Some wanted to preserve this world through beautiful things like bonds and friendship, while others wanted the world to feel pain and thereby change it.
In truth, the two did not conflict.
Take Konoha as an example. Konoha was now extremely united internally, and it was developing very well at the same time.
But that came at a cost. Konoha had merely shifted all its internal conflicts outward, making other villages and countries suffer in exchange for its own peaceful years.
Cultivation was a process that required long-term persistence. For cultivators, most of their time was spent in tedious training, and over the course of that long cultivation, most events and emotions gradually faded away.
Fortunately, the Foundation Establishment stage was only the beginning of cultivation. Even secluded cultivation would not consume too much time.
According to Hiruzen Sarutobi's senses, he had around a hundred years left to live. A Foundation Establishment cultivator's lifespan should have been far longer, but Hiruzen Sarutobi had already been elderly to begin with.
Even after dispersing all his chakra and restoring his body's vitality, his lifespan would not recover. Only continued cultivation could extend it.
After reaching Core Formation, one's lifespan could be measured in millennia.
Konoha flourished, and the new generation was slowly growing up as well.
Shisui had already made a name for himself in the Shinobi World. The title of Shisui the Body Flicker had shaken the Shinobi World, and with the Flying Thunder God Technique, he had completed every mission with a perfect record to this day.
Itachi and Kabuto had constantly been conducting all kinds of research with Orochimaru. Though they were the Hokage's disciples, they were not particularly well-known.
However, Konoha as a whole had undergone tremendous changes because of Orochimaru's research.
Orochimaru still had to manage Konoha,