"System, send Madara Uchiha back."
[Confirmed: sending employee Madara Uchiha back.]
The next instant, a white light appeared beneath Madara's feet.
His expression changed sharply.
The moment the light appeared, the Chakra inside him went out of control again.
It hadn't been sealed off.
Instead, some irresistible force was pulling him back.
Madara snapped his head up, his Rinnegan fixed on Zhang Yu.
"You-"
Before he could finish, he vanished from the middle of the tavern.
The white light faded.
Nothing remained where he had stood.
Zhang Yu looked at the empty floor and let out a long breath.
That felt good.
So damn good.
Was this what being the boss meant?
So what if Madara Uchiha was powerful?
He could send him back whenever he said so.
There was no room for negotiation.
Still, he hadn't actually intended to dump Madara back in the Pure Land.
He had finally managed to summon his first employee, so of course he had to put him to work.
Zhang Yu waited two seconds, then said inwardly, System, recall Madara Uchiha.
[Confirmed: recalling employee Madara Uchiha.]
The white light shone again.
Madara Uchiha reappeared in the middle of the tavern.
He still wore the same crimson armor, his black hair hanging loose, but his expression was ten times uglier than before.
For that brief instant, he really had returned to the Pure Land.
Though it had only been a short time, he couldn't have mistaken the feeling.
Emptiness.
Deathly stillness.
No physical body.
No breathing.
Only the inescapable silence of the place where the dead returned.
Then, with a single thought, Zhang Yu had pulled him back.
The way Madara looked at Zhang Yu changed completely.
If he had only believed him thirty percent before,
now he believed him at least seventy percent.
This man really did possess the authority to send him back to the Pure Land and bring him out again.
Madara said in a low voice, "Is this the authority you were talking about?"
Zhang Yu nodded.
"That's right."
"I can summon you, and I can send you back at any time."
"You can keep your power, move around, and think, but there's one rule that will never change."
He looked at Madara, his voice calm.
"You can't attack me, and you can't go against the tavern's basic arrangements."
Madara said coldly, "What if I refuse to work?"
Zhang Yu thought for a moment.
"Then you can be a decoration."
"Just standing in the tavern, you're pretty intimidating anyway."
Madara: "..."
It suddenly occurred to him that leaving the Pure Land might not have been a resurrection, but a fall into another, even more absurd pit.
Yet he had no room to resist now.
He couldn't attack Zhang Yu.
Whether he could even escape the tavern was another matter.
Even if he got out, Zhang Yu could send him back to the Pure Land with a single thought.
Madara hated the feeling of someone else holding power over his life, death, and comings and goings.
He hated it very much.
But he had lived a long time, and he wasn't a fool who knew only how to get angry.
Since he couldn't resist, he would stay for now.
Observe this man.
Observe this so-called Undead Tavern.
Observe the Shinobi World as it was now.
Perhaps he would eventually find an answer.
Madara looked away and said coldly, "I can stay for the time being."
Zhang Yu raised an eyebrow.
"To work?"
Madara looked at him.
"For the time being."
Zhang Yu smiled.
"All right, for the time being, then."
"We're opening tomorrow. Get used to the place first."
Madara glanced at the tables, chairs, and wine jars, his voice stiff.
"I don't know how to serve drinks."
"You can learn."
"I don't know how to wipe tables."
"That's even easier."
"I don't know how to attend to customers."
Zhang Yu pointed at his face.
"With you standing there, I doubt the customers would dare ask you to attend to them."
Madara snorted coldly, turned, and walked over to sit in a corner.
He didn't want to discuss serving drinks and wiping tables with Zhang Yu anymore.
It was an insult to the life he had lived as Madara Uchiha.
Seeing that he had finally settled down, Zhang Yu was delighted.
His first employee was in place.
And it was Madara Uchiha, no less.
Even if this little tavern didn't get a single customer tomorrow, he would still consider it worth it.
Late that night, Zhang Yu did a little tidying up in the rooms on the second floor.
Madara could get by without sleeping, but now that he had a complete physical body, resting was naturally no problem.
Zhang Yu pointed to a room farther down the second floor.
"That one's yours."
Madara stood at the top of the stairs, frowning slightly.
"I don't need it."
Zhang Yu yawned.
"Whether you need it is up to you. The room's yours anyway."
Madara looked at Zhang Yu, who seemed to take it for granted, and finally went up.
He really wasn't used to this kind of environment.
No battlefield.
No slaughter.
No game of strategy he had to calculate at every moment.
Not even a plan he needed to advance immediately.
The room was small.
A bed, a wooden table, and a window.
It couldn't have been more bare.
Yet when Madara sat on the edge of the bed, he suddenly realized he didn't know what to do.
For the past several decades, everything in his life had revolved around his plan.
While alive, he had waited for the Rinnegan.
As he lay dying, he had made arrangements for Obito.
After death, he had waited to be resurrected.
He had remained mentally tense the whole time.
Even in the Pure Land, it was as though a thread had been pulling at him.
But now, Zhang Yu had told him that he was already dead.
The plan's ending had also been "full of twists and turns, strange and unpredictable."
Most importantly, there was nothing he could do for the time being.
Madara leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.
He had only meant to sort out his thoughts.
But after an unknown amount of time, he actually fell asleep.
In that sleep, there was no battlefield.
No Wood Golem of Hashirama's.
No image of Izuna falling.
No moon.
And no Infinite Tsukuyomi.
There was only a rare quiet.
Early the next morning, Zhang Yu got up and made breakfast.
He was no master chef, but after living alone all these years, he had no trouble cooking porridge, frying eggs, or grilling rice balls.
Before long, steam drifted out of the kitchen.
When Madara came downstairs, he paused.
He had slept deeply last night.
So deeply that it felt a little unreal.
As someone who had lived through the Warring States era, he had long been used to waking, fighting, and facing death at any moment.
Yet last night, he hadn't dreamed at all.
The feeling was absurdly unfamiliar to him.
Zhang Yu came out carrying porridge and saw Madara standing by the stairs. "You're up? Come eat," he said casually.
Madara frowned.
"I don't need to eat."
Zhang Yu set the bowls on the table.
"You have a physical body now. Whether you eat is up to you."
Madara had intended to refuse.
But the aroma of hot porridge drifted over, and after a moment of silence, he sat down anyway.
Zhang Yu brought over rice balls and fried eggs and pushed them in front of him.
"We're opening today, so eat your fill."
Madara picked up his chopsticks, his movements a little awkward.
He tried a mouthful of porridge.
It was ordinary.
There was nothing special about the taste.
But as the warmth traveled down his throat and into his stomach, his frown slowly eased.
Zhang Yu looked at him.
"How is it?"
Madara said indifferently, "Average."
Zhang Yu smiled.
"For you to call it average is already quite a compliment."
Madara did not argue.
He ate his breakfast slowly, suddenly finding this kind of life absurd yet peaceful.
Before yesterday, he had still been fixated on his ultimate plan.
He had believed reality was a failure and the world was wrong, and that only the Infinite Tsukuyomi could bring true peace.
But now, he sat in a small, out-of-the-way tavern in Konoha, eating a bowl of ordinary hot porridge.
No one was hunting him down.
There was no one he needed to scheme against.
Nor was anyone forcing him to save the world.
A thought suddenly occurred to him.
Maybe it wouldn't hurt to set that plan aside for now.