Half a month later, the Ninja Academy was built, with Tobirama personally serving as principal and teacher.
However, the first enrollment was small, fewer than forty people, and half were children sent from the various clans.
Hiruzen Sarutobi and Danzo Shimura, who would become famous in the future, were among them.
What surprised Tobirama was that there was also a member of the Uchiha clan among them, Kagami Uchiha.
The Academy’s curriculum covered the Clone Jutsu, Substitution Jutsu, Transformation Jutsu, the basics of the five major nature ninjutsu, combat theory, and kunai and shuriken usage.
These were standard shinobi skills, devoid of any profound techniques.
Yet to civilians, such abilities remained out of reach, even as they formed the bedrock for those born without a clan legacy.
While the people of Konoha gradually turned their attention to the Academy, Kakuzu made his move in the shadows.
The curse seal binding him, coupled with the Flying Thunder God mark, meant any unauthorized departure from the village would alert Tobirama instantly.
His Wind Nature and Earth Nature clones stood guard at Daimyo’s mansion.
Three years had passed since they earned the trust of Daimyo’s forces, he could not afford a slip-up now.
Kakuzu dispatched his Yang clone, which used the Transformation Jutsu to hide within a merchant caravan and slip out of Konoha.
The clone reached a black market Kakuzu knew well, snatched a wandering ninja to serve as a sacrifice for Edo Tensei, and tore a piece of flesh from the Yang Release heart embedded in its body to use as a medium.
“Tiger, Snake, Dog, Dragon…”
He slammed his hands together.
“Edo Tensei!”
Kakuzu remotely guided the clone through the jutsu.
Normally, paper-like substances would materialize to coat the sacrifice, summoning the original owner of the Yang Release heart, Fudo Akimichi.
But whether due to imperfections in this version of the technique or because Kakuzu cast it through a clone, a strange pulling force hit him the instant the jutsu activated.
The clone felt nothing.
His main body, however, sensed an invisible suction from beyond.
Something dragged at his soul.
“What’s going on?”
Sensing danger, Kakuzu tried to dispel the jutsu immediately, but his vision blurred.
In a flash, he went from his room to a world draped in ice and frost.
‘Land of Snow?
No, not the Land of Snow…’
Freezing cold bit at him despite his lack of heavy clothing.
As a shinobi possessing chakra, he should not feel such cold.
Puzzled, Kakuzu walked.
With every step, the chill deepened, as if his body had lost all ability to generate heat.
After walking for an unknown time, he spotted a figure slowly sinking into the snow.
Kakuzu sprinted over and swept away the thick white snow.
Beneath it lay solid ice, and trapped within that ice were millions of figures.
Among them, Kakuzu saw familiar faces.
He had killed high-ranking officials back in Takigakure, not to mention the Konoha shinobi Fudo Akimichi and Mizuya Yamanaka.
“They’re all dead.
Does this mean…”
Kakuzu suddenly understood what this world of ice and snow truly was.
The Realm of the Dead?
The Underworld?
No, judging by standard shinobi terminology, this place had to be the Pure Land.
Of course, this Pure Land wasn’t a peaceful paradise associated with gentle butterfly dances.
It was the true resting place of the dead, a desolate and barren afterlife.
In canon, the Sage of Six Paths had summoned the past Kage from this very place, combining their power to pull Team Seven and the Nine-Tails out of Kaguya’s Amenominaka dimension and back into the real world. Get faster updates on novelping.com.
“Seems a mishap with my Edo Tensei is why I ended up here.
Come to think of it, calling this the Pure Land is less accurate than calling it a frozen hell…”
A deep chill seeped from the core of Kakuzu’s soul, growing colder by the second.
If he remained in the Pure Land, he would likely be counted among the truly dead, frozen there for eternity.
‘Edo Tensei: Release!’
Fortunately, Kakuzu could still mold chakra.
After undoing Edo Tensei he had cast in the living world, his consciousness returned to his own body.
The icy chill receding from his soul vanished right along with it.
“Phew…”
Kakuzu slumped in his chair, taking a long while to calm his racing breath.
He shifted his attention back to his Yang Release Clone.
Through the clone’s distant eyes, he saw that the wandering shinobi used as a living sacrifice had already died, his life force entirely drained by Edo Tensei.
He should have recalled the clone immediately, but on second thought, he changed his mind.
His Wind and Earth clones remained stationed at the Land of Fire Daimyo’s Residence, their positions were already secure.
Leaving abruptly would waste three years of hard, undercover work.
He would let the Yang Clone stay out in the world to secretly develop his own independent forces.
The Kakuzu of the past was weak, forced to follow this world’s rigid rules.
Now, possessing enough power, he would change the natural order himself.
Kakuzu thought with determination.
The Yang Clone cleanly extracted the heart from the wandering shinobi’s fresh corpse and used the Parasitic Technique to inhabit the body.
Though it was a husk entirely drained of its life force, it served as a sufficient temporary vessel.
After ordering the Yang Clone to explore south along the Land of Fire, Kakuzu refocused entirely on his main body.
‘Pure Land…’
This major discovery set Kakuzu’s mind rapidly racing once again.
Before the establishment of the hidden villages, wars raged endlessly across the world.
Shinobi served as living weapons for the daimyo, treated as expendable tools throughout history.
Even clans with no generational feud would fight to the bitter end at a single command from their lords.
During that brutal era, a shinobi’s life was a tragedy, defined by unavoidable hardships and the selling of one’s own flesh and blood to survive.
But a new era descended, and the hidden villages finally emerged.
The Sage of Six Paths had long become a faded legend of questionable existence, yet Hashirama Senju was now universally hailed as the ‘God of Shinobi’.
Mere strength was not enough to earn that, what mattered far more was his creation of the hidden village system, freeing most shinobi from their tragic, aimless fate.
It was this great, sweeping achievement that earned him the title of ‘God’ among his peers.
Under the leadership of this ‘God’, peace had finally arrived.
Weary of endless past battles, the people desperately sought a tranquil life.
Even the fierce Uchiha clan grew tired of fighting, no longer completely obsessed with power.
In the past, every Uchiha aside from the old, weak, sick, and disabled was a trained shinobi.
But now, over half of the new generation had absolutely no desire to ever step onto a battlefield.
As Clan Head, Madara watched this shift with pain in his heart.
He firmly believed Konoha’s newfound tranquility had thoroughly numbed his clansmen.
“We need power,” he told them.
“The more peaceful the times, the more we need power.”
True peace requires absolute power to maintain.
Madara did not articulate such logic on a conscious level, but he understood perfectly how to act on it.
Even though the world had entered an era of relative peace, his relentless pursuit of power never lagged for a single moment.
His clansmen dismissed his concerns, believing their leader was being far too harsh and paranoid.
Because his militant ideas failed to resonate with a populace eager for rest, his support within the Uchiha clan quickly dwindled.
Eventually, even as their nominal head, he stood entirely alone in his convictions.
Thoroughly disappointed with the Uchiha clan, Madara left the compound and walked onto the bustling Konoha streets.
As he walked, he eventually found himself standing silently before a small ramen shop.
“One bowl of ramen.”
Madara did not request a private room, waiting instead at a regular open seat.
Kakuzu emerged from the back kitchen and spotted Madara.
Surprise briefly flickered across his face, this was Madara’s first visit in three long years.
Madara sensed the gaze, looked up, then completely ignored him.
He was here to eat, nothing more.
“That’s…
Lord Madara.”
“It really is!”
“Lord Madara…”
The whispers rippling through the diners carried no joy of seeing a revered leader, only the stark fear of facing a legendary demon.
They exchanged hushed, panicked words, settled their bills one after another, and quickly fled the shop.
Madara heard the nervous murmurs.
He frowned, then looked up as Kakuzu walked over and placed a steaming bowl of ramen in front of him.
“It seems I’ve disrupted your business,” Madara spoke softly.
It was a disruption, but Kakuzu genuinely did not care.
“It’s nothing.”
Madara responded with silence.
Seeing this quiet resignation, Kakuzu spoke.
“You are at a severe disadvantage in this war of public opinion.”
The reason the people of Konoha fled in terror upon seeing Madara was precisely that, right now, accounts of Madara’s ruthless slaughter of past enemies were rapidly spreading among the civilians.
But most ordinary humans memories were incredibly short.
Even though Madara had shocked the entire world ten years ago, very few could vividly remember it now.
Unless someone purposefully kept leaking information, specifically dark secrets, to deeply etch the image of Madara’s brutality and absolute ruthlessness into the people’s minds.
This was a clearly malicious smear campaign, so who was doing it?
None other than this era’s perfect scapegoat, Tobirama Senju.
“Public opinion…” Madara was certainly not stupid.
Although it was a relatively new term, connecting it to his current situation of being actively ostracized by the civilians of Konoha, he roughly understood its meaning.
At the same time, he knew exactly who was launching this campaign to smear his name.
It was the younger brother of his closest friend, Hashirama, Tobirama.
“Tch.
How pathetic.” Madara curled his lip, showing nothing but pure disdain for Tobirama’s petty, underhanded tactics.
Kakuzu said, “He who wins the hearts of the people wins the world.
The only real competitors for Next Hokage are just you and him.
Compared to raising his own prestige, deliberately degrading yours is much easier.”
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