At this moment, the great forest below was scattered back by Hashirama.
Konoha Village was already full of scars, with only a few empty houses left standing at the edge, carrying a desolate feeling of ancient road, west wind, and thin horse.
Kairen's Rinnegan controlled Teuchi to float, while he himself stood quietly in the sky, pretending for a moment!
Kairen's logistics unit gathered the villagers of Konoha in a training field.
After the storm calmed, the villagers returned to the village, wanting to cry but having no tears.
Truly gods fight, and mortals suffer.
"Wuuu… the private money I hid under the tree is gone!"
"The house I saved thirty years of money to buy!"
"Haha… no need to pay the mortgage now!"
"Keep dreaming!" A developer silently pushed up his glasses.
One of Kairen's shadow clones held a big loudspeaker and shouted in the middle: "Everyone, don't panic, all of your losses will be covered by our Kairen Corps!"
"Really?!"
"Really!"
The shadow clone continued shouting: "Do you see that person in the sky? He especially loves to hear good words. In a moment everyone will shout together with me—whoever shouts the loudest will have their losses covered first!"
A shadow clone in the crowd shouted the slogan: "Kairen-sama, long live!"
In an instant, the whole village seemed to tremble.
"Kairen-sama, long live!"
"Kairen-sama, long live!"
"Kairen-sama, long live!!"
Kairen wiped the corner of his mouth in the sky: "This is people's hearts. I have gained the hearts of the whole village—after this, won't I be able to do whatever I want!"
The shadow clone continued shouting: "Kairen is awesome!"
"Kairen is awesome!"
"Kairen is awesome!"
"Kairen is awesome!"
In the village center.
Tsunade, full of pride, said to Hashirama beside her: "Grandpa, see? This is the will of the people!"
Hashirama scratched his head: "Looks like that monkey kid doesn't have people's support!"
Kurama silently watched. Although it didn't know whether the Third really had people's support or not, Kairen truly hadn't touched anything related to people.
See, here it comes!
"Kairen! Long live!"
"Kairen!! Long live!"
The whole village was shouting!
Tsunade felt a bit embarrassed and quietly glanced at Hashirama.
Hashirama's eyes were full of interest, finding Kairen amusing.
Tobirama snorted, but didn't say much.
"Ku… Kurama!!"
A voice suddenly sounded—precisely Minato's voice.
Right now he was pointing at Kurama, his face full of fright, constantly looking at Kushina and Kurama.
His gaze switched back and forth between the person and the fox, as if he had seen something terrifying.
Although Minato was called the fastest man in the ninja world, in some respects he seemed a bit airheaded.
Kurama snorted: "What, am I Kurama that scary?"
Minato shook his head hard: "No, Kushina—wasn't Kurama sealed in your belly? How did it come out? Won't you be in danger like this?"
Kushina shook her head: "It was Kairen who helped me release the seal. He used his own chakra to give me a life!"
Hearing this, Minato felt somewhat guilty inside.
Kairen treated Kushina so sincerely, caring for her like a real older sister.
Yet he had planned to oppose Kairen—he truly felt ashamed.
Jiraiya sighed lightly and said faintly: "This is the general trend, not something personal strength can stop. It seems the life of a ninja doesn't suit me—I still prefer being a wanderer!"
Tsunade folded her arms, looked seriously at Jiraiya, and asked:
"You're… leaving the village!"
Jiraiya nodded, then walked toward the corpse of Sarutobi Hiruzen.
"Let me take Sarutobi-sensei's body!"
Shima suddenly jumped onto Jiraiya's shoulder.
The two sages sighed softly.
"That kid isn't easy to deal with! Even the Sage of Six Paths could do nothing about him. Little Jiraiya and little Minato are still far behind."
Fukasaku shook his head: "Let the big guy worry about it! We're going home to eat bugs!"
Tsunade said nothing, quietly watching Jiraiya's back.
Traveling the ninja world, unrestrained—she really did long a little for such a life.
But now she couldn't—she still had to serve a little troublemaker.
"Right, Orochimaru, you—"
Tsunade was just about to ask Orochimaru his plans.
But unexpectedly, Orochimaru, who had just been tied to the big tree, had only a layer of snakeskin left—he had already shed his skin like a white snake.
Tobirama was somewhat surprised: "This young man… I was guarding him the whole time, yet he still escaped—not simple!"
Tsunade shook her head helplessly: "Let him go! His heart was never in the village!"
Kairen slowly descended with Teuchi, landing right where the few remaining houses of the village stood.
Magically, one of them was Ichiraku Ramen.
Kairen sighed: "Truly, flowing Konoha, Ichiraku Ramen!"
He set Teuchi on the ground, then flew toward where Tsunade and the others were gathered.
Within seconds, Kairen saw the group clustered together.
Tsunade waved to Kairen, puffed up her little fist: "We won!"
Kairen smiled: "It was expected long ago!"
He slowly landed, deliberately raising his forehead a bit higher so everyone could see his Rinnegan clearly.
Kushina asked in confusion: "Why did your eyes change color?"
Kairen gave her a disdainful look: "Long hair, short insight!"
Tobirama stepped forward and praised Kairen: "Rinnegan—the eyes of the Sage of Six Paths. He gave them to you!"
Kairen rubbed his hair: "The Sage of Six Paths said he would entrust me with the great mission of saving the world—this is a bit of compensation!"
Hashirama was curious about Kairen's next move, so he asked:
"After taking control of Konoha, what are you going to do next?"
Kairen's attention wasn't on Hashirama's question, and he casually exposed his true thoughts:
"Ascend the throne as emperor, open a grand harem!"
Tsunade was furious: "What?!"
Kairen quickly argued: "Let Tsunade become Hokage, breaking the nobles' exploitative system!"
Hashirama still wanted to know more clearly: "The specific steps?"
"Let Tsunade first become Hokage, eliminate the Fire Daimyō's mansion, merge military and government into one, unify the ninja world, and end the great upheaval of a thousand years!"
Kairen's words were light, but in the ears of the few, they sounded like thunder.
Tobirama's tone carried shock: "Overthrowing the daimyō—you're going against the entire ninja world!"
The daimyō and nobles were the privileged class of the ninja world—ninjas depended on them for support.
Kairen wanted to overthrow the daimyō—wouldn't that flip the land of the ninja world?
Kairen's Six-Tomoe Rinnegan slowly rotated, beautiful like sun, moon, and stars.
"With these eyes—whoever nags me, I'll wipe out their whole family!"
Tobirama suddenly lowered his head, deep in thought.
Kairen possessed the Sage of Six Paths' eyes and power to match the Sage of Six Paths.
In other words, he was now the Sage of Six Paths—the true god on earth.
Hashirama's voice carried a few strands of admonition:
"Child, your killing intent is too heavy. If things go as you say, the ninja world will be drenched in blood—millions of corpses."
Kairen's Rinnegan suddenly turned toward Hashirama, and a powerful pressure enveloped him.
Hashirama burst forth with a mighty chakra, resisting the pressure of Kairen's Rinnegan.
"First Hokage, I think… you're not as good as Uchiha Madara!"
Tsunade shouted from the side: "Kairen!!"
In the shadows, Uchiha Madara pricked up his ears—someone actually thought Hashirama wasn't as good as him.
You know, whenever compared with Hashirama, he, Uchiha Madara, became a stray dog—the runner-up of the ninja world.
He wanted to listen carefully to Kairen's comments on the two of them.
Kairen folded his arms and spoke calmly.
He would not show mercy just because Hashirama was his elder.
"You possessed the power to unify the ninja world, yet chose balance, even using the nine tailed beasts as weights to divide."
"Your original intention was to hope for peace in the ninja world, but what you did was a pile of foolish things."
Hashirama clenched his fists—his benevolence was devalued to nothing in Kairen's words.
He was about to question Kairen.
But Tobirama placed a hand on Hashirama's shoulder: "Big brother, keep listening! Sometimes I really feel… you're like a child holding a powerful weapon."
Kairen continued lightly: "Look—what happened to this world after you died? First the First War, then the Second War, and now the Third War is still being fought."
"The bare facts are right in front of you—the balance you set for the ninja world is only a thin, brittle sheet."
"People will not understand each other. In everyone's heart they build layer upon layer of defenses—mutual suspicion, mutual scheming, and mutual hostility!"
Uchiha Madara secretly gave a big thumbs-up: "Well said! Hashirama is too naive—how can you trust enemies?"
Kairen smiled faintly: "Unified roads, unified writing, rivers and mountains under one rule, the ninja world as one—that is my concept of peace."
Hashirama read it carefully: "Rivers and mountains unified, ninja world as one!"
He sighed: "You're far too much like Madara. Back then, he thought the same—uprooting all military organizations except Konoha."
Hashirama couldn't help but question again, "But like this… how many years would we have to fight? As long as everyone understands the cruelty of war, people will be able to understand one another and won't lightly resort to blades and soldiers."
"My distributing the tailed beasts is the same. Once troops are moved, it becomes an ultra-large-scale tailed beast war. The great nations will restrain one another. This is the fastest way to achieve peace in the short term."
Hashirama explained his understanding of peace.
Kairen shook his head. Isn't this just another kind of nuclear deterrence? It can indeed achieve a terrifying balance, but in the end there will be a day when it explodes.
"Your vision is short-sighted. Uchiha Madara sees it very clearly. The barrier between people not something that your benevolence can move."
Tobirama spoke a few words on behalf of Hashirama from the side:
"You can't blame Big Brother for this either. During the Warring States era there was fighting year after year, and our two younger brothers died in battle while still children."
"Big Brother couldn't bear that era that sent children to the battlefield and desperately yearned for peace. Madara also understood Big Brother's thinking. Our two clans founded Konoha and pacified the chaos in the Land of Fire."
"For a period of time the whole ninja world stopped fighting, as if true peace had finally arrived. That kind of peace was hard-won. Big Brother didn't want to fight anymore—he was tired of fighting!"
"Most importantly… years of chaotic warfare left both our clans with heavy casualties, and we had no choice but to recuperate."
"That kind of balance wasn't only Big Brother's position. Many people in the village were already scared of fighting. If it continued, the clans would be beaten to extinction."
Kairen still wore that businesslike expression.
"Although I understand your expectations for peace, that kind of balance is not what I seek."
Hashirama let out a sigh. "Enough! Enough! We're all dead already, so let's not meddle in the affairs of the ninja world anymore."
Tobirama nodded.
Kairen also understood Hashirama a little more.
In the early days of Konoha's founding, the quality of ninja was uneven, but with Hashirama and Uchiha Madara—Susanoo-clad Great Buddha—those two wiping out four nations wouldn't have been a problem.
But war isn't just a matter for two people: the takeover by rear units, the placement of prisoners of war.
Most important of all, what are ninja wars actually for?
Land!
No—ninja aren't farmers; they don't need to engage in cultivation.
Their sphere of activity is just one village. There's no need to seize wider territory.
Money is also part of the reason, but not a large part.
Ninja are simply a group of mercenaries—mercenaries who take clients' money and complete missions.
That is to say, the ones who truly want war are the daimyō.
Their wars are just land games: you grab a piece of my land, I grab one of your concubines.
In the old days, killing through samurai warfare was too slow, so they were eliminated.
Ninja replaced them—killing faster, more efficiently—and the game of daimyō and nobles rose to another level.
So, ninja are merely the blades and soldiers of daimyō and nobles. The more chaotic the ninja world is, the more ninja it can nourish.
"Hahahaha…"
Thinking of this, Kairen laughed loudly.
Those around him were full of confusion—how did Kairen end up laughing halfway through speaking? Were the First Hokage's words that funny?
Hashirama asked, "What are you laughing at?"
Kairen slowly gathered his belly, stopped laughing, finally swept his gaze around, and said firmly,
"To pursue peace in the identity of a ninja is like a prostitute acting as a pimp—it's purely mixing things up."
Hashirama was completely puzzled. "What do you mean?!"
Tobirama carefully pondered Kairen's words, and everyone around fell into quiet thought.
In the end, the Nine-Tails at the side spoke a single sentence that awakened the dreamers.
"Because you ninja are themselves a profession born from war. Ninja thinking about peace is simply a joke."
Hashirama continued in confusion, "Ninja… can't pursue peace?"
Tobirama slowly relaxed his forehead, a hint of a smile in his eyes.
"Big Brother, if the entire world became peaceful, then the ninja world wouldn't need us ninja anymore."
"This—" Hashirama was shocked.
From Kairen's words, Tobirama felt a lot and voiced his own understanding.
"Ninja and daimyō are mutually a hiring relationship. Peace is something politics must consider, while war is only the means to achieve it."
Kairen continued speaking to Hashirama: "Now do you understand why I want to overthrow the daimyō?!"
The daimyō of the ninja world intermarry with each other and are basically like brothers. They are one body, weaving together a gigantic web of connections.
In all these years among the Five Great Nations, it's been rare to see a country destroyed.
Isn't the reason just the rules of their noble games? Play is play—but you can't play too big.
Hashirama still had many things he didn't understand; his mind couldn't accept too much at once.
"What a pity. Tobirama and I can't stay in the living world for too long, otherwise I really would like to see that peaceful world you're talking about."
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Pls Drop some Power Stones
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