Uchiha Makoto stood there, sighing heavily, his face filled with unmistakable anxiety for the future of the Uchiha clan.
He was dead serious about building the persona of someone who lived and breathed for the Uchiha.
After all, with such a persona in place, it would be far easier in the future to pry people away from Konohagakure.
The Fire Daimyō quietly observed Makoto's expression.
That look of worry didn't seem fake at all.
Makoto truly appeared to believe that the Uchiha clan would one day be destroyed because of the Senju.
And to be fair—
That wasn't an act.
Because in the future, if the world really followed the original canon timeline, the Uchiha clan would indeed face annihilation.
The entire clan would be massacred by Uchiha Itachi, leaving behind only a single survivor—
Uchiha Sasuke.
One lonely sapling trying to grow back into a forest—
turning a single person into an entire clan—was no easy task.
And Sasuke wasn't exactly cooperative either.
If he truly wanted to revive the Uchiha clan, shouldn't he at least have tried to build a harem?
Instead, he married only Haruno Sakura.
Fine. No harem.
But then at least put some effort into… production.
Damn it, the guy spent all his time wandering the shinobi world like a restless ghost, completely neglecting the future of the Uchiha.
He had one daughter and called it a day.
Not even a son!
And that daughter would probably get snatched away by that blond kid from the Uzumaki clan. According to the customs of that island nation—
Once a woman married, she took her husband's surname.
As for the children?
That went without saying.
By canon standards, the Uchiha clan was practically doomed.
Of course, Sasuke himself was a pitiful victim—
it wasn't fair to blame him too harshly.
The real executioner was Uchiha Itachi.
That weasel.
It was as if no one had ever taught him what family meant, what parents and kin meant, or even how to distinguish friend from foe—
Well… thinking about it carefully, maybe no one actually had taught him.
At four years old, his so-called "gentle" father, Uchiha Fugaku, dragged him straight onto the battlefield to get his first taste of killing.
In an environment that was nothing short of hell, surviving at all was already a miracle.
On the battlefield, kunai and shuriken had no eyes. Even as Fugaku's eldest son, surrounded in secret by elite Uchiha guards, accidents were always possible—
After all, Senju Nawaki had been blown apart by explosive tags. War was full of unpredictable deaths.
And Fugaku never once provided his son with any psychological guidance.
The moment Itachi awakened the Sharingan, Fugaku was so pleased he forgot everything else—
Forgetting that Itachi's Sharingan had awakened only after witnessing the death of a comrade.
He simply left the boy to fend for himself, occasionally using "the glory of the clan" to emotionally blackmail him.
Hmph!
At the very least, Hiruzen Sarutobi, that old fox, had praised Itachi for possessing "the mindset of a Hokage" at a young age.
But what exactly was the Hokage's mindset?
That was just the Hokage's stance.
And Fugaku had even been proud of it—thinking his son had the makings of a Hokage.
By then, Itachi's stance—and his loyalties—were already crooked.
The rest hardly needed explanation.
Of course—
Every tragedy that would later befall the Uchiha could ultimately be traced back to this very moment.
Was Uchiha Madara wrong?
He only wanted to "fly away together" with Senju Hashirama, to fulfill the dream they had made as children—to bring peace to the shinobi world.
This was all the fault of the naturally evil Senju Tobirama!
It was Tobirama who, at the founding of Konoha, personally forged the ideology of—
Anti–Uchiha-ism.
And that was why, in the future, Uchiha Restorationism would flourish within the clan.
The Uchiha weren't rebelling for no reason—
They had been subjected to systematic oppression by Konoha.
"Makoto, you're overthinking this," the Fire Daimyō said gently, smiling.
"Your Uchiha clan is a bloodline clan that has endured for a thousand years."
"As long as you abandon illusions, recognize reality, and continue to struggle—"
"Even the Senju clan won't be able to wipe you out."
What the Daimyō said wasn't wrong.
If the Uchiha abandoned幻想, recognized reality, and kept fighting—
They truly could avoid extinction.
Especially Madara.
If he genuinely wanted to preserve the Uchiha clan, he had plenty of options.
True, Madara couldn't defeat Hashirama head-on.
But against the rest of the Senju clan, it would be absolute domination.
At worst, he could simply hunt down the other Senju relentlessly until Hashirama was forced to compromise—
"If the Senju don't deploy Hashirama, the Uchiha won't deploy Madara either."
Remove Hashirama from the equation.
What remained was just Senju Tobirama.
No matter how strong Tobirama was individually, he posed no fundamental advantage against the entire Uchiha clan.
In fact, from the Uchiha's perspective—
The advantage would be ours.
The Sharingan was naturally suited to awaken in brutal, hellish environments like the Warring Clans Era.
The harsher the world, the stronger the Uchiha became.
This was an advantage the Senju could never replicate.
And a three-tomoe Sharingan carried with it two utterly terrifying dōjutsu—
Izanagi and Izanami.
Izanagi:
The ultimate manifestation of Uchiha Yin Release.
By sacrificing a three-tomoe Sharingan, the user could twist and rewrite reality itself.
In simple terms—a resurrection token.
And if used cleverly, even a group resurrection.
Izanami:
Equally costly, also requiring the sacrifice of a three-tomoe Sharingan.
Activated through eye contact in battle, it trapped the enemy in an endless genjutsu loop until they accepted reality—or remained imprisoned forever.
Its effect was nothing short of a miniature Infinite Tsukuyomi.
With these two ultimate fail-safes—
How could the Uchiha possibly lose?
Even Flying Thunder God Technique could be countered with a first-encounter kill.
The Fire Daimyō continued speaking, analyzing advantages and disadvantages for Makoto.
But—
What sounded like consolation
was, in truth, pouring fuel on the fire.
How could the Uchiha and Senju possibly abandon a thousand years of hatred and reconcile?!
Civil war—
they had to keep fighting!
He wanted to see rivers of blood!
It would be best if Madara and Hashirama fought until the heavens collapsed—
Until both of them died together!
If you two monsters don't die—
How am I supposed to sleep at night?!