it can maintain such a stable balance…” Aizen murmured, his eyes filled with an even stronger longing for the unknown. “What a world full of possibilities.”

But Sasuke's attention was completely elsewhere than on Aizen's sentiments.

He stared intently at the stone door of the secret chamber, deducing from his own principle that "after time travel, time in the original world stands still."

When he left, Orochimaru and Kabuto Yakushi stood guard outside the door, waiting for him to finish his training.

So they should still be there now.

But to his perception, there was no one outside.

Could it be that the "time freeze" that he had always regarded as an ironclad rule has failed this time?!

"Sasuke-kun?"

Aizen's voice pulled him back from that brief moment of distraction.

Sasuke turned around, his gaze falling on the huge bathtub filled with the White Snake Sage's venom in the center of the secret room.

He raised his hand, and a pure power of the Six Paths quietly emerged in his palm.

"Hungry Ghost Realm".

Those golden Rinnegan eyes shone brightly at this moment!

The poisonous sage chakra originating from the White Snake Sage at the bottom of the pool was instantly swallowed up by that suction force.

The violent natural energy that had once been enough to make him experience the cruelty of the soul was now as docile as a tamed sheep before his Rinnegan, and was easily absorbed.

"..."

Aizen watched the scene unfold before him silently, sensing that the already powerful aura of the young man was rapidly increasing.

"Snap—"

A slight, crisp sound.

A menacing horn grew out from the smooth skin on Sasuke's forehead.

It was pitch black, but its tip shimmered with a strange purple light.

That was the ultimate manifestation of the power of the immortals of Ryuchi Cave, proof of complete harmony with nature.

Sasuke opened his eyes, gently touched the menacing horn on his forehead, and frowned slightly.

The next instant, he swept his palm across.

The horns, which had already solidified into a physical form, silently vanished and disappeared back beneath the skin.

"..."

He stood up from the pool, his golden Rinnegan calmly gazing at Aizen.

"gone."

"Where to? The Pure Land?" Aizen asked instinctively.

"Go out and see."

Sasuke didn't explain much; his figure left a blurry afterimage as he disappeared from the secret room.

"Look at this world, during the time I was away..."

"What exactly happened?"

Aizen's smile deepened, and he adjusted his clothes with interest before following after him.

..........

Beneath the Hidden Sound Village lies another, even larger laboratory.

Orochimaru was sitting on a cold stone seat, his face grim.

He could clearly feel two vast auras rapidly approaching his direction.

Even from the leader of the Akatsuki organization, he had never felt such pure and terrifying pressure.

When did this kind of monster infiltrate Otogakure?!

"Lord Orochimaru..." Kabuto Yakushi, who was standing to the side, was also pale-faced, his eyes behind his glasses fixed on the entrance of the laboratory, his voice dry, "Should we evacuate immediately?"

"It's too late."

Orochimaru spoke in a hoarse voice, forcibly suppressing the trembling in his heart.

Just as he finished speaking...

The heavy stone door, made of alloy, silently turned into dust.

Two figures, one in front of the other, slowly emerged from the billowing smoke and dust.

Leading the way was a young man dressed in a pure white robe, with long, silver-white hair casually draped over his shoulders.

That already handsome face now, under the dim light of the laboratory, exuded an almost superhuman divinity.

Orochimaru stared blankly at the silver-haired figure, his mind completely blank.

"...S-Sasuke-kun?"

That face had matured considerably. Although the features still vaguely resembled Sasuke's, his long, silver-white hair and those golden Rinnegan eyes that seemed to look down upon all living beings like a god...

They were all completely different from the black-haired, black-eyed boy he remembered.

But it gave him a long sigh of relief; thankfully it was Sasuke, and not anyone else.

"How many days have passed since I left?" Sasuke asked calmly.

"A few... days?" Orochimaru repeated subconsciously, then immediately realized what was happening.

“Sasuke, during the time you disappeared…” He thought carefully for a moment, “it was probably only three or four days.”

"I couldn't sense your chakra at that time, and I thought you had some urgent business to attend to and had temporarily left."

Three or four days...

Sasuke's eyes instantly darkened.

really.

The "time freeze" that he had always regarded as an ironclad rule failed this time.

Although everything he experienced in Soul Society felt incredibly long to him, it was only a short three or four days in the eyes of this world.

Is it because I have gained the ability to actively travel through the world that the passive rules have also changed?

This uncertainty made him feel a sense of instinctive unease.

He raised his head and turned his gaze back to Orochimaru, his voice icy.

"Has anything new changed in the ninja world these past few days?"

"change?"