Chapter 330: Sakura, Empress of Heaven
The world changed. The sun and moon spun on, tireless.
The sun rose and set more times than anyone could count.
Beyond the walls of that coffin, the world outside kept turning, day after day — towering mountains wore down to flat plains, oceans became fertile fields, once-open plains sank into marshland, deserts bloomed into oases, and oaseChapter 329: Sealed Aways, in turn, eroded into cliffs...
Sakura no longer had any way of knowing how long she'd slept — how long the darkness inside that iron coffin had wrapped around her.
Green vines had crept up over the heavy lid of the coffin, moss spreading thick across every surface.
Outside, a blade caught the cold light as it was driven into the seam of the coffin's lid.
The chakra patterns etched across its surface, which had been running steadily all this time, froze for one brief instant under the blade's touch.
Amid a rush of noisy commotion, several people scrambled to pry the ancient, dust-caked lid free.
The lid hit the ground with a heavy thud, and warm sunlight spilled once more across the pink-haired figure inside.
The people who'd pried the lid open stared, their breath catching audibly at the sight before them.
A breathtakingly beautiful young woman, robed in white, her pink hair spread around her, lay perfectly still in that cramped space, hands folded gently over her stomach.
Even in deep sleep, the Yin-Yang Release Body Technique had never once stopped remaking her body.
No one could say how many years had passed — but by now, the young woman lying in that coffin no longer looked quite human at all, at least not by any ordinary measure.
"Is— is she even still alive?"
One of the black-haired young men among them stared down at the girl in the coffin, his voice trembling faintly.
"I don't know."
"But right now, she's the only one who can save us."
The one speaking was a burly, bearded man in his middle years, standing at the front of the group.
"Don't worry. Sakura's got a good heart. She'll help you all."
"And besides — it's about time, now."
Off in the corner, an old woman with hair gone entirely white looked at the still-youthful face of the girl in the coffin, something like fond remembrance flickering in her eyes.
"L— Lady Katsuyu."
"But this woman is from three thousand years ago."
"There's no way to know if she's even alive."
The bearded man looked at the old woman, hesitant.
"Yes..."
"Three thousand years..."
"Three thousand years ago, Sakura already foresaw exactly where things would end up. That's why she sealed herself away."
"So that when a great enemy came for the shinobi world again, humanity would still have the strength to fight back."
"Rather than being slaughtered like lambs, with no way to resist at all."
The old woman — Katsuyu — looked at the girl in the coffin, her skin faintly pale from centuries without sunlight.
"Wh— what?"
"She foresaw this, three thousand years ago?!"
One of the group — a striking young woman — spoke up, unable to believe it.
"Ah. Sakura was always like that. She kept everything to herself, faced every enemy on her own, carried every burden herself."
"In her own era, she never lost. Not once."
"Even the Ōtsutsuki couldn't stand against her for a single exchange."
The Slug Sage — Katsuyu — walked forward, her steps slow and aged, crossing the distance toward the young woman whose face she'd nearly forgotten.
Under the anxious, watching eyes of everyone present, Katsuyu reached out a wrinkled hand toward the girl.
The instant before her fingers touched the girl's skin, the sleeping young woman's eyes snapped open.
A pair of jade-green eyes, burning with gold flame, opened before everyone's gaze.
The moment her eyes opened, a terrifying wave of chakra — vast as a mountain range, no — vast as a star, seemingly without end — surged outward from that slender, delicate body.
Every face in the room went white as sheets, and everyone dropped instinctively to their knees.
But the wave of chakra came and went in an instant, retreating the moment it appeared.
As though it had never happened at all.
"Lady Katsuyu. You've gotten old..."
Just as everyone knelt there, drenched in cold sweat, an ethereal, otherworldly voice rang out from inside the coffin.
Every head instinctively turned toward the one person among them who hadn't knelt — Katsuyu.
"Yes, Sakura."
"It's been far, far too long."
"Even I've grown old."
Katsuyu looked at the young woman before her, tears welling unbidden in her eyes.
"How long was I asleep?"
The girl in the coffin slowly sat up, a faint pattern of fire-red markings crawling across her white robe.
"Three thousand years..."
Hearing Katsuyu's answer, spoken in a voice that had become an old woman's, Sakura fell briefly silent.
Three thousand years...
"Is Hagoromo still alive?"
The girl paid no attention at all to the people still kneeling on the ground, still too afraid to raise their heads.
"Hagoromo passed away..."
"Two thousand years ago, a stranger from the Ōtsutsuki clan arrived in the shinobi world. Hagoromo fought him — the two of them destroyed each other in the end."
"Is that so..."
"Gone, then..."
The girl's body lifted slightly off the ground, her bare feet settling onto the earth below.
But looking closely, her feet hovered a full centimeter above the floor, never quite touching down.
"Get up."
The girl's voice sounded out, glancing once at the strangers before her.
By the time they raised their heads, she had already vanished, leaving nothing behind.
"L— Lady Katsuyu. Was that... the Sovereign of Heaven, who once ruled over the entire world?"
Someone asked, cautious, glancing at the elderly woman before them.
As the first legendary figure to ever bring the whole world under a single banner, the story of Sakura Haruno had been told and retold, passed from mouth to mouth, for countless generations.
From Empress, to Grand Sovereign, and finally, in the mouths of countless people across the ages, the Empress of Heaven.
Even after the Amanogawa Empire itself eventually fell, the legend of Sakura Haruno had never once faded from memory.
Countless generations after her had risen from among the common people since, taking up banners proclaiming themselves worthy of the Empress of Heaven, worthy of the shinobi world itself, striving through endless cycles of chaos and war to find some lasting peace of their own.
The name Sakura Haruno had, by now, become nearly synonymous with peace itself — with plenty, with something close to utopia.
"Yes."
Katsuyu watched the spot where the young woman had vanished and let out a quiet sigh.
"So — what's she going to do now?"
The bearded man at the front of the group asked, cautious.
"Whatever it is she's always done."
...
The pink-haired figure wandered across land that felt both intimately familiar and strangely foreign, gazing at this planet she'd once protected with her own hands, something dazed settling over her.
Her senses spread effortlessly across the entire planet beneath her feet, taking in every last detail with perfect clarity.
She learned the current state of the world.
Three thousand years ago, not long after she'd sealed herself away, Ōtsutsuki Momoshiki, Kinshiki, and Urashiki had arrived on this world.
But back then, Hashirama had still been alive. Naruto. Sasuke. And Kaguya as well.
And Hagoromo, still hidden away in the Pure Land.
So all three of those Ōtsutsuki had died.
Over the three centuries that followed, Sasuke and Naruto had both passed away in turn — but with Hashirama still standing, the Amanogawa Empire had remained, by and large, a place of relative peace.
But once Hashirama himself died, the empire had collapsed entirely within a hundred years, and the shinobi world descended once more into war.
Eventually, one figure had single-handedly swept away that chaos and founded a new nation, called Shinen.
But within a mere two centuries, that too had crumbled, for one reason or another.
The fall of a dynasty, bringing war in its wake, and with war, a new empire rising from the ashes.
The cycle, over and over.
Another five hundred years passed, and a new wave of Ōtsutsuki arrived.
At the time, the shinobi world was still locked in its own wars.
Hagoromo had torn himself from the Pure Land and, joining forces with Kaguya, struck down the invading Ōtsutsuki together.
But after that battle, Hagoromo lay gravely wounded, dying — and Kaguya, giving her own life to shield her son, fell in that same fight.
Three years later, Hagoromo died as well, carrying his regrets with him to the end.
Hagoromo had always been, fundamentally, a spirit — a soul without a body. His death meant true, final death.
Two thousand years' worth of accumulated souls, gathered within the Pure Land, transformed into the purest possible force upon his death and flowed back into the shinobi world, nourishing it in turn.
The overall power level of the shinobi world surged dramatically as a result.
But even so, no one, in all that time, ever managed to ascend to Six Paths level again.
Another thousand years passed. The Ōtsutsuki clan, as though some curse woven into the fabric of the shinobi world itself, returned to invade roughly once every thousand years.
By that time, there was no one left in the shinobi world capable of standing against them.
Katsuyu had taken human form and torn herself free of Shikkotsu Forest, exhausting the entirety of the Sage Pool's three-thousand-year reserve of natural energy, and at the cost of grave, near-fatal injuries, had finally driven the invaders back.
Now, it seemed, the world had fallen once again into that same thousand-year cycle.
Sensing what was coming, Katsuyu had chosen, in her dying moments, to break Sakura's seal.
She knew, by then, that the shinobi world no longer had the strength left to resist the Ōtsutsuki.
Only Sakura could still do that.
And given how many times the Ōtsutsuki clan had already suffered defeat on this world, this next cycle would surely come with overwhelming force behind it.
Perhaps even the full might of the entire Ōtsutsuki clan, thrown at this one planet that had defied them, again and again, for so long.
The pink-haired woman wandered across the world, taking in its splendor, watching countless lives pass her by, until at last she came to a barren, empty stretch of land.
She looked out over that stretch of wasteland, something stirring wordlessly in her chest.
With a faint pulse of power, two mounds of earth rose up out of the ground.
Naruto and Sasuke's graves.
Even after three thousand years, the bones of two Six Paths–level beings, though long since reduced to their skeletal remains, had endured perfectly intact.
Looking at these two fresh mounds, Sakura let out a helpless, faint laugh.
Of course. Even in death, those two idiots had to be buried side by side.
But her laughter faded before long. She raised a finger, and a third grave rose up beside the other two.
She plucked a single strand of her own hair, and it dissolved into a streak of pink light, settling into that third grave.
Three headstones rose up from the earth before the three graves.
Something flickered across Sakura's face. She let her finger trail lightly downward, and shards of stone scattered in its wake — leaving, on all three headstones, the exact same inscription.
The Grave of Team Seven.
She couldn't find Kakashi's grave anywhere.
He'd never ascended to Six Paths level. His body and soul had long since returned to nourish the world itself.
Once Hagoromo died, the Pure Land itself had dissolved — and from that point on, when someone in the shinobi world died, they died for good.
Unless revived promptly through the Rinnegan or some similarly powerful secret technique, there was no longer any coming back.
With a single gesture, a thick stack of paper offerings appeared before her. She set them alight, flames dancing across the burning paper, and watched quietly.
She built a grave for herself, too.
She was, by now, powerful beyond her own ability to gauge — she genuinely didn't know where her own limits lay anymore.
But just in case, she gave herself a headstone all the same.
The days passed, one after another.
Sakura lingered before those three graves for three months. When she finally reappeared, she'd returned to Shikkotsu Forest.
Sakura looked at the colossal presence before her.
The battle a thousand years ago had left Katsuyu with wounds that seemed, by any reasonable measure, impossible to recover from.
She could barely even maintain her human form anymore. She was dying.
"Sakura."
Katsuyu looked at the young woman before her, a note of sorrow crossing her face.
"I can heal you."
Sakura said, looking at her.
"No."
"Every ounce of your strength is precious, Sakura. It should be saved for the enemies still to come."
"There's no second coffin left to put you to sleep in, and no one left who could wake you a second time."
Katsuyu looked at the woman before her with gentle warmth.
Memories that should have long since faded into blur came sharpening back into focus now, clear and bright.
She could still see it — a six-year-old pink-haired girl, spinning her clumsy little lies to try to fool her.
Back then, how could she possibly have imagined that little girl would still be standing here, three thousand years later, walking her through the last steps of her own life?
Sakura looked at Katsuyu in silence.
"I'm sorry, Sakura."
"I can't stay with you any longer."
"You'll have to walk the rest of the road alone, from here."
Katsuyu's words kept coming, but her breath had already begun to slow, growing fainter by the moment.
Katsuyu died.
Four thousand years old, and now, gone.
She had watched Hagoromo rise and fall. She had watched humanity climb from something like a tribal age all the way to where it stood now.
She had watched Sakura's own rise, too.
But she would never see how Sakura's story ended.
Sakura watched it happen, her expression calm.
Gone. All of them, gone now.
At that moment, a figure appeared amid a puff of white smoke, stepping into a Shikkotsu Forest that no longer had Katsuyu in it.
It was the bearded, middle-aged man who had originally pried open Sakura's coffin.
"Y— Your Majesty? Empress of Heaven?"
The moment he saw Sakura, the man dropped to his knees, overwhelmed.
Ever since the day the Empress of Heaven had awoken from her coffin, he'd rushed to report the news to the current ruler of the Mingyao Empire.
The Mingyao emperor had, upon hearing it, given orders to spare no expense finding the Empress of Heaven, wherever she might be.
But the Empress of Heaven had no wish to be found — who, then, could possibly have located her?
And yet, here she was, right in front of him.
"Mm."
"You must be Shikkotsu Forest's last remaining summoning contractor, aren't you?"
Sakura looked at the man, calm.
"Yes. My name is Uzumaki Meng."
The man spoke, a mixture of excitement, disbelief, and quiet sorrow in his voice.
Uzumaki... Meng.
Sakura looked at him, and for a moment, it was almost as though she could see the shadow of that blond boy from long ago standing in front of her.
So this is it, then. One of Naruto's descendants.
"Live well."
Sakura looked at the man and let out a quiet sigh, then vanished from where she stood once more.
As she departed, the whole of Shikkotsu Forest trembled gently.
Katsuyu's massive body sank slowly into the earth, and a great burial mound rose up in its place.
Carved into the towering headstone was a single line of text.
Here Lies the Slug Sage of Shikkotsu Forest.
Grave raised by Sakura Haruno.
...
Sakura moved on again after that. It was unlikely she would ever return to Shikkotsu Forest.
She wandered the Mingyao Empire, circling it again and again, over and over.
It was only sometime later that a library quietly appeared, somewhere in the city that had risen atop the old ruins of Konoha.
The library had no formal name — its sign simply read "Library," nothing more.
Inside, Sakura had written down every technique she knew, every book bearing the same single signature at the end.
Sakura Haruno.
Yang Release. Yin Release. Yin-Yang Release. Sage techniques. Dust Release. Wood Release. Storm Release. Lava Release. Corrosion Release. Wind Release. Fire Release. Water Release. Lightning Release. Earth Release...
Curious visitors occasionally wandered in — but upon seeing that every single one of the thousand-plus volumes bore the signature "Sakura Haruno," they'd scoff and turn away without a second glance.
Everyone knew, after all, that the Sovereign of Heaven had never once written a book in her life.
Just another con artist, trading on the Empress of Heaven's legendary name.
(End of Chapter)