Starting with rogue ninjas, building the insect kingdom.

Chapter 596 Otsutsuki's First Style is Truly Manipulated

Ōtsutsuki Isshiki had never been so disheveled.

Even when he was ambushed by Kaguya Otsutsuki last time, and the world was given to the Divine Tree, he was never as disheveled and defenseless as he is today.

He was as insignificant as dust, residing in a speck of dust, even his breathing had to be done with utmost care.

This gray-white space had no up, down, left, or right, no end, only eternal nothingness and the man suspended in the center of the void.

Aburame Zhicheng didn't even move. He just sat cross-legged in mid-air, his arms resting on his knees, his eyes slightly closed, like an ancient Buddha in deep meditation.

Ōtsutsuki Isshiki knew that those eyes had never left him.

"How long do you plan to stay in there?" Aburame Shisei's voice pierced through every inch of the space.

"I've heard that the Otsutsuki clan has a long lifespan. You can live for 500 or 1000 years after you shrink, right? Then you should be able to play with me for a long time."

Isshiki Otsutsuki was unable to respond to him.

He held his breath and suppressed his energy fluctuations to the minimum, and then he could wait.

Once the madman ran out of patience and a crack appeared in the space, white flames ignited without warning.

It ignited precisely from inside his body.

"ah--!"

The burning sensation was not the heat of ordinary flames, but a tearing pain that penetrated deep into the bone marrow. Every chakra meridian was wailing, and every cell was being stripped of its lifespan.

When the flames died down, it felt as if several months of its life had been drained away.

"How...how did you find me?" His voice was hoarse and filled with disbelief.

"I couldn't find you." Aburame Shisei didn't even open his eyes. "I just burned the entire area around that speck of dust. Your idea is clever; shrinking it to that extent, I indeed couldn't pinpoint your location precisely. But you forgot one thing—this is my world, I can burn wherever I want."

As soon as he finished speaking, an area several meters in diameter was once again covered in white flames. Ōtsutsuki Isshiki was located at the edge of that area, half of his body licked by the flames, forcing him to regenerate.

"Can't you burn it somewhere else?" he asked through gritted teeth.

Aburame Shisei finally opened his eyes, a faint smile on his lips. "But I don't want to."

He raised his right hand and gently clenched his fist.

Otsutsuki Isshiki's body suddenly froze.

The surrounding gray space seemed to come alive, and an invisible force squeezed in from all directions, imprisoning him in mid-air.

He struggled desperately but found that he could not move his limbs, torso, or even a single finger.

"This is a minor technique I developed while deducing the unity of the five elements; I call it the Cage."

Aburame Shiki slowly stood up and walked towards him. "The principle is simple: use the will of this space itself to suppress you. The reason you couldn't revert to your original size after shrinking was because of this technique. However, I wouldn't need it if you didn't shrink."

He walked up to Isshiki Otsutsuki, squatted down, and looked at his enemy, whose body, which was the size of a grain of rice, was now close enough to appear quite large.

"Do you remember when you blew up that village?" Aburame Shisei's voice was calm. "I designed and remodeled that place. I built the several layers of insect nests underground here, one by one. And the academy... and many, many more."

He extended two fingers and gently pinched Ōtsutsuki Isshiki's right arm.

With a gentle pull, his right arm was ripped off at the root. As expected, no blood flowed; only white energy surged at the break.

The Otsutsuki clan's bodies wouldn't normally experience much pain from losing an arm, but Aburame Shisei didn't know what was attached to those two fingers. The moment the arm was severed, Otsutsuki Isshiki's nerves felt like they were struck by lightning, and the pain almost made him lose consciousness.

"Ah—!" The scream echoed in the empty space.

"Killing is not torturing life, do you know that? You're more like a villain than I am!" Otsutsuki Isshiki shouted angrily.

"Does it hurt?" Aburame Shicheng seemed not to hear, perhaps this was his true nature. His ethereal, otherworldly demeanor and serene demeanor were all a facade.

He casually tossed the severed arm aside, and it was shredded in mid-air by some force, turning into white specks of light and dissipating. "It must have hurt a lot. When I came here, I saw you with a huge hole in your back in the Northwest. She must have suffered no less than you. And those people around you who were vaporized by you. I realized that even the soul can't withstand the powerful laws of physics; it's destined to be annihilated."

"You're still alive, so you should be grateful. The fact that you can still feel pain means your nerves are still working, your brain is still functioning, and your heart is still beating. Those who are dead, they have nothing left."

"You're insane! You're absolutely insane! Do your men even know what kind of person you are?"

"I've been observing you for a long time. You think you're special, that you're different. But in reality, you're no different from anyone else in the ninja world. You've already been infected. You're just a worm parasitizing our Otsutsuki system. Without our nourishment, you're nothing."

Isshiki Ōtsutsuki was panting heavily, his severed arm slowly regenerating, but at a rate several times slower than usual. This space was suppressing his regenerative abilities, and even the Ōtsutsuki clan's pride in their immortality was being weakened.

So all he wanted was to provoke the other party and hasten their death, so that he could regroup and break free from control.

Although this would continuously deplete his life force, given his current state and Aburame Shisei's methods, he couldn't kill himself; he could only slowly wear him down.

"I am very self-aware, so I rarely show it in front of others. People have two sides and many facets, and I never deny that. Actually, what I hate is the destruction of my living environment. I rarely take exams outside, and I don't have that much ambition. I just quietly cultivate my immortality. Even if Konoha runs away in front of me, as long as they don't cause trouble, I don't go to great lengths to eliminate them. Because in my eyes, you are the same as them, unimportant."

"What... exactly do you want?" Otsutsuki noticed that he wasn't provoked, but instead spoke calmly to him. "You could have just killed me, why..."

"Why don't you make a move?" Aburame Shisei continued, "Because of your current state, if I kill you, you'll revive. While reviving in your shrunken state is slower, given enough time, your chakra will still regenerate, right?"

With a wave of his hand, Ōtsutsuki Isshiki discovered that something was being eroded by something else on the seal on his chest, eroding his body and his brain.