A Saintly Fool Deserves to Die!

[Beep! A Uchiha clan member has died!]

[Beep! Would the host like to...]

The moment he heard the system chime, Uchiha Jin didn't feel as overjoyed as he'd expected. Instead, he felt a kind of calm he couldn't even put into words.

Uchiha Shisui...

That obstacle in his way had finally died at Jin's hands, after all the careful planning and guidance he'd carried out time and again.

Maybe you're wondering...

Looking at the body, which was already growing cold, it was easy to see that the slightly goofy face bore no trace of pain. Instead, it still held an indescribable bewilderment and confusion.

It wasn't hard to imagine how tangled Shisui's thoughts had been in his final moments, so much so that he'd forgotten his body was already at its limit—and even the unbearable agony of his life force fading away.

It seemed that, until the moment he died, Shisui hadn't imagined his end would come not because his injuries had finally overwhelmed him, or because he'd fallen while fighting for the Will of Fire.

But because...

He had died at Jin's hands!

Why?

Though Shisui had been too weak to speak, the question he wanted to ask still came through clearly in his eyes!

"Why? Because saintly fools deserve to die!"

Although he'd inherited the Uchiha Filial Piety System, a cheat that made him the Uchiha's sworn enemy, that didn't mean Jin had to follow the tired old trope of "kill every Uchiha you see."

After all, Jin was now a system host, but he was also wearing the Uchiha name.

Like a farmer dressed up as a turkey, he might not truly think of himself as one, but he couldn't just watch some deranged turkey on the farm try to drag him and all the others into the abyss of destruction, could he?

That's right!

Shisui had loudly preached peace, and every word of his rang with genuine sincerity from the depths of his soul.

But that was precisely why Shisui deserved to die even more!

Politics was, at its core, a process of mutual compromise!

But the existence of an oddball like Shisui had shattered this most basic rule of politics, ultimately pushing the Uchiha toward annihilation.

That's right!

The one who'd actually done the deed was Uchiha Itachi, another brainless lunatic and madman.

Jin couldn't help recalling the science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem from his previous life. In it, there seemed to be a ruthless woman who, with nothing but her saintly heart, destroyed humanity, destroyed Earth, and might even have destroyed the universe!

If Itachi was like Evans, who wanted to summon the Trisolarans to destroy humanity, then Shisui was like Cheng Xin, who abandoned the deterrence plan and sent humanity on Earth straight into the abyss of destruction.

What they had most in common was their groundless sense of morality.

For these so-called saintly fools, preserving their own moral purity was their highest priority. As for how to actually solve the problem? They didn't know. They couldn't do it...

And the outcome?

Well, they were heartbroken and innocent. "Stop! Don't fight anymore!"

They had never considered that in a zero-sum game, protecting the sheep in the name of love meant the wolves would starve to death.

The greatest love was always accompanied by the greatest ruthlessness. A mother might risk her life to protect her child and kill an enemy without hesitation when her child was threatened. That was why people said a mother could be as strong as steel.

And if she couldn't be strong, she could never protect love and goodness.

Cheng Xin's mistake was believing too much in love—believing all of humanity, even the entire universe, would follow the moral standards she imagined. In the end, she caused the people of Earth to miss their chances to save themselves again and again.

Shisui's greatest mistake was believing in Sarutobi Hiruzen and that hollow, empty, twisted Will of Fire. From beginning to end, he had never considered things from the Uchiha's point of view.

The Uchiha had to compromise! The Uchiha had to back down!

He had never considered that under the rules of a zero-sum game, if the Uchiha didn't show their claws, all that awaited them was a quiet extinction after their edges had been worn away.

But!

Things shouldn't have turned out this way. They didn't have to end in such utter devastation!

With the power of the Mangekyo and the marvel of Kotoamatsukami, Shisui could have built a bridge of balance between the Hokage and the Uchiha.

There might have been constant conflict on the surface, but both sides would have exercised a degree of restraint. That kind of dynamic balance would actually have benefited all of Konoha.

But Shisui didn't understand. He even naively thought such a plan was wrong, and still wanted to take the village's—or the Hokage's—side, using a method like controlling Uchiha Fugaku to force the Uchiha to back down.

Even after Danzo, acting on behalf of the village, had stabbed him in the back, he'd only chosen the cowardly option of suicide, to avoid worsening the conflict between the village and his clan.

Even worse, he'd passed his hollow, twisted Will of Fire on to Itachi. Itachi was already a fool whose mind had been warped by war, and in the end, he'd brought about the tragedy of the Uchiha clan's massacre.

Lose your humanity, and you lose a lot!

Lose your animal instincts, and you lose everything!

Recalling that famous line from Mr. Zhou, Jin didn't feel the slightest guilt about killing Shisui. In fact, as a Uchiha elder, he felt a sense of satisfaction at having saved the clan.

Of course!

As the farmer, Shisui, that plump turkey, had reached his Thanksgiving...

And so.

The only good Uchiha Shisui was a dead Uchiha Shisui!

So even though Jin knew Shisui was on the verge of death, and might not survive even if they took him to Konoha Hospital, Jin had still chosen to end his life with his own hands.

He didn't deserve it!

Letting Shisui die with that idiotic, naïve fantasy would have been the greatest insult to the innocent Uchiha who had died in the original story...

Swish!

Jin casually pulled the kunai from Shisui's chest. After a scorching wash of fire chakra, he used the Body Flicker Technique to toss it aside.

Feeling the system's prompt in his mind, Jin still didn't hurry to answer. He glanced at the increasingly fierce fighting up ahead, then turned to look behind him at the hundreds of figures rushing over.

"Shisui!"

At the sound of a somewhat youthful, terrified voice, Itachi's swift figure appeared nearby. He stumbled over to Shisui's corpse with the Body Flicker Technique, unable to accept that his best friend had died right in front of him. Two clear streams of tears ran down the tear troughs he'd had since birth.

"Jin, what happened?"

Fugaku and Setsuna arrived one after the other. The Uchiha Clan Compound wasn't far from here, and with all this commotion, it was only natural that the local powers would take notice.

But Jin still had no intention of answering them. His gaze continued to sweep over the countless chakra signatures charging toward them in the distance.

Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!

It was only a basic C-rank ninjutsu, yet it instantly swept away the thick fog created by the fighting between the Uchiha and Root.

The moment the fog vanished completely, Hiruzen dropped from the sky and slammed down onto the eaves of a house. He shouted furiously.

"Stop! What are you doing now?"

(Hiruzen's inner thoughts: Why did I say 'now'?)