Ryosuke and Oda Ieyasu talked through the entire night.
Each of the four reform directions could branch out into countless offshoots. Once they were translated into concrete tasks, they became hundreds of densely packed items that needed to be carried out.
"…There are still many follow-up matters that need to be refined, but roughly speaking, this is it."
Oda Ieyasu looked at the manuscripts spread all over the table and felt as though he were seeing a vast, surging new era. The world would become different under these thin sheets of paper.
"It should… become better, right?"
"Of course."
Ryosuke spoke with certainty, looking at the morning light rising outside the window.
"I'll be counting on you from here on out."
All Ryosuke could do was give guidance on the overall direction. As for concrete implementation and the management of government affairs, he truly wasn't good at that, so he could only trouble Oda Ieyasu again and again.
"This is my job to begin with."
Oda Ieyasu gathered up the documents on the table.
From the courtyard came the sound of wooden swords cutting through the air.
Ryosuke and Oda Ieyasu followed the sound with their eyes and saw little Hideyoshi practicing swordsmanship alone, meticulously and earnestly.
"Our generation, more or less, has lived pretty miserable lives," Oda Ieyasu said.
Parents, wives, close friends… for all kinds of reasons, pushed along by politics and intrests, they had passed away in ways that made one's heart feel twisted every time one thought back on them.
Oda Ieyasu looked at little Hideyoshi's sweat-drenched figure and said with a smile, "Let the next generation live happily."
Ryosuke nodded.
After leaving the daimyo's residence, Otsutsuki Isshiki looked back.
"So… this journey is over?"
"Yeah."
Ryosuke said, "It's over."
Isshiki felt a bit reluctant to part with it.
Not that he truly missed traveling with Ryosuke.
It was more like someone visiting a zoo, after hearing about and seeing the past experiences of the small animals inside, when they walk out of the zoo, they inevitably feel a little reluctant to leave.
But if you really asked most people to live together with animals, that would absolutely be impossible.
No matter what, in Otsutsuki Isshiki's long lifespan, this short month or so…
He would remember it for a very long time.
———
Once the contents of the manuscripts were put into action, it was like pouring water into a pot of hot oil, crackling and exploding as if the entire ninja world were about to be turned upside down.
The very next moment, the annihilation army acted like a lid slammed down on the pot, pressing all the splashing oil back in.
Resistance was inevitable.
Some were open, some were hidden, and some even came from friends of the past.
For friendly resistance, Ryosuke personally went to persuade them.
For hostile resistance, Ryosuke also personally went to "persuade" them.
Spring passed into summer, and in the blink of an eye, three months were gone. By the height of midsummer in July, the world's structure had undergone earth-shaking changes.
"But going back to the few goals I originally set."
First, change the direction of the world's development and obtain an Ascension Star Core.
Ryosuke glanced at the calendar.
Tomorrow, the leaders of all regions would arrive at Kirigakure to sign the "Human Federation Agreement." The ninja world would no longer have the concept of nations, all would be merged into the Human Federation, with all resources uniformly allocated.
Besides that, there were two other major events tomorrow.
One was the establishment of the Ninja World History Memorial Hall, which recorded all known history since the birth of humanity. Even the events involving Kaguya and the brothers Hamura and Hagoromo were included.
The other was that, with the breakthrough in lunar space teleportation technology, the derived global teleportation network connecting major cities would officially go online tomorrow.
That meant that starting tomorrow, people could be in the Land of Wind in the morning, pass through a teleportation gate to easily arrive in the Land of Fire in the afternoon, and then go to the Land of Water for a gathering in the evening.
The world was no longer just spiritually connected, it was truly, physically bound tightly together.
"I deliberately put these three things on the same day. Such a massive change to the world line should be enough to obtain an Ascension Star Core, right?"
Although no one could say for sure about something like a world-line change, Ryosuke's intuition told him, 'This was it'.
He was fairly confident about it.
Then came…
Second, training Ripple and Rotation.
There was no need to say much about this.
Ryosuke had already trained both to their respective limits. Now he was just waiting for the Ascension Star Core to enter the Steel Ball Run storyline and have a bout with the President's D4C.
Third, find Uchiha Obito.
"This guy can really run."
A movement speed of nearly eight kilometers per second was like an orbital satellite hanging overhead. And unlike an orbital satellite, it could occasionally change its orbit and adjust its flight angle, which greatly increased the difficulty of tracking it.
"But once the global teleportation gates are activated, they won't be able to escape."
As long as he could lock onto the general position, Ryosuke could repeatedly use the teleportation gates to track them, constantly adjusting his mind-writing precision, until he eventually cornered Obito's sky base.
Once he found them, he could wipe them out completely.
Thinking this, Ryosuke checked off the first two tasks, marking them as completed.
Then he drew a star next to the third task, indicating that once tomorrow's ceremony was over, this would become the most important matter.
"Lastly…"
Ryosuke opened a crack in the drawer and looked toward Otsutsuki Isshiki, who had been tossed into the ghost room.
Unlike the teleportation gates, which had mature technology and only needed one-to-one replication,
the project to kill Isshiki had yet to yield any results. For now, Isshiki could only continue staying with Ryosuke, carried around with him.
Even with the ghost room, once Ryosuke switched stands, Isshiki, being a living entity, would fall out of the ghost room, which was still somewhat troublesome.
Ryosuke thought for a moment, then wrote down task four, "Deal with Otsutsuki Isshiki," and also drew a star next to it.
'That's probably it.'
He glanced at the time.
The wall clock showed the current time, 1:17 a.m.
"Tomorrow, no, today, is definitely going to be a busy day. Go to sleep."
Ryosuke closed the notebook and walked toward the bedroom.
———
[At the Same Time, Otsutsuki Kaguya's Ice and Snow Dimension.]
A group of seven people, all wrapped in thick clothing, were carefully walking step by step across the ice.
With the unlocking of space teleportation technology, and the discovery of clues to Kaguya's dimension at Hamura's lunar outpost, the scholars of the research institute, through repeated attempts and following the trail step by step, actually managed to locate the corresponding ice-and-snow, magma, desert, and super-gravity alternate dimensions.
Considering the survival pressure involved, the scholars decided to start exploring with the ice-and-snow dimension first.
Today was the thirty-second exploration.
Their objective this time was a towering castle in the distance.
This operation included four researchers and three ninja, from Konoha and Kirigakure respectively. Two of them were people Ryosuke was fairly familiar with.
One was Sakamoto, who had thrown a kunai at Ryosuke during the Yagura subversion battle, bragged about it for three years, and was expected to keep bragging about it for the rest of his life.
The other was Nakajima Daishi, the one who blew up Kaitian No. 1.
"That should be the castle where Otsutsuki Kaguya lived when she was alive."
Sakamoto glanced at his watch. "At our current speed, we probably won't make it back today. Looks like we'll miss the opening of the History Memorial Hall."
Nakajima Daishi's eyebrows were covered in tiny ice crystals. He put his hands on his hips, took a few deep breaths, and said,
"No rush. Once we really make a major discovery, there'll be no need to go see it. After a few years, we'll naturally be able to write our own names into the memorial hall as 'contributors.'"
He was grateful to Ryosuke, and he looked forward to holding his daughter, bringing his wife along, and going to the memorial hall together, pointing at one of the names and saying, "This is me."
That feeling… should be wonderful.
Of course, debts that needed to be repaid still had to be repaid.
Because Nakajima Daishi had blown up Kaitian No. 1, the institute would deduct 30% of his monthly salary to pay off the debt. Major research achievements could also be used to offset it.
"Having your name written into the History Memorial Hall…"
Sakamoto scratched his face, lifted his chin slightly, and looked a bit proud.
He might already be written in.
In the records of the Yagura subversion battle, just… as a villain.
As Sakamoto was thinking about this, he laughed. Suddenly, he saw a pitch-black teleportation gate appear not far away.
"Huh?"
He pointed in the direction of the gate. "Besides us, did the institute arrange for others to come over too?"
Before his words even finished, Otsutsuki Momoshiki and Kinshiki stepped out.
Momoshiki's gaze swept over them.
"Heh."
"I didn't expect to see lowly lifeforms crawling around like bugs even in Kaguya's palace. Looks like that disgrace of the Otsutsuki, Kaguya, really did have serious problems."