Chatting with Readers

With this, the story of this novel comes to an end. However, I have left Ying Yue with an open ending; as an immortal, transcendent being, there are still countless stories for him to experience. Ying Yue has already achieved his goals in the ninja world: he has pacified the chaotic era and created a level of prosperity never before seen.

This novel was born during a period when I was suffering from a "book famine." I had some wonderful inspirations and began writing immediately. My skills were limited at the start, and the first hundred thousand words were rather mediocre. The protagonist grew too slowly and lacked "satisfaction points," which led to a significant loss of readers. Later on, the readership stabilized, likely as I became more proficient. It is thanks to the support of all you readers that I was encouraged to write until today.

More than income, I care about spreading ideas. In many novels today, once supernatural powers are introduced, the story's background often becomes nothing more than a "reskinned" feudal dynasty, frequently emphasizing Social Darwinism and the law of the jungle.

In my view, humanity became the most formidable and dominant ultimate organism on Earth not because of the terrifying strength of any single individual, but because of cooperation and wisdom. Individually, humans can hardly defeat lions or tigers, and we are far inferior to creatures like dinosaurs. However, once humans learned to cooperate and build civilization, those powerful beasts became insignificant before us.

The cooperation that drives human history forward is far greater than competition, and even more so than the zero-sum games of competition.

Then there is the issue of the Naruto worldview. Naruto appears to be a passionate shonen manga, but many details are left unfilled—or perhaps the author, Kishimoto, simply did not want to fill them. If you peel back the surface of the shonen genre and delve into the reasons for the endless strife in the ninja world, the enemies of the story become much more than just the so-called villains.

Kishimoto's stories often present the effect before the cause; the story of Naruto Uzumaki existed first, and the background was filled in afterward. It is like shooting an arrow and then drawing the target around it—the story comes first, and the logic is patched in later. This process led to many logical inconsistencies and even bizarre occurrences, which gave rise to numerous Naruto conspiracy theories. For example, why did Hashirama Senju, who possessed the Sage Body, die in his prime? Why did the Second Hokage, who possessed the Flying Raijin, die just to cover the retreat of his guards?

Questions like why the Senju clan disappeared, or how the Uzumaki clan and the Land of Whirlpools were destroyed, are often brushed over with a single stroke.

It is as if we know the action of shooting an arrow occurred and the arrowhead hit the target, but the flight trajectory of the arrow is missing.

Therefore, in these gaps, I added some relatively reasonable trajectories, along with the story of how Ying Yue navigated them.

Next is the issue of war and peace. Many characters in Naruto pursue peace, such as Nagato of the Akatsuki or Uchiha Madara. Even the so-called villains are not purely evil; they simply have different methods for achieving their ideals of peace.

Why do the people of the ninja world have such a deep obsession with peace? That must be credited to the dark, grim, and tragic setting of the Naruto background. In the Warring States period, children only a few years old were sent to the battlefield as cannon fodder. Ninjas were treated as expendable tools, and living in constant fear of death and mutual slaughter was a daily occurrence.

At the same time, Kishimoto never clearly stated why ninjas fought each other—was it because of hatred or resources? It felt more like war for the sake of war. War was merely an event to push the plot forward; war was caused by hatred, and hatred was born from war—a circular argument, a closed logical loop.

In reality, war always has deep-seated causes. War is the continuation of politics; it erupts due to the distribution of resources. This aligns with the logic of the real world. If we apply real-world logic to the Naruto world, we can conclude that ninjas fight over resources. Limited mission quotas are fought over by a few major ninja villages, and ninjas rely on these missions for their livelihood.

A ninja's income comes mainly from funding by the Daimyo and mission commissions from other nobles, merchants, and lords. These resources provided by the Daimyo do not appear out of thin air; they inevitably come from the labor of the common people. The Daimyo provides funds to the villages and ninjas, who in turn maintain the Daimyo's rule. The Daimyo extracts the fruits of the people's labor through taxes and other means, gives a small portion to the ninjas to maintain his power, and squanders the rest, while the nobles and lords attached to him take their own shares.

It is clear that if the Daimyo and the nobility were removed from this cycle, the lives of both ninjas and commoners would improve. Thus, the Daimyo and the social system they established are the root cause of the endless strife in the ninja world.

Of course, Kishimoto would never write it this way. Japan still has an Emperor and zaibatsu, and combined with a small-state mentality, solving the problem at its root would face opposition. Furthermore, Kishimoto's understanding of politics is extremely naive.

However, our novel does not need to worry about such things. Overthrowing the feudal rule of the Daimyo is a righteous cause. Thus, Ying Yue's story evolved from a standard "invincible" power-fantasy into a tale of mobilizing the masses to change the world.

Furthermore, there is the question of how to develop better after pacifying the world.

Previously, the ninja world had developed for thousands of years under a low-productivity feudal society. Even with the supernatural power of chakra, it remained very backward. The main reason was that the Daimyo used a small number of ninjas with supernatural powers to easily suppress all resistance. They held the right to distribute social resources, and how they distributed them depended more on maintaining their existing rule and on bloodlines and personal connections.

They did not focus on how to expand social resources so that society could develop and everyone could have more. Naturally, the ninja world stagnated. Ying Yue's approach was to distribute the "cake" to those who could make it bigger, rather than distributing it based on bloodlines and nepotism to maintain a regime.

The more evenly and fairly the cake is distributed, and the larger the cake is made, the better. Ying Yue broke the feudal rule and established a more rational new order.

Of course, in this process, Ying Yue also promoted the development of productive forces. Only with the further development of productive forces can the transformation of production relations proceed smoothly, and a society where most people live more dignified lives can be realized.

It was not that he became Hokage and then gained people's recognition; it was that he gained people's recognition and then became Hokage.

People like Danzo clearly did the opposite, while Ying Yue first allowed those who supported him to benefit. Those who supported Ying Yue followed him firmly, and he gained their loyalty. By the time Ying Yue had the support of the vast majority of Konoha's ninjas, becoming the Fourth Hokage was a foregone conclusion. He was the uncrowned king of Konoha; even if Sarutobi Hiruzen disagreed, he could have followed the story of Chenqiao and had the Hokage cloak placed upon him. Similarly, when Ying Yue became the Emperor of the ninja world, it was largely due to the support of the people who followed him, pushing him to that position.

The cost of loyalty is often tangible benefit, not empty slogans. Ying Yue achieved this, drastically changing the lives and destinies of most people in the ninja world, and naturally, he gained their support.

So-called "Heavenly Mandate" is not predestined by the heavens, but is the mandate of "those who follow the Way have many to help them, while those who lose the Way have few." It is the historical view of the people, and this is the idea this novel seeks to spread.

I haven't thought about the concept for my next work yet. If there is time and opportunity, there will be another one. Finally, thank you all for your support. Your requests for updates and your reading were the main motivation for me to complete this novel. If you enjoyed it, please leave a rating for this work so that more people can see it. Thank you all.