"Clan leader, you can't do this!"
The Senju Elder looked frantic. How could he let the clan leader go to his death?
"This is an order. All clan members, listen up! Withdraw immediately!"
Senju Butsuma's orders could not be disobeyed. His unquestionable command made the Senju Elder understand his resolve.
"Retreat."
The Senju Elder turned away with difficulty and led the surviving clan members in their escape, leaving their backs to the clan leader.
"Uchiha Tajima, fight me!"
The mighty chakra within Senju Butsuma erupted completely. A layer of pale-yellow Wind Affinity chakra coated the blade in his hand.
The Uchiha shinobi rushing toward him had already felt that terrifying, razor-sharp presence.
"Stand down. I'll handle this."
Uchiha Tajima could see that his opponent was determined to die. Sending his clansmen to fight now would only mean sending them to their deaths.
"Boom!!!"
The clash between the two caused their chakra to spill out, and terrifying shockwaves swept in every direction.
This was Senju Butsuma's swan song, but it was also Uchiha Tajima's final dance.
At the Ancestral Hall in the Uchiha Compound, a crowd of Uchiha elders dressed in black lowered their heads in mourning.
Uchiha Izuna knelt silently before his father's coffin, tears streaming down his face.
He had never imagined that his last farewell to his father would truly be their last.
Uchiha Madara was also devastated. His gaze was vacant, and no one knew what was going through his mind.
Uchiha Yang knelt quietly to one side, burning extra paper money for his uncle, hoping he would be doing well in the afterlife.
He could feel that his uncle had treated him with genuine kindness.
He never thought their last farewell would be their last.
If he remembered the story correctly, they had died together with Senju Butsuma, but it never said which time.
As expected, the battlefield was a place where people could die at any moment.
"Madara, you don't want your uncle to have died in vain on the battlefield, do you?"
Seeing the family elders looking at Uchiha Madara as if they wanted to speak but couldn't, Uchiha Yang decided to break the silence.
At a time like this, he was the most suitable person to speak.
"What should I do?"
Uchiha Madara turned his head toward him, his eyes confused and rigid.
"Become the clan leader, lead our people, and win the final victory against the Senju Clan."
"This is the responsibility you must shoulder. The hopes of our people, their future, and the prosperity of the clan all rest on you."
Uchiha Yang clapped a hand on his shoulder and spoke with a grave expression.
This was the first time he had ever fed someone a motivational speech full of empty promises. It felt wonderful.
"Please pull yourself together, Young Clan Leader. The clan members are all waiting for you outside."
The Great Elder, Uchiha Sei, looked at Uchiha Madara with a deeply troubled expression.
The casualties in this war had been devastating. Grief and hatred had spread to every Uchiha.
They all hoped the Young Clan Leader would lead them in taking revenge on those Senju bastards.
The shackles of hatred had long bound generation after generation. Hatred would not disappear with time; it would only be passed down to their descendants.
As for power struggles, they were unavoidable within the Uchiha Clan, but only over minor matters.
On major matters, everyone seemed to share an unspoken understanding, following the clan rules passed down through the generations and protecting the clan's stability.
The succession to the clan leader's position was not a matter decided by a single line of the family.
Instead, the person chosen had to be accepted by the clan members and possess the most talent and strength, as well as awaken the Three-Tomoe Sharingan.
Uchiha Madara had always been the leader of the younger generation, and the clan members had long acknowledged his strength.
On the night the compound was attacked, Uchiha Madara had held off the main force of the enemy attackers all by himself.
Moreover, there had been an elite Uzumaki jōnin with several clan-leader-level Sealing Scrolls, preventing him from wreaking havoc across the compound and harming the clan members.
Clan-leader-level Sealing Scrolls contained the power of a clan leader's full-force strike.
That was the terrifying power of the Uzumaki Clan.
Uchiha Madara had never cared much about becoming clan leader.
But when he stood and walked outside, the clan members' eyes all turned toward him in the mourning hall.
Uchiha Madara felt the heavy responsibility weighing on him. All the clan members' hopes rested on his shoulders.
Standing beside Uchiha Madara, Uchiha Yang saw the way the clan members looked at him.
It was a level of trust and hope beyond anything he could imagine.
Perhaps at that moment, they all believed Uchiha Madara could lead them to defeat the Senju Clan.
No one but him knew that the Uchiha would eventually suffer a crushing defeat at the hands of the Senju Clan, even resorting to the shameful act of surrendering on a massive scale.
Perhaps Uchiha Madara had realized something at that moment, too.
Almost all the clan members who had trusted him back then had died in battle. The Uchiha who surrendered were Uchiha whose backbone had been broken.
"Please take up the position of clan leader, Young Clan Leader. For Clan Leader Tajima, who sacrificed his life, and for the countless clansmen who died, lead us in taking revenge on those Senju bastards!"
At some point, the Great Elder, Uchiha Sei, had taken up the Inherited Gunbai. He knelt on one knee before Uchiha Madara, holding it out as he shouted.
"Please take up the position of clan leader, Young Clan Leader. For Clan Leader Tajima, who sacrificed his life, and for the countless clansmen who died, lead us in taking revenge on those Senju bastards!"
The Second Elder, Uchiha Rei; the Fourth Elder, Uchiha Fu; the Fifth Elder, Uchiha Ri; more than a dozen elite jōnin; and the rest of the clan members followed suit.
The Third Elder had already followed the clan leader to his heroic end, sacrificing his life on the battlefield.
Uchiha Madara was not the sort to hesitate. Seeing everyone like this, he immediately took the fan and raised it high above his head.
"From today onward, I am the clan leader."
In that instant, Uchiha Yang saw Uchiha Madara's Sharingan flash. That glint of red seemed to be the Mangekyō Sharingan, not the Three-Tomoe Sharingan.
As if remembering something, Uchiha Yang looked over at Uchiha Izuna. Sure enough, the Mangekyō Sharingan had appeared in his eyes, too. At that moment, only Uchiha Yang noticed it.
It seemed their uncle's death had dealt the two brothers a tremendous blow, but it had also given them a new power: the Mangekyō Sharingan.
At the same time, Senju Hashirama had successfully taken over as clan leader within the Senju family.
The era of Uchiha Tajima and Senju Butsuma had ended. In its place came the utterly frenzied End of the Warring States.
After this three-year war ended, the two battered giants returned to their lairs to lick their wounds.
News that the two clans' leaders had perished together spread throughout the Shinobi World.
Some even greedily wanted to tear a piece of flesh from the two wounded giants.
The resources controlled by the Senju and Uchiha clans were simply too abundant.
Shinobi needed more than food; they also needed all kinds of resources to help them grow stronger.
Training a single shinobi could be enough to bankrupt a well-off family.
Anything related to shinobi was extremely expensive. Even an ordinary C-rank ninjutsu could fetch a high price.
Ordinary people simply couldn't afford that kind of expense.
After taking over as clan leader, Uchiha Madara immediately arranged a series of orders to help the clan recover.
Only after taking over did he realize that the clan could no longer withstand another protracted war.
Still, there were voices within the clan calling for action against the Uzumaki Clan, the culprits behind the attack on their compound.
Thinking of the revenge plan Uchiha Yang had told him about, Uchiha Madara looked forward to it immensely.
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