White Dove: I'm Going to Build a New Uchiha!

Swish, swish!

A series of gazes shot toward him like blades.

Facing those stares, White Dove didn't care in the slightest. A smile still hung on his face.

He was just helping a bunch of people who were all talk.

It wasn't that the Uchiha couldn't fight, or that they couldn't bring themselves to do it.

They'd just all been crippled by the Will of Fire, just like Shisui. They couldn't bring themselves to strike at their own people.

Uchiha Fugaku, seated at the head of the room, looked at White Dove with a hint of displeasure. He had quite a few issues with him.

Because the man was too dangerous!

He usually skipped clan meetings, so there had to be a reason he'd come today. Better to sound him out first.

Having made up his mind, Uchiha Fugaku asked:

"White Dove, do you have any good ideas about the villagers' complaints?"

No matter what, he had to rein in White Dove's dangerous idea of being "above the shinobi." Konoha was a place that believed in the Will of Fire, and it would never tolerate such thinking.

"Of course!" Uchiha White Dove replied casually. "These people aren't ordinary villagers anymore. We need to hit them hard. I say we arrest them all and interrogate them to find out who's telling them to undermine the close relationship between the Uchiha and the village!"

He'd kept his head down for long enough. There was no more time for that, so now he was finally "speaking his mind."

Uchiha White Dove had been fed up with these unruly villagers for a long time.

Before transmigrating, he'd watched the anime and naturally thought highly of the villagers. But after actually dealing with them, he'd realized they'd been spoiled rotten.

They treated shinobi like they were disposable... Though, weren't shinobi basically the same as disposable people?

Well, never mind!

Either way, White Dove was genuinely fed up.

If I didn't have extraordinary powers, fine. But I'm a shinobi, and you not only show me no respect, you keep targeting me. What do you expect me to do, just put up with it?

That was why, despite being a member of the Police Force, he enforced the law with an iron fist. Uchiha Fugaku had no choice but to transfer him to a logistics department and make him a squad leader.

Now he was saying they should hit the villagers hard.

"Shut up! Are you trying to destroy the Uchiha?" Uchiha Fugaku scolded him. "The Police Force's duty is to protect the villagers. How dare you say something like that!"

He truly hadn't expected Uchiha White Dove to say something so dangerous.

"No, Clan Head, you've got it wrong." White Dove shook his head slightly. "The Police Force's duty is to 'maintain order,' not protect the villagers!"

He wasn't making that up. It was recorded in the clan history: the Police Force had originally been established for precisely that purpose.

As for the villagers?

That came after. Now that the villagers were disrupting order, hitting them hard was only right.

But because they had a weak, incompetent clan head like Fugaku, the Uchiha had gone from a mighty lion to a sick cat.

"You..."

Uchiha Fugaku was so angry he couldn't speak.

As Uchiha Clan Head, when had anyone ever dared raise their voice to him like this?

"I came to this clan meeting today to tell you, Clan Head: starting today, I'm going to build... a New Uchiha!"

Uchiha White Dove stood up and declared his purpose, every word deliberate.

That was right. It was the self-preservation plan he'd been considering for a long time.

If the Uchiha kept going as they were, they were doomed!

Konoha F4 were watching them from outside, while the White-Eyed Wolf harbored murderous intent within. If they didn't change course soon, they might as well kill themselves. At least then their eyes would remain their own, instead of being used as experimental materials and expendable tools.

So he planned to take it one step at a time.

First, he'd use internal strife to make the higher-ups less wary of the Uchiha and earn their support.

He wouldn't speak for the others, but Pot King would definitely support him.

So White Dove might seem crazy, but in truth he was perfectly clear-headed. He was also walking a tightrope over a blade's edge.

What could he do? He didn't have one of those outrageous systems.

If he did, he'd have stopped "eating beef" a long time ago. Why would he put up with the villagers and the higher-ups every day?

Kage Level was the pinnacle in a small shinobi village, but in Konoha, it only made him a strong shinobi. It didn't make him the strongest.

There was barely any time left. Otherwise, he'd have waited until he reached Kage Level before making his move.

At the same time, this was an important opportunity.

An opportunity to reach Kage Level.

He was going all in!

If his talent wasn't enough, he'd have to "take a shortcut."

"Uchiha White Dove, have you gone mad?"

The Second Elder, Uchiha Setsuna, an extremist, sprang to his feet in shock.

A shinobi clan didn't deal with rebels by simply scolding them. They followed the clan rules and eliminated them outright.

"I'm not mad!" White Dove shook his head lightly and looked at Uchiha Fugaku with disdain. His voice carried undisguised contempt. "I just don't approve of a clan head who's indecisive toward outsiders and weak and incompetent toward his own people!"

Yes, that was his verdict.

In peacetime, Fugaku would definitely have been a good clan head. The problem was... this was the damn Shinobi World!

It was a hell where the average person didn't live to thirty, and killing was as ordinary as eating or drinking.

With a clan head like this, it was no wonder White Dove was turning the table over. Staying under his leadership was no different from committing suicide.

And he was going to openly break with Fugaku!

The more fiercely he acted, the more Pot King would trust him and invest in him. After all, the shortcut he needed to reach Kage Level was tied to Pot King.

Only after reaching Kage Level would he have the right to take a seat on Konoha's game board.

At best, being on the verge of Kage Level could guarantee he'd survive in the Shinobi World like a stray dog, forever living in fear.

If that was all he wanted, why had he even bothered transmigrating?

Before transmigrating, he'd been a nobody. If he was going to stay that way afterward, he might as well go to the Land of Rain, flirt with Konan, and get himself killed.

As things stood, to borrow a phrase from his previous life:

He didn't dwell on the past or hope for another life. He only sought to be invincible in this one. He would stand at the summit of the Shinobi World and reshape this hellish world into the place he envisioned!

He'd never hidden his ambitions from his trusted subordinates, and that sheer scale of vision had won them over. Otherwise... why would they be so devoted to him?

But even the loftiest goal had to be achieved one step at a time. This was the first step.

Reaching Kage Level!

If he botched this step, there'd be no future.

"Arrogant..." Uchiha Tenzan, the conservative Dove Faction's Grand Elder, was just about to speak up and condemn him when Uchiha Fugaku raised a hand to stop him.

"White Dove, is there something I've done as clan head that you're unhappy with?"

He was genuinely curious. Was this restless young man acting on his own, or was someone trying to extend their reach into the Uchiha?

"During the Nine-Tails' attack a few years ago, we Uchiha were clearly Konoha's strongest shinobi clan, yet we didn't make a move at all. That's why the villagers assumed we were behind the Nine-Tails' attack, right?"

Uchiha White Dove asked.

He wasn't actually trying to rebel, so he didn't mind arguing for a while and undermining Fugaku's authority.

"That's right, but it was because..."

Uchiha Fugaku had just begun to explain when White Dove cut him off.

"I know Root acted on the Third's orders and stopped the Uchiha from leaving the clan compound... But what I want to ask is this!" White Dove launched into a tirade. "The Fourth Hokage was in charge at the time. Since when did Root get to call the shots? And they used 'the Third's orders' to do it. Are you an idiot?"

He'd wanted to say this for ages.

Back then, he hadn't even been allowed to speak. Otherwise, he'd have said it long ago.

The Fourth Hokage had already taken office, and Root didn't even have his trust. Yet you obediently followed Root just because they invoked the Third's orders? Are you his dog?

Even a dog wouldn't be that obedient!

"..."

Uchiha Fugaku had no answer. He really had made the wrong choice back then.

If the Fourth Hokage were still alive, the Uchiha certainly wouldn't be in this state now.

But White Dove wasn't going to let him off so easily. He kept kicking him while he was down:

"And then there was the village ordering the Uchiha to move away from the center. You agreed to that too, even though you were clan head. Wasn't that the same as admitting we were involved in the Nine-Tails' attack?"

Uchiha Fugaku had some brains, but he might've been better off without them.

As White Dove's questions piled up, the others in the shrine hall grew resentful too.

After all, much of the clan's current resentment came from being ordered to move to the edge of the village. They were nearly starving, yet the compensation still hadn't arrived years later. It was no wonder they were angry, or that the Hawk Faction had grown in numbers day by day until it now outnumbered the Dove Faction.

As for what the village's higher-ups thought?

They believed the Uchiha had caused enormous losses by starting the Nine-Tails' attack. Making them move away from the center of the village was already a generous punishment. They wanted money too? They were dreaming.

"..."

Everyone fell silent.

They hadn't considered that at all.

The Uchiha were undeniably strong in terms of power, but when it came to "brains," they seemed to be inversely proportionate to their strength.

"And so many people keep shouting about rebellion at clan meetings. Even the village's children know the Uchiha are planning to rebel now. Aren't you afraid the village will strike first?"

As he spoke, White Dove swept his gaze over everyone at the meeting, as if they were idiots.

A rebellion should be kept secret, shouldn't it? But at every clan meeting, they kept shouting about it like children playing at war. There was nothing he could say.

Everyone looked awkward at his words, because it really was an "open secret."

"So, Clan Head Fugaku, am I wrong to say you're indecisive toward outsiders and weak and incompetent toward your own people?"

White Dove stared at Uchiha Fugaku, rubbing his failure in his face.

The village's destruction of the Uchiha in the original story had truly depended on this "traitor" cooperating. Faced with the choice between humiliation and extermination, he'd let the Uchiha be humiliated before they were wiped out.

Any clan head with a little backbone would've stopped the Uchiha from being exterminated.

Uchiha Fugaku's expression was complicated as he listened.

Only after hearing White Dove's words did he understand how many mistakes he'd made. But as clan head, he couldn't agree to having the clan split apart, so he said sternly:

"White Dove, I can take what you said earlier as a joke. Don't let there be a next time!"

But his response was...