The road of extortion.
Ryosuke stood before the Joestar Jizo statue, thought for a moment, took an apple out of the Ghost Room, placed it in front of the statue, and said softly, "Wish me luck."
Hot Pants leaned over, looked the short, chubby stone statue up and down, and asked, "Is this a local god? Should I also pray to it, to ward off the bad luck Miracle of You brought?"
Ryosuke asked in surprise, "Don't you believe in God?"
"Those are two different things."
"He's Johnny in the future."
Ryosuke's words made Hot Pants, who was just about to follow local customs and perform a Japanese kneeling bow, freeze in place.
"Huh?!"
Hot Pants was shocked. "This fat uncle is skinny, frail Johnny? Then why is his statue in Morioh?"
Ryosuke briefly explained Johnny's situation to her, "After the SBR race ended without my interference, Johnny sealed the Saint's Corpse in America. Then, on the way back to his homeland with Gyro's body, he met Rina Higashikata. The two fell in love, got married, and had a child."
"The happiness didn't last long. The Higashikata family's generational curse erupted. To save his wife, Johnny once again took out the Saint's Corpse, wanting to use the Saint's power to transfer the calamity afflicting her."
"However, the transferred calamity fell on his own child."
"Johnny realized that even if this calamity were transferred again, it would just land on someone else's son, daughter, husband, or wife, so..."
Ryosuke reached out and gently patted the shoulder of Johnny's stone statue.
"He used the power of Spin and the Corpse to transfer the curse onto himself, and ultimately died. The reason the ginkgo leaves on this street can transport objects is also because they were influenced by the power of Spin, giving birth to a Stand."
After hearing Ryosuke's account, Hot Pants fell silent for a long time. The Johnny she knew was reliable, an outstanding comrade.
But just like how you could never imagine that the buddy who skipped classes and went to internet cafés with you would, after becoming a father, willingly shoulder such heavy responsibility and pressure for his child and wife, Hot Pants also couldn't imagine Johnny choosing to walk toward death on his own.
"Hm?"
Uchiha Madara folded his arms across his chest. Born in an age of war, he had seen and heard plenty of people dying for their families and clans, so he didn't feel much emotion over that.
What he cared about was something else.
"Didn't Johnny and Gyro encounter Dio's attack in another spacetime? Then how could he still marry and have children many years later?"
Following linear time logic, whether Johnny and Gyro from a hundred years ago were captured or killed, under Dio's influence, the events of JoJolion shouldn't have been able to unfold at all.
Madara pondered for a moment, then asked, "Parallel worlds?"
It seemed that only parallel worlds could explain it.
But...
Ryosuke shook his head.
He took out a piece of the Saint's Corpse and told everyone to close their eyes and touch it.
After Madara and Hot Pants touched it, in the pitch-black field of vision, they saw another complete Saint's Corpse, extremely far away in the distance.
Different from the Saint's Corpse in their hands, which emitted golden light, the one far away gave off a faint silver glow.
There was no need to ask Ryosuke. The moment they saw the two Saint's Corpses, they naturally knew the answer deep in their hearts, the distant Saint's Corpse, hidden in an underground warehouse in America, was merely a "projection" that existed as a reference anchor.
The one in their hands was the true body that possessed the Saint's power.
"We're in the baseline world, but…"
Uchiha Madara frowned slightly. "Why hasn't the causal flow of time been transmitted here?"
Ryosuke stood before Johnny's statue, thinking about the same issue. After a moment, he said, "I have a guess."
"Do you remember the void mist we saw when we came over?"
"I was already wondering before whether it was just an illusion. I always felt that after transitioning from the ninja world to the JOJO world, the void mist… seemed to have become thinner."
"If the mist is the filler between different worlds and different spacetimes, then does thinning mean that spacetime which was originally not far apart has been artificially pulled farther away, like…"
As Ryosuke spoke, he looked toward Joshu, who was picking his nose, repeatedly pulling mucus between his index finger and thumb. As he pulled, the mucus naturally became thinner.
Hot Pants hurriedly stopped him. "Okay, okay, I get it. No need for more examples."
Ryosuke tilted his head.
He had originally wanted to say, "like a spatial slingshot."
"In short, I suspect that Dio used some method to stretch the distance between different spacetimes of the JOJO world to an extreme."
"On the surface, we're only 'a little over a hundred years' away from the era of the SBR race, but on a spacetime level, the distance may already be unimaginably vast."
"So vast that… the experiences of people like Johnny can't cross that spacetime distance in a short time to affect this place."
Uchiha Madara understood, but a new question arose, "Why would Dio do this?"
Thinking logically, Dio's influence spreading outward with time would subtly bring many advantages.
To put it more extremely, if Dio went back to the time of Phantom Blood and wiped out the Joestar family entirely, people like Joseph and Jotaro wouldn't even be born.
Ryosuke raised two fingers.
"I think there are two reasons."
"First, Dio's current strength allows him to resurrect people out of thin air and create matter from nothing. He doesn't need to care about the Joestar family at all."
"So there's no need to rely on 'causes' to create 'effects' that benefit him, he can just create them directly. Why go through all that trouble?"
"Second, just like my spatial slingshot. A world stretched to its limit, if at some point in the future, everything suddenly converges together, with causes and effects colliding, spacetime crashing into spacetime, then…"
A spatial slingshot Ryosuke created using an area of roughly a dozen kilometers could already smash Ōtsutsuki Isshiki until he spat blood.
How terrifying would a "spacetime slingshot" formed from eight JOJO spacetimes, spanning two great worlds and hundreds of years?
Ryosuke didn't know.
After the battle ended, they went to the Higashikata estate. After confirmation, the branch of the New Rokakaka had already been taken. Josuke guessed it was most likely Tooru's doing.
The branch had long since been sent out of the world of JoJolion and handed over to Dio.
"A New Rokakaka fruit capable of 'unequal, equivalent exchange.'"
"Spacetime stretched to the extreme."
"And kidnapping Yasuho to obtain Paisley Park, an investigative ability that could be called a cyber, side-effect-free version of Amenominakanushi."
Ryosuke felt as though countless mysteries lay before his eyes.
However...
Ryosuke vigorously rubbed his cheeks.
Sitting here thinking blindly was meaningless. The answers would ultimately have to be found on the road. Besides, Ryosuke had never been good at solving problems through reasoning and speculation.
He had always been a man of action.
Before transmigrating, he worked hard.
After transmigrating, he worked hard at killing people.
In its own way, that was Ryosuke's unity of knowledge and action.
The Saint's Corpse flashed with light once more.
"It's time to depart," Ryosuke said.
"Please wait a moment." Seeing everyone about to leave, Josuke hurried over.
"I want to set off together with you."