"No! That's impossible! How could ninja do construction work!"
Hiruzen Sarutobi knelt in the mud, his head thrown back.
A breaking scream tore from his throat, edged with a piercing sob.
The construction site was noisy.
Earth Release rumbled as it tore up the ground. Wooden piles crashed into deep pits. Thousands of shovels rasped through the soil.
But Hiruzen's shout cut straight through the heavy machinery-like din.
It struck the eardrums of everyone around him.
The ninja working nearby stopped what they were doing.
A man from the Hyuga Branch Family flinched, and the bamboo basket full of crushed stone slipped off his shoulder.
It crashed into the muddy water, splashing mud all over his trouser leg.
He didn't bother wiping it off. He turned in alarm and looked at Hiruzen sitting in the mud.
Nearby, a Yamanaka Clan Chunin was bent over, marking lines with white lime.
When he heard the shout, he straightened abruptly.
The half-stick of white chalk in his hand snapped with a crack, covering his hand in powder.
He looked at the Sarutobi young clan leader, who had gone mad, and swallowed dryly. Then he quickly lowered his head and went back to drawing the line.
He was terrified of bringing trouble down on himself.
Hiruzen clutched his mud-caked hair with both hands.
His nails dug deep into his scalp, tearing out several bloodstained hairs.
His lungs felt as though they were stuffed with wet cotton, and his breathing rasped like a broken bellows.
"We're ninja!"
Hiruzen stared fixedly at the crude iron shovel beside him.
"We learned how to kill. We fight to protect the village!"
He snatched up the shovel.
The handle was covered in splinters, which drove straight into the burst blisters on his palm.
The pain was excruciating, but he couldn't feel it.
He hurled the shovel into the muddy water, sending a spray half a meter high.
"This lowly manual labor is what the daimyo's slaves do!"
Hiruzen trembled all over, his teeth chattering wildly.
"The Will of Fire isn't for hauling bricks!"
Heavy footsteps interrupted his ravings.
Leather boots pressed into the thick mud with wet, sucking squelches.
Hiruzen looked up.
Four people in short black coarse-cloth work clothes pushed through the crowd and strode over.
Bright red strips of cloth were tied around their right arms.
Straight swords hung at their waists, and they carried jujube-wood clubs.
Kagami Uchiha led them.
A streak of dust marked his face, and his black eyes had turned into the scarlet Three-Tomoe Sharingan.
His Sharingan spun in the cold morning mist, showing undisguised irritation.
Kagami walked up to Hiruzen and stopped.
His foot slipped half an inch in the mud. He gripped the ground with his toes and steadied himself.
He looked down at his former comrade.
"What are you shouting about?" Kagami said, his voice icy.
He dug in his ear and flicked the dirt from his finger.
When Hiruzen saw Kagami, he seized on him like a drowning man clutching at a straw.
He crawled forward two paces through the mud on his hands and knees.
"Kagami! Come to your senses!"
Hiruzen grabbed Kagami's trouser leg, leaving a dirty black handprint on the cloth.
"You're the Uchiha clan leader! You lead the noble Police Force!"
Hiruzen's voice was as hoarse as sandpaper, and flecks of spittle sprayed into the air.
"Shu Shiraishi has gone mad! He's working everyone like animals!"
Hiruzen pointed at the ninja sweating all around them.
"Look at them! Look at us! What are we doing?"
"Construction work? Digging ditches?"
The veins stood out one by one on the back of his hand.
"Join me and resist him! The daimyo won't stand by and do nothing. As long as we join forces..."
Hiruzen didn't finish.
Kagami hadn't listened to his long speech at all.
He rested his right hand on his sword hilt and drew his left leg back half a step.
Hiruzen froze and let go of his trouser leg.
"Kagami?"
Kagami raised his right leg.
His military boot swept through the air and slammed squarely into Hiruzen's chest.
The kick landed with tremendous force.
Hiruzen felt his breastbone crack, and the air was driven from his windpipe in an instant.
His feet left the ground, and he flew like a kicked sandbag.
He sailed backward.
Across a two-meter stretch of level ground.
And plunged straight into the freshly dug foundation pit behind him.
It was a muddy pit three meters deep.
Groundwater had seeped in the night before, leaving half a foot of yellow muddy water at the bottom.
Splash!
Water sprayed everywhere.
Hiruzen's back slammed into the water at the bottom of the pit.
Muddy water flooded his nose and mouth.
He flailed, choking down a mouthful of foul, dirty water.
"Cough, cough, cough!"
Coughing violently, Hiruzen crawled out of the mud.
His chest burned with pain.
He knelt at the bottom of the pit. His hair was plastered with yellow mud, hanging in strands against his face.
His coarse hemp clothes were soaked with muddy water, weighing on him like a suit of armor. They were cold to the bone.
At the edge of the pit.
Kagami Uchiha leaned over.
His scarlet Sharingan looked down at Hiruzen at the bottom of the pit.
"Lord Hokage said,"
Kagami spat a mouthful of muddy saliva into the pit.
"Anyone who slacks off"
He tapped his jujube-wood club against a stone at the edge of the pit with a crack.
"gets their legs broken and gets thrown into the furnace for fuel."
Kagami looked at Hiruzen's mud-covered face.
"Keep digging. If you don't finish this section of the foundation today, don't even think about eating."
With that, Kagami turned around.
He walked away through the mud with three subordinates from the Urban Management Brigade.
The sound of their boots was gradually drowned out by the rumble of the construction site.
Hiruzen knelt at the bottom of the three-meter-deep pit.
Its walls were covered in slippery yellow earth, and severed tree roots jutted out of the soil like worms.
He looked up.
A patch of gray sky hung overhead.
A cold wind swept down into the pit.
Hiruzen shivered.
He braced both hands in the muddy water and slowly stood up. His knee joints popped stiffly.
Beyond the edge of the pit.
He could see the construction site outside.
Not far from him.
Nara Rokumei's younger male cousin, the strategist who usually did nothing but play board games.
Was carrying a log weighing over a hundred jin, bent double under its weight.
He missed his footing, and the log rolled off and smashed into his ankle. He rolled on the ground in pain.
On the other side.
Several elders of the Hyuga Main Family wore thin, short gray tunics.
Each carried a large bamboo basket on his back as he picked usable stones from a rubble-filled waste pile.
Their Byakugan were pushed to their limits.
One elder slowed down, and an Uchiha urban management officer immediately lashed him across the back.
The old man stumbled into the pile of stones, scraping his palms raw and bloody. He didn't dare make a peep. He got up and kept picking stones.
Hiruzen clenched his back teeth.
His lip split, and the metallic, salty taste of blood spread through his mouth.
His beliefs from the old era, the supposedly inviolable dignity of the great clans.
Here, they had been crushed to nothing.
No one cared who you used to be. No one cared what merits you had earned.
In this rumbling machine, everyone was just a cog that could refine Chakra.
If you didn't work, you got beaten.
If you resisted again, you died.
Hiruzen lowered his head.
He looked at the iron shovel he had thrown away by his feet.
Its wooden handle lay submerged in the muddy water, gleaming coldly.
He stood there for a while. The cold wind cut through his soaked hemp clothes.
He bent down.
He reached both hands into the murky water.
He found the rough wooden handle. Splinters pierced the tender flesh of his palms.
Hiruzen picked up the shovel.
He no longer shouted about the Will of Fire, nor did he mention the daimyo again.
The last glimmer in his eyes that belonged to a young clan leader went out completely.
He raised the shovel.
And drove it hard into the yellow mud at the bottom of the pit.
He stepped on the blade and shoveled with all his strength.
A shovelful of mud flew onto the edge of the pit.
He began the day's manual labor in humiliation.
Above the pit.
Several thick wooden planks had been laid across the muddy ground as a temporary walkway.
Steady footsteps sounded on the planks.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Shu Shiraishi was inspecting the construction site in his military boots.
Two Anbu carrying construction plans followed beside him.
His route happened to pass the deep pit where Hiruzen was.
Shu Shiraishi walked past the edge of the pit.
A small clod of dry mud kicked up by his boot rolled down the wall.
Plop.
The clod landed on Hiruzen's shoulder and crumbled into powder.
Hiruzen's movements paused for a moment. He didn't look up, staring fixedly at the shovel beneath his feet.
Shu Shiraishi didn't look down at all.
He didn't so much as glance at the bottom of the pit.
Without the slightest pause in his stride, he stepped right past overhead.
This utter disregard.
It left Hiruzen more despairing than Kagami Uchiha's kick had.
In Shu Shiraishi's eyes, he no longer even counted as a stumbling block. He was just a beast of burden that could shovel dirt.
Shu Shiraishi stepped across the wooden planks to the very center of the construction site.
Ahead lay a cleared patch of level ground.
At its center stood a massive earthen kiln more than ten meters tall.
It was the beginnings of a steelworks, built over the course of an entire morning by more than a hundred Earth Release ninja.
The kiln's outer walls had been reinforced with refractory clay mixed with Chakra. Fine cracks covered its surface.
The air was thick with the scorched, dry smell of raw earth and ozone.
Shu Shiraishi stopped in front of the kiln.
He narrowed his eyes and examined the vent at the top.
Several thick iron pipes had already been installed, running all the way to a cooling pool nearby.
He turned his head.
He looked to his side.
A row of ninja in gray fireproof suits stood at attention.
There were more than a dozen of them, all Uchiha elites.
They wore no armbands and carried no weapons.
Each had a thick, wet towel wrapped around his face, leaving only a pair of black eyes exposed.
Shu Shiraishi raised a hand and pointed at the massive earthen kiln before him.
His knuckles looked a little pale beneath the dim sky.
"Get the blast furnace set up."
Shu Shiraishi looked at the row of Uchiha elites.
"It's your turn."