This was something Hiruzen simply couldn’t accept.
When they had set out, the two of them had been more or less on equal footing.
Now, by the time they returned, Danzō had completely transformed.
The sheer disparity was almost more painful than being killed outright.
When it came to progress, falling behind once meant falling behind forever.
So, naturally, Sarutobi Hiruzen’s thoughts also turned toward the tulip market.
There was no reason that Shimura Danzō could do it while he couldn’t!
However, Hiruzen still retained a shred of reason.
If you handed him a shuriken and sent him onto the battlefield, he would be perfectly at home.
But the tulip business was still far too unfamiliar to him.
So he needed an experienced guide to show him the ropes.
Even if that guide was Danzō.
Especially if that guide was Danzō!
“Danzō, I have a favor to ask…”
“Could you take me along with you?”
“About this tulip business…”
“I really want to get ahead!”
Sarutobi Hiruzen spoke with utmost sincerity.
He had never humbled himself like this in front of someone his own age.
But if it meant becoming Lord Tobirama’s disciple, it was all worth it!
“Oh?”
“So you want to get involved in the tulip business too, Hiruzen?”
“Didn’t you say before that shinobi should only do what shinobi are supposed to do?”
Faced with Danzō’s teasing, Hiruzen looked somewhat embarrassed.
Nevertheless, he forced a smile and admitted that his previous understanding had been too shallow.
“All right.”
“I suppose I can take you under my wing.”
Shimura Danzō didn’t make things difficult for him.
He readily agreed to Hiruzen’s request.
After all, the two had always been comrades!
Even if they were rivals, theirs was still healthy competition.
Hiruzen, as long as you’re willing to admit defeat, that’s all that matters.
I, Shimura Danzō, am simply better than you!
Danzō soon began teaching Hiruzen everything he knew about trading in the tulip market.
“Although tulip prices have already begun rising steadily, we’re still near the bottom.”
“It’s not too late to enter the market now!”
“Hiruzen, after deducting the money we’ve spent purchasing supplies, how much of your budget do you have left?”
Sarutobi Hiruzen calculated mentally.
They had brought a total of eight hundred million ryō this time.
The two had divided the funds equally, each taking four hundred million ryō for purchasing supplies.
After spending more than thirty million ryō on supplies, Hiruzen still had roughly three hundred and seventy million ryō left.
“Good.”
“Round it down and wipe out the odd amount.”
“Use seventy million ryō to buy in.”
“What?
Seventy million ryō?”
“Danzō, you’re not joking, are you?”
Hiruzen couldn’t help crying out in shock.
He hadn’t expected Danzō to become so bold.
Seventy million ryō counted as pocket change?
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
“A huge amount of capital has already flowed into the tulip market.”
“If you don’t buy heavily now, are you planning to wait until the price rises and then buy from someone else at an inflated price?”
“My biggest regret is that I was too timid when I first entered the market.”
“I hesitated and only invested that little.”
“If someone had guided me from the beginning…”
“I wouldn’t have made a measly fifty million ryō.”
Shimura Danzō spoke with a look of deep regret.
He really could have kicked himself.
Why didn’t I buy more from the very beginning?
Sarutobi Hiruzen was still hesitating.
Seventy million ryō was an astronomical sum to him.
To put it bluntly, it was enough money to buy his life several times over.
It was practically the price of two Asumas!
“Hiruzen, I really don’t understand what you’re so afraid of.”
“With this market, only people with the courage to take risks can make money.”
“The timid ones can only end up holding worthless assets!”
“When prices fluctuate, those people panic at the slightest dip and can’t wait to sell at an even lower price just to get out.”
“Based on my analysis of the tulip price trends, let me tell you something.”
“The lower the price, the more you should buy!”
“If there’s a major crash, that’s when you need to buy the bottom and go all-in!”
Sarutobi Hiruzen listened to these half-understood terms.
He mechanically nodded.
For some reason, he felt as though he had just become the very bagholder Danzō looked down upon.
At the dinner table, Shimura Danzō enthusiastically rambled on about all the experience he had supposedly accumulated from trading tulips.
One technical term after another came flying out.
Although Sarutobi Hiruzen understood only half of what he was hearing, he was thoroughly shaken by it.
In the end, he naturally accepted Danzō’s recommendation.
“Danzō, will this really work?”
“This is seventy million ryō we’re talking about!”
“Stop talking and do it!”
Sarutobi Hiruzen invested seventy million ryō in one go.
At first, he was terrified.
He was so nervous that he could barely sleep.
But several days later, when he saw the terrifying profits, his initial fear was completely forgotten.
He became just like Danzō.
He regretted not investing more from the beginning.
Palace of the Land of Fire
“Hazin, the price has reached the point we’ve been waiting for.”
“After all this promotion, wealthy merchants and nobles from more than half the shinobi world have poured enormous amounts of capital into the tulip market.”
“Now, let’s let this feast turn into a full-blown frenzy.”
Uchiha Makoto sat in his chair, looking at the price charts, capital flows, and the report prepared by the daimyō’s professional analysts.
He felt that the time had come to launch the contract market.
“Yes, Lord Makoto.”
Hazin nodded.
The name of tulips had now become famous throughout aristocratic circles.
Their price had climbed steadily alongside the influx of capital.
Now came the most frenzied phase.
At the same time, the actual supply of tulips was rapidly dwindling.
Soon, there would barely be any physical tulips left to speculate on.
This was the perfect moment to introduce contract trading.
It was easy to imagine.
Even physical trading had already become this insane.
Once the market shifted to contracts, the turnover rate would probably skyrocket.
Not only wealthy merchants, but even the lofty great nobles would become green with envy at the profits generated by such transactions.
They would rush in without hesitation.
According to the information currently available, even shinobi who normally did nothing but focus on completing missions had started getting involved.
Although they were only a small minority.
Most of these shinobi were wandering shinobi—desperadoes who lived on the edge.
The shinobi clans, especially the major clans, wouldn’t touch this sort of thing.
They weren’t good at it.
And instinctively, they had no desire to get involved in commerce.
As far as they were concerned, being soldiers and collecting their pay was simply the natural order of things.
Thinking about anything else for even a second might as well be a crime!
And especially at this particular moment…
Almost every prominent shinobi clan throughout the shinobi world had their attention focused on two things:
How to establish a shinobi village.
And how to join a powerful shinobi village.
These matters concerned the future of their clans.
This was also what made Hazin feel incredibly fortunate.
His superior might be shameless and ruthless, but at least he still had a bottom line.
He hadn’t dragged the shinobi clans into this mess.
After the feast would inevitably come devastation.
Once that enormous scythe came down, who knew how many wealthy merchants and nobles would be ruined by tulips?
Some might even be driven to jump from buildings in despair.
These people were, at the end of the day, merely wealthy and influential.
What did money, wealth, and political power mean in the face of overwhelming force?
Unfortunately, these shinobi still hadn’t realized that.
Almost all the victims of this scheme were wealthy merchants and nobles.
They couldn’t possibly shake the current balance of the shinobi world.
But if the shinobi clans themselves had become involved and were wiped out financially…
That could easily ignite the powder keg of the shinobi world.
A shinobi clan stripped of its entire fortune was capable of doing absolutely anything.
Especially considering that being a shinobi was essentially a profession built around one’s youth.
Shinobi who survived beyond forty and were able to enjoy a peaceful old age were rarer than giant pandas.
And the one thing shinobi clans never lacked was young men who were willing to fight, kill, and risk their lives.
Put nicely, these young shinobi were passionate, energetic, bold, and willing to chase their dreams.
Put less nicely…
They were completely reckless and acted on impulse.
….
Soon.
Under Uchiha Makoto’s arrangements, as tulip prices continued their insane climb, contract trading quietly appeared in the major tulip markets throughout the Land of Fire.
And everyone was stunned.
So this was another way to trade tulips?!
There was no doubt about it.
The emergence of this trading model made the market even more insane.
Originally, you needed to actually purchase tulips before you could speculate and trade them.
Now you didn’t even need the flowers.
A single contract was enough to make a trade.
The system was also exceptionally convenient for tracking transactions and recording price increases.
With all these advantages that physical tulip trading simply couldn’t match, combined with an extremely high turnover rate and profits that made people’s eyes bleed with greed, more and more nobles and wealthy merchants poured into the market.
And, of course, Sarutobi Hiruzen and Shimura Danzō were among them.
The two had completely lost their rationality.
They had become utterly intoxicated by the tulip market and had completely forgotten the supply-purchasing mission they had been sent to complete.
“Hiruzen, this market is insane!”
“I just calculated it.”
“The two of us have already made more than three hundred million ryō!”
“There probably isn’t anyone in our clans richer than us now!”
“That’s right, Danzō.”
Shimura Danzō and Sarutobi Hiruzen celebrated wildly.
Now they were considering whether they should throw all their remaining supply-purchasing funds into the tulip contract market.
The market was simply too tempting.
Not going all-in would practically be a crime!
“Hiruzen, why don’t we go all-in?”
“Risking everything is a kind of wisdom.”
“I think the time has come!”
Danzō felt that their current profits still weren’t enough.
They had to make another fortune.
When they returned to Konoha, they could simply throw enough money at Lord Tobirama to leave him stunned and convince him to accept these two exceptional talents as his disciples.
“Hmm…
Isn’t that a little too much?”
“What could possibly be wrong with it?”
“Look at the market.” This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
“Even the people selling rice balls on the streets of the Land of Fire know that tulips can make money.”
“With a market like this, what are you still worried about?”
Shimura Danzō spoke with absolute confidence.
Sarutobi Hiruzen, whose mind had already been clouded by greed, was quickly persuaded.
The two waved their hands and decided to put every last bit of money they had into the tulip contract market.
They eagerly anticipated making another fortune!
But…
Tulip prices had actually been at an extremely high level for some time already.
The introduction of contract trading was simply pouring oil onto the fire.
It was a final flash of brilliance before the end.
Uchiha Makoto and the Fire Daimyō had already begun selling off their holdings aggressively.
As for Shimura Danzō and Sarutobi Hiruzen…
They were first-time bagholders.
Veteran market players knew that once even the rice-ball vendor on the street knew which “stock” was making money…
That was the moment you ran.
The frenzy didn’t last long.
On the third day after Danzō and Hiruzen went all-in, a young shinobi from the countryside who had never seen much of the world publicly ate an expensive tulip, mistaking it for an onion.
The tulip’s owner went berserk and demanded compensation.
The young shinobi merely spread his hands.
“It’s just a flower.”
“What could this thing possibly be worth?”
And then…
The tulip market seemed to take a devastating blow from those words.
In reality, the price had simply reached its ceiling and begun to collapse.
Overnight— tulip prices plunged three times in succession!
“Danzō, what do we do now?”
“Didn’t you say those recent crashes were just corrections, and that the market was backing up to pick people up?”
“Why has this been going on for several days already?!”
Sarutobi Hiruzen’s eyes were bloodshot.
His beard was unkempt.
He hadn’t slept properly for a day or two.
His entire mental state had deteriorated, and he anxiously questioned Shimura Danzō beside him.
Unfortunately…
Danzō wasn’t doing any better.
He hadn’t slept properly for a day or two either.
He kept muttering under his breath.
“How could this happen…?”
“It shouldn’t be like this…”
“According to the fundamentals, it should have gone back up again!”
“Danzō, say something!”
Shimura Danzō’s expression was vacant.
Hiruzen pushed him again.
He was genuinely panicking.
The two of them had previously bought a huge number of tulip contracts at extremely high prices.
They had practically bought at the absolute peak.
Now the price had fallen all the way back to the level from two weeks ago.
They had been absolutely slaughtered.
All their previous profits were gone.
And they had lost another five hundred million ryō on top of that.
The tulip price was still slowly declining in waves.
Every rebound was merely Uchiha Makoto manipulating the market behind the scenes and harvesting the remaining bagholders again and again.
Every time, he gave them a little hope.
He pushed the price back up.
Then he harvested them again.
Today’s low would become tomorrow’s high.
According to the plan, this cycle could continue for a month or even two.
By repeatedly giving the remaining investors a little hope, they could continue harvesting plenty of bagholders.
Shimura Danzō was one of the victims.
Every time he saw a glimmer of hope, he couldn’t help fantasizing about a recovery.
He even stopped Hiruzen from selling when Hiruzen had wanted to get out a couple of days earlier.
At first, Danzō wasn’t particularly anxious.
But Sarutobi Hiruzen was terrified.
The losses were real.
If the price didn’t rise again as Danzō had promised, allowing them to recover their losses…
They were finished sooner or later.
“Stop bothering me!”
“Danzō, things have already turned out like this.
What am I supposed to do?”
“Do you expect us to sell all our contracts and return to face Lord Tobirama with a loss of five hundred million ryō?”
Shimura Danzō was extremely irritable.
Hiruzen was like a fly buzzing incessantly in his ear, making him restless and annoyed.
He was already panicking.
And now Hiruzen was putting even more pressure on him.
Making money was all smiles and laughter.
Losing money was nothing but curses.
If only he had known…
He never should have gotten involved in the tulip business.
Danzō was filled with regret.
Alongside it came overwhelming fear.
He was genuinely frightened now.
He had absolutely no idea how this situation was supposed to end.
The confidence and swagger he had possessed when he was making money now seemed like nothing more than a dream.
The dream had ended.
And waiting for them was a terrifying nightmare.
A five-hundred-million-ryō deficit was enough to buy their lives dozens of times over.
Sarutobi Hiruzen stared at him.
“Then what are we supposed to do now?”