The Sins of the Ancestors

Uchiha Kei did not care in the slightest about the calculated friendliness shown by Uchiha Shisui and his kin.

The tree of life is such that if you look up from the bottom, all you see are backsides, but if you look down from the top, all you see are smiling faces.

Compared to Shisui's current lineage, the situation of Uchiha Kei's own branch was simply far superior.

Therefore, in Kei's view, no matter what they were thinking, they had to wear friendly smiles whenever they faced him.

As for Uchiha Kei's attitude toward them, it depended entirely on his mood.

Whether it was the warmth of a good mood or the harsh rebukes of a bad one, they had to accept it all, lacking even the courage to refuse.

After all, no one would stand up for them.

Who told their branch to be neither integrated into the village nor favored by their own clansmen?

There was no helping it; it was all the sins of their ancestors!

As descendants of Uchiha Kagami's line, being Uchiha while cozying up to the Hokage and delusionally hoping to use "love" to make the clan integrate into the village was simply absurd.

The proud Uchiha clan never wanted your love; they wanted your fear and your reverence.

Furthermore, what Uchiha Kagami pursued wasn't even the village loving the Uchiha, but the Uchiha loving the village.

We Uchiha already abandoned our own clan leader, Uchiha Madara, and chose to stay in the village—if that isn't love, what is? We're just too proud to say it out loud.

Since we've gone this far, it should be the village's turn to love us back.

The Uchiha felt they had sacrificed so much without receiving anything in return, and their psychological balance was skewed. Yet the naive Uchiha Kagami still delusionally hoped to make the Uchiha sacrifice even more.

Anyone who has been in a relationship knows that the reason you can't leave a toxic partner is often because your sunk costs are too high; you'd be too unwilling to let go without a result.

The Uchiha were already deeply unwilling, and yet, one of their own actually wanted them to sacrifice even more.

That is textbook PUA!

Although the Uchiha clan didn't see things as clearly as Kei did, that was roughly the situation.

Unfortunately, most of the time, the opinions of the masses and the leaders are at odds. The masses want reasonableness, fairness, and self-interest. If they can't get it, then the wrath of a common man will spill blood five paces away and turn the world into mourning.

But the leaders have to consider how the Uchiha would survive if they left the village, how to deal with the village's retaliation, and how to properly settle the clansmen.

If they couldn't manage that, they had no choice but to stay in the village.

Since they had to stay, they had to find a way to integrate.

Thus, Uchiha Kagami's actions received the private endorsement of the clan leader at the time, meaning: "Considering the thoughts of the clansmen, I cannot publicly support you, but I will never interfere with your actions."

But the clansmen neither knew of nor could accept such private support.

So, what was the final result?

The result was that during the Second Shinobi World War, whenever there was a mission requiring someone to risk their life for Konoha, Uchiha Kagami's lineage was always the one to provide the manpower.

Consequently, dying young became the standard for their branch.

No matter how strong you were, once you hit the battlefield, survival was entirely a matter of luck.

Just like that, a perfectly fine lineage was reduced to Uchiha Shisui, Uchiha Obito, and a few stray cats.

Even those who took care of their daily lives weren't members of their own branch, but elderly, frail Uchiha women who had lost their families in the war—the kind who had married into the clan.

For this entire branch of Uchiha, twenty-five was a death trap for the men; not one had ever lived past it.

And as a transmigrator, Uchiha Kei knew that in another year or two, their numbers would dwindle even further.

By then, if this branch were to continue, they could only hope for asexual reproduction.

I hope they can produce someone as cheated as I am. Otherwise, there won't even be anyone to visit their graves during the holidays. Do I have to work odd jobs in the Pure Land just to get by? That would be too pathetic.

Thinking of this, Kei felt quite happy.

Living in a world with such extraordinary power levels, the foresight and knowledge of a transmigrator are unreliable.

Even if you know a lot, what's the point? Without strength, if you live within the familiar plot, your life and death depend entirely on the whims of those familiar characters.

Thinking you know everyone's personality and can just talk your way through everything with a few glib words is pure wishful thinking.

If you don't believe it, think about it: with your ability to talk people into things, have you ever managed to talk your own parents into seeing things your way?

Once you realize this, you understand that in a world of the extraordinary, foresight is useless.

But if you leave the familiar plot environment, your greatest advantage as a transmigrator is gone—so what is the point of transmigrating?

Therefore, having a cheat is much more reliable.

Kei's cheat was quite aloof and never communicated with him, unlike those flashy, attention-seeking cheats that act cute.

Although the cheat wasn't cute at all, it was very useful, and Kei was quite fond of it.

The cheat's function was powerful yet singular: card drawing. The cards drawn were famous, named ninjas from anime worlds—living, breathing ninjas.

These ninjas might have lower combat power in their original worlds compared to the Naruto world, but a lifetime of ninja experience made them qualified ninjas by nature. Coupled with the enhancement of the Sharingan, they could instantly become competent ninjas in the Naruto world.

That wasn't all; the cheat also granted Kei the ability to assign these ninjas to complete system missions.

Although the missions weren't dangerous at all, they would mandatorily require the assignment of at least one purple card, or multiple purple cards, or an orange card, and so on.

However, this left Uchiha Kei unable to accept many tasks for the time being, as he lacked any orange-tier cards.

The available tasks were all patrols or routine chores. Their difficulty levels were so low that the Hidden Village's task hall wouldn't even bother processing them, yet the rewards were incredibly generous.

He could earn a massive amount of points, which could be exchanged for all sorts of things: money, resources, materials, ninjutsu, and more.

Consequently, without support from the clan, Kei's branch survived entirely by exchanging these points for resources.

Providing food, clothing, and shelter for over two hundred people was truly no small feat.

But because of these tasks, none of this was a problem for Kei; at the very least, he had managed to save up quite a few points by now.

The issue was that the point exchange shop contained many high-quality items. However, those high-quality goods not only required a vast amount of points but also necessitated orange-tier ninjas to complete orange-tier tasks to unlock them.

Unfortunately, the best Kei had on hand were purple-tier cards; he didn't have a single orange-tier card. Thus, he could only complete low-level tasks.

It was even more of a pity that this game lacked a "pay-to-win" feature.

Otherwise, Kei could have relied on drawing cards, dispatching ninjas to complete tasks, earning money, spending it on the game, and then continuing to draw cards, creating a perfect, self-sustaining loop.

That would have been a bit too broken.

Therefore, Kei could only rely on daily check-ins to obtain summoning scrolls, which basically allowed him to save up for one ten-pull every month.

In other words, he added ten clansmen each month.

Just like that, Uchiha Kei, a war orphan who had been swept away to a remote corner of the Uchiha clan, had developed that desolate area into a vibrant, thriving place in less than two years, forcing Uchiha Fugaku to acknowledge the existence of his branch—all thanks to this cheat-like card drawing and point exchange system.

Of course, Uchiha Kei also had to thank the Second Hokage, Senju Tobirama, and the Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen. If not for the fundamental village policy of ostracizing the Uchiha established by the Second Hokage, and the Third Hokage's perfect inheritance of that political strategy, Uchiha Fugaku, as the newly appointed clan head, would not have been under such immense pressure.

If Fugaku hadn't been under such pressure, he wouldn't have been so desperate to increase the Uchiha's strength, and he wouldn't have so easily accepted the dozens of Uchiha clansmen who had appeared out of thin air.

I still remember how terrified Kei was during that first ten-pull, even preparing for the worst—death, or if he survived, exile.

Kei felt that no matter which village it was, the sudden appearance of dozens of ninjas would be a major incident, and the village leadership would certainly investigate.

But he had no choice at the time; back then, Kei was just an ordinary Uchiha who hadn't even awakened his Sharingan, with strength no better than a common genin.

He was the type of cannon fodder who had only mastered the Three Body Technique and one C-rank ninjutsu.

He was also a war orphan.

For an orphan, survival is always the primary obstacle.

Human nature, even with its countless shining moments, is something you can never pin your hopes on when you are born into this world.

Even in a society governed by the rule of law, it is common to see people prey upon the vulnerable or exploit orphans with no one to rely on, let alone in the chaotic world of Naruto.

Furthermore, most of the Uchiha clan's assets were held in common. Once Kei's parents died, he naturally lost the right to continue occupying their large house.

Thus, just like Uzumaki Naruto would later experience, Kei lost his home and, carrying only a few of his parents' belongings, was relegated to a remote corner of the Uchiha clan to live alongside other orphans.

At the same time, Uchiha Kei was at an awkward age—older than the other orphans, making him a "big brother," but not old enough to be self-sufficient.

He was forced into the role of a leader without having the ability to provide for everyone.

It was a miserable situation. Not only did the older Uchiha Kei have to look after the several children living in that remote corner who were also war orphans, but he also had to find a way to satisfy the physical demands of his own growth.

In other words, he had to fill his stomach.

And it wasn't just filling his own stomach; he had to fill the stomachs of over a dozen orphans!

As the saying goes, a growing boy eats his father out of house and home. This was no easy task.