Do shinobi actually have ambitions?
Do shinobi really want to rebel?
Can your rule truly continue for ten thousand generations?
…
These were all things that deeply worried the Daimyo of the Land of Fire.
In order to maintain their rule, the daimyos had gone to great lengths to build a mental prison for the shinobi—the theory that shinobi were merely tools.
Shinobi poisoned by this ideology would do everything in their power to complete the missions assigned by their employers without ever thinking about the meaning behind those missions.
But although reality had already been twisted into the form the daimyos wanted to see, that still couldn’t change their fundamental nature.
They were nothing more than paper tigers…
They appeared to stand high above everyone else, but in reality, they possessed power without possessing the strength to back it up.
As long as a single powerful shinobi was willing to defy the entire world, that alone would be enough to drag them down from their divine throne.
Even if Senju Hashirama never did such a thing, as time passed…
The era of shinobi clans would eventually give way to the era of shinobi villages.
The power of shinobi leaders would become increasingly concentrated.
The Kage could reduce the daimyos to little more than figureheads, while a single missing-nin from a major shinobi village could easily conquer an entire small country.
By then…
The shinobi would naturally discover…
Some very interesting things…
…
Uchiha Makoto knew exactly how the future would unfold, and he also understood what the Daimyo of the Land of Fire was thinking right now.
“Your Highness, the battle between the Uchiha and Senju clans has completely ended.”
The Daimyo’s expression froze for a brief moment before he looked astonished.
“Ended?”
“It has completely ended.”
Uchiha Makoto deliberately emphasized his words.
“What exactly happened…”
As the Daimyo, he knew very well about the relationship between the Uchiha and Senju clans.
The Senju and Uchiha clans had been mortal enemies for a thousand years, locked in an endless cycle of conflict that had continued until the present day.
And now the battle between the Uchiha and Senju clans had actually ended completely?
What a joke!
Impossible!
Absolutely impossible!!
“Could it be…
the Uchiha clan achieved the final victory and wiped out the Senju clan…
or perhaps the Senju clan…”
That was what was going through the Daimyo’s mind.
If the battle between the Senju and Uchiha clans could truly end completely, there was only one possibility…
One of the clans had completely disappeared from the shinobi world.
From a certain perspective…
The Daimyo of the Land of Fire wasn’t wrong.
After all, even after the Leaf was established, the struggle between the Senju and Uchiha clans never truly stopped.
Instead, their conflict merely became deeper and more covert, revolving around the position of Hokage…
It wasn’t until the Senju clan was the first to be wiped out that the Senju finally ended this struggle.
Meanwhile, the Uchiha clan continued fighting against the representatives of the Senju-aligned will until the Uchiha clan itself was exterminated.
As for…
The Senju and Uchiha clans abandoning their thousand-year feud and shaking hands in reconciliation…
Such a possibility hadn’t even crossed the Daimyo’s mind.
Make peace?
How could something like that possibly happen?!
And yet…
It had happened.
It was almost darkly humorous.
Uchiha Makoto recounted everything that had happened recently, conveniently leaving out the negative news about how the Uchiha clan had been completely suppressed by the Senju clan…
After all, the Uchiha clan had lost Uchiha Izuna, while that old bastard Senju Tobirama also had a special advantage against the Uchiha clan.
For the sake of maintaining game balance, it was highly recommended that Senju Tobirama simply be banned!
Most importantly, what was truly worth emphasizing was how the Senju succubus—Senju Hashirama—had stabbed himself with a kunai and threatened to die in order to secure peace between the Senju and Uchiha clans.
In the end, he had finally convinced Uchiha Madara of his sincerity and achieved the great reconciliation between the Senju and Uchiha clans.
“To exchange his life for peace between the Senju and Uchiha clans, Hashirama…
stabbed himself with a kunai…
He actually wanted to kill himself?”
“That’s right!”
“Are you sure a kunai could really hurt Senju Hashirama?”
The Daimyo had heard about Senju Hashirama’s recovery abilities…
That was a level of regeneration that was practically inhuman.
As for those cliché stories about someone lying on the ice to catch a fish for their parents, the Daimyo had seen enough staged performances like that to last a lifetime.
So he was deeply skeptical about Senju Hashirama’s attempted suicide.
“Tell me!
Senju Hashirama, you thick-browed fellow, weren’t you just putting on an act?”
“Uh…
At least Lord Madara believed it could work.”
Uchiha Makoto paused briefly.
As for this question…
He honestly didn’t know either.
But that question wasn’t important at all.
It was like this:
Imagine that just a few days before your wedding, your girlfriend went to a hotel with some strange man and stayed in the same room with him for an entire night.
Whether or not your girlfriend actually had sex with that man…
Does it matter?
No!
What matters is your attitude.
If you believe your girlfriend remained faithful, then even if something did happen and she put a green hat on your head, you wouldn’t care.
You would still marry her.
But if you didn’t believe her…
Even if your girlfriend really had remained faithful, you still wouldn’t marry her.
You have to believe in the power of believing!
Whether Senju Hashirama could actually kill himself with a kunai wasn’t important.
What mattered was that Uchiha Madara believed he could.
After Uchiha Makoto explained it this way…
The Daimyo was convinced and stopped dwelling on the kunai issue.
“This…
this…
this is truly something worth celebrating…”
The Daimyo sat there in a daze for a while, digesting the information Uchiha Makoto had given him.
Only after repeatedly confirming that it was true did he finally manage to squeeze out those few words.
But deep down, his feelings were incredibly complicated, filled with bitterness.
The combined strength of Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara was already enough to overturn the entire balance of power in the shinobi world.
But that wasn’t necessarily an unsolvable problem.
The shinobi world had been plagued by wars for countless years.
The shinobi clans constantly fought over resources and the number of missions they received, creating endless conflicts…
And the daimyos had always hoped to exploit this.
They wanted the shinobi clans to hate one another and wear each other down while they quietly remained behind the scenes…
The Senju and Uchiha clans were the most obvious examples.
To deal with the problem of Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara, the best solution was to let a strong man deal with another strong man, and let one hero deal with another hero…
Let Uchiha Madara deal with Senju Hashirama.
If things continued in the direction of Uchiha Madara and Senju Hashirama carrying on the fine tradition of their ancestors…
Fighting each other until the very last moment of their lives…
That would obviously be the best possible outcome.
But…
The worst possible thing had happened.
Damn it!
The Senju and Uchiha clans had made peace?
You two actually made peace?!
How could such a thing be allowed?!
For the sake of realizing the ideals they had held as children, so that their children would never have to step onto the battlefield again…
Oh…
And for the sake of peace in the shinobi world?
What the hell kind of Bloodline Clan nonsense was this?!
Peace in the shinobi world?
Just for the sake of peace in the shinobi world?
That was a slogan we daimyos had already played out countless times!
And yet the two of you were treating it like some priceless treasure, holding it between your teeth!
Uchiha Madara!
Senju Hashirama!
You two have disgraced your ancestors all the way back to the eighteenth generation!