The Weak People and the Strong Nation

Indoors, there was a table laid out with fine food and wine. Judging by the spread, it seemed even more luxurious than the banquet just now.

Before Sarutobi Hiruzen could speak, Prince Huang Ren took the initiative and said, "These are good things I specially saved for you. There wasn't much of it, and I was afraid the people outside would eat it all up."

Sarutobi Hiruzen's expression turned strange. He could not figure out what the other man was doing.

Prince Huang Ren sat cross-legged on the floor and beckoned warmly. "Don't just stand there. Let's have a few drinks. You're the Hokage, and I'm the Daimyo's elder brother. In terms of status, we're about the same."

When someone showed favor for no reason, they were either a traitor or a thief.

Prince Huang Ren had deliberately emphasized the relationship between them as groundwork, laying the foundation for the conversation to come. More importantly, by being so polite, Prince Huang Ren was reminding Sarutobi Hiruzen: you are the Third Hokage, and I have something to ask of you next, so I hope you have some sense and don't fail to appreciate the favor.

An ordinary ninja might not have been able to wrap his head around it, but Sarutobi Hiruzen, who had grown up in the Sarutobi Clan, could not possibly fail to understand. Otherwise, all those adults in the clan would truly have been useless.

Sarutobi Hiruzen understood. Taking the hint, he sat down on the floor. "Is that so? Then I really will have to drink a cup. Otherwise, I'd be letting down Prince Huang Ren's kindness."

With that, he picked up an exquisite wine cup and poured it down his throat in one gulp, then could not help praising it. "Truly good wine."

Prince Huang Ren smiled. "As long as you like it. Then drink a little more."

Cups were pushed back and forth, and wine went down. A flush gradually rose on Sarutobi Hiruzen's face, as if he were getting drunk, but he was not truly drunk. He was laying the groundwork for the later conversation, because even if he said something wrong, he could later cover it up as a slip of the tongue while drunk.

At the same time, Prince Huang Ren did the same thing, deliberately making himself look half-drunk as he swayed his head. "Right, right. Lord Hokage, there is something I don't know whether I should say."

"Mm, you~ say it."

"I heard the Sarutobi Clan used to be the daimyo of some country. Is that true?"

With his past exposed, Sarutobi Hiruzen's pupils shrank, but he remained calm and laughed. "That was all a very long time ago."

The Sarutobi Clan was somewhat different from ordinary Ninja Clans. They had once been the daimyo of a small country, but later, for certain reasons, the country was destroyed, leaving behind only one person and three retainers.

Those three retainers were the ancestors of the Ino-Shika-Cho. Later, the four of them slowly developed their own clan forces. Although Ino-Shika-Cho no longer had a retainer relationship with the Sarutobi Clan, because of the special relationship between their ancestors, the Sarutobi Clan would act as witnesses and present the earrings to strengthen the bond between the three.

(P.S.: The above is purely my personal YY. After all, Kishimoto never explained why these clans were so close.) Prince Huang Ren drank another cup of wine. "I didn't expect it to actually be true. Now that Lord Hiruzen has ascended to the seat of Hokage, restoring your ancestors' great undertaking must be just around the corner."

Sarutobi Hiruzen shook his head. "That's all in the past. Right now, I only want to be a good Hokage of Konoha..."

Huang Ren nodded in satisfaction. Through this exchange, he understood Sarutobi Hiruzen's attitude and continued, "Then from now on, the Fire Country's national defense will have to rely greatly on Konoha."

"That is naturally no problem. If I may be so bold, how much of this funding will be allocated to Konoha?"

Although the current world order followed the One Country, One Village System, ninja commissions were not absolutely distributed according to one country and one village. For example, the Fire Country Daimyo's mission commissions could actually be handed to the ninja of Kirigakure, and they would gladly accept them. The more commissions, the better.

It was just that in most cases, because of proximity, mission commissions were handed to the ninja of one's own country.

Aside from being the highest leader of a village, the "Kage" was often also a symbol of its greatest combat power. Konoha had just lost the Kage, such a massive fighting force, and it would inevitably be affected internationally. Its commissions would unavoidably decrease as well.

Ninja did not engage in production. Their income depended entirely on mission rankings and the Daimyo's funding.

After becoming Hokage, the most important task for Sarutobi Hiruzen was to pull in sponsorship and solve the problem of food and drink for the ninja in the village.

The Daimyo showed a troubled expression, raised one finger, then stated a very tight figure.

After hearing it, Sarutobi Hiruzen pleaded, "That is far too little. Could it be a bit more?"

Prince Huang Ren sighed. "The farmers' harvests have been poor recently as well. The Daimyo's Estate has no surplus grain either..."

"But..."

"Ouch..."

"Your Highness Huang Ren, what's wrong?"

"It seems I ate something bad. Wait for me a moment. I'll go relieve myself."

Prince Huang Ren stood and left, leaving behind a puzzled Sarutobi Hiruzen, who was wondering what the other man had up his sleeve. Suddenly, two women in revealing clothing entered the room. Looking closely, these two women were precisely the dancers who had been dancing gracefully at the banquet just now, the ones who had lingered in his dreams.

While Sarutobi Hiruzen was still stunned, the two dancers had already come to his side and offered him wine. "Prince Huang Ren has business for the moment. Next, we will serve you..."

Soft warmth entered his arms, fragrance filled his nose, and with those two seductive little vixens pressed tightly against him, Sarutobi Hiruzen found it a little hard to restrain himself. Then he failed to restrain himself.

"Eh? Why are you taking off your clothes?"

Prince Huang Ren, who had left the room, did not go to the toilet. Instead, he went straight to another room.

Inside the room, a clean, fair-skinned twelve-year-old boy saw Huang Ren and immediately asked, "Father, has the matter been resolved?"

Huang Ren smiled faintly. "Almost certainly."

Sarutobi Hiruzen was a smart man. The political wisdom he possessed would allow him to understand what it meant when someone said: if he does not accept it, how would I dare allocate money to him?

Huang Ren's son asked in confusion, "Father, was there really a need to go this far? Couldn't you just allocate the funds directly?"

Huang Ren sighed. "Lan Ren, you don't understand. Ninja are different from the Samurai class of the past. This group is far too powerful. Some powerful ninja can even take down a country all by themselves. What we can use to control them is money. If there are no monetary constraints, then ninja will become an uncontrollable force, even endangering the ruling position of us daimyo."

This was not alarmist talk.

He had once had the fortune—or rather, the misfortune—to encounter such a ninja.

With just one slash, several mountains had been leveled. Before such mighty power, any money, status, wealth, and so on were utterly useless, nothing more than an empty shell.

Every time he thought of those blood-colored eyes, Huang Ren's body could not help trembling. That feeling was as if he were an ant, and whether he lived or died depended entirely on the other party's single thought.

However, what made him even more despairing was that there was not only one such person. There was another person even stronger than him, and both of them had once lived in Konoha.

How could Huang Ren possibly not guard against, not stay wary of beings like that, who could crush him to death with a casual finger?

Fortunately, those two were dead now, but the villages they had left behind were also extremely combat-capable. If those ninja really wanted to overthrow the Daimyo, it would be almost laughably easy.

That was why the ninja of these villages had to be controlled, no matter what method was used.

There was definitely more than just him who thought this way. The people in other nations who secretly controlled their countries as he did must also be guarding against their own ninja, and they were all actively thinking of ways to weaken these ninja and find ways to absorb them under their command.

The One Country, One Village System was something the Daimyo had never truly wanted to acknowledge. It was a forced compromise made under the circumstances.

What they truly wanted was for the ninja's power to fall completely under their own hands, instead of this arrangement where they still had to allocate a budget every year.

A bunch of Commoners actually dreamed of standing on equal footing with the Nobles? What a joke. Acknowledging it now was nothing more than a delaying tactic.

To make his son understand this principle better, Huang Ren had no choice but to begin educating him further, as prolifically as bamboo shoots after the rain. "Lan Maru, let me ask you: how is a country considered strong?"

Without thinking, Lan Maru said, "If the people are strong, the nation is strong. If the people are weak, the nation is weak."

He thought this statement had to be correct, but instead, he received his father's forceful denial.

"Wrong."

"Wrong?"

Huang Ren said decisively, "That's right. And not just wrong—dead wrong."

"???"

Lan Maru remembered that this was something his father had told him when he was little. Why was what he said now completely opposite to what he had said back then?

"Lan Maru, you're older now, and there are some things it's time to tell you. I didn't tell you when you were little because I was afraid you would speak carelessly, blabber everywhere, and cause a bad influence. Now that you've grown up, you know what it means that you can eat whatever you want, but you can't say whatever you want. So I may as well explain it clearly and thoroughly to you now.

"The so-called saying that 'if the people are strong, the nation is strong; if the people are weak, the nation is weak' is just something used to fool those lower-class people. If a country wants to be strong, then it must make its people contribute. Since it is contribution, then naturally, the more the better. But correspondingly, once the people contribute more, they become very weak. From this, the conclusion is: The weak people and the strong nation. The way to govern a country begins with weakening the people."

When Lan Maru heard this, he could not make sense of it no matter how he thought.

Huang Ren continued his lesson. "Next come making the people poor, exhausting the people, keeping the people ignorant, humiliating the people, and abusing the people."

None of these terms looked like good ones, and even he, who had been born into a Noble family since childhood, trembled at them.

While Sarutobi Hiruzen was fooling around with those two dancing girls, Huang Ren had plenty of time to properly educate this son of his, because next, he had an extremely important matter to entrust to this son. He had to explain certain relationships and logic clearly in advance. This concerned all the future interests of the Noble faction of the Land of Fire.

P.S. In the original work, the Daimyo was portrayed as being as stupid as a pig. That was Kishimoto's fault. But in reality, which person in power is an idiot? So I strengthened him appropriately.