A Day of Sudden Wealth · The Cause of the Clan Massacre

His consciousness sank into the Demon Refining Pot's space, where categorically sorted items had been piled up in staggering quantities.

The most numerous were books of every kind—more than ten thousand volumes in all!

There were myths, geography, battle orders, etiquette, genealogies, and archives passed down by the Uchiha Clan since ancient times, as well as technical materials, product catalogs, novels, and miscellanies purchased or collected after Konoha was founded. It was practically a miniature library.

The next largest category was ninjutsu materials.

The Uchiha Clan was famous for Fire Release, but thanks to the Sharingan, its collection of ninjutsu from other elemental affinities was equally impressive.

After tallying them up, Uchiha Hara had obtained the following number of ninjutsu:

Fire Release ninjutsu: 447 types

Earth Release ninjutsu: 392 types

Water Release ninjutsu: 271 types

Wind Release ninjutsu: 159 types

Lightning Release ninjutsu: 117 types

Genjutsu: 83 types

Total: 1,469 types!

Classified by rank:

S-Rank: 3 types

A-Rank: 119 types

B-Rank: 875 types

C-Rank: 426 types

D-Rank: 46 types

This was an enormous fortune that would drive any ninja village mad!

With these ninjutsu alone, Uchiha Hara could even build a ninja village from scratch.

The third most abundant category was money.

Banknotes of every denomination, from the smallest one-ryo bills to the largest ten-thousand-ryo bills, had been piled into a small mountain. Uchiha Hara spent some mental effort sorting and counting them by denomination.

The final figure made his breath catch:

2,497,852,264 ryo!

Roughly 2.5 billion ryo!

"Seriously... those who kill and burn walk away rich, while those who build bridges and repair roads die without even a grave..." The massive sum sent a surge of wild joy crashing through him.

He remembered reading plenty of pay-to-win novels. Their protagonists would risk their lives completing missions for three or four years and might not even earn a hundred million ryo, while he had made this much in a single night.

If I had a pay-to-win system, I'd probably have spent enough to clear the game by now.

Clearly, working for others would never make someone rich. To make big money, you had to take it from the rich.

But what followed was an even deeper anger.

Those two had sat on such enormous wealth and still watched orphans starve to death or perish from illness and weakness. While wine and meat rotted behind vermilion gates, bones of the frozen dead lay by the roadside.

They deserved to die. Taking their lives was only right!!

Chairman Mao believed that clan authority was one of the four great ropes binding the peasants. It carried feudal characteristics and should be eliminated.

He ranked clan authority alongside political authority, divine authority, and marital authority, seeing them as tools used by the ruling class of old China to bind the people.

Before this, Uchiha Hara had never truly understood that view. After all, he had never lived within a clan.

Not until he transmigrated into the Uchiha Clan and saw this immense fortune.

All he could say was that the Teacher had not deceived him. It truly was exactly as he had said.

Suppressing his anger, he found the relevant account books and began flipping through them, wanting to learn where the money had come from.

However, the Uchiha Clan's accounts had always been a mess. Uchiha Jiang and Uchiha Amano clearly had not graduated from accounting school either and were just as incompetent in that field. Their records were an utter disaster, and fully sorting them out would take a long time.

He only skimmed them roughly, but he managed to identify the general sources of the funds:

1. Village financial allocations: When Konoha was founded, Senju Hashirama and Senju Tobirama negotiated with the Daimyo's Court and established that Konoha would receive fixed annual funding, which would be distributed among the major clans according to their shares.

As one of the two giants who founded the village, the Uchiha Clan received an exceptionally large share. Once the funds reached the clan, they were further divided among its branches.

The Third Elder had been an elder since the village's founding. He had controlled this portion of the funds for forty-two years, accumulating approximately 1.26 billion ryo.

2. Security Force allocations: The village's funding for the Security Force often had a surplus, which was likewise divided among the Uchiha Clan's four branches. The Security Force had existed for thirty-one years, and this source had accumulated roughly 248 million ryo.

3. External income: This included shares of taxes from former fiefs, profits from clan businesses, and tributes from subordinate clans.

As a former great clan of the Land of Fire, the Uchiha Clan had towns and villages under its protection. After joining the Hidden Leaf Village, the administrative rights over those towns were handed to the Daimyo of the Land of Fire, but the Uchiha Clan still retained a portion of the tax revenue.

Furthermore, this was the first time Uchiha Hara had learned that the Uchiha Clan was actually an arms-dealing family.

The Uchiha Clan owned an Explosive Tag printing factory, and its Explosive Tags were of exceptional quality.

The most expensive and effective Explosive Tags on the market all came from the Uchiha Clan.

Seeing this, Uchiha Hara's understanding of the Naruto world's economy was completely overturned.

He had previously been limited by the manga and anime, leading him to believe that ninja mainly lived off mission rewards.

But in reality, major clans like the Uchiha Clan had economic foundations deeply rooted in political allocations, land taxes, and monopolized industries.

Mission rewards were perhaps only a source of income for civilian ninja and small clans.

Other clans were likely the same: the Yamanaka Clan had the Intelligence Department, flower shops, and perhaps even some small overseas nation; the Nara Clan had medicinal herbs and deer antlers; the Akimichi Clan had livestock breeding and barbecue restaurants... Each had its own way of surviving.

"No wonder the Uchiha Clan was wiped out!" Uchiha Hara finally understood why the Uchiha Clan would perish in the future.

Hatred and betrayal were secondary. At the root of it all were interests.

The financial allocation shares for each clan in Konoha had been determined when the village was founded. At that time, the Senju Clan and Uchiha Clan were the strongest, so naturally they received the most.

But times had changed. Clans like the Sarutobi Clan had gradually grown stronger. The Sarutobi Clan could field three thousand Fire Release ninja, and no one knew how many Water Release, Earth Release, Wind Release, and Lightning Release ninja it had. Adding children who had not graduated, Genin who had not gone to war, and retired old ninja, its total number of ninja might already have reached ten thousand. How could they be willing to remain beneath others forever, watching the Uchiha Clan occupy such vast interests?

The Senju Clan had already declined, and its assets had likely long been cleverly transferred away by its "good teacher." That left the Uchiha Clan as the greatest obstacle and the fattest sheep awaiting slaughter.

The Nine-Tails Rebellion had merely been a perfectly timed excuse.

Of course, the Uchiha Clan's population decline was also one of the main reasons for its destruction.

When they held a clan meeting, there were shockingly few ninja sitting inside. Such a vast Uchiha Clan could actually be wiped out by two people. That showed just how far the clan had declined.

If they had only had more people, they could have exhausted Uchiha Itachi to death.

"Talent, bloodline, wisdom, strength... before an absolute population advantage and political maneuvering, they all seemed so pale." A chill ran through Uchiha Hara. "A clan that had existed for a thousand years, descendants of the Ōtsutsuki Clan, could still head toward extinction because its population was too small."

Then why was the Uchiha Clan's population so low?

Perhaps the answer had to be sought from that "wise" clan head, Uchiha Fugaku.

In order to win merits on the battlefield and let the villagers see the Uchiha Clan's contributions, he chose to use the strength of the entire clan to fight the Hidden Mist Village. As a result, the Uchiha Clan and Hyuga Clan both suffered massive losses on the battlefield.

The final result was that the village grew ever stronger, while the two clans completely lost their voice.

When they told you to hand over your clan brother to answer for the crime, you had no choice but to hand him over.

Did Uchiha Fugaku truly not know the Sarutobi Clan's population figures?

Ninja were best at gathering intelligence, and the Uchiha Clan was also skilled in Genjutsu. Uchiha Hara guessed that Uchiha Fugaku most likely knew.

But under the Hokage's dominant public narrative, once the label of "anyone who refuses to go to war doesn't love the village" was slapped on him, he was powerless to resist.

So the question was, was there a solution to this situation?

There was.

It was to lie low.

Hide their strength and accept the mockery.

Give up their so-called pride and dignity, surrender the title of the number one ninja clan, admit that they were "weak," fight for nothing, preserve themselves, and quietly develop.

With the Uchiha Clan's looks and wealth, they presumably would not struggle to find wives. Twenty years later, they could more or less return to their peak.

Unfortunately, any ninja clan could use that strategy—except the Uchiha Clan, whose pride ran to its bones and whose members were prone to losing their heads as soon as they awakened their Sharingan.

"So the destruction of the Uchiha Clan was practically inevitable..." Uchiha Hara let out a long sigh. Still, he did not think the Uchiha Clan should not have been destroyed. Struggles for interest had always been this way. There was no should or should not, only advance or retreat, their loss and your gain.

Besides, Uchiha Hara had no particular feelings for the Uchiha Clan. If it was to be destroyed, he might even be one of the people pushing it along.

After all, the Uchiha Clan as it stood now truly was beyond saving. Breaking it apart and building anew would not necessarily be a bad thing.

"It seems I need to start preparing now to preserve seeds for the Uchiha Clan on the Night of the Clan Massacre..."

When the time came, keeping some children of three or four years old—or even newborns—as well as gentle-tempered women, then rebuilding the Uchiha spirit from scratch, might be the proper path.

He remained sprawled across the table, appearing to sleep deeply.

No one knew what decision he had just made.