“Dad, how’s Kazan?”
Shinku Yūhi returned before long.
He hadn’t refused his daughter’s request.
Besides, he was rather curious to see for himself what the genius who had defeated both the Uchiha and Hyūga looked like.
“Don’t worry. He’s fine.”
Shinku rubbed his daughter’s head.
Young love?
That sort of thing wasn’t uncommon in the shinobi world.
Being a shinobi was an extremely dangerous profession, with one of the shortest life expectancies around.
Because of that, shinobi often married and started families at a very young age.
No one could guarantee they wouldn’t die on the battlefield tomorrow.
Shinku had been young once too, so he didn’t think it was a big deal.
“He’s really okay?”
“Mm. Lord Hokage seems to think very highly of him. The clan heads of both the Uchiha and Hyūga personally demanded that Kazan be punished, but Lord Third protected him from both.”
Geniuses were always treated differently.
Besides, the Third Hokage’s intentions weren’t actually that difficult to guess.
A thoughtful gleam flashed through Shinku’s eyes.
From Orochimaru and Jiraiya, to Minato Namikaze, and now Kazan…
It was clear that Hiruzen Sarutobi intended to cultivate a Hokage from a civilian background and finally bring the village under true unity.
Both previous Hokage had come from the Senju Clan.
That had given the Senju an unparalleled status within Konoha.
Yet the Second Hokage, Senju Tobirama, hadn’t passed the position down to one of his descendants.
Instead, he had chosen Hiruzen Sarutobi.
Presumably, Lord Second had already realized back then that if the village was to continue developing, Konoha could not remain the Konoha of the Senju Clan.
Now, Lord Third was simply carrying out the Second Hokage’s will to its logical conclusion.
He wanted everyone to understand that Konoha didn’t belong to the shinobi clans.
It belonged to everyone.
If everything went according to Hiruzen Sarutobi’s plans, then in the Konoha of the future, the very concept of “shinobi clans” would gradually become blurred.
Clans like the Uchiha and Hyūga might even begin marrying into other shinobi clans—or even civilian families.
“That’s great! I’m heading out, Dad. Tell Mom I won’t be home for dinner.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to help Kazan repair the house!”
You don’t know the first damn thing about repairing a house.
What are you going to help with?
Shinku shook his head but didn’t expose his daughter’s intentions.
…. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Meanwhile.
As expected, Kazan had once again been sentenced to repair the street and damaged buildings.
He was discovering that he was getting better and better at it.
If the whole shinobi thing didn’t work out, he could always become a renovation worker.
With skills like these, he’d never starve.
After beating Hyūga Asuka, Kazan had once again been protected by Hiruzen Sarutobi, exactly as he’d expected.
“It’s probably more than just him valuing my future potential. That old man Hiruzen is likely trying to weaken the influence of the other shinobi clans in the village.”
In both the manga and anime, Hiruzen Sarutobi had always appeared to be a kindly old man willing to sacrifice everything for the village.
But that was only the surface.
There were far too many things that couldn’t otherwise be explained.
Take the Senju Clan.
They were one of Konoha’s founding clans.
Konoha had only been able to come into existence largely because the other shinobi clans had been drawn in by Hashirama Senju’s overwhelming strength and personal charisma.
While he was alive, he was beloved throughout the village.
Konoha flourished, and Hashirama alone was enough to deter the entire shinobi world.
Then, not long after his final battle with Madara Uchiha at the Valley of the End, Hashirama died of illness.
The First Shinobi World War erupted almost immediately afterward.
His successor was his younger brother, Senju Tobirama.
Tobirama didn’t possess Hashirama’s ability to bulldoze through the entire shinobi world with sheer strength, but the institutions and administrative systems he established benefited Konoha for decades.
And yet…
The Senju Clan, which had produced two generations of Hokage, rapidly withdrew from the center of history after the deaths of the First and Second Hokage.
The Senju hadn’t gone extinct.
They had simply faded into the background.
But the fact that they had been forced to abandon their exalted position in Konoha and withdraw was already enough to suggest many things.
Perhaps the Senju clan head at the time had realized that if they didn’t retreat, their clan might truly become history.
Once the Senju withdrew from Konoha’s political stage, next came the village’s other “founder”—
The Uchiha.
Unfortunately, the proud Uchiha didn’t know when to retreat.
They even attempted a coup, eventually bringing about the destruction of their entire clan.
It would have made sense if Black Zetsu had been the one secretly pushing everything along.
But Black Zetsu wanted to revive its mother, Kaguya Ōtsutsuki, and accomplishing that required the Rinnegan to reappear.
If anything, Black Zetsu was one of the last beings who would want either the Senju or Uchiha to completely disappear.
So it was difficult not to suspect that Hiruzen Sarutobi had been quietly pushing things along from behind the scenes.
Hiruzen Sarutobi was a pure inheritor of the Will of Fire.
His Will of Fire emphasized sacrifice and inheritance, trust in the next generation, breaking down the barriers between clans, and creating a Konoha that belonged to everyone.
In short, Hiruzen might not have been forceful enough when decisive action was needed, but when it came to politics, he definitely knew what he was doing.
“Kazan!”
While Kazan was thinking, Kurenai’s voice came from the distance.
He raised his head and saw her jogging toward him from the other end of the street.
The moment she arrived, she started complaining.
“Why did you get into another fight? You’re not hurt, are you?”
“Nope. I’m perfectly fine.”
“Don’t fight anymore. Dad said both the Uchiha and Hyūga are really angry with you.”
Of course they are.
I climbed up by stepping on their geniuses.
“I probably won’t anymore.”
After beating both the Uchiha and Hyūga, Kazan had completed another hidden achievement.
But it wasn’t Renown in Konoha.
It was:
[Sweep the Ōtsutsuki Descendants I]
Another multi-stage hidden achievement.
If nothing unexpected happened, then completing the entire achievement would probably require him to beat up the rest of the Ōtsutsuki descendants as well.
Kaguya Ōtsutsuki was the progenitor of chakra.
Before she was sealed away, she had given birth to two sons—
Hamura Ōtsutsuki and Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki.
Those two were the ancestors of the Uchiha and Hyūga Clans, as well as direct descendants of Kaguya Ōtsutsuki.
Afterward, Hamura and Hagoromo also produced descendants of their own, giving rise to several other bloodlines.
Among them were the nearly exterminated Uzumaki Clan, the Kaguya Clan of Kirigakure, the Gold and Silver Brothers of Kumogakure, and the Byakugan-bearing clan that lived on the moon.
This achievement was neither particularly easy nor particularly difficult.
The easy part was that with Garp’s level of strength, beating up Ōtsutsuki descendants would be simple.
The difficult part was that quite a few of those descendants had already kicked the bucket.
Kazan couldn’t remember when the Kaguya Clan had been wiped out.
He only remembered that later on, there seemed to be just one person left—
Umemaro…
Oh, no.
Kimimaro!
As for the Gold and Silver Brothers, the Second Hokage, Senju Tobirama, had already sent them off to meet their ancestors long ago.
Kazan didn’t even know whether they had left any descendants behind.