19 Foolishness and Naivety

Uchiha Kei, do not fear; the sun will rise as usual.

That night, everyone had finalized their plans against Uchiha Kei, swearing to eliminate this outspoken child before he could fully mature.

But so what? Kei was still able to open his eyes and see the next day's sun.

He was even fully aware of their every move.

On the morning of the second day, Uchiha Hotaru was reporting to Uchiha Kei everything that had happened in Konoha Village, describing even the intimate details of Fugaku's bedroom activities without omission.

Clearly, this was overly shameful for a woman, but as an intelligence officer, it was a display of competence.

She was only responsible for delivering intelligence to her leader in exhaustive detail. As for the conclusions drawn from that intelligence, those were for the leader to judge himself, and it was also a subordinate's way of acknowledging their leader's wisdom.

"Lord Kei, after Clan Head Fugaku had a brief conversation with Itachi last night, he returned to his room. According to the information sent back by the butterflies stationed at Lord Fugaku's door, the Clan Head seemed quite energetic last night; he tossed and turned for the entire night."

As she said this, Hotaru lightly licked her crimson lips with the tip of her tongue, looking as though she were still savoring the thought, full of the allure of a young married woman.

She was a woman with beauty like a butterfly, possessing the ability to summon illusory butterflies, and also holding a natural affinity for snakes.

Beauty and danger converged in her, giving her a unique temptation.

[Uchiha Hotaru: Ninjutsu A, Taijutsu B, Genjutsu A+]

Yet, Kei felt no temptation at all; his heart was simply filled with speechlessness.

Sigh, what a pure young girl she used to be!

Back then, Kei had noticed the mutual affection between her and Uchiha Maru, so he presided over their wedding. When he first mentioned it to Hotaru, the young girl had blushed as red as a steam engine.

It had only been two years since she married Uchiha Maru under his officiation; how had she become so open, openly discussing such matters with her superior in the doorway?

Is this the difference between a young girl and a married woman?

Does this count as workplace harassment!

If Kei were to say, "Madam, you wouldn't want Mr. Maru to know about this, would you?" the tone of the scene would change instantly.

Unfortunately, he had long understood the nature of his subordinates over these past two years. They were real people; the "thought imprints" merely granted them loyalty to Uchiha Kei, but that did not mean they lacked their own emotions.

He certainly didn't want to harbor any grudges with Uchiha Maru, a ninja who could sever rock with a single strand of hair.

[Uchiha Maru: Ninjutsu B, Taijutsu A+, Genjutsu C]

Of course, one must also add that he had long grown accustomed to the fact that the ninja girls he summoned over the years didn't love him.

Not to mention the marriage of Hotaru, this young woman with a girlish charm, which had received his blessing. Even for those other summoned characters who didn't share mutual affection, he had no desire to provoke them.

The satisfaction that power brings to a man is on a much higher level than those petty romances.

Kei closed his eyes, thought for a moment, and calmly accepted reality: the Hokage faction, the Danzo faction, and even Uchiha Itachi had all colluded, harboring improper designs on his life.

Fortunately, they had not yet joined forces in a desperate alliance, still working on their own separate schemes.

Among them, Danzo was the most brainless; he planned to assassinate Kei the moment he was alone.

This was the stupidest method, yet also the most direct and effective. Once successful, things would become irreversible.

But the reason Kei found it stupid was that it also gave him sufficient excuses to stir up trouble.

If you are allowed to assassinate me, then I am allowed to assassinate you.

Danzo! You always think too highly of yourself, believing no one dares to do anything to you. Yet you forget that the "humanitarian destruction" methods you used in the past were against isolated, weak individuals, whereas now you are facing the leader of a violent gang.

We are all leaders who rely on our subordinates to get by; who doesn't have a few death-defying loyalists under their command?

Why does Danzo think only you are allowed to kill, while others are not allowed to kill you?

And I, Uchiha Kei, don't even need to kill you. I only need to release a massive amount of false information to trick you into dispatching enough men, then raid your lair and expose you—the one hiding in the shadows—completely under the sunlight. That would strip away your advantages and leave you hamstrung in all your future dealings.

It would be best if I could implicate the Third Hokage in your actions over the years; that would be perfect.

You treat me as prey, but I also treat you as bait to drag others down with you.

In this game, the bet is on your luck, Danzo.

If your luck is good, you die and that's the end of it. If your luck is bad, then for the rest of your days, you shall live humbly under the sun.

Compared to Danzo's stupidity, Itachi's expectations—and even his move to use secret arts to contact Shisui—only made Kei feel he was too naive.

Heh, beautiful childhood innocence. They always have their own imagined utopias and always think the world exists according to their own ideas, yet they know nothing of the baseness of human nature.

He's still counting on Shisui to oppose him.

He should worry about resolving the responsibility for his own front-line failures first.

Although the Third Shinobi World War had not yet officially begun, the fact that the Land of Fire was simultaneously clashing with the Land of Lightning and the Land of Water on the eastern front could no longer be hidden.

The Sunagakure ninja, who had long felt that Konoha was constantly suppressing and leeching off them, could no longer hold back; a righteous "backstab" against Konoha on the western front had long been in preparation.

Large-scale military operations between nations are never achieved overnight; as long as one is attentive, one can certainly find the irregularities.

It's just that before the outbreak, one side finds a loophole-ridden excuse as a cover, while the other side has enough confidence that they are unwilling to believe it.

Or perhaps, those who did discover it had their own agendas and were happy to see it happen.

For instance, Uchiha Kei, because of his knowledge of Hokage history and sufficient intelligence support, was able to make accurate judgments regarding the movements of the Land of Wind.

However, he had long since harbored designs on the Land of Rivers, which was wedged between the Land of Fire and the Land of Wind, and thus he allowed the Land of Wind to act as it pleased.

Although the Land of Rivers was barren and lacked anything worth coveting, a group of people lived there who also possessed red eyes. They were known as the Red Eye Clan, and life there was not particularly pleasant for them.

Having lost their inheritance of ninjutsu, they were no longer capable of being ninjas. At the same time, they became targets for ordinary villagers to vent their dissatisfaction toward the high-and-mighty nature of ninjas, leading to them being ostracized everywhere.

Kei, however, had the intention to recruit them, bestow upon them the Uchiha surname, and bring them back to Konoha to be cultivated.

Possessing a bloodline limit, they were natural material for ninjas and were born to be the bane of the Byakugan Clan. When the time came, he would simply claim they were Uchiha who had failed to awaken their Sharingan; who would dare to contradict Uchiha Kei?

Who could possibly understand the Uchiha better than he did?

Therefore, Kei had spared no effort in ensuring the Red Eye Clan endured a harsh living environment.

If they weren't pushed to the brink of survival, how could they possibly be willing to follow him wholeheartedly?

Kei's subordinate, the charismatic Gennosuke, was currently executing this mission. He drove mountain bandits and rogue ninjas to oppress the Red Eye Clan, weeding out the dead weight of the clan while protecting those willing to sacrifice their lives for the survival of their kin.

When the time was right, these downtrodden people would encounter the dawn of their lives; Gennosuke would descend like a god from the heavens to save them from their plight.

They would undergo a transformation, taking on the prestigious Uchiha surname and becoming a branch of the Uchiha who had failed to awaken their eyes, eventually evolving into a cadet branch dedicated to protecting the main Uchiha family.

As for the rogue ninjas and bandits who had oppressed them, they would be slaughtered to the last man under Gennosuke's leadership.

The Red Eye Clan would thus be able to vent the pent-up dissatisfaction of their many years of suffering.

The truth behind the misery of their lives would be thoroughly erased.

Kei believed that this transition from the depths of the abyss to the sudden arrival of heaven, coupled with the leap in social status that turned a group of refugees into the envy of all, would surely make them willing to give everything for the glory of the Uchiha.

By then, they would revere the Uchiha as gods.

The plan was proceeding smoothly; all that was missing was for the Land of Fire and the Land of Wind to clash, which would completely destroy the living environment of the Land of Rivers caught in the middle.

To bring about this situation, one had to allow the Sunagakure Ninja to launch sneak attacks, letting them pass through the Land of Rivers to form a pincer movement against Konoha alongside the ninjas from the Land of Water who had landed in the Land of Bears.

Oh, right—the current Land of Bears was the former Land of Whirlpools.

Once such a front was formed, the child's play that characterized the current skirmishes between ninja villages would inevitably be shattered, and the Third Shinobi World War would erupt in full.

At that point, no one would be playing games anymore. Konoha would have to concentrate all its power to strike back, unable to let other ninja villages perceive its weakness.

But once such a strategic situation arose, someone would have to take responsibility for the unfavorable developments on the front lines.

As the second-in-command on the front lines, Uchiha Shisui became the only logical choice.

After all, since the first-in-command was a member of the Nara Clan and a die-hard loyalist to the Hokage, the one who would have to step up and take the blame would inevitably be an Uchiha—even if you, too, were a loyalist to the Hokage.

Counting on Shisui to return and deal with him?

Naive!

Better to hope that when Shisui faces the village's interrogation, he doesn't end up becoming the second Hatake Sakumo!