Ginza

The first rays of dawn spilled over Konoha, casting a pale golden glow across the hidden village.

Looking down from the Hokage Rock, the entire village resembled a folding fan slowly fanned open.

At the core of the fan's ribs lay the administrative district, where the Hokage Building stood tall and imposing.

Surrounding it were official institutions such as the Administrative Department, the Education Department, and the Medical Department.

A bit further away, atop the building of the Police Force, the Uchiha clan's fan crest declared the power and status this family held within Konoha.

Using this area as a semicircle, the zones extending outward were the residential compounds of the various ninja clans.

The sprawling estates of the Uchiha and Hyuga clans maintained the architectural style of the Warring States period.

The faint sound of barking drifted from the Inuzuka clan's compound, while the medicinal herb gardens of the Nara clan shimmered with verdant hues in the morning mist.

These well-ordered compounds surrounded the administrative center like stars arching around the moon.

Interspersed among them were the training grounds of the Ninja Academy and the courtyards of Konoha Hospital.

In the outer regions, the civilian residential areas spread outward along the arc of the fan.

Dense clusters of houses stood side by side, and the signs of shops gradually became clear in the morning light.

Smoke from cooking fires rose from thousands of rooftops, weaving together with the dust kicked up by early-rising ninjas practicing ninjutsu at the training grounds.

Streets radiated outward from the Hokage Building like the veins on a fan, connecting the entire village.

Mitokado Homura, flanked by several guards, paused before the towering gates of Konoha.

The morning light stretched the shadow of the massive gate long and thin, like a distinct boundary line.

He looked back into the village, his gaze falling upon that exceptionally conspicuous building in the center—it was even more magnificent and imposing than the Hokage Building.

The massive fan crest was engraved on the dark walls, its metallic textures flowing with dazzling golden brilliance under the morning sun, stinging his eyes and causing them to twitch uncontrollably.

As long as one remained within Konoha, provided there was no obstruction, the first thing to catch anyone's eye regardless of where they stood was inevitably that flamboyant fan emblem.

Even from the perspective of the Konoha gates, what arriving travelers and visitors saw first were not the stone faces of the past Hokage.

It was the Uchiha clan's Commercial Tower, a structure that proclaimed wealth and power.

The tower had become the landmark of this city—a place with a permanent population of over two hundred thousand that was called a village in name, but functioned as a great metropolis.

"I hope Hiruzen can handle the Uchiha properly... If only he could constrain and tame them as Second Hokage taught Kagami Uchiha..."

The thought had barely surfaced before he cut it off himself, turning it into an almost inaudible sigh.

"...In the end, these are wartime conditions where one's strength is simply insufficient."

Mitokado Homura adjusted his glasses, turned, and stepped out through the Konoha gates.

Under the watchful eyes of the gate guards and many others, the group's figures gradually drifted further away.

Eventually, they vanished onto the forest road leading toward the capital of the Land of Fire.

Utatane Koharu, who had rested for a while during the night, stood before her office window, her gaze resting heavily on the Commercial Tower that pierced the sky.

As the advisor elder responsible for Konoha's logistics and finances, that building was not just an Uchiha enterprise in her eyes, but a distressing sinkhole of potential tax revenue.

When Konoha was first founded, all industries were waiting to be developed, and the village was destitute.

Every ninja clan had entered the village with their own capital, together laying the foundation for the village, and no one had yet formed a concept of taxation.

Later, during the long peace, more and more people were attracted to Konoha.

Especially after Senju Hashirama clapped his hands and used his Wood Style ninjutsu to gift free "single-family homes," the number of admirers who could no longer survive outside grew ever larger.

Thus, Konoha flourished day by day.

It wasn't until the reign of the Second Hokage, Senju Tobirama, that a tax system was finally established.

However, facing resistance from all the ninja clans, and being in no rush—nor having foreseen his own swift demise—Senju Tobirama had placed the main burden of Konoha's taxes on the rewards ninjas received after completing missions.

For industries operated by ninja clans, he only collected symbolic fixed fees, and he took nothing at all from the many small-scale businesses.

When Sarutobi Hiruzen succeeded him, he naturally followed the old rules and continued the established system.

The various ninja clans operated their increasingly prosperous family businesses with a tacit understanding—

From the forging of ninja tools to the trade of medicinal herbs, from real estate leasing to usury.

In every field where there was profit to be made, the presence of the ninja clans could be found.

At first, everyone was making money in a friendly manner, and Utatane Koharu hadn't thought much of it.

But as the Uchiha, who had previously disdained such business, rose abruptly and kept producing "irreplaceable" goods—especially after this Commercial Tower shot up into the sky—everything changed.

It was rumored that its single-day turnover was enough to surpass the monthly earnings of a small clan.

This shimmering building not only rewrote Konoha's skyline but also cast a restless shadow in the heart of every ninja clan.

Seeing the Uchiha raking in gold, many families secretly imitated their best-selling products.

Some clans even attempted to steal trade secrets using their family's secret techniques.

The final result was always tasting the iron fist of the Uchiha—

The Uchiha clan of today is nothing like the pathetic state it was in during the era of Uchiha Fugaku.

Under the strong leadership of the Hawk Faction, headed by Uchiha Ren, the clansmen struck back with thunderous methods and perfectly legitimate justifications!

With a simple Sharingan: Hypnosis, they followed the trail to root out every single intelligence thief, and those involved were promptly thrown into prison.

The majority of these culprits belonged to the Shimura clan and the Sarutobi clan, while the rest were merely small families following the trend.

Major clans like the Ino-Shika-Cho and the Hyuga maintained a cautious, wait-and-see approach throughout.

As the situation escalated, Sarutobi Hiruzen had to step in personally to mediate.

He not only ordered the involved families to compensate the Uchiha for their massive commercial losses but also made an unprecedented exception by allocating a prime piece of land in the center of the village.

He granted the Uchiha special permission to build what is now the Commercial Tower that overlooks the entire village—Ginza—a hub integrating daily necessities, ninja gear, dining, entertainment, and leisure services.

All the Uchiha shops scattered across the streets and alleys were consolidated within it.

While siphoning the entire economy of Konohagakure, it also attracted many other ninja clans to move in.

This allowed the Uchiha to act as landlords, providing for their many non-ninja clansmen and improving welfare benefits to strengthen clan cohesion.

At the same time, they used profit as a bond to win over those ninja clans that could be swayed, creating what is now a den of indulgence famous throughout the Land of Fire.

Utatane Koharu tapped her fingers irritably against the ledger, her mind filled with nothing but how to extract money from the Uchiha.

Yet she knew that demanding money from the Uchiha so blatantly would be like pulling teeth from a tiger.

Those Uchiha would truly dare to force every single shop owned by the Utatane clan to shut its doors for good.

They could find a dozen reasons to do so without even trying.

This was the power of the Konohagakure Military Police Force, authorized by Senju Tobirama, which combined executive, legislative, and judicial powers—an organization even more extreme than the Jinyiwei.

"The Uchiha are not a monolith."

"Both the Uchiha clan head's lineage and the Dove Faction have shown intentions of leaning toward us."

Utatane Koharu's gaze deepened as a thought emerged.

"If Hiruzen uses his authority as Hokage to appeal to their sense of reason and emotion... I imagine that clan head would not refuse this olive branch from the Hokage."