Hyuga Ryono led the three visitors into the village.
The first thing they saw was a broad street lined on both sides by neat, symmetrical two-story wooden houses.
People moved back and forth along the road.
There was still wariness in their eyes, but their overall condition was visibly better than one would expect from refugees and people who had spent years living through conflict.
There were very few ninja, though, and even fewer with significant chakra reserves.
The entire country seemed to be relying on Uchiha Mu alone to hold up the sky.
It was an extremely unbalanced structure.
Under normal circumstances, an enemy could simply hold Mu in place while another force wiped out the village.
But there was an obvious problem with that strategy.
If the village was destroyed and Uchiha Mu survived, whoever did it would be in serious trouble.
Of course, everything depended on how strong Mu proved himself to be in the near future.
If he was weak?
Sorry, kid.
The moment Hashirama was gone, everyone would line up to erase his little country from the map.
If he was strong?
Then they simply wouldn’t provoke him.
The territory controlled by the Nation of a Hundred Clans was small anyway.
It couldn’t compare to Konoha, and while the region had resources, they weren’t exactly irresistible.
Ryono led the three men to the ninja academy.
At the moment, the students were attending their daily ideological lesson.
“Want to sit in?” Ryono asked with a smile.
“Why not?”
Uchiha Yan was curious about the institution and wanted to see what Mu was doing here.
…
“Today, we’ll once again discuss the theory that ninja are tools and the theory that ninja are not tools,” Mu said from the front of the classroom.
A red-haired boy raised his hand.
“A tool is treated as a consumable.
A person isn’t.
Ninja raised under the idea that they’re people instead of tools usually develop convictions several times stronger than ninja raised under the tool doctrine.”
“An Uzumaki?”
Yan’s attention immediately shifted.
He found the discussion itself a little absurd.
If ninja weren’t tools, what were they?
He was far more interested in why members of the Uzumaki Clan were here.
“When we visited the Uzumaki, we found many orphans,” Ryono explained.
“We swore on the honor of our clans and paid the Uzumaki to let us adopt some of them.”
Naturally, part of the reason the Uzumaki had agreed was because they thought highly of Mu.
If some random person had shown up asking for Uzumaki children, they could have tried their luck and seen what happened.
“So that’s what happened…”
Yan turned his attention back toward the lesson.
Mu continued.
“As I said before, during the Warring States Period, treating ninja as tools wasn’t necessarily wrong.
It helped maintain clan stability—”
“But it doesn’t work anymore, right, Teacher?” another red-haired boy interrupted.
“If we do the same thing now, the village just becomes one giant ninja clan.
Eventually the wars become even larger and spread across the whole ninja world.”
The boy felt that his teacher could be rather repetitive.
This was already the third time Mu had explained the same point.
Still, the nin-taijutsu Mu taught was genuinely excellent, so the boy could forgive a little nagging.
“Hm?”
Yan frowned and began thinking about Konoha’s current structure.
“Correct, but today we’re focusing on the individual,” Mu said.
“Let’s use my own Uchiha Clan as an example.
The Sharingan awakens and evolves through powerful emotional stimulation.
That alone proves that a ninja must be a person, not a tool.”
“Without human emotion, the Uchiha cannot go far.
The same principle applies to other clans.
People may say ninja are tools, but a ninja only displays extraordinary strength when he truly identifies with his clan, his village, or what he’s fighting for.”
Mu smiled at his students.
“Here’s a question.
You’re on an intelligence-gathering mission.
During the mission, you find a teammate who is dying and can no longer speak.
His body may contain valuable information.
Do you bring the body back or continue the mission?”
“Bring him back first,” one student answered.
“Then the mission fails.
Under the tool doctrine, the mission is everything.
A ninja must complete it.”
The student hesitated.
“But Teacher,” a blonde girl said, “isn’t that kind of doctrine useful for maintaining control?”
Mu’s eyes lit up.
“Go on.”
“If the ninja brings the body back and the mission fails, the village may forgive him because the body contained useful information.
But if that ninja later tries to enter the leadership, his rivals can attack him over the failed mission.
No one outside the leadership knows exactly what the failure cost or why the decision was made.”
The blonde girl continued calmly.
“The mission becomes a weapon that can be used against him later.”
“Very good.”
Mu nodded.
“The ninja himself may also lose faith in what he believes.
If situations like that happen often enough, other ninja start questioning the meaning behind what they’re doing.
Eventually the village weakens.”
“At the heart of it all is the same mistake: treating a thinking human being as a tool and assuming that person won’t develop thoughts of his own.”
Why did Mu keep hammering this lesson into the children?
Changing the damnable mentality left behind by the Warring States Period was one reason.
The three visiting ninja were another.
If even one of them returned to Konoha and seriously thought about what he had heard, perhaps some people might eventually choose to leave and join the Nation of a Hundred Clans.
Yan was deeply shaken.
With Mu breaking the argument down point by point, he could understand the logic.
Understanding it didn’t mean agreeing with it.
Perhaps only after experiencing another real war would he remember this lesson.
Hyuga Tenka was much the same.
He understood the point, but he wasn’t about to change his entire life because of one lecture.
Still, he had become curious.
What would this awkwardly named Nation of a Hundred Clans actually become in the future?
“Want to see somewhere else?” Ryono asked after the class ended.
Yan looked around.
“What exactly is this place?”
“The ninja academy.
It teaches children ninjutsu.
The curriculum mainly focuses on the basic Three Basic Techniques and chakra control.”
At first, Ryono had wondered whether Mu would teach everyone advanced techniques.
Then Mu explained something obvious that she had overlooked.
Most people in the world were ordinary.
Most didn’t possess exceptional talent.
But if someone mastered the Three Basic Techniques and developed excellent chakra control, that person might still defeat a ninja who knew several more impressive techniques.
After all, what good was a powerful jutsu if you needed half a day to finish the hand seals and got cut down before you could cast it?
“Uchiha Mu should know a lot of ninjutsu, shouldn’t he?” Tenka couldn’t help asking.
Everyone knew the Sharingan could copy techniques.
Mu probably knew techniques from all five basic nature transformations by now.
“Tenka, not everyone has the Byakugan or Sharingan,” Ryono replied without elaborating.
Tenka studied her for a moment.
“You’ve really changed.
Can love change someone that much?”
If he had been chosen as the future Hyuga clan head, he naturally wasn’t completely useless.
Ryono thought seriously about the question.
“It can.
I realized that my eyes are always drawn to him.
No matter what I’m doing, as long as he’s beside me, I feel like I can handle anything.”
Her heart was filled entirely with Uchiha Mu.
If Mu abandoned her now—or if someone killed him—Ryono might very well turn herself into the second…
No.
The first Obito.
That was how deeply she believed in him.
“Sigh.
Show us the rest of the village.”
Tenka understood now.
There was no bringing Ryono back.
And they couldn’t kill her either.
So she might as well remain here.
The Hyuga had studied the Byakugan for a thousand years.
Ryono’s isolated bloodline would probably lose the ability to awaken it after several generations anyway.
It wasn’t a major issue.
Though as far as Tenka knew, an Uchiha and Hyuga bloodline had never been mixed before.
“Alright.
Follow me.”
Ryono took them through the entire settlement.
Most of it was still under construction and the population remained concentrated in a few areas.
Compared to Konoha, the country still had a long way to go.
There was one idea Yan strongly approved of, however.
Identification cards.
They were the country’s only officially recognized proof of identity.
That had an obvious advantage: once the system was fully established, enemy villages would have a much harder time inserting spies.
The downside was equally obvious.
Any spies planted during the country’s founding would also become extremely difficult to identify later.
Overall, though, the benefits outweighed the risks.
That was why Mu had implemented the system immediately.
If he didn’t change things while the country was still being built, was he supposed to wait until everything had already become entrenched?
Reforming it then would be far more difficult.