A Puzzle So Simple, You Can't Solve It.

(15 days ago, 16nth of December, Cultivator's base, Kirigakure.)

Two figures dressed in long robes were talking back and forth as the bigger one was getting restless with every passing moment, pacing around the lines on the floor as he kept his distance from the other person in the room. The figure of the Divinator merely continued staying crosslegged on the floor, an array enveloping him as well as his surroundings.

In front of him, an ethereal looking knife rotated slowly in the air as the Divinator's sharp eyes stared at it carefully

"Risking so much just for this pest. If we just dragged him back with us I could simply pulverize it until nothing remained and be done with it."

The divinator didn't bother to take his eyes off the blade as he responded.

"We already clarified this. Since the information Yang Feng sent back, I already peered into many possibilities. We already tried that one, and you almost eliminated all of it… almost. But in the end, it's all the same, it comes back, we always miss a part of it, a part that evolved enough to survive being blasted to atoms. Every time it ends the same, with us thinking we have won, and then being stabbed in the back by that thing. Sometimes it masks itself as our child, our disciple, or our spouse. It is an abomination that can become any living creature, no matter the conditions. It eventually consumes everything that lives."

The Divinator slowly explained as the knife slowly stopped rotating in the air as he extended his hand towards the handle, slowly examining the blade in his hand.

"And the only method you came up with is directly attacking its soul, forfeiting any physical advantage it might have. Not bad, it would be the perfect method to deal with physical types like myself. Can't believe that if stabbed with this tiny blade, even at my peak, I would sooner or later die. You sure have some scary tricks up your sleeves, oh almighty Divinator" – The second cultivator commented jokingly before his eyes laid upon the piece of paper that was left behind by Yang Feng. – "… It will work, won't it?" – He asked in a somber voice.

For figures like them, the higher they climbed the lower the count of the people they could call friends became. The three of them had originally been four, now down to only two. A moment passed as the Divinator turned his head to the piece of paper before talking again.

"It will be a type of victory." – The divinator said as he turned to face his friend.

"A type of victory?" – as the other one turned his head with a questioning and confused look on his face, only to feel something wrong as he came face to face with the Divinator.

'What the…?'

He suddenly felt weak as his legs suddenly failed him, falling down as he saw an ethereal copy of himself where he was once standing, a familiar-looking knife penetrating it an ethereal body as he couldn't find the strength to move.

"…So many times we have saved our own home from its destruction… for you guys to revel in victory, and for me to count down the minutes until the next calamity befell us. I have seen it enough times to come to terms with reality, that no matter what we do, eventually, our own dimension will run out of time, disappearing forever and taking us with it. No matter how high we climb, no matter how many times we save it… eventually after a certain amount of time passes it will cease to exist and so will we." – As he spoke, the knife disappeared as the ethereal body started to crumble.

"Well, we could always start running away into lower realms, like a 'modern world' which hasn't even reached the capabilities to travel beyond its own stellar system… there would be no such oppressive energy there to inhibit us, letting us live like gods… it is where Yang Feng was originally from, and where he would have eventually ended up after he died originally as a cultivator, though I'm not so sure now."

"Though do not worry, your death and my departure will only deviate our original plan to seal Kei Uchiha away by a small margin, small enough to not be noticed by anybody but with enough consequences to save our home."

As the ethereal figure crumbled away little by little, the physical body on the ground listened carefully to the voice of the Divinator. Death wasn't foreign to him, he had brushed shoulders with it enough times to prepare himself for the inevitable end that was to come. He was not smart, not even remotely on the level of his peers, he only had his strength and it wasn't something that was unreachable to the others. He had enough experience to know that he could not smash through every problem, and was the most likely to die if any situation arose… but he at least needed to know that his death held some semblance of meaning.

"An artificially made pocket dimension only held that monster for 10 years… but the time dilation between our universes was not large enough. Ten years for him, 100 for us, and in 100 others everything had been wiped out."

"Sealing him to a physical object and throwing him onto the closest available foreign dimension worked, and it was a powerful dimension so it contained him for a long time… but we couldn't easily mess with it without provoking the beings inside… It held that monster for 100'000 years, forcing him to face every living being in that dimension before facing us once again. Sadly for us, those 100'000 years it spent there only equaled to about 1 year on our own dimension."

"Thankfully, the dimensions are always moving… and in one year, that foreign dimension will have moved, for another one to take its place. A very powerful dimension, but very incompatible with our resident monster. There is also a slight possibility of him dying while in there… but that doesn't matter. Once that monster crawls to the top of the food chain, enough time will have passed, every single life form will have passed away, and the universe will reach its end one way or another. Nothing will be left for that monster even if the dimension itself is still around by that time."

"I know what you want to ask next… if that is all, then why take your life? It's simple really, we are nowhere near powerful enough to hold that monster back physically for more than a day. Its own plan was set to start on the 8th of October… sadly for us, the new dimension won't be in place until the end of November… meaning we had to delay it for almost 2 months somehow. How do we do that to a considerably superior opponent? It's simple really, we can't. The only thing that can delay it… is itself. Overthink the obvious and push his own plans in search of an answer that is literally standing at its own feet. It is too smart of a creature to not fall for this. It will search for a challenge to its intellect where there is none, and inadvertently push its own plans to secure their feasibility. After all, who expects an actual opponent, one who poses a threat to you… to simply give up?"

As the ethereal figure turned crumbled, the eyes of the body on the ground went hollow, the body going limp as the Divinator looked sadly at it. It was a sight he was used to seeing countless times, a burden carried by those who saw what possibilities the future held.

"Now then, its time for me to depart as well…"