Not everyone in a ninja clan was a ninja.
There were certainly ordinary people, too.
Some might even have had the aptitude to become ninja, but simply didn't want to. You couldn't force them into it, could you?
That made these people Yuya's primary targets.
They were the ones responsible for the most menial work in the ninja clans.
In other words, they provided resources for their clans.
Put simply, in the past they farmed, did business, wove cloth, and supported the ninja who protected them.
That arrangement had made perfect sense during the Warring States Period.
Ninja provided protection, and civilians provided resources.
But it no longer suited the era of the ninja villages.
These civilians had to hand over resources not only to their clans, but also to the village.
In that case, they could either stop paying their clans altogether or stop paying the village.
Konoha had never forcibly collected food, money, or anything else from clans like the Sarutobi, Hyuga, and Shimura. But it certainly collected the taxes due each year.
The clans could decide how much to pay, though, and both sides knew exactly how much they were giving.
That arrangement obviously couldn't continue indefinitely.
But the village had only just been established, and then war had broken out.
The war was still ongoing. Kumogakure had only temporarily withdrawn; no armistice had been signed.
They certainly couldn't afford to fall out with those clans during wartime, so Senju Tobirama could only make a note of them in his little book.
Senju Tobirama hadn't forgotten how, last time Yuya went around the village seeking supplies, almost none of the clans had been willing to help.
Regardless of whether Yuya himself had come up with the idea of soliciting supplies, he had been representing Senju Tobirama.
Oh, I finally managed to get my hands on tens of millions, and every one of you blocked my door demanding money. Now I send someone to ask for supplies, and you won't even do me the courtesy of helping?
Who does that?!
Senju Tobirama wrote it down in his little book, but Yuya didn't think that way.
He hadn't taken these clans seriously from the start.
At the end of the day, a clan was just a group of people with the same surname banding together for warmth.
The name of a clan was useful when fighting external enemies.
But was Konoha an external enemy?
No. So Yuya had a thousand ways to break these clans apart.
He had chosen to slowly wear them down to avoid escalating tensions. If Kagami Uchiha hadn't had a sudden whim and ventured out to look around, he wouldn't have realized that many ordinary members of the Uchiha Clan had already left the compound and moved into Konoha's urban districts.
Here was the important part: yes, the Uchiha Clan had serious internal problems in Konoha, but did the other clans have no problems of their own?
Did they not oppress their ordinary clan members?
Of course they did.
It was only a matter of how much.
The Uchiha Clan was currently the most oppressive. Gradually, ordinary members of the other clans would also leave their compounds and move to the eastern, western, southern, and northern districts Yuya had planned.
Could Kagami Uchiha stop them?
No.
Put simply, it was a choice.
In the future, the only thing a so-called clan could offer you was the feeling of belonging that came from living together with your fellow clansmen.
Nothing else.
The village could provide the protection clans offered, couldn't it?
Couldn't Konoha provide everything else a clan could?
Konoha also had plenty of jobs. The factories were practically fighting over workers. Often, the machines and materials were already there, but there weren't enough workers, so the machines just sat idle, costing money every day. And money was what Yuya cared about.
Once these ordinary clan members moved out, they would realize that as long as they worked hard, life in Konoha's urban districts was definitely better than it had been in the compounds.
For the Uchiha, it was several times better.
There wouldn't be some cult-like bunch knocking on their doors every day to preach Konoha's Seven Sins and urge them to fight the village. And they wouldn't have to pay a monthly fee, either.
And once they moved out, they would realize: who ran the Police Force?
The Uchiha.
What did they do?
Protect Konoha.
So after moving out, they didn't have to pay anything, and they still enjoyed the same protection as before...
Why wouldn't they leave?
Once they moved out, they would realize...
It really was a lot more comfortable.
(Of course, there was another benefit to moving out: if the people in the Uchiha Clan Compound went berserk, they wouldn't be wiped out along with the clan. Killing someone inside the compound was a family matter; killing someone outside it was a village matter. Itachi Uchiha gave this a thumbs-up.)
Once he understood that, Kagami Uchiha promptly found his place.
He simply checked out.
He wasn't the Uchiha clan head, and honestly, he didn't think there was anything wrong with the Uchiha leaving their compound.
If anything, weren't they living better now?
So why disrupt Yuya's plans?
Kagami Uchiha could see that Yuya was different from the Second Hokage.
There was no need to say much about Senju Tobirama's talent for ninjutsu. "Professor of Ninjutsu" was the best praise he could receive.
But Yuya was different.
The boy hadn't displayed any skill in ninjutsu at all, yet he was already enough to make Kagami Uchiha's blood run cold.
Kagami Uchiha didn't believe he could come up with a plan on such a massive scale, slowly carving away at every ninja clan.
He could understand, and even accept from the bottom of his heart, why Senju Tobirama had handed the village's administration over to Yuya.
Well, he might have accepted it, but whether Sarutobi Hiruzen and Shimura Danzō did was another matter.
Kagami Uchiha set his worries aside and focused on strolling down Commercial Street with his wife. He had to admit, it was really enjoyable.
Commercial Street stayed lively even at night.
And unlike the aloof Kirigakure shop, the only shop from Sunagakure was run by a brother and sister from the Chiyo Clan who were both very friendly.
Konoha was so large that there were bound to be people who wanted to try the flavors of other villages.
Cactus fruit... Hmm... He'd never tried it before. Should he give it a go?
It wasn't expensive, anyway. A skewer with two fruits cost 100 Ryo, which was a drop in the bucket for Konoha's residents these days.
Why not try something new?
The Sunagakure shop was run by a brother and sister from the Chiyo Clan. They had only rented the place for a year, but that was all the more reason Sunagakure wanted to make the most of it.
The ninja from Sunagakure who had come to Konoha had already started investigating.
Now, don't get the wrong idea. They weren't sneaking into Konoha's various classified locations to steal intelligence or anything like that.
They were doing something much more straightforward: observing.
Observing openly, in broad daylight.
The Sunagakure ninja had been stunned on their very first day in Konoha.
The roads were paved entirely with stone?
And it was obvious the stones had been polished.
They made the roads smooth and comfortable underfoot.
That alone had been enough to astonish the people from Sunagakure. The roads in their village were all made of dirt mixed with gravel, the kind that turned into a complete mess whenever it rained.
But if it rained, the people of Sunagakure would be thrilled. They wouldn't care if the roads turned to mud.
After all, their village was short on water.
Just how short? A Water Release ninja who went there would be treated like a treasure.
But generally speaking, no Water Release ninja was willing to go there. Sunagakure's training environment wasn't suitable for them, and powerful, famous Water Release ninja had no interest in the meager benefits the village could offer.
But back to the point. The roads were one thing; the Sunagakure ninja could all see how developed Konoha was.
And it wasn't just developed in the sense of having great military strength.
During the day, the buildings in Konoha's four planned districts were mostly empty. The few people around were elderly, weak, or sick.
But all around Konoha, thick smoke poured from the woods without letup.
It was obvious people were working.
By evening, it was as if the whole village suddenly came to life. The young adults got off work and rarely went straight home. They either called a few friends to drink, chat, and eat skewers, or headed to Konoha's gambling dens.
Well, those gambling dens were gone now. There was only one, run by Konoha itself.
They said business was booming.
The Sunagakure ninja made a note of that. When they got home, they would have the Kazekage seize the gambling den owners' assets and exile them, then run the gambling dens themselves.
Sunagakure had its share of gambling addicts, too, though certainly not as many as Konoha.
Konoha was bustling during the day and lively at night. The Sunagakure ninja were writing so many observations that their hands were about to fall off.
That was because Konoha's construction sites never stopped. The Wetland Bridge being finished didn't mean construction was over. They could build bridges and roads in other places, too.
And Konoha's village was still too small. It couldn't accommodate too many people; once its population reached a million, it would probably be overcrowded. At that point, they could either keep making the buildings bigger and taller or develop the Outer City. Yuya had chosen to lay the groundwork for the second option first, so construction was going on outside the village, too.
The Sunagakure ninja were baffled. Just how much money did Konoha have?!
So many sites were being worked on at the same time, not to mention the workers' wages...
Just how rich was Konoha?
The observers from Sunagakure were stumped. But a few days later, news suddenly spread through Konoha that the village was planning to build a water plant on the Uchiha Clan Compound's eastern side.
Once Sunagakure heard about it, they couldn't sit still.
After all, they really were short on water...
So their leader promptly submitted a diplomatic request:
"Big brother, help your little brother out. Could you set up a water plant for us, too?"
I spent almost an hour looking for where the recommendation data section was, but I couldn't find it. Forget it. Let the whole thing burn; I don't care anymore. Whether I pass the first round of recommendations or not, whatever. We'll know the result in three days anyway. If I don't get recommended, great. If I do, there'll be a pile of annoying stuff to deal with. The editor will probably ask me to write extra chapters, too. I'll save my drafts for after the book goes on sale...
[PS: The world's runner-up is the biggest loser. 17 won for a whole year, only to come second at the PGC. The prize money was decent, but it's such a shame they didn't get a grand slam. Sigh.]
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