The Uchiha Clan's Legacy

He didn't know it.

He believed that enduring humiliation for the sake of peace and letting go of his hatred were noble acts, but in truth, those were the very things that made his clan resent him most.

The Uchiha Clan would never submit to the Senju Clan.

If you, Madara Uchiha, wanted to fight the enemy to the death, then trust in your clan's strength. At worst, the clan could risk exposing Izanagi to restore your power. If one person wasn't enough, then ten would do. If ten weren't enough, then more.

Using the Uchiha Clan's Three-Tomoe Sharingan to alter reality was enough to wear down any enemy.

Yet Madara Uchiha had gone off to fight somewhere else, taking Hashirama Senju with him, all by himself.

You lost, then dusted yourself off and surrendered.

And you made everyone else bear the consequences of your failure.

The reason Uchiha Raimon hadn't considered using Izanagi on the clan members after Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha left was that the strongest fighters from both clans had left the main battlefield. Using Izanagi then—even to bring every clan member back—wouldn't have changed the overall situation in the slightest.

If Hashirama Senju won,

then with his overwhelming strength, even if the Uchiha Clan had already wiped out the Senju Clan, he could still single-handedly defeat the entire Uchiha Clan.

But if Madara Uchiha won,

then there'd be no need for the Uchiha Clan to use Izanagi at all.

They could simply wipe out the Senju Clan.

After all, Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha had already surpassed what people considered the limits of a shinobi.

Even clan-head-level fighters couldn't trade blows with them. They would be casually cut down with ease.

So Uchiha Raimon had naturally refrained from using this final trump card and had deliberately kept it hidden.

Even if the entire Uchiha Clan were wiped out, Izanagi could still alter the outcome of the clan's destruction.

Once the Senju Clan thought they had won,

the Uchiha Clan members could use the altered outcome of Izanagi to lie low with their clan until the danger passed.

No matter what,

the Uchiha Clan would never be destroyed.

What a perfect situation and strategy.

Madara Uchiha had acted as if he couldn't understand plain speech. He had eyes only for Hashirama Senju and was always the first to charge ahead alone.

He didn't care at all whether the rest of the clan lived or died.

No wonder he'd been driven out of the Uchiha Clan!

"After all, Madara Uchiha doesn't understand people's hearts. He really thinks the Uchiha Clan will perish without him. But with the Uchiha Clan's thousand-year legacy, if Hashirama Senju really dies soon, there's no reason we can't take the Second Hokage's position for ourselves."

Uchiha Mine declared with confidence.

"Mm, exactly. All we have to do now is wait and see how things turn out. If nothing unexpected happens..."

"Then we'll see for ourselves after this winter!"

Uchiha Raimon nodded. He didn't doubt Uchiha Mine's claim that they would take the Hokage's position.

There was no other reason. Setting aside Hashirama Senju, the God of Shinobi, the Senju Clan was no threat in the Uchiha Clan's eyes, even with several powerful fighters led by Tobirama Senju still around. Tobirama Senju was clever, but when it came to genuine strength—the level of the Uchiha Clan's top elders—there was little difference between them.

Otherwise, Uchiha Raimon and the others wouldn't have been thinking of slowly taking revenge on the Senju Clan.

Speaking of these steadfast allies at his side,

Uchiha Raimon was also constantly speculating about the trump cards they possessed.

Among them,

the situation of the Uchiha Clan after its clan head, Madara Uchiha, left was especially worth mentioning.

The entire Uchiha Clan was now governed by the remaining nine main branches. The origins of these nine branches involved one of the Uchiha Clan's most important traditions.

That was the awakening of the Sharingan.

As the Uchiha Clan's Kekkei Genkai,

the Sharingan was considered the clan's pride. Only those clan members who awakened it were truly Uchiha.

The Sharingan had several different stages: One-Tomoe, Two-Tomoe, and Three-Tomoe. The Insight Eye of the One-Tomoe Sharingan let its wielder perceive an opponent's movements in advance during battle. The Copy Eye of the Two-Tomoe Sharingan could observe an enemy's Chakra flow and directly copy all their standard ninjutsu. The Hypnotic Eye of the Three-Tomoe Sharingan could cast and enhance Genjutsu.

Furthermore, every increase in the Sharingan's level improved its wielder's eyesight, potentially to the point of seeing on a cellular level. It also greatly increased an Uchiha's overall talent, Chakra, strength, speed, and mental fortitude.

With the Sharingan's added power,

Uchiha clan members had earned a reputation for being so formidable that anyone who faced one in a one-on-one fight at the same level had no choice but to flee.

And the Sharingan was unlike other Kekkei Genkai.

Compared to other Kekkei Genkai, which also consumed Chakra, the Sharingan gave the Uchiha Clan a tangible boost to their mental strength, giving rise to a new kind of power.

That power was Dojutsu Power.

Even without using Chakra, its wielder could use Dojutsu Power alone to put an enemy under hypnosis or even inflict mental damage.

At the same time,

Dojutsu Power was a variation of spiritual energy.

It was a product of Yin Release, one of the forms of Yin-Yang Release.

This incredible power

allowed the Uchiha Clan's Kekkei Genkai to evolve further through a strange transformation, awakening the power known as the Mangekyō Sharingan. Born from the deepest desires of the human heart, it gave everyone who reached that level a unique Mangekyo ability.

Moreover,

every Uchiha

who awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan would rapidly rise to clan-head-level strength in a short time. In the current era of hidden villages, that was equivalent to Kage Level.

Some with particularly powerful Mangekyo abilities could even kill opponents of the same level in an instant.

Thus, everyone who awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan became one of the Uchiha Clan's foremost figures.

But awakening the Mangekyō Sharingan wasn't easy. It depended on the individual's innate talent.

The Uchiha were good at drawing conclusions, though.

They had managed to deduce a few things: the stronger one's bloodline, the greater one's talent for awakening the Sharingan. The descendants of those who had awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan were also more likely to awaken the Sharingan themselves.

To prevent close-kin marriages and ensure that the Mangekyō bloodline continued to spread, the Uchiha Clan came up with a good solution. Every powerful fighter who awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan had to take many wives and have many children, establishing a branch of their own. The different branches would then intermarry.

It was, in a sense, killing two birds with one stone.

And these branches were like brilliant jewels within the clan, never to be cast aside. Each branch was like a steady stream carrying the Mangekyō bloodline forward through the Uchiha Clan—a powerful legacy that could never be erased.

For example, Uchiha Raimon's own branch had inherited a Mangekyō bloodline from centuries ago. It had not only inherited a bloodline naturally superior to others, but also exceptional talent for awakening the Sharingan.

It also possessed the forbidden technique Izanagi.

Originally, this forbidden technique had been the unique Mangekyō Sharingan ability of one of its ancestors, but after that ability was deciphered, the technique could be used with an ordinary Sharingan as well. Its power went without saying. Even though it required the sacrifice of a Three-Tomoe Sharingan, it was still astonishingly powerful.

Against this backdrop, the Uchiha Clan's population had grown like bamboo shoots after the rain. With each Mangekyō Sharingan user founding a branch and expanding the clan's numbers, the clan's strength increased further, finally overcoming the Senju Clan's long-standing numerical advantage and gaining the upper hand.

This let the Uchiha Clan experience the satisfaction of victory through superior numbers, making them champion this policy all the more strongly.

Sadly, throughout a thousand years of warfare, time had flown by. The Uchiha Clan should have had more than nine Mangekyō users, but in the end, only these nine bloodlines survived, as rare as phoenix feathers. Most had perished in war.

Most of the remaining Mangekyō Sharingan users belonged to these original nine main branches, so none had established a new main branch.

The Uchiha Clan's original main branch had naturally passed down its Mangekyō bloodline, too. Unfortunately, most of its members disliked getting married and having children. They preferred fighting the Senju Clan. After a thousand years, their numbers had dwindled to almost nothing.

After Izuna Uchiha's death and Madara Uchiha's departure, that branch had all but died out.

"What a pity. What a real pity! If only the Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan bloodline had been passed down!"

Uchiha Raimon was frustrated by their failure to think ahead. Even though this clan head's foolishness had given him headaches many times before, he still couldn't understand what the man was thinking.

But even without Madara Uchiha's bloodline being passed down, the other main branches still retained plenty of their own trump cards.

Uchiha Raimon would never believe that his own branch was the only one in the clan whose Izanagi had been deciphered. There had to be other forbidden Sharingan techniques.

From Uchiha Raimon's memories,

one of the First Elder's ancestors had preserved his pair of Mangekyō Sharingan and used them to create special weapons.

They were special spiritual artifacts that could only be empowered by the Sharingan. They could automatically recognize the Uchiha bloodline, keeping other shinobi from using them, and possessed tremendous, almost absurd power. Even an ordinary shinobi could easily kill a clan-head-level opponent with them.

The two weapons were the Totsuka Blade and the Yata Mirror.

The Totsuka Blade possessed immense destructive power as well as an inescapable sealing ability. Anyone struck by it would be absorbed into a supreme Genjutsu made entirely from dreams.

The Yata Mirror not only possessed incredibly powerful defensive capabilities, but could also repel all ninjutsu and physical attacks. With the Yata Mirror in hand, virtually no shinobi could break through its defenses from the front.

Most importantly,

these two weapons could also be imbued into the eyes of the Mangekyō Sharingan, further empowering Susanoo, the Uchiha Clan's ultimate power, with two divine weapons.

"If Madara Uchiha had still had the Totsuka Blade and Yata Mirror back then, perhaps the outcome would have been different! But those two weapons disappeared during a battle a hundred years ago. No one knows where they went. Otherwise..."

Uchiha Raimon suddenly spoke up, testing the waters.

"Exactly! Who could disagree?"

Uchiha Mine looked just as helpless, as if they really had been lost. There wasn't a hint of hesitation in his voice.