After leaving, Senju Tobirama found a high vantage point: the Twin Towers in the center of Konoha. Yuya had specifically built them ten stories tall after saying he wanted a landmark building.
By the standards of Yuya's previous life, their height was laughably unimpressive. But in this world, they could still serve as landmarks.
The Twin Towers housed the heads of Konoha's various departments.
Well, not exactly departments. They were the workplaces of the different shinobi clans.
It couldn't be helped. Those clans had helped establish Konoha, so naturally they were entitled to a certain degree of authority within the village.
And what Senju Tobirama saw now were the busy figures inside.
As he looked up, Senju Tobirama suddenly felt a little dazed.
Strictly speaking, he had reviewed some of Yuya's important decisions himself.
He had also returned last year.
If anyone had witnessed Konoha's changes firsthand, it was him.
But standing up high and surveying the surroundings, Tobirama felt that Konoha had changed so much.
In just two short years, Konoha's dirt roads had all been replaced with relatively smooth stone-paved streets.
He'd heard Yuya's next project was something called "concrete roads." Tobirama didn't know what that meant, and he had no intention of getting involved. He'd let Yuya tinker with it.
As for him...
He would just take a look at how Konoha had changed...
Senju Tobirama gazed at Konoha's busiest street. Even during the day, it was still bustling with people.
He'd even heard that people from Kirigakure and Sunagakure had shops there, though he didn't know what they were selling.
The other areas were a little quieter, but that was because the civilians were at work during the day. Apparently, from dusk until late at night, the civilian district was lively.
Come to think of it, Yuya had said more than once that they were short on people. But looking at the state of the village now...
Wasn't it doing great?
How could they possibly be short on people?
Tobirama was quite satisfied. He looked up again.
Oh, a gambling house... That brought back memories. His older brother used to go to that one all the time...
Hm?
Who was that?
Were children allowed into gambling houses now?
Uh, why did that figure look so familiar?
Then Sarutobi Hiruzen and Kagami Uchiha, standing behind Senju Tobirama, suddenly felt a surge of fury well up from him...
The two exchanged a glance and shrugged.
Well, whatever. They didn't think Senju Tobirama would do anything reckless.
And so, on that day, the cries of Tsunade, princess of the Senju Clan and granddaughter of Hashirama, the First and God of Shinobi, echoed throughout Konoha.
"Bang!"
The Hokage Office door was kicked open.
Sitting off to one side, hidden behind a mountain of paperwork, Yuya raised an eyebrow. Since he was only acting Hokage, naturally he couldn't sit in the main seat. He looked up and saw... Oh, it was his uncle. He'd been wondering who would dare kick in the Hokage Office door.
If it was his uncle, then it was fine.
"Yuya!" Senju Tobirama looked at him and spoke through clenched teeth. "I'm going to kick out every last one of those gambling-house owners!"
Yuya looked up at his uncle. "What?! Uncle, have you lost your mind? Do you know how much we'd lose?"
Senju Tobirama frowned at Yuya. "What do you mean?"
Yuya rummaged through the pile of papers on his desk, then pulled out a sheet and handed it to Senju Tobirama. "These are the transaction taxes and rental fees those gambling houses paid last month."
In short, Yuya had scrapped the monthly protection fees those gambling houses used to pay. Instead, he charged a transaction tax amounting to fifteen percent of their turnover and allowed them to put up signs, bringing their business out of the shadows and into the open.
In exchange, however, Yuya forbade the gambling houses from offering private loans. Even if a gambler got down on his knees and begged them for money, lending him any meant they'd be raided, their assets seized, and them driven out. They could look forward to the whole package.
After weighing the pros and cons, the gambling-house owners had agreed.
And now, every month, they looked at their income of over ten million ryō and grinned from ear to ear.
Yuya felt like laughing, too. Didn't those idiots know you had to fatten a pig before slaughtering it?
Yuya knew what kind of people ran those gambling houses. He'd already gathered evidence that three of them had secretly sent people outside the village to set up Tongqiu Shops.
Basically, one Tongqiu could be exchanged for a hundred thousand ryō at a gambling house. No money? No problem. They'd let you buy on credit, and you could pay them back the following month. They wouldn't even charge interest.
Wasn't that just lending money by another name?
Of course Yuya knew something like this would happen.
He'd seen far more sophisticated schemes online in his previous life. This setup still required their underlings to handle things. Those people had ordinary civilians transfer the money for them, passing it through an account and then another person's hands. By the time anyone investigated, all they could find were scapegoats.
Their scheme was way more effective than yours, wasn't it?
But Yuya had prepared for this in advance. The law stated that money could not be lent with deferred payment in any form.
Don't underestimate the importance of those five words, "money lent with deferred payment." Once they were in the law, all you had to do was give money to another person, and even if that person returned it a second later, Yuya could still arrest you under that law.
And with "in any form" included, they had pretty much shut down every scheme involving money.
It helped that ordinary people in Konoha had money in their hands now. Yuya had also blocked the gambling-house owners from using civilians as middlemen to pass the money along. Otherwise, they wouldn't have hesitated to drag some ordinary people into it.
Was that rule shameless?
Sure, it was. It was incredibly shameless. But Yuya felt he had a clear conscience. Every one of those gambling-house owners deserved to die.
Still...
They weren't fat enough yet. He'd let them grow a little more first.
After hearing Yuya's plan, Senju Tobirama was silent for a moment before speaking. "That still doesn't mean you should let children go there!"
Yuya blinked, then was immediately at a loss for words. "Tsunade?"
Senju Tobirama froze, then flew into a rage. "That little brat even said today was her first time going!"
Yuya hurriedly tried to calm him down. "Take it easy, take it easy. It wasn't Tsunade's first time, but I've had people watching over her."
Senju Tobirama was furious. "Oh, so you knew and didn't stop her!"
Yuya nearly spat blood. "Uncle! It's not that I didn't want to stop her! Tsunade insisted on going!"
Senju Tobirama: "And you just let her go? I entrusted her to you, and this is how you look after her?!"
Yuya: "...All right, all right. It's my fault. I'll have all those gambling houses arrested tomorrow!"
Senju Tobirama was satisfied. "There, that's more like it."
It was obvious that the long string of zeroes in the gambling houses' accounts had already made Senju Tobirama lose all reason.
Since Konoha was founded, when had the village ever had hundreds of millions of ryō in cash?
Even when they'd swindled Yuya, they'd used gold bars, not cash.
Those damn gambling houses had dared to take so much money from Konoha?!
They had to be taken down!
Yuya sighed. He'd actually wanted to let them grow a little more.
But there was no helping it. Senju Tobirama couldn't look away from that figure of hundreds of millions of ryō. Yuya couldn't blame him.
Yuya knew this kind of quick-money grab would only work once.
After this, those gambling houses definitely wouldn't come back to Konoha.
So they only had one chance.
In that case, he'd go to the Uchiha Clan tomorrow.
And while he was at it...
There were a few other things that needed taking care of.
Tomorrow, my new book is getting a trial recommendation. I doubt it'll make it through the trial and into the second round. The big shots in the author group said I should post extra chapters once it gets recommended, but I have to work during the day, so I haven't. I'll stick to the usual two chapters a day, 4,000 words total. Sorry, everyone.
P.S. The readers in the book's discussion group were right. If you can't handle the pressure, you shouldn't write—or do anything else, for that matter. So from now on, I can't be bothered replying to those comments. A lot of people just leave after cursing you out anyway. You can explain things to them, but they won't listen—they just keep chanting, "I can't hear you, I can't hear you." What's the point of wasting time on that? I could use that time to write another chapter.
Before you continue