We Met Long Ago

The previous two so-called eras were nothing more than an illusion.

But now.

Shen Mo was about to begin in earnest.

As soon as he finished speaking, the planet rotated once more, and he directly took Konan with him as he charged toward it.

Konan was completely powerless to resist.

As everything around her rapidly changed, she still floated lightly less than half a meter above the ground in that seemingly incorporeal form.

Rain fell miserably over the land.

All of a sudden.

One ninja after another leaped over with weapons in hand, and one of them charged straight toward her.

Konan instinctively defended herself.

However, the ninja passed directly through her body.

"Didn’t I tell you? This is the River of Time, and the location is the Rain Village from thirty years ago." Shen Mo floated beside her, his right hand still resting on her shoulder. "As far as this era is concerned, you don’t exist. You can’t affect anything here. You can only observe."

At that moment, the ninjas wearing Rain Village forehead protectors clashed with a group of Konoha ninjas, and they began slaughtering one another in an instant.

The clash of weapons and the fearful cries of people before their deaths seemed to pull Konan back to that period.

The Ninja World War.

The Rain Village had been engulfed in war.

"You were only five years old back then, right?" Shen Mo said with a cheerful smile. "You really were adorable."

Following his gaze, Konan abruptly looked into the distance.

There, three children were trembling as they hid in the corner of a mound of earth.

Nagato, Konan, and Yahiko.

Konan couldn’t remember exactly when this was. Situations like this had been common for them back then. She clutched a small bag in her hand, containing the Ration Pills they had risked their lives to scavenge from those ninjas.

These weren’t merely their food.

They were also a chance for some of the other orphans to survive.

Konan stared blankly at the other two children.

Yahiko’s face was full of nervousness, while Nagato looked somewhat frightened.

Her eyes gradually reddened.

Before she met Jiraiya, that period had been the most dangerous and difficult time of her life, struggling to survive as an orphan on a battlefield like this.

But from her perspective at this moment.

The bond between the three of them had begun at that time, and now, only she remained.

Konan held back her tears.

She turned to the man before her and asked, "What exactly are you after?"

She was half convinced and half doubtful of what the man had said about taking her to the past.

But one thing was certain.

No matter what this man wanted to do to her, she had no power to resist whatsoever.

"Didn’t I tell you? The current you isn’t worth having any ulterior motive toward." Shen Mo gave her a gentle smile. "I can know everything that happened in the past from the River of Time, naturally including you. I may understand you even better than you understand yourself."

Konan pursed her lips and said nothing.

At that moment.

Nagato’s startled cry suddenly came from the distance.

Konan looked over and discovered that when she had fled from one mound of earth to another, she had accidentally dropped the bag in her arms onto the ground, spilling several dark Ration Pills.

Naturally, her younger self had stopped and bent down to pick them up. These were important things.

Nagato and Yahiko did not realize she had failed to follow them until they reached the other mound.

On a battlefield.

That undoubtedly carried a fatal danger.

Konan suddenly shook her head, as if memories were about to surge out from her mind.

Then she opened her eyes wide and abruptly turned around to look at the man standing beside her.

She remembered.

Shen Mo moved his hand away from her shoulder and walked step by step toward the Konan of thirty years ago. Footprints gradually appeared behind him. Finally, five-year-old Konan raised her head and looked in terror at the adult who had appeared before her.

Just as in her memory.

The Konan of the future clenched her fists tightly.

Her expression was filled with utter shock.

She had remembered what had happened, but how was this possible!?

At this moment, right before her eyes.

Shen Mo gave five-year-old Konan a gentle smile and raised his hand to lightly rub her head. A beautiful blue flower appeared on her forehead. Then he bent down and said something in a gentle voice.

—You have to live well.

The memories belonging to that time continued surging through Konan’s mind.

She raised her hand and touched her forehead.

There was an identical blue flower there.

It wasn’t the original one.

But from that moment on, she had begun using flowers like this as the sole ornament in her hair.

In her memories.

For a long time, she had been unable to recall that man’s appearance. What she could remember was that one sentence. Sometimes, she even wondered whether it had all been a dream. As time passed, that memory gradually faded away.

And now, she remembered.

Looking at the man who had returned, Konan bit her lip tightly.

"What exactly is going on?"

She had met this man thirty years ago, and he had even left his mark on her.

And all of this.

Had actually happened right before her eyes!

"Didn’t I tell you? This is the space-time of thirty years ago." Shen Mo smiled. "Ordinary beings cannot change the past in the true sense, but I’m different. This is the realm I’ve reached. So, in truth, we met long ago."

Konan stared fixedly at the man before her.

An existence capable of reaching into the past and even changing the future.

For such an existence.

Wasn’t he omnipotent?

By comparison, Nagato truly had no qualifications to be called a god.

But—

"Why did you say that?" Konan asked softly. Although she had gradually forgotten why, the words You have to live well had always been engraved deep within her heart.

When Yahiko died, when she faced despair.

Those words had always surfaced in her mind.

Even just now.

When Nagato died, those words had appeared again.

She didn’t know who had said them to her, nor did she know when they had been said, but she had always remembered them.

Now she knew.

The man who had said them to her was the one before her.

"If you’re asking why, then it’s because I hoped you could live on." The smile on Shen Mo’s face seemed to grow a little broader. He walked forward step by step and said slowly, "Konan, you see yourself as the pillar supporting the two bridges of Yahiko and Nagato, hoping to watch them lead the Rain Village, and this world, toward peace. But in my view, the true bridge has never been them. It’s you."

Changing the cause and effect of the past without causing too great an impact did not require many Trading Points.

He could make her understand his existence, gain her favor, and, in the process, increase the possibility of making her an agent.

It achieved two goals at once.