The confident smile on Madara Uchiha’s face grew even broader.
Right now, he felt that Makoto Uchiha’s sincere advice was nothing more than alarmist fearmongering.
Advice offered in private could be called counsel, but Makoto giving sincere advice in public was a challenge to Madara Uchiha’s personal authority.
Yet Madara didn’t care about that at all.
This was both his trust in Hashirama Senju and his confidence in his own strength.
He was the proudest Uchiha, and in all the vast Ninja World, Hashirama Senju was the only person he acknowledged.
As long as Hashirama supported him, the village they built together using their combined strength would surely fulfill the dream they had shared in their youth.
However…
The mysteries of fate were truly hard to describe.
People always harbored unrealistic illusions about their moonlight ideals.
Once Konoha was established, Hashirama Senju changed!
Madara Uchiha remained the same Madara Uchiha, but Hashirama Senju had become the First Hokage.
He firmly believed that protecting the village meant protecting people, protecting ninjas, and protecting children.
Therefore, in the eyes of the First Hokage, whether it was paternal love or brotherly affection, anything that threatened the future of Konoha had to be eliminated!
Just as Hashirama Senju said: “Whether it is my friend, my brother, or even my child, anyone who dares to make an enemy of the village will not be forgiven by me!” “Since Lord Madara has made up his mind and chosen his path, then I have said all I can say,” Makoto said.
“I will obey your wishes, Lord Madara, and refrain from seeking revenge against the Senju Clan, but I will not build a ninja village with them either.
I choose to leave the Uchiha Clan.” Makoto was too lazy to keep arguing with Madara about the Senju Clan.
Words couldn’t teach a lesson that experience would deliver in full.
When Madara Uchiha felt the sting of betrayal and found that his own clansmen were unwilling to follow him, he would understand just how prophetic Makoto’s words today had been.
“So that is your thought…
I understand.” Madara Uchiha nodded, saying nothing more regarding Makoto’s decision.
The hatred accumulated over a thousand years between the Uchiha Clan and the Senju Clan was beyond counting.
It wasn’t just the Senju and Uchiha; the same applied to other ninja clans.
In the Warring States period, an unwritten rule had even emerged that ninjas venturing outside must never reveal their surnames, lest they be unfortunate enough to encounter ninjas from an enemy clan.
The fate of such unlucky souls went without saying.
The cost of training a ninja was far from low, and as the saying went, “Sapping the enemy is better than strengthening yourself.” Ninjas from hostile clans were more than happy to seize any opportunity to do a hit job!
“If you wish to leave the Uchiha Clan, I can grant you a sum of travel money and let you leave,” Madara said.
Seeing Makoto’s resolve, Madara did not try to keep him, even offering to provide him with money from the clan.
Wandering the Ninja World alone was an extremely dangerous affair.
Traveling without money could truly bring a grand hero down over a single copper.
But on this point…
Madara Uchiha slightly underestimated Makoto Uchiha—or rather, overestimated Makoto’s moral baseline.
Every state had its laws, and every trade had its rules.
The Uchiha Clan had been passed down for a thousand years in the Ninja World, and the family name of Uchiha resounded across the entire land as a legendary powerhouse.
Thus, Madara himself, and indeed the entire Uchiha Clan, were quite traditional and bound by rules.
When purchasing kunai, shuriken, training elixirs, and daily supplies, they paid every single coin without fail.
They were incapable of forced buying, extortion, or taking things for free using their authority.
The proud Uchiha truly cherished their reputation!
But Makoto Uchiha was different.
He was stepping out to start his own venture, planning to establish an independent ninja village just like Orochimaru.
The Uchiha Clan had long passed its phase of primitive capital accumulation, but Makoto was about to undergo that arduous, sinful, and bloody process.
Which massive corporation didn’t dabble in grey—or even black—methods when starting out?
A certain audacious company in his former world had even dared to issue digital tokens pegged one-to-one to fiat currency.
Though later struck down by the iron fist of regulation, that didn’t stop it from becoming a tech giant!
As long as one could wash their hands clean and come ashore later, it didn’t matter.
Makoto didn’t mind using his martial strength to do a bit of dirty work.
Of course, he would never foolishly take on bounty missions for money like Kakuzu.
A triad without brains would be a gofer for life; to make real money, one had to do business like Jimmy Boy.
Collusion between officials and merchants, buying low and selling high—those were just basic operations.
In Makoto’s master blueprint: First, earn the initial pot of gold.
Then, set up an enterprise in a specific industry, leverage force to establish a monopoly and rake in exorbitant profits.
Next, open a bank to absorb public deposits, borrow money from the bank under the enterprise’s name to expand operations, generate even higher profits, and feed back into the bank—repeating the cycle to lift oneself up by the bootstraps straight into the sky!
This strategy did carry a small amount of risk.
After all, for any company, expanding production scale was a massive gamble, and countless bosses had lost everything.
However, Makoto had a contingency plan.
If a problem arose midway and the capital chain snapped, he would immediately liquidate the company.
Either sell off those toxic assets to some poor sucker, or directly declare bankruptcy, toss away the bad debts, and abscond with the cash!
While playing the game this way was a bit ruthless…
It was guaranteed to make money!
In this treacherous Ninja World, a ninja could suffer the torment of their conscience for a lifetime, but they must never suffer poverty for a lifetime!
Otherwise, what was the point of becoming a ninja?
Those ninja clans were utterly uninspired.
A thousand years had passed, and they were still earning money by taking on missions!
Even Hashirama Senju, a progressive figure who established Konoha—the strongest village in the Ninja World—merely categorized mission ranks reasonably to assign tasks based on a ninja’s capability.
He didn’t alter the underlying survival logic of ninjas at all: ninjas accept missions to survive, and sooner or later, they die somewhere in the Ninja World.
Makoto Uchiha possessed far grander ambitions.
If he was going to build a ninja village, he would build the largest one; if he was going to make money, he would make the easiest and most abundant fortune!
Madara Uchiha being willing to give him money to leave the Uchiha Clan pleased Makoto, but receiving only a sum of money wasn’t enough.
Whether in the twenty-first century or in the Ninja World, what was the most expensive commodity?
Without a doubt: Talent!