"Leaving just like that, without even a proper confession… when I think about it, my life really has been a failure."
Jiraiya couldn't help but mutter the complaint.
Now that he knew the future, watching his own actions in the video only made them seem faintly ridiculous.
"Well, maybe that's for the best. A real man ought to have the guts to turn this kind of thing into material for a novel." He bared his teeth in a grin. "Probably better that I didn't say it—would've just left more regret behind. Still, my luck's pretty terrible. Tsunade probably only ever won that one time in her whole life."
"Idiot!"
Tsunade snapped, staring at the scene in the diary.
Her luck at gambling had always been abysmal. She lost so often that she'd become famous as an easy target in casinos.
And yet, the one time she had won… the cost had been far too high.
"Drinking and gambling really do ruin things. I never thought the price of drinking could be this heavy. If I hadn't been drinking, there's no way I would've agreed to let him go alone to test the Akatsuki's strength."
Her hand clenched into a fist, resolve hardening in her eyes.
"From today on, I'm quitting drinking."
At that moment, the scene shifted.
Jiraiya had already arrived in the Land of Rain, standing within Amegakure.
For many, this was their first time seeing the isolated country.
The Land of Rain was perpetually shrouded in rainfall, completely unlike anywhere else.
Dry days simply didn't exist here.
As Jiraiya continued his investigation, fragments of information about the country gradually came to light.
But his presence did not go unnoticed.
Under the curtain of rain, Pain performed a jutsu, bringing the rainfall to a sudden halt. At the same time, Konan scattered countless paper butterflies into the air, sending them out to search for Jiraiya.
"This rain… is it being controlled by Yahiko?"
Jiraiya watched the scene, noting how the rain had been stopped at Pain's command, and recalling how his future self interrogated Amegakure's shinobi.
He hadn't revealed his identity, and yet Pain seemed to know of his presence. Combined with the information obtained during interrogation, a suspicion began to form.
There was something off about that rain.
At the same time, the interrogated shinobi revealed a shocking truth.
The civil war in the Land of Rain… had already ended.
Jiraiya hadn't known. Even Tsunade and Hatake Kakashi, both well-traveled and experienced, were unaware.
The only one who knew was Uchiha Itachi, already within the Akatsuki.
The Land of Rain was simply too remote, and its endless downpour only deepened its isolation. Once a battlefield during the Third Great Ninja War, it had since cut itself off almost entirely from the outside world.
And presiding over Amegakure had been Hanzo the Salamander.
A man known as the Demigod.
He might not have matched the overwhelming presence of Senju Hashirama, the God of Shinobi, but he was still recognized as one of the strongest in the world.
The title of the Sannin had been granted by him personally.
No one had ever imagined that Hanzo could lose.
Let alone be defeated in a civil war.
"…What?"
Tsunade's voice came out in stunned disbelief. She still remembered how helpless the three of them had been against Hanzo back then.
Even now, she couldn't say for certain that she could defeat him, even if he had grown old.
His strength was absolutely at the Strong Kage Level Kaede Kitahara had described.
Someone like her, who wasn't particularly combat-focused, would stand no chance against him.
At first, she had assumed the Akatsuki had simply taken advantage of the chaos of the Land of Rain's civil war to develop in secret.
That would have made sense—violence in a war-torn country would draw little attention.
But reality was completely different.
They hadn't used chaos as cover.
They had ended the war themselves and seized control of the entire country.
That was an entirely different matter.
"Tch… that old bastard. Telling us to come back and challenge him when we got stronger, and then he goes and gets himself killed."
Tsunade clicked her tongue, recalling how Hanzo had once stood above them and granted them the title of Sannin.
Back then, he had spared them only because of Konoha's strength.
She had never been satisfied with that outcome.
In the video, the Amegakure shinobi revealed how Pain had slaughtered Hanzo's entire family, along with all his relatives and associates, leaving no one alive.
Even Jiraiya was shaken.
Were those really the same gentle children he had once known?
They had been war orphans, yet they had dreamed of bringing peace to the Land of Rain. They had their ideals, their convictions.
How had they become so ruthless?
And how had Yahiko become a so-called god?
Before they could think further, the scene showed Jiraiya disguising himself and infiltrating Amegakure.
But he didn't notice the paper butterfly forming behind him.
Konan was watching.
Elsewhere in Amegakure, after gathering enough information, Konan appeared beside one of the Six Paths of Pain—the Animal Path—and reported that the intruder was Jiraiya.
"Is that so? Jiraiya-sensei… how nostalgic."
The Animal Path spoke, its tone carrying a strange sense of reminiscence.
"What should we do, Pain?"
Konan looked toward it.
"He won't become our ally anyway."
The Animal Path's voice was calm and detached.
"…Probably not."
Konan didn't sound entirely certain.
"Then kill him," the Animal Path said coldly. "At this point, there's nothing left to hold onto. The reason I'm using this body is to eliminate intruders. Lead the way."
"Pain, before you arrive, I'll deal with him myself," Konan said.
"If you can kill him, then do it," the Animal Path replied without hesitation.
With that, it moved toward Jiraiya's location.
Seeing this, Jiraiya himself froze.
He had no memory of ever taking in such a disciple, and yet Konan addressing him as "sensei" seemed completely natural.
"I never took in a student like that."
The realization struck him immediately.
"He said he's using this body… so that's not the real one, is it?"
He understood at once that the Animal Path was not Pain's true body.
But among his students, there was no one like this.
Up to now, he had only ever taken in four disciples: Nagato, Yahiko, Konan… and Namikaze Minato. Even counting the future Uzumaki Naruto, that would only make five.
There was no one else.
Combining that with what the Animal Path had said, the conclusion became unavoidable.
Whoever stood behind that body, calling him "sensei," could only be Nagato or Yahiko.
At first, he leaned toward Yahiko being Pain. Among the three, Yahiko had always been the one with the strongest will, not Nagato, even with the Rinnegan.
But then something clicked.
He hurriedly flipped back through the earlier entries in Kaede Kitahara's diary.
When the Akatsuki's leader had been mentioned, the name used had always been Nagato.
Yahiko had never been brought up.
Jiraiya's breath caught.
Of course.
The Rinnegan belonged to Nagato.
He had already wondered before why those eyes had appeared on Yahiko's body. Now, everything made sense.
With all the information pieced together, the truth became clear.
Yahiko… was likely already dead.
Just like the others bearing the Rinnegan, his face was covered in strange black rods.
Those rods were probably being used to control the bodies.
If they were treated as a kind of puppet technique, everything fell into place.
But arriving at that conclusion made Jiraiya's chest tighten.
If Nagato was the one controlling everything, and Yahiko appeared like this…
Then it meant Yahiko had died.
Only that could explain why the leader of the Akatsuki had shifted from Yahiko to Nagato.
After leaving the Land of Rain during the Third Great Ninja War, Jiraiya had occasionally heard news about the three of them.
With the Rinnegan—said to belong only to the Sage of Six Paths—their activities in Amegakure had gained them a reputation.
And then, suddenly, all news of them had vanished.
At the time, he hadn't thought much of it.
Now, there was nothing left to misunderstand.
Given how close the three had been, if Yahiko were still alive, Nagato would never have reduced him to something like this—neither fully dead nor truly alive, lacking the presence of a living person.
At last, Jiraiya understood why the Deva Path's destruction of Konoha had felt so strange.
It hadn't seemed like a living human, yet nothing had felt outright wrong either.
Now it was clear.
Yahiko was dead.
And his body had been turned into something else—a puppet forged through an unknown technique.
That also explained why the shinobi he interrogated had spoken of Pain exterminating Hanzo's entire bloodline.
The Nagato he remembered—the gentle, soft-hearted boy—would never have done something like that, would never have spared no one, not even infants.
Unless something had broken him.
Something that had inflicted unbearable pain and twisted his nature beyond recognition.
And Yahiko's death… could very well have been the trigger.
Especially if Hanzo had been involved.