---Third POV---
Shiho snapped out of it and saw that all the Konoha ninjas were staring at him. He immediately started trembling with nervousness and began speaking haltingly.
"I... I don't actually know that much. This is something my grandfather once told me. If I say anything wrong, please, all of you, don't…"
"That's enough. Just get to the point."
Ryouma felt that if he didn't interrupt this unfortunate kid, he'd probably add a dozen more disclaimers before saying anything.
"Alright, I'll start now." Shiho swallowed nervously and began to speak. "Legend has it that a long time ago, Rōran was just a barren desert. Then, a priestess prayed to the gods, and a miracle happened, water and life burst forth from the earth. Because of that, people wandering the desert gathered here, and eventually, Rōran was founded. And at everyone's request, that priestess became part of the Rōran royal family, guarding the Ryūmyaku for generations."
Ryouma's mouth twitched.
That's not the important part, he thought, but seeing how terrified Shiho looked, he didn't scare him further.
Fortunately, Shiho's pace was fairly quick, and he soon got to the critical point.
"Later, for some unknown reason, the power of the Ryūmyaku began to weaken. Without its nourishment, Rōran's water sources and greenery began to shrink. At the time, the people of Rōran believed the royal family had failed to protect the Ryūmyaku and had angered the gods. During a ritual, someone deliberately set a fire, and the reigning queen was burned alive in the flames. The Queen's only daughter was devastated and wanted to find the culprit, but no one was willing to help her."
Rin couldn't help but cover her mouth in disbelief, her face full of confusion. "How could something like that happen…"
Ryouma knew her personality couldn't handle tragic stories like this. But this was the way of the world, there would always be ignorant people. All he could do was squeeze her hand, signaling her not to take it too much to heart.
"And then what happened?" Kakashi asked. Hearing about the queen's tragic fate, he seemed to begin understanding why Shiho was telling a story that sounded more like legend than history.
"Then, the Queen's daughter, in despair, went to the heart of the Ryūmyaku and sang the song that had been passed down through the royal family. Her sorrowful voice caused the nearly dried-up Ryūmyaku to erupt in unprecedented light, and then…"
He paused there, seeing that all the ninjas had their eyes on him, and nervously continued.
"And then… I don't know what happened."
"What?!" Obito grabbed Shiho by the collar, furious. "Are you messing with us? After all that, you still didn't explain what caused the Ryūmyaku to turn out like this?"
Shiho looked miserable, on the verge of tears. "I really only know this much. My grandfather said his grandfather only told him this. Besides, you're the one who asked me to tell it…"
Naruto quickly rushed forward, wrapping his arms around Obito and pulling him back while pleading, "Don't be like that, Obito-sensei. Don't make it harder for him."
Ryouma frowned, staring at the massive deep-blue pillar of light rising into the sky. This isn't the same level of Ryūmyaku disturbance as in the original storyline…
At this level of energy, ordinary sealing techniques were completely useless. The sheer pressure emanating from it made it nearly impossible to inscribe any normal jutsu.
The most advanced sealing technique he currently possessed was the double-layered nested "Eight Trigrams Seal," but even that required a seal formula as a medium to activate.
Seeing Obito still pressing Shiho for answers, he gently advised, "Naruto's right. Let him go for now."
Hearing Ryouma, Obito immediately released Shiho and turned to ask, "Then what should we do next?"
Kakashi calmly suggested, "For safety, I think we should retreat from Rōran for the time being."
Naruto's eyes widened in shock. "If we do that, doesn't that mean I won't be able to return to my original time?"
"That's still better than dying, isn't it?" Kakashi said coldly.
Clap clap.
Ryouma clapped his hands, pulling everyone's attention back.
"First of all, Kakashi, retreating isn't an option. From what I can sense, the energy of the Ryūmyaku's eruption is strong enough to destroy at least half the shinobi world."
"Th-That serious?"
Obito seemed even more shocked than Kakashi, who had just suggested the retreat.
"That's right," Ryouma confirmed again. "And based on the information Shiho gave us, for the Ryūmyaku to erupt on this scale, the royal family must have been involved. In other words—"
"In other words, we just need to find that evil Queen, beat her, and make her restore the Ryūmyaku back to normal, right?" Naruto confidently finished Ryouma's thought.
"Uh… aside from the 'evil Queen' part… but whatever, you're not wrong."
Ryouma didn't bother correcting the misunderstanding, he figured they'd understand once they met Queen Sāra themselves.
"According to the legend, the current Queen of Rōran must be at the Ryūmyaku's core. We'll have to get close first to take the next step."
With that, he flicked his hand, firing a stream of chakra at a broken-down puppet nearby. The puppet quickly transformed into a sleek, all-metal hovercar. He leapt into the driver's seat and turned to the other four with a puzzled look.
"What are you all waiting for? Get in."
"Oh!"
Realizing a beat late, the others hurriedly jumped onto the strange-looking platform.
Ryouma formed the hand signs for a Boil Release technique. Two white jets of steam burst out from the rear, and the hovercar shot off toward the Ryūmyaku like an arrow loosed from a bow. They barreled through the ruins, and in less than a minute, they reached the outer edge of the Ryūmyaku. As for why they only got to the outer edge and not the core, it wasn't because Ryouma didn't want to go further, but because their path was blocked by the towering pillar of blue light.
"This is the Ryūmyaku?" Obito reached out his hand, trying to touch the sky-piercing stream of light, only for Kakashi to smack it away just in time.
"You think this is some regular trap you can just step on? This is energy strong enough to wipe out half the shinobi world."
"I-I… I was wrong…" Obito stammered for a while before realizing his mistake and apologizing obediently.
Of course, Kakashi didn't press the issue. After all, it was Obito, it would be weird if he didn't act rash sometimes.
Rin's sensory abilities were nowhere near Ryouma's, but even without them, it was clear just how dangerous the Ryūmyaku was from this close.
"This is going to be tricky. How are we supposed to get inside?"
As she had said, this energy barrier formed by the Ryūmyaku's energy stream was indeed troublesome.
Ryouma looked up at the seemingly endless torrent of energy. If he used Full Counter here, the consequences probably wouldn't be pretty.
A subtle shift occurred in his perception as he decisively activated his enhanced sensory abilities. Upon perceiving a faint disruption in the energy pillar's essential flow, he nodded slightly and muttered to himself: "Just as I thought."
In fact, the moment the energy pillar had shot into the sky, he had already activated his combined perception to observe the stream of energy. But at that time, he couldn't sense any vulnerable points in its fundamental structure, which was expected. After all, for the Breath of All Things to perceive the essential flow of something, the user had to understand the true nature of what they were observing.
The life essence of living beings was easy to grasp, but the "breath" of abstract concepts like energy formations couldn't be understood through idle imagination. That was why he had patiently listened to Shiho's story in detail. In that seemingly mythical history, one sentence had caught his attention: "Later, for some unknown reason, the power of the Ryūmyaku began to weaken."
In many worlds, the concept of "Ki" existed. The so-called Ryūmyaku referred to the places where the earth's energy flows converged and gathered. Different worlds or planets had different names for it based on their cultures. Here in the shinobi world, this "Ki" was called natural energy.
This was also the very energy needed by the God Tree planted by the Ōtsutsuki clan. The reason the Ryūmyaku weakened back then was probably because Kaguya and Isshiki came to the shinobi world and planted the God Tree.
Now that Ryouma had understood the true nature of the Ryūmyaku, its essential "breath" and flow patterns naturally became visible to his perception. The disruptions were a bit faint, but it didn't matter. He drew Lostvayne from his back and stepped forward.
The others also noticed his actions. Naruto clenched his fists excitedly like a little fanboy and said, "It's that move, right? Your eyes are glowing, it must be that move!"
Obito, hearing Naruto's excited words, quickly looked at Ryouma's eyes. The Rikugan's enhanced state combined with his focused spiritual awareness created an almost otherworldly glow.
Ryouma didn't bother explaining the change in his eyes. Instead, he waited for the right moment and slashed at the point where Ryūmyaku's essential flow was most disrupted. If his guess was right, this light pillar was merely the outer shell of the Ryūmyaku. Severing its flow shouldn't affect the core of the Ryūmyaku inside.
As the blade flashed past, the sound of shattering glass echoed from within the towering pillar.
In the next instant, the deep blue pillar disintegrated inch by inch, turning into a mist-like torrent of energy that instantly engulfed the entire Rōran, and continued to spread outward at an unstoppable pace.
"Oops, guess I was wrong."
He hadn't expected that destroying the shell would cause the energy stored inside the Ryūmyaku not to dissipate or return, but instead erupt prematurely. Still, at least now they could go inside and find the Queen. Things weren't too bad.
Probably...
He turned back to look at his companions a little awkwardly. "It's fine, everything's still under my cont—huh?"
He felt something strange about his voice, it had become sharper, more high-pitched, like it had reverted to how he sounded before his voice changed as a child.
When he shifted his gaze toward Rin and the others, his eyes widened slightly in surprise. All of them, who just moments ago looked like teenagers, had now turned into four- or five-year-old little kids.
Rin had only felt a flash of dazzling light. When she managed to force her eyes open, she saw a wide-eyed, child version of Ryouma staring at her.
"?"
The situation was so sudden that she didn't react immediately.
"You guys? Why do you look like this? Is it some kind of genjutsu?"
Obito asked as he pinched his thigh. Yep, hurt a lot, so probably not genjutsu.
Kakashi muttered in exasperation, "If you think it's genjutsu, you should activate your Sharingan, not pinch yourself."
"Oh! You're right!" Obito clapped his hands and tried to channel his now-thin chakra into his eyes.
"Eh? Why can't I activate my Sharingan? Ryouma, help me check, did my eyes change?"
Ryouma looked at him and shook his head. "Nope. Still normal."
"Ahhh! Why are all of you little kids now, what the heck!"
Hearing that familiar voice, everyone turned to Naruto.
When they saw he looked exactly the same as before, Rin exclaimed in relief, "That's great, you didn't turn into a kid!"
Ryouma, using his Rikugan, sensed the now-scarce chakra in his body, then grabbed Shukaku, who was lying on his head, and examined him back and forth.
"Stop touching me, buddy. I don't know where the chakra sealed in your body went either."
Ryouma could understand becoming a child, after all, the Ryūmyaku did have time-related powers, but his chakra disappearing? That was strange. It didn't match the law of chakra conservation at all.
"Look outside!" Kakashi suddenly pointed in one direction and shouted.
Rōran now looked nothing like its former apocalyptic, sandstorm-ravaged self. Instead, it appeared veiled in a soft blue haze, bathed in dreamy halos of light.
Boom!
Not far away, a cluster of towers flickered and sparked like a broken TV screen, then began to rewind, the bricks vanished row by row. Within seconds, it had turned into a lush green forest. And that wasn't even the strangest part. Right next to that area, time had distorted again, turning another section into a lifeless desert. Similar phenomena were occurring all over Rōran, or rather, within this mist-shrouded space.
Staring at a sight more surreal than anything he'd ever dreamed of, Naruto couldn't help but cry out, "What the heck is even happening here?!"
Ryouma handed Shukaku over to Rin to hold, his child-sized body made it inconvenient to carry him. Once done, he calmly said, "Just like how Naruto traveled through time to this era, all these strange phenomena ultimately stem from the Ryūmyaku. As long as we seal the Ryūmyaku, without its energy, even the most powerful techniques will unravel on their own."
Now that the energy pillar was gone, he could perform the sealing jutsu on the Ryūmyaku without obstruction.
Kakashi asked with concern, "But sealing the Ryūmyaku would require at least an S-rank sealing technique. Do you still have enough chakra for that?"
Ryouma gave him a thumbs-up. "Don't worry, more than enough."
Although time had been reversed, his passive buffs hadn't. His wish-based abilities remained completely unaffected.