The north wind swept past. A dry, cold snowflake drifted down onto the tip of a nose. The little golden-eyed cat sneezed, waved a paw, and shifted into a different pose to doze.
The squirrel pinned beneath Matatabi's belly stirred, edged closer to the warm spot, and went right on snoring.
"Lord Matatabi? Are you here?"
"Dummy An'an, not here!"
"Zhita, this is an illusion, an illusion! How do you keep falling for it?"
"I'll find Lord Matatabi no matter what!" He clenched his fist, his fighting spirit burning.
A bunch of stupid brats~ Matatabi rolled over, exposing its belly to the breeze. The clingy squirrel took the opportunity to sprawl across it.
Taking care of kids~ They actually expected Lord Matatabi to babysit! When would these days of playing hide-and-seek with children ever end?
The faintly smiling face of a certain someone appeared in its mind. Matatabi tucked in its fluffy tail and shuddered. No, no, playing hide-and-seek with the kids was still better... Who knew if that bastard was the Sage of Six Paths reincarnated?! This was cheating!
"The Land of Water, the Tokugawa Clan..." A long, slender finger, unlike a ninja's, slowly traced a stack of registers. "They don't need to exist anymore. Pass down the order. The clan doesn't need to get involved. Send people to keep watch, and make sure nothing is overlooked."
The Land of Water, the Toyota Clan.
"You've fallen into depravity!"
Toyota Ishi's face was murderous. "Under the threat of ninjas, you've forgotten the pride of being a samurai clan! You cowards!"
"Why did we change our ancestors' surname and endure humiliation to stay here?! Was it so we could kneel at our enemies' feet and lick up their scraps? Have you forgotten the name Oda? Forgotten the samurai's teachings? Our ancestor Oda Nobunaga defeated an enemy ten times his size! Even in the face of life and death, he never cast aside his courage or valor! And what are you doing?!"
"Look at your samurai swords. What right do you have to wield them?"
Toyota Ishi's voice rang with passion and grief. "All these years of peace—what have they given you besides the shameful desire to live like cowards? If we keep shamelessly letting ourselves go, one day we'll suffer the same fate as before! Hatred! Only hatred! Only hatred can drive us to grow stronger! Only by washing away the disgrace of those days can we restore the dignity and glory of the Oda Clan as samurai!"
"The Tokugawa Clan is our enemy!"
"Betrayal always comes at a price! Yet the Tokugawa still live in comfort after betraying us. You are descendants of Oda Nobunaga—why don't you seek revenge? What are you doing? What are you afraid of? Speak!"
The people below lowered their heads, ashamed and unable to speak.
"It's the ninjas, isn't it?!"
"Cowards! Cowards!! Every last one of you is a coward!!!"
"Those lowly tools! How could they compare to the way of the samurai? Don't forget, our enemies are human! Can't a blade pierce their veins and plunge into their hearts? We'll use their blood to honor the generations of heroic souls in the Oda Clan!"
"If you don't even have the courage to swing your swords, how can you possibly win?"
"Better to die standing than live on your knees! Who will join me in creating the most tragic chapter in the history of the Oda Clan? After this battle, our descendants will reclaim the Oda surname! They'll hold their heads high! And future generations will remember all of you—who's with me?!"
..."My lord!" "Head of the clan!" "We're willing to go!"... Passionate men were the easiest to rouse. His speech had set everyone's blood boiling; they could hardly wait to charge into the Tokugawa Clan with their swords.
Toyota Ishi laughed, gratified and feverish. "Good! You're all fine sons of the Oda Clan!"
"Prepare your gear! In two days, I'll go with you to our deaths!"
"Yes!"
"Ancestors!" Toyota Ishi knelt before the ancestral shrine, tears of excitement streaming down his face. "We are about to bring the full strength of our clan to bear against our enemy! We will no longer skulk in shame, and we won't hesitate to shatter like jade! We will restore the glory of the Oda samurai!"
His answer came in the form of a pair of golden eyes gleaming with an enchanting light.
Uchiha Madara hadn't deliberately concealed his decision. Everyone in the clan who needed to know already knew. The people of this era were relatively straightforward, and Uchiha ninjas had a decent professional code. As expected, they were deeply uncomfortable with Madara's shameless conduct.
The Uchiha had always operated legally, followed proper procedures, maintained a good reputation, and paid their taxes... Ah, no one dared collect them? That was dereliction of duty.
In any case, killing a client was something only rogue ninjas did!
At the clan meeting, the clan members voiced their doubts about Uchiha Madara's actions.
"The Tokugawa Clan has worked with us on missions. We shouldn't do this."
"That's why we're having someone else do the killing." Madara interlaced his fingers and rested his chin on them. A faint, detached smile touched his lips, but his words were ice-cold.
"Well..." The sixth elder, Uchiha Minyue, hesitated. "But the Tokugawa Clan has no particular grudge against us..."
"The Tokugawa are an extreme left-wing faction in the Land of Water. They've always supported the daimyo in provoking wars. As our ally, the Land of Lightning doesn't need a war right now." His implication was clear: the Tokugawa Clan wasn't needed, either.
Uchiha Minyue said, "Even so, you didn't have to insist on ordering the extermination of their clan."
Uchiha Zaitian, who managed the clan's mission office, twitched at the corner of his eye.
Madara glanced at him with a smile. "They asked for Matatabi."
Uchiha Zaitian grumbled inwardly: The poor Tokugawa Clan had taken on a mission with the Uchiha to get Matatabi, but the clan head didn't want to hand it over. According to the new clan mission rule—"If the client dies, the mission is considered void, and the down payment is nonrefundable"—anyone who dared fight our clan head for something should just die! As for the extermination... Who told you to place the mission in your clan's name, you idiots?
Uchiha Zhi wore an expression of disapproval. "This goes against the code of the ninja."
"If upholding the ninja code means the Uchiha Clan will be wiped out, would you do it?"
Uchiha Zhi was stumped. He still cared deeply about the clan.
"Rules." Madara surveyed the room. "They're made by the strong for the weak. When people agree to follow them, we call them a code of conduct. If it benefits us, we uphold it. If it doesn't, we learn to refuse by taking a detour. There's no such thing as a dead end in this world. You are ninjas, but you are also members of the Uchiha Clan."
Madara was met with silence. The Uchiha had been ninjas for generations, and many things had become matters of faith in their hearts. A few words couldn't change that.
Madara continued unhurriedly, "When I took over, I set down a principle that many of you didn't understand, didn't you?"
In his first year in power, Uchiha Madara had established a principle: the Uchiha Clan protected its members. Unless the clan faced the threat of annihilation, no one could sacrifice a member of the clan for any reason, whether political, economic, or military. This rule wasn't just for the clan to know. Everyone else had to know it, too: this was the Uchiha's rule, and that made it the rule of the Ninja World. It had to be obeyed without question. Anyone who disagreed had better be prepared to make enemies of every Uchiha.
Outsiders assumed those words were merely a threat to the world. Those inside the clan knew better. Objections had poured in from every direction: a ninja's creed put the mission first!
"Why do we become ninjas? For some so-called code of conduct, some so-called principle? Because of the Sage of Six Paths? No. Because of power."
His voice dropped lower, carrying a peculiar weight through the now-quiet Council Chamber. "Only power lets us survive in this chaotic world. The strong can still be killed; how can the weak hope to escape death? We're bound together by blood, but all we're doing is relying on one another to survive. So we won't be bullied in this world, so our loved ones won't die violent deaths, so the next generation can live safely to adulthood. Those are the true reasons we have a clan, and the true reasons we become ninjas. If one day being a 'ninja' can no longer achieve those ends, the Uchiha will abandon the profession without hesitation!"
The people's convictions began to waver. Uchiha Tai, however, smiled with relief.
"You need to understand that the Uchiha are no different from the Senju, the daimyo, the nobility, or the commoners. We all want to survive. If you can't break free of your old way of thinking, your lives will be meaningless. The Uchiha will always be a tool, a pawn in someone else's hands, a servant to the wealthy. And the only end awaiting us will be abandonment!"
"Being a ninja is simply a useful way to survive. It will never become our highest creed! This is beyond question, beyond change, and beyond dispute!"
His forceful declaration shook everyone present.
Ninjas were tools, ninjas had low status... These absurd ideas left behind by the Sage of Six Paths, whose name had long since vanished into some forgotten corner of history, were a grotesque social structure by the laws of the jungle as well as the development of human society. Yet generation after generation had accepted them. The nobility must have been laughing themselves awake.
Uchiha Madara wanted to ask the ninjas: Had you devoted all your brain cells to your muscles? Any sane person knew that when you possessed overwhelming power but had low status, the smartest move was to rebel and overthrow the officials. Yet you were stupid enough to kill one another for money just to stay alive. Honestly...
After becoming Uchiha Madara, with a whole clan of secretly chuunibyou, stubborn old and young members in tow, it clearly wasn't wise to openly rebel and seize power. What did it take to conquer the world? Military strength, economic power, influence over public opinion, and, for a more professional approach, cultural infiltration—then, finally, a just cause. For now, there was nothing he could do about the last one, but the rest weren't difficult. Uchiha Madara had never cared much about titles, after all. If he couldn't be king, being the power behind the throne wasn't bad either.
He wanted a comfortable life. He wanted goals worth pursuing. He wanted the power to control what he desired. He wanted to stand above all others in every world. His elegance and composure could never erase his competitive nature.
The original Uchiha Madara had also been ambitious and competitive. The difference between him and this Madara was that he had long since passed the stage of flaunting his brilliance. He could see his own mistakes, knew when to let go, and had enough patience, maturity, and clear-headed calm not to chase quick results or expose his unfinished plans to the world.
If Senju Hashirama had the talent and luck of someone who seemed to be the adopted son of a certain anime creator, then the Uchiha Madara of this world had character stats with cheat-level starting values.
The outcome of their future struggle was now impossible to predict.
This was the first time Uchiha Madara had laid out his reasoning for the clan. In his view, the strategies he had set in place and the forces he had built so far were just groundwork. How could tools control the world? Now he was laying out a different path before the clan, one that didn't belong to a pure ninja. If they could break free of the mindset that bound them to their identity as ninjas after this meeting, that would be the true beginning of the Uchiha's rise.
The people slowly straightened their backs. Their gazes turned toward him with trust and reverence—and now, above all, resolve.
"We obey!"
Before you continue