What Was Going On?

After taking care of something as major as the Four-Nation Alliance, Senju Tobirama felt confident enough to leave the village's affairs to Yuya and head to the front lines himself.

Of course, he took Sarutobi Hiruzen and Kagami Uchiha with him when he left.

But when Yuya went to see them off, he couldn't figure out why Kagami Uchiha was being so polite to him.

There was even a hint of...

Respect?

What was going on?

Kagami Uchiha, you're more than ten years older than me. I could call you uncle.

Although Kagami Uchiha's attitude left Yuya baffled, he had no intention of changing his plans for the Uchiha Clan.

Once the Water Plant was up and running, the Uchiha Clan would make several million Ryo a year from water fees alone.

The Uchiha Clan would collect the water fees themselves, hand over a portion to Konoha as taxes, and keep the rest.

But that meant the Water Plant was short on workers too.

The Uchiha Clan's compound used to be full of people wandering around with nothing to do, but now practically everyone wished they could split into two Shadow Clones and go to work.

That would double the exhaustion, though.

Well... overwork really could kill you, so better not.

The Water Plant was complete, and the recruitment notices Yuya had asked Konoha's merchants to spread around had finally borne fruit.

A small ninja clan had come to Konoha.

They'd heard that Konoha would give newcomers land and grain and settle them there. The grain wasn't free, though; they'd have to pay it back, albeit over the course of three to five years.

This policy wasn't exactly appealing. Unless people were truly desperate, it wouldn't attract them.

As luck would have it, there were indeed ninja clans in the small countries around Konoha who were desperate.

This clan had more than a hundred people, but only three of them were ninja, and their strength was at best on par with Konoha's Chunin.

If they stayed out in the world, they'd inevitably end up someone's slaves.

To survive, all one hundred or so members of the clan had come to Konoha.

They only hoped Konoha would feed them first, just as the notices had promised.

Yuya was naturally delighted.

He knew the conditions he was offering wouldn't draw in ordinary people or clans that weren't truly desperate.

But now there was a first, wasn't there?

And if there was a first, there would surely be a second.

Yuya was very pleased.

Besides, his notice had a second purpose.

It was just that this purpose was a little too dark.

Konoha was in the heart of the Land of Fire.

With its abundant natural resources, no one in the Land of Fire was so desperate they couldn't survive. The Feudal Lord exploited them mercilessly, but they still weren't at the point of starvation.

That was why Yuya hadn't set his sights on those people.

If he really targeted the people of the Land of Fire, the Feudal Lord wouldn't agree. He needed people to work his land and mines, too.

It wasn't time to fall out with the Feudal Lord of the Land of Fire yet. Konoha didn't have the strength for that.

And among the desperate clans who saw the notice and made the long journey to Konoha, the elderly, the weak, and the infirm would surely be gradually worn down along the way.

Otherwise, they couldn't have endured such a long journey.

In other words, all the hundred or so people in this first group to arrive in Konoha were young, able-bodied workers.

Men and women alike, the one thing Konoha lacked most right now was people.

A hundred or so people might not make much of a difference, but it was enough to staff a Steel Mill.

Well... as for everywhere else...

There wasn't much I could do. If I had to say, Yuya could guarantee that he'd prioritize staffing the factories and shops under his own management. But ninja clans, merchants, and the factories and shops they ran? There was nothing he could do about those.

Yuya had calculated that even in an era when human lives were worth less than grass and ninja graduated at eight and went to war at nine, even if children started working in factories at ten, it would still take ten years to produce a new generation of workers.

In ten years, Yuya was confident he could eliminate poverty in Konoha and make sure every household could afford meat. By then, who would still want their child working in a factory at ten?

There was something to be said for keeping your operation small.

But Konoha really was too small.

There were too few people. No matter how many methods he came up with, if no one came to Konoha to contribute, there was nothing he could do.

And to get people to come, besides enticements, there was...

Apparently only one other way.

—Enticements were definitely out. People who came for the perks cared about those benefits, and Yuya would rather share them with the people of Konoha than hand them to outsiders looking to make a quick profit—

The other method was...

Public opinion.

In the nineteenth year of Konoha, as Konoha's front lines entered a phase of back-and-forth warfare with Kumogakure, all kinds of rumors began to spread across the Shinobi Continent.

Things like Konoha being filthy rich, everyone in Konoha eating meat every day, Konoha having the strongest military in the Shinobi World, and all the other villages being no match for it...

All of that was true, but the rumors that followed were another matter.

Things like Konoha's air being sweet, Konoha's moon being rounder than the one in their XXX, and anyone who went to Konoha getting rich, finding a wife, and becoming a somebody began spreading like a virus.

And unlike the usual announcements, which circulated among ninja, these rumors were aimed solely at ordinary people.

By the time the various villages caught on, a year had already passed.

In Konoha's nineteenth year, Yuya upgraded the various factories, making wastewater treatment the highest priority.

After all, Konoha was small. In the first two years, they'd had to expand as fast as possible to maximize profits, and wastewater treatment had become a problem.

But some people weren't happy about that.

They used to earn 100 a day. After wastewater treatment was introduced, they could only earn 50.

This was the first time Yuya had made his secretary push a policy through by force.

And from that moment on, Yuya—the man everyone had assumed was Senju Tobirama's mouthpiece—officially entered the sights of everyone in Konoha.

In late summer of Konoha's nineteenth year, Kumogakure announced that they wanted to go home and harvest the wheat, and proposed a temporary ceasefire. Senju Tobirama slapped that idea right down. "Harvest your ass. Dream on. Before, I was worried those Earth Release bastards from Iwagakure would ambush us while we pursued you.

"Now that I don't have to worry about that, why the hell should I be afraid of you?

"Want to harvest wheat? Go do it in hell!"

Unlike in the previous two years, Konoha didn't retreat. Instead, they pressed forward, crossed the Land of Iron, and entered the Land of Lightning.

The Feudal Lord of the Land of Lightning panicked.

Before, the fighting had all taken place in the Land of Fire, and he hadn't cared how much got smashed.

But now Konoha had invaded the Land of Lightning...

That meant all the damage would be to their precious property!

This had to stop. They absolutely couldn't keep fighting.

As Senju Tobirama marched through the Land of Lightning, he discovered something.

That day, he'd planned to go down to a river, have a drink, and take a bath.

After bathing, Senju Tobirama had a sudden urge to practice some Water Release. That was when he noticed that, beneath the riverbed he'd smashed apart with his Water Release, some fine golden grains had surfaced.

Senju Tobirama dived underwater to take a look. Each grain was tiny, but there was no doubt that the golden particles exposed beneath the broken riverbed were gold dust.

Which meant that underneath...

There had to be a gold vein.

And judging by the glittering gold dust exposed at the surface, the deposit below was probably quite rich.

Senju Tobirama was thrilled. He ordered Kagami Uchiha to return within three days and bring Yuya there.

Kagami Uchiha accepted the order.

But when he returned to Konoha and saw the crowd gathered outside the Hokage Office, holding banners that read "Strongly Protest the Closure of the Textile Mill!" and "XXX Owes Us Our Wages! Pay Us Back!" among other slogans, he was completely confused.

What was going on?