That shake of the head, slow and clear.

Under the gaze of thousands in the central square of Uzushiogakure, and under the stare of Deva Path Pain's inorganic Rinnegan, Uchiha Kei's movement was as slight as a breeze brushing over water, yet in the deathly silent air, it stirred up an invisible giant wave.

There was no furious rebuttal, no impassioned declaration, not even a shred of hostility revealed.

It was merely such a calm, negative action.

What it contained was a weight heavier than any intense words. It was a fundamental disapproval of the pieces' own path after overlooking the chess game from a higher dimension.

The god's invitation was rejected.

Deva Path Pain—or rather, Nagato, who sat far away within the tower of the Hidden Rain Village, perched on the life-support device in the palm of the Gedō Mazō—finally had a ripple of genuine emotion appear in his usually stagnant eyes.

He could not understand. He had laid bare his deepest Pain and core philosophy without reservation. That theory of peace through Pain, forged from blood and tears, was the only answer he had extracted from hell, the only antidote he believed could end the endless strife of this Shinobi World.

This theory was cruel and extreme, yet possessed an irrefutable realistic logic. He believed that anyone who truly longed for peace and possessed the power to match it should be able to understand this weight and agree with the necessity of this path.

Uchiha Kei should be no exception.

However, the other party merely shook his head.

"Nagato."

Kei finally spoke. His voice was not loud, yet it penetrated the stagnant air of the square with abnormal clarity, reaching everyone's ears. He directly exposed the true name behind Pain, a name wrapped in Pain and hatred.

Inside the Hidden Rain Village tower, Nagato's emaciated body shuddered violently, and the black tubes connected to the life-support device swayed. This name had not been called for a very long time. Ever since Yahiko died, he had discarded this name, defining himself as the god who inherited his best friend's will.

"I can understand your Pain," Kei's gaze pierced through the shell of Deva Path Pain, as if looking directly at the main body. "But your vision is too limited."

Vision, too limited.

These five words were like an invisible heavy hammer, striking hard against Nagato's heart. He had imagined countless possible responses from Uchiha Kei: angry accusations, hypocritical persuasion, or direct attacks. He had never imagined that the other party would use such a condescending, almost pitying tone to evaluate the peace theory he had spent his entire life and everything he had to build.

"You..." In Deva Path Pain's hollow voice, there was a trace of irrepressible emotional fluctuation.

Kei did not give him the chance to continue questioning. Instead, he turned around, slowly raised his arm, and pointed to the modern city behind him that shone brightly in the sunlight: Uzushiogakure.

He pointed to the wide, clean streets, to the citizens who, although displaying fear due to Pain's arrival, had not fled in panic but instead gathered tightly behind the defense line of the Military Police Force.

He pointed to the Ninjas whose eyes were a mix of tension and trust, aiming their weapons at the enemy while their bodies stood firmly to protect the civilians.

"Look." Kei's voice returned to calm, yet carried an irrefutable power. "Your peace is built upon fear. It is the reluctance forced upon the world because they fear the ultimate weapon in your hands, fear that in the next instant their homes will turn to scorched earth and their loved ones will die an unnatural death."

"That is not called peace, Nagato, that is called a balance of terror. It is a brief, fragile truce filled with suspicion and hatred, bought by a Damocles sword hanging over everyone's heads."

"And look at my city, look at my citizens."

Kei's arm swept in a semicircle, encompassing the entire Uzushiogakure in his gesture.

"They live and work in peace, not because they fear anything. They work hard, learn knowledge, and build families, not to avoid some apocalyptic judgment."

"But because they are full of hope for tomorrow."

Hope.

This word, spoken from Kei's mouth, seemed to carry an innate magic. It was like a ray of light, piercing through the eternal night in Nagato's heart built from Pain and rain.

He saw, on the streets of Uzushiogakure, suspended rail cars gliding silently, transporting supplies and personnel. He saw, on the distant construction sites, Ninjas skillfully manipulating Earth Style to raise brand-new buildings from the flat ground. He saw, from the direction of the school, the clear sound of children reading aloud.

These scenes, transmitted in real-time to Nagato's mind through the eyes of the Six Paths of Pain, formed an incomparably sharp, glaring contrast with the memories in his mind: the muddy streets of the Land of Rain, the collapsed houses, and the orphans crying in the flames of war.

"True peace is not about passively stopping war." Kei's voice suddenly rose, full of infectious power, as if he were preaching to Nagato, or perhaps expounding his founding principles to his own citizens and the whole world.

"But about actively creating a world where war loses the soil it needs to exist!"

"You think about how to use Pain to stop people's greed and strife. But I think about how to use hope to lead people to pursue a better life!"

"When education becomes the right of every child, allowing them to gain knowledge, distinguish right from wrong, and possess the ability to choose their own lives, rather than passively becoming cannon fodder for war;"

"When medical care covers every citizen, so they no longer lose their families due to a single illness, and can live and die with dignity;"

"When a prosperous material life becomes the norm, allowing everyone to earn enough to be well-fed and even pursue enjoyment through their own labor, rather than having to fight to the death just to compete for a piece of bread;"

"When channels for advancement are fairly open to everyone, allowing a commoner's child, as long as they are hard-working and excellent enough, to also become a scholar, a general, or even a leader of a country, rather than letting bloodline and background determine everything..."

With every sentence Kei spoke, the eyes of the citizens and Ninjas of the Land of Whirlpools in the square brightened a little more. Many of them were the most direct beneficiaries of these words. They were once the ostracized Uchiha of Konoha, refugees displaced in the Shinobi World wars, or people struggling to survive in the Hidden Mist.

It was Kei, it was this city, that gave them everything they had never dared to imagine in the past.

"By that time, Nagato, tell me, where is the soil for war?"

Kei turned abruptly, his gaze like lightning, piercing straight into Pain's eyes.

"You use Pain to make people give up fighting, I use hope to make people actively embrace peace! You use destruction to intimidate the world, I use creation to lead civilization! Your path is to make everyone cry on the ruins! But my path is to let everyone stand in a prosperous city and laugh!"

These words, like a great bell, not only made the people of the Land of Whirlpools around him boil with excitement, their eyes shining with dazzling brilliance, but also dealt an unprecedented, violent shock to the heart of Nagato, who was far away in the Hidden Rain Village.

He had never thought that peace... could also be in such a form.

His entire life, he had been thinking about how to stop war, how to eliminate hatred, how to punish evil. All his methods were full of destructiveness and ruin.

And Uchiha Kei, from the beginning, had been thinking about how to create, how to build, how to lead.

This was a brand-new field of thought he had never stepped into.

"Your biggest mistake, Nagato, is attempting to use one ultimate weapon to solve the problem once and for all." Kei's gaze became sharp, as if seeing through Nagato's deepest cognitive blind spot.

"And I am creating an ultimate system!"

"A social system capable of self-development, self-perfection, and self-repair! A civilization system that can continuously create wealth, foster hope, and bring happiness and dignity to everyone!"

"Your Tailed Beast weapons can at best bring a one-time, diminishing deterrence. When people get used to its existence, when new ambitious people find ways to counter it, the flames of war will reignite, perhaps burning even brighter than before."

"But my system can bring eternal, spiraling prosperity! It will continuously evolve, continuously solve new problems, and digest, absorb, and transform all the sprouts that might breed war into the driving force for progress!"

Kei took a step forward, his aura climbing to its peak. He used the most intuitive, sharpest metaphor to put a period to this battle of philosophies.

"Facing a monstrous flood, you think of building a dam to stop it by blocking it. But the flood will eventually wash everything away, or submerge all things from a place you cannot see."

"But I am digging a brand-new, wider canal! I actively guide it, lead it, letting that power capable of destroying everything become the source of life that irrigates ten thousand acres of fertile fields!"

"You are blocking the flood, while I am digging a canal!"

Boom!

This metaphor, like a thunderbolt of creation, completely split open the ideological barriers in Nagato's mind. His logic-consistent theory of peace through Pain, which he had always been proud of, appeared so... small, so... primitive, in the face of Kei's higher-dimensional system theory of peace.

Blocking versus guiding.

Destruction versus creation.

Stopping versus leading.

These are two completely different ideological landscapes.

He had been immersed in past Pain, attempting to cover old Pain with greater Pain. But Uchiha Kei had long since cast his gaze toward the distant future, personally designing and building the broad road to the future upon the ruins.

The surrounding citizens of the Land of Whirlpools had shifted from initial shock to fanatical worship. Their gaze toward Kei was like looking at a living god. No, more worthy of reverence than a god. Because gods bring ethereal promises, while their Uzukage brings happiness that is within reach.

"So, Nagato."

Kei walked up to Deva Path Pain, close enough to almost see every circle's texture in those Rinnegan eyes.

He made the final judgment in a tone that carried a trace of pity, yet without any mockery.

"Your peace is just a recurring nightmare named endurance. While my peace is a spiraling, ascending future named civilization."

"You are not a god."

"You are just a pathetic person, trapped tightly by the Pain of the past, unable to move on."

"And I will become the... person who establishes the order of the new world."

The words fell.

This clash of philosophies was declared over with Uchiha Kei's overwhelming, dimensionality-reducing ideological advantage.

The Six Paths of Pain collectively fell into a long silence. Those six pairs of rotating Rinnegan, at this moment, seemed to lose all their luster, turning into a pool of stagnant water.

Far away, at the top of the Hidden Rain Village tower.

"Pfft—"

Nagato violently spat out a mouthful of fresh blood, dyeing the lapels in front of him red. His emaciated body trembled violently, and the black rods stuck in his back emitted a dangerous hum due to the violent turmoil of Chakra.

In his mind, every word of Kei's continuously echoed.

"Your vision is too limited..."

"I use hope to make people pursue..."

"You are blocking the flood, while I am digging a canal..."

"You are just a pathetic person trapped by Pain..."

These words, along with the look in Yahiko's eyes before he died, the teachings of Master Jiraiya, and the endless flames of war in the Land of Rain, crazily intertwined to form an unprecedented spiritual storm.

He developed a profound, foundation-shaking doubt about the path he had given everything for and firmly believed in.