"He's alive!"

"My brother, he's still alive!"

Sandayū excitedly spoke, his hands trembling as he held the remnants that only living people could leave behind. His eyes were wide with hope as he frantically examined every scrap and container.

Kakashi, on the other hand, cautiously scanned the labyrinth of stone towers around them, his visible eye narrowed in concentration. These ancient beings could be anywhere, waiting behind any of these stone walls.

"These traces are at least a few days old," Nadare observed, picking up an empty can from the ground. The food inside had almost entirely dried out by the wind. He turned the can over in his hands, studying it closely. "But it's clear someone was here recently."

Sandayū's face lit up at Nadare's words. "Then there's still hope! Yoshiro could have survived the snowstorm!"

However, a troubling thought nagged at Kakashi. "But why leave the stone tower?" he mused aloud. "Its walls would have been sufficient to shield against the storm's cold."

Realization dawned on Sandayū's face. "He's still being pursued," he whispered, his earlier excitement giving way to fear.

Without warning, he dashed toward the stone slope in the middle of the tower, heading straight for the void below.

"Sandayū!" Kakashi shouted, his voice echoing off the ancient walls. But his warning did little to calm the desperate man. With a quick glance at Nadare, he sprinted after Sandayū.

Nadare, trailing behind, didn't immediately follow. Instead, he took out steel wire and dozens of explosive tags from his pouch. This is my chance, he began setting up a trap across the entire first floor of the tower.

Meanwhile, on the stone slope, Sandayū recklessly ran toward the deepest, darkest space below, shouting as he went.

"Yoshiro!"

"Yoshiro!"

"Can you hear me?"

His cries echoed several times within the cylindrical stone walls, each repetition seeming to mock his desperation. There was no reply, only endless darkness and silence.

Suddenly, his foot slipped on the smooth, ancient stone. He fell heavily, the impact knocking the wind from his lungs. Kakashi, close behind, quickly stepped forward to help him up.

"I'm sorry," Sandayū gasped, the pain bringing him back to his senses. "I was too excited. I didn't think..."

"We need to be more careful," Kakashi advised, his voice low and urgent. "Any loud noises in this place could attract the Ancients. We don't know what we're dealing with here."

Sandayū nodded, chastened. He picked up his flashlight, which had fallen to the ground, and began to survey his surroundings.

The beam of light revealed walls made of massive stones, their surfaces adorned with intricate carvings and complex reliefs. Looking up, an overwhelming, suffocating sense of grandeur pressed down on both Sandayū and Kakashi.

"This craftsmanship," Kakashi murmured, running his hand over a carved surface. "It's unlike anything I've ever seen."

Sandayū nodded in agreement. "The skill required to create these... it's beyond human capability."

Everywhere on the walls were enormous pentagrams, their precise angles and deep etching revealing their significance to the ancient builders.

In the very center of the lowest level stood several severely weathered stone pillars. Kakashi leaned closer, his visible eye widening as he examined them.

"These patterns," he said, tracing the distorted shapes with his finger. "They look like... writing."

Sandayū moved closer. "A written language? But that would mean..."

Kakashi nodded. "Their civilization was far more advanced than we could have imagined. Everything we've achieved... they'd already done it, eons ago."

He had once thought that humans were the first beings in this world to use writing for communication, but after seeing this city, he began to realize how small humans truly were.

As they examined the walls, Sandayū suddenly let out a startled cry. "Kakashi! Look at this!"

Kakashi hurried over to check. What he saw made him freeze. The carvings on this wall weren't just decorative; they were a series of murals, extending and conveying a continuous story.

As they stared at the massive mural, something extraordinary happened. The images seemed to connect directly with their minds, piecing together the history of the Ancients within Kakashi and Sandayū's thoughts.

"It's... It's showing us their history," Sandayū whispered.

Kakashi was equally amazed. In the face of this long and ancient history, even the Sage of the Six Paths, who had founded the shinobi way thousands of years ago, was nothing more than a fleeting shadow, like a meteor streaking across the sky.

The mural revealed the Ancients as a species from beyond the stars, arriving on this planet when it was still a barren, lifeless world. Their powerful bodies and muscular wings enabled them to travel and fly through space, and their dual respiratory systems allowed them to breathe in extreme environments.

"They came from the stars," Kakashi murmured, his mind struggling to comprehend the scale of what he was seeing.

At that time, this land was nothing but a vast ocean.

They passed through the atmosphere, like meteors wrapped in flames, and crashed into the cold ocean below.

They decided to settle here.

These were the Elder Things.

The story continued, showing how the Elder Things established fully functioning cities at the bottom of the sea a billion years ago, using their unfathomably advanced technological power.

Their bodies were adapted to both land and sea, with strong crinoid-like limbs for swimming and additional appendages for walking on land, while their wings allowed them to fly through the sky.

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Both organic and inorganic materials provided them with sustenance.

They were the ultimate lifeforms, able to roam freely across every corner of the world!

As land began to rise from the sea, they built new cities on the continents. They began to experiment with the elements of this world to create the first living organisms, initially as food, but later for more complex purposes.

"Look," Kakashi pointed to a section of the mural. "They created servants. Beings called... Shoggoths."

Sandayū frowned. "Creating life itself... Is that not playing god?"

The mural showed how the Shoggoths, excelling at heavy labor and needing only small amounts of organic material for sustenance, constructed massive, magnificent city-states for the Elder Things in any environment.

With the Shoggoths as their workforce, the Elder Things' society developed even further.

Using their tentacles, they crafted and wrote with precision. While the cities were built by Shoggoths, the intricate carvings and ubiquitous artistic creations were crafted personally by them.

They constructed art galleries, educational centers, livestock farms, and slaughterhouses for organic meat in their cities.

They even, like humans, used fire and salt to make their food more delicious.

They had a currency system, and a green pentagram-shaped jade was their universal form of money.

Though they rarely died, the Elder Things would build star-shaped tombs for those who did, honoring them as heroes.

The social systems that humans would evolve over countless millennia had already been perfected by them.

It was a civilization that had perfected what humanity would take millennia to develop.

But then, the tone of the mural changed. Three hundred million years ago, a powerful race tore through space, launching a long and devastating war against the highly advanced civilization of the Elder Things.

Kakashi's eye widened as he saw the deliberate depiction of an enormous shadow in the ocean behind their city. A bloated, hulking form with tentacles writhing under its chin, thrashing in the ocean, while wings flapped ominously behind it.

He immediately understood what the Elder Things had faced.

Cthulhu!

Everything matches! It all aligns perfectly! This is the intersection of history!

Kakashi's eyes widened as the realization hit him. He never imagined that in this northern Land of Snow, which had no connection with the southern Land of Water, he would discover the convergence of the ancient histories of both regions.

The history of the Ancients once intersected with the history of Cthulhu at some point in time.

That moment was the one Kakashi had seen after catching a glimpse of a corner of the Cthulhu statue, receiving a flood of information in his mind.

Cthulhu, as one of the Great Old Ones, descended upon this world 300 million years ago. Kakashi had never shared this information with anyone.

Why did I keep this secret? Would anyone have believed me if I told them?

It was an unverified piece of knowledge, as no ancient histories from the past mentioned the existence of such a being.

But now, in this massive mural that spanned time and was presented right in front of him, it referenced that very moment—Cthulhu's arrival 300 million years ago. Kakashi was now 100% sure that this immensely powerful being referenced by the Ancients was none other than Cthulhu!

Moreover, in the mural, Cthulhu was accompanied by his subordinate race.

The flying Cthulhu minions bore a similar outline to him, surrounding the cities. Their spread wings were connected, even darkening the skies.

At this point, Kakashi understood who those gigantic honeycomb-like fortresses of the Elder Things' cities were built to defend against.

Judging from the level of destruction these fortifications suffered, Kakashi could imagine how brutal the war must have been.

The scale of this conflict... it's beyond anything in our recorded history.

These massive invaders quickly gained the upper hand. The Elder Things, who had long grown complacent in their comfort, had degenerated to the point where they could no longer fly through space, and their war technology was entirely ineffective against the invaders.

The cities of the Elder Things were destroyed one by one, not even their foundations remained. Their civilization, which had thrived and expanded for hundreds of millions of years, retreated in defeat, crushed like ants.

This alien race lacked any sense of mercy; they didn't care about the act of taking life.

They were different from the Elder Things. The Ancients wanted to thrive and live here, but this new alien race only sought to dominate and destroy the world.

They're not just conquerors, Kakashi realized, they're destroyers of worlds.

In the end, the Elder Things were driven back to the land where they first arrived, while the new alien race took over the newly formed land and built a sinister, terrifying stone city.

Then, one day, violent movements in the Earth's crust caused the sky to tremble.

After the catastrophic tremors subsided, the sinister stone city built by the invaders sank into the sea along with them and their master.

"So that's how R'lyeh ended up underwater..." Kakashi murmured, his eyes tracing the carvings depicting the cataclysmic event.

It was as if the world had returned to the way it was before these invaders arrived.

The Ancients' living space began to expand again after the departure of their natural enemies. They rebuilt cities on land and restored their social order.

But by that time, everything had changed over the course of billions of years.

The Shoggoths, once loyal servants, had accidentally gained dangerously high intelligence.

With their own will, the Shoggoths transformed into any form they desired. Their brains rapidly evolved in the process, turning them from amorphous life forms that required hypnosis to shapeshift into intelligent beings.

Creation turning against creator... a tale as old as time, Kakashi shook his head slightly.

The Shoggoths no longer accepted the hypnosis of their creators, the Ancients, and grew as they pleased according to their own desires.

After they devoured the majority of the Ancients, the Ancients finally used a powerful weapon to quell this rebellion of creation against creator.

Then, less than 100 million years ago, yet another wave of alien invaders appeared, swiftly defeating the already severely degraded Ancients. The declining Ancient civilization was once again driven back to its original land.

At this point, the mural became chaotic, as if the mood of the one who carved it had become too heavy to continue.

As a result, he could no longer gather more information from the mural.

Kakashi, now fully awake from the dream-like experience, glanced at Sandayū, who was still staring at the mural, entranced. It seemed that he, too, had received the same information in his mind.

He tried to use his wits to connect this ancient history with recent events.

If the first alien race that attacked the Ancients was indeed Cthulhu, and that sinister stone city was the strange word he had received in his mind—R'lyeh—then everything made sense.

Three hundred million years ago, an undeniably powerful entity descended upon this world. Even the Ancients, who had developed for billions of years, feared the power of Cthulhu and his followers.

For some unknown reason, Earth's crust shook, causing Cthulhu and the city of R'lyeh to sink into the deep sea, as if they had never come.

But unlike the Ancients, who truly entered a period of decline, the Ancients discovered here may be the last of their kind in the world.

Cthulhu and his followers, however, did not degenerate, nor did they leave. They could not be destroyed and still lurk somewhere in the ocean to this day.

Under such circumstances, could the reappearance of the Cthulhu statue be a sign?

The sudden emergence of a cult in the Land of Water that fervently worships Cthulhu, along with the mad chants shouted by the rogue ninjas from Kirigakure.

All these signs point to one thing: they wish for the return of Cthulhu.

Although Kakashi didn't know how they planned to bring Cthulhu back, the sudden resurgence of this ancient term from the depths of human history was definitely not a good omen.

If Cthulhu is stirring...

Suppressing the complex thoughts in his mind, Kakashi placed his hand on Sandayū's shoulder.

"Sandayū, are you alright?" Kakashi asked gently, noticing the man's dazed expression.

Startled by the unexpected touch, Sandayū's head jerked so violently that his glasses almost flew off, and he let out a surprised yelp.

"Ugh!" he mumbled, still disoriented from the vision.

He had clearly seen the same vision as Kakashi, but his mental resilience was far weaker than the ninja's, causing his whole body to tremble slightly.

"What's wrong with him?"

At that moment, Nadare's voice came from behind.

Kakashi glanced back at Nadare, who had just walked down from the stone slope. Where was he all the time?

Instead of answering, he asked, "Where did you go just now?"

"Nowhere, just took care of some personal business," Nadare answered nonchalantly.

Kakashi didn't think much of it and turned back to comfort Sandayū.

Kakashi's words brought Sandayū back from the depths of ancient history, returning him to his normal state.

Nadare then turned to the mural and asked, "Were you looking at this just now?"

"You'd better not get too absorbed in it," Kakashi advised, before he and Sandayū walked into the only passage at the lowest level.

"They're just some useless murals. I couldn't care less about this nonsense." Nadare snorted and moved his gaze away from the mural, following Kakashi and Sandayū as they continued onward.

As they entered the passage, Kakashi cast one final glance back at the mural.