Chief Architect of the Will of Fire

Me? There was a part for this too?

Toji instinctively looked at Hashirama, who was watching him with a mischievous grin.

He'd been set up.

Toji remained calm in the face of trouble. He slowly walked onto the stage and stood beside Chiri.

After a brief thought, he began reciting in a composed voice, "Where Konoha leaves dance, fire too burns without end. Its light will illuminate the village and cause new trees to sprout..."

Toji's entrance poem was precisely the Will of Fire.

The so-called Will of Fire was, bluntly put, a spirit that glorified selfless dedication, jointly forged by the people of Konoha through their long years of struggle.

First Hashirama had been an important founder of the Will of Fire. The Second Hokage, Tobirama, had carried it on, while the one who would truly summarize it was the future Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi.

But in Toji's eyes, this whole line of rhetoric was long-winded, hollow, and unbearably dull.

The Will of Fire was incomparably great. Konoha was a civilized place. All Konoha villagers were one family...

Family?

As everyone knew, when people without blood ties kept calling each other "family," nothing good ever came of it. Either they were plotting to take your money and your life, or they wanted to use the identity of family to morally coerce and verbally abuse you.

Toji had nothing but disdain for that rhetoric. Yet from top to bottom, the villagers of Konoha truly ate it up.

One only had to look at how future Konoha villagers spent their days.

They woke up and cursed Naruto a few times to clear their heads. At breakfast, they compared the bacon on the table to Choji and cursed him a few times to whet their appetites. At noon, they saw tomatoes in their meals, thought of Kushina, and cursed her a few times. During afternoon tea, they spotted Sakura at the next table and made a few comments about her large forehead...

A beating was affection, and scolding was love.

Clearly, Konoha's villagers had achieved perfect unity of word and deed. They truly treated one another as family and loved one another deeply.

Since the ignorant villagers liked it.

Toji naturally would not refuse. He decided to personally become the chief architect of the Will of Fire!

"The Will of Fire..."

"So this is the Will of Fire. That was wonderfully said. How had I never thought of it?"

Below the stage.

Hashirama's eyes reddened uncontrollably, and tears streamed down his face as he kept murmuring, "No one understands me better than Toji. This is exactly what I have always pursued."

Even the ever-serious Tobirama was slightly moved.

He had never expected Toji to say something so thought-provoking.

He, Tobirama Senju, had touched taboos by conducting human experiments. He had never treated the prisoners in Konoha Prison as people, and he had never sincerely accepted the Uchiha. Yet even so, from beginning to end, everything he did had been for Konoha.

Tobirama sincerely agreed with the Will of Fire that Toji spoke of.

Toji was not the Hokage, yet at this moment, he had said what a Hokage should say and done what a Hokage should do.

But no one present thought he had overstepped his bounds. Instead, they all praised him inwardly.

The director of Gospel Hospital possessed a noble character and a spirit of gold.

The resolve he displayed was deeply moving.

Thinking back carefully...

During the three years since Toji had joined Konoha, he had been putting the Will of Fire he spoke of into practice through his actions. From the time he took the lead in signing that Organ Donation Consent Form, he had truly treated every villager here as family.

Thunderous applause instantly erupted below the stage.

Toji raised a hand to quiet them, then quietly stepped down from the stage.

When the deed was done, he brushed off his sleeves and left, hiding his achievements and fame.

Today was destined to be recorded in Konoha's history—

Konoha's most important spiritual core, the "Will of Fire," had been formally proposed and established for the first time on January 15th, Konoha Year 8, by Toji Zenin, the first director of Gospel Hospital.

After returning to his seat.

Hashirama wiped away the tears at the corners of his eyes and said to Toji emotionally,

"Toji, that was so well said. How did you come up with all that?"

"I didn't think much about it. It was just something I felt in the moment," Toji replied evenly. "But Lord Hokage, and Chiri, if you wanted me to go onstage, why didn't you tell me in advance? It wasn't like I would have refused. You caught me completely off guard."

Though it sounded like a complaint, he was actually raising his own standing before Hashirama without making it obvious.

I hadn't even prepared a draft. I just said whatever came to mind, and I could still say something so pure. If you cut open my chest and looked inside, just how sincere would that heart be?

Hashirama reacted exactly as Toji had expected and was even more moved.

He immediately instructed Chiri, who sat to Toji's right,

"Starting next week, the Ninja Academy will add a Will of Fire course. Chiri, arrange for someone to compile and organize Toji's speech today as the dedicated textbook for this course."

"Add an assessment related to the Will of Fire to the graduation examination, in addition to the existing requirements."

"Yes, Lord Hokage."

Uchiha Chiri immediately accepted the order.

It was easy to foresee that once this set of teaching materials was officially put into use, Toji was destined to become a figure impossible to bypass in Konoha's history.

From then on, anyone wishing to become a Konoha ninja would need not only basic ninjutsu and knowledge of the deeds of past Hokage, but also a thorough understanding of Toji's ideals and accomplishments.

Many formidable ninja would be forgotten by history as time's wheel turned, but Toji, recorded in the textbooks, would achieve a different kind of immortality.

Even though he was already an Immortal Species.

As long as Konoha stood, Toji would live forever.

Toji felt no ripple in his heart, but he put on a deeply moved expression. "Lord Hokage, how could I possibly deserve such an honor..."

He did not care about such empty fame. Compared with being written into textbooks and leaving his name in Konoha's history—

The forbidden techniques in the Book of Seals and the various Sealing Jutsu of the Uzumaki Clan were the tangible benefits he truly wanted.

"You deserve all of this!"

Hashirama heavily patted him on the shoulder.

Clearly, this time, Hashirama had failed to catch the hidden meaning in Toji's words.

"Forget it..."

Toji said nothing and withdrew his gaze.

With his current status and position, he truly no longer had any reason to ask for Sealing Jutsu outright. He could only suppress the thought for now and find a way to coax it out of Mito after Hashirama's death.

As for the excuse, Toji had already drafted one for the time being.

To prevent the extreme possibility of "the Tailed Beasts once again being controlled by the Uchiha, while the Uzumaki Clan declined amid the increasingly complex environment of the Shinobi World and left no successors."

As an Immortal Species, he needed to master the power of the Four Symbols Seal and become Konoha's final line of defense.

"If you endanger the village, then even if you are the family of my 'wife,' I will never spare you..."

That reasoning showed resolve comparable to Hashirama's.

It would surely make Mito think of Hashirama upon hearing it and hand over the Four Symbols Seal, the sealing method she kept most closely guarded.

Toji came back to himself.

The first graduation ceremony came to an end amid that fervent atmosphere.

In high spirits, Hashirama immediately waved a hand and announced that he would host a banquet for all Ninja Academy teachers to thank them for their hard work in establishing the school. At the same time, he invited the Jōnin chosen to lead teams, encouraging them to fulfill their duties and cultivate Konoha's first group of outstanding ninja under the new system.

Everything seemed to be developing in a positive direction.

Inside the banquet's private room.

Toji was arranged to sit with Chiri.

He accepted the wineglass Chiri handed him, but his gaze was fixed on the table occupied by the team-leading Jōnin.