The last time Aoba had awakened the Evil God, Jashin, it had been purely accidental.
And even then, there had been no direct interaction.
In fact, Aoba suspected that Jashin hadn't truly woken up, it had merely stirred for a moment.
This time, he needed to wake it deliberately.
Aoba attempted to use genjutsu to infiltrate Shin's consciousness.
His reasoning was simple, if Jashin was truly within Shin, then delving into the deepest layers of his mind should inevitably disturb it.
With his Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan, Aoba's genjutsu abilities had long surpassed even Itachi.
Moreover, Shin was utterly devoted to him.
With no resistance, Aoba easily entered Shin's inner world.
But something felt off. Shin's mental world was too empty.
After being rewritten by Kotoamatsukami, Shin's entire life revolved around Aoba's commands.
As a result, his inner world was astonishingly simple, there were no lingering thoughts.
Only pure obedience.
Aoba pressed deeper, bypassing Shin's surface consciousness and delving into the deepest layers of his psyche.
Aoba had entered many minds before.
As a high-ranking figure in Konoha, he had participated in countless interrogations, he had personally invaded prisoners' and enemies' mental worlds on numerous occasions.
But Shin's mind was… wrong. It was too clean. Not just clean... sterile.
So much so that not only was there no trace of Jashin…
There were barely any human traces at all. Shin had once been Hidan.
Kotoamatsukami had rewritten his personality, but it had not erased his past self.
That meant that when Hidan was still in control, his inner world must have already been this… empty. And that?
That was deeply unnatural.
Hidan had been a zealous cultist. He had murdered countless people. He had delighted in torture and cruelty.
A man like that… Should have had a mind filled with twisted, chaotic darkness.
So why was his mindscape so pristine?
Aoba's unease deepened. He pressed further. Deeper into Shin's subconscious.
At this point, he was no longer inside Shin's mind. He had reached something deeper, his very soul.
And there, in the core of Shin's spiritual world, Aoba saw a sleeping infant.
A baby. An unconscious baby.
Aoba immediately realized, this was the "Evil God."
The entity parasite within Shin's soul.
But then, he noticed something else.
Something was wrong.This wasn't just a parasite. There were no other souls present.
Which meant, Shin didn't "host" Jashin.
There was no separate Evil God.
Shin was Jashin.
There was no "possessed" priest. There was no "Evil God's blessing." The entire religion was a lie.
The Jashin never existed separately.
The truth was, Hidan himself had been the god all along.
But he wasn't a fully formed god. He was incomplete. His divine spirit had only recently taken shape.
It was still developing. It was still growing.
Aoba had misunderstood something fundamental.
The Evil God was not one of the ancient slain deities.
It wasn't an old god who had survived the Sage of Six Paths' purge.
It was a newborn. A newly created god. Faith had created it.
The cultists of Jashinism had worshiped an imaginary god, and in doing so, they had manifested it into reality.
This new Evil God was fundamentally different from the ancient gods.
The old gods had been born from nature itself, they had been the embodiment of fire, wind, lightning, elemental forces given divine form.
And over time, humans had worshiped them, giving them names and shape.
But the Evil God had formed in reverse.
It had been created by faith first. And then it had developed a consciousness.
And violence and death had become its very nature.
Because those were the acts its followers committed in its name. But here was the irony, the original cultists had all died.
Hidan had killed most of them himself.
In time, Hidan had continued killing, but not to spread the faith.
Just to survive. Because he had been created by belief.
And as fewer people worshipped him, he had grown weaker.
Aoba had long ago wiped out the last remnants of Jashinism.
And as a result, Jashin had remained a child.
Its growth had been stunted. It had never matured. It had never even fully awoken.
It had remained a baby. A god in infancy.
And then, Aoba saw something that chilled him to the bone.
He had thought the infant's face looked familiar.
And now he understood why. The infant god looked like him. Like Aoba Kamikawa.
Aoba's mind raced. And suddenly, he understood.
Kotoamatsukami. It hadn't simply rewritten Hidan. It hadn't just brainwashed him.
No, it had enslaved the god within him.
The reason Aoba's control over Shin had been so absolute, the reason Shin had been so obedient, the reason there had been no resistance at all, was because he hadn't simply subjugated a man.
He had enslaved a young god.
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Currently on Chapter 358 - Found You