Chapter 771: You’re Different from Other Uchiha
In Parallel World 1, the second summer of Konoha.
This summer felt especially scorching, particularly for the entire Land of Fire.
About three months ago, the Daimyo’s residence across the Land of Fire began undergoing subtle changes.
Most officials and nobles in the Daimyo’s residence were unaware that their Daimyo had been killed by the First Hokage, Senju Hashirama.
Many high-ranking nobles and officials summoned afterward were also controlled by Madara’s Sharingan genjutsu.
Then, as Tobirama began taking over the entire Daimyo’s residence, he swiftly initiated a decisive overhaul.
Tobirama’s methods were not as gentle as his brother’s.
During this period, for nobles and officials throughout the Daimyo’s residence—those who disobeyed policies, acted covertly, obstructed, pretended compliance but didn’t follow through, and so on—
Tobirama killed them all outright!
Then immediately summoned them back with Edo Tensei to continue their work.
In just one month, the entire Daimyo’s residence underwent drastic changes.
After all, Tobirama had boasted in front of his brother and Tenshou Sennin that if he couldn’t handle a mere Daimyo’s residence, Madara would laugh himself to death!
Not to mention, he’d previously been wrongly blamed by the nobles in the Daimyo’s residence, causing his brother to mistakenly think he was extorting the people and imposing cruel taxes.
Tobirama harbored resentment.
He couldn’t forget his brother’s enraged expression upon learning the truth that day, turning the entire imperial palace into a hell of Mokuton spikes—a horror Tobirama never wanted to experience again.
But despite Tobirama’s best efforts, one person wasn’t enough.
He couldn’t oversee millions in the Daimyo’s residence or accurately read everyone’s hearts.
How could nobles, accustomed to superior status, tolerate ninjas ruling over them?
Before Konoha’s founding, so-called ninjas and clans were merely thugs and disposable tools hired and used by these nobles at will.
The static mindset of the war era, entrenched for centuries, couldn’t change easily.
Thus, many nobles and officials who noticed the anomalies openly or covertly defied Tobirama and the ’Daimyo’s’ orders, even sending numerous messengers to seek aid from other major nations.
Though Tobirama killed relentlessly, it was hard to eradicate them all.
Fortunately, all these conspiracies were resolved by Uchiha Naori, Konoha’s deputy sent to assist Tobirama.
Naori herself was highly capable, and with many Uchiha ninjas joining, their powerful Sharingan genjutsu and manipulation skills left no secrets hidden in the Daimyo’s residence.
Almost all malicious actors were uncovered by Uchiha ninjas, and most secret letters sent by nobles were intercepted.
Even Tobirama had to admit that in investigation, anti-corruption, and interrogation, Uchiha ninjas with Sharingan were naturally professional experts.
So useful!
After initial resistance, Tobirama couldn’t resist the ’convenient’ law and began heavily involving Uchiha ninjas.
He started treating them like livestock, where one Uchiha ninja was worth three regular ninjas.
Though the Uchiha ninjas were exhausted, their hearts were quite pleased.
Initially, they worried the Senju clan was deliberately sidelining them, barring them from village power. Now, with Konoha gradually dominating the Daimyo’s residence, those worries vanished.
Moreover, eliminating nobles who once didn’t see ninjas as human was immensely satisfying!
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With Naori and the Uchiha clan’s support, Tobirama’s governance speed surged, fully controlling the Daimyo’s residence in just half a month.
This included administration, judiciary, security, oversight, city rulers, and high officials—all levels were replaced and cleansed by Tobirama, removing most parasites and replacing them with workable people.
He didn’t demand absolute loyalty or exceptional ability—just usability for now.
Or rather: in many positions, as long as they weren’t corrupt, law-breaking, brutally taxing, or extorting, you could put a pig there, and it’d likely perform far better than those original scoundrels...
After fully controlling the Daimyo’s residence, Konoha’s penetration and dominance over the Land of Fire also accelerated rapidly.
In less than a month, with Tobirama and Naori’s collaboration, they used the Daimyo’s residence as the center to bring the entire Land of Fire under practical control.
This included Kikyō City, Tanzaku City, Katsuragi Mountain, Fire Temple City... a total of hundreds of cities and regions, brought under control one by one.
Of course, fully reforming these cities, cleansing corruption as done in the Daimyo’s residence, and giving them new life couldn’t be done quickly.
There was too much of a personnel shortage.
Or rather, a severe lack of administrative talent.
Currently, Konoha’s entire ninja population, including women, children, and the elderly, was only a few thousand—far from enough.
Moreover, this was early in Konoha’s founding; no ninja had attended a ninja academy, most struggled to read, and over 98% had no governance or management experience.
You couldn’t expect, in a war era where children wielding swords had to fight, that ninja clans only trained for combat would produce many educated people.
That was impossible and would’ve been a waste of resources!
Ask these ninjas how to kill, and they’d give you nine methods.
But ask them to design, plan, manage, operate, or modernize a city?
They’d lose their minds.
Even if Tobirama and Naori were immensely strong, they couldn’t overnight turn thousands or tens of thousands into officials skilled in administration, fair, and honest!
Moreover, managing a city required both ability and integrity.
Ability without integrity often led to corruption, becoming worse locusts, extorting people, and devouring everything.
Integrity without ability, even with good intentions, could cause major mistakes, like a villain’s complex schemes not matching a fool’s sudden ideas.
On this, Tobirama and Naori had no permanent solution; they could only rely on systems to temporarily restrain and limit.
The only way was to gradually strengthen dual training of ability and integrity, relying on time to select and train enough core personnel to replace old local management.
This would be a long process, not solvable overnight.
This was also why Tobirama hadn’t initially planned to swallow the entire ninja world in one gulp; even if his brother had that power, he didn’t have the iron kidneys to sustain it!
Ultimately, the number and quality of ninjas in the Warring States Period couldn’t compare to the future.
Quality here didn’t refer to combat strength but overall quality.
Look at future Chunin Exam written tests: encryption logic, shuriken trajectory calculations, geographic tactical analysis, even foreign language questions...
Tobirama knew teaching these at the ninja academy wasn’t futile but genuinely enhanced a ninja’s overall value and thinking ability.
Like communicating with an uneducated thug, the vast cognitive and thinking gap was enough to make you question life.
Asking illiterate Warring States ninjas to manage cities was likely why his future self insisted on founding the ninja academy, right?
Perhaps he’d long considered the potential split between ninja villages and daimyo nations, starting to train talent, right?
Sadly, that trash version of himself was too trash!
Nearly killed by the likes of Kinkaku and Ginkaku...
So embarrassing!
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However, Tobirama and Naori’s wisdom was remarkable. Though they couldn’t solve the personnel shortage, they each designed and built two new systems to curb and mitigate the issue to some extent.
Tobirama designed an evaluation system, while Naori created a supervision system.
The first was mainly handled by Tobirama and a few veteran officials skilled in politics and economics to set indicators, targeting original officials in hundreds of Land of Fire cities, including hard metrics like administrative efficiency, economic efficiency, work time effectiveness, case handling effectiveness, integrity, and more.
Then, Konoha ninjas were sent to various cities to inspect and grade.
Anyone seriously failing was sacked and purged, no exceptions.
With no choice due to their talent shortage, they could only use alternative methods to push and evaluate officials with some management experience.
Though most ninjas knew nothing of politics or economics, basic facts and indicators were understandable.
In the field, did target officials extort taxes? Meet indicators? Slack off? Complete work schedules?
These were easy to distinguish.
Just grade per set standards, no need for advanced knowledge, perfect for ninjas.
Of course, flaws remained.
For example, Tobirama and others setting evaluation standards would be exhausted; some ninjas might misgrade; some local nobles might conspire to hide or deceive, and so on.
These were significant issues.
That’s when Naori’s second supervision system came into play.
This system was mainly implemented by Uchiha and Hyūga ninjas together.
While Tobirama conducted evaluations across the Land of Fire, Uchiha ninjas were sent to use Sharingan genjutsu to monitor if Konoha ninjas grading neglected duties or if city-managing nobles had hidden rule-breaking behaviors.
With Sharingan genjutsu, most corrupt criminals were quickly found.
Ordinary people untrained in ninjutsu couldn’t withstand Sharingan genjutsu interrogation.
Even ninjas rarely resisted Sharingan genjutsu.
This way, though not 100% fair and honest, it was enough to prevent most from slipping through.
Sharingan and genjutsu were natural enemies of dirty crimes.
No matter how well you hid, you couldn’t hide from your own conscience.
In this wondrous world, ninjutsu and doujutsu were the best tools to crush these scoundrels!
However, Naori knew this supervisory power was too great; the Uchiha clan couldn’t bear it, and Tobirama wouldn’t agree.
So she straightforwardly added another restriction.
Hyūga ninjas specifically monitored Uchiha ninjas for random manipulation, inducing targets to commit crimes or lie, and helped targets dispel genjutsu.
Byakugan, seeing chakra flow, and Gentle Fist, cutting chakra, were the best tools to limit Sharingan.
This also greatly curbed Uchiha ninja overreach and errors.
The Uchiha clan oversaw grading ninjas and target officials, while the Hyūga clan oversaw the Uchiha.
This was very safe and robust.
Naori was clever, having heard some future stories from clan leader Madara, knowing the Uchiha tended to draw attention.
Thus, she deliberately pulled the Hyūga clan into this.
On the surface, it seemed to pit Uchiha and Hyūga against each other, but it actually bound both clans together.
If one side erred, the other couldn’t escape.
Even in the worst case, the Hyūga clan would join the Uchiha in the grave, so no loss.
On this, Tobirama had to approve Naori’s proposal and officially implement it.
On one hand, he truly lacked better supervision methods; on the other, Hyūga oversight could indeed limit Uchiha power.
Thus, with the deployment and implementation of these two new systems, many Konoha ninjas formed evaluation and supervision teams, rushing across the Land of Fire.
With minimal, simple manpower, they quickly brought all cities under control and oversight.
Of course, all this was promoted in the Daimyo’s name.
An Edo Tensei-revived Land of Fire Daimyo puppet was very useful.
Evaluation system announcements were ordered by the Daimyo; deploying ninjas to evaluate and supervise was also ordered by the Daimyo.
What?
You disobey?
You have objections?
Great, welcome to the Daimyo’s residence to meet the ’Land of Fire Daimyo’ in person to discuss.
Tobirama guaranteed to ’entertain’ you well.
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By now, Tobirama had fully controlled the entire Land of Fire, very smoothly.
Far faster than the initial estimate of several months, cutting time by at least half.
Though Tobirama was reluctant to admit it, this was undoubtedly thanks to Naori and the Uchiha clan’s support.
But this wasn’t the end.
After all, Tobirama’s goal was to control the entire world; the Land of Fire was just the first step.
At this moment...
As Konoha’s two sharpest minds, they were discussing in the Daimyo’s residence’s imperial palace.
"Tobirama-sama, this is the list of criminals compiled by Uchiha ninjas for this period." Naori handed over the list.
Tobirama, busy comparing evaluation metrics, looked up, slightly shocked after taking the list.
’When did she come in? I didn’t notice at all?’
’Am I too tired and focused?’
’Damn, how could I be so careless with an Uchiha ninja?’
Tobirama quietly regretted.
They’d collaborated like this for over a month, too familiar!
Intense, continuous work had indeed made Tobirama careless; or he didn’t think any enemy could silently breach the Edo Tensei guards outside.
Except his sole deputy.
"Hmph! You Uchihas aren’t cheating this time, are you?"
"No, at least I wouldn’t do something that foolish."
"True, you wouldn’t dare." Tobirama snorted. He wasn’t worried about this; dealing with smart people was far more comfortable than with fools.
After interacting with Naori, then dealing with those foolish officials, Tobirama got headaches.
During this contact, Naori also admired the Senju genius before her.
Though Tobirama’s strength wasn’t as great as his brother’s, his wisdom, political acumen, and forbidden jutsu development skills far surpassed 99.99% of other ninjas.
No wonder the Uchiha clan in the future couldn’t defeat this freak.
Such a Senju genius deserved full support from the clan leader and herself!
"There’s still one issue with the supervision system," Naori proactively reported.
"Speak."
"The Hyūga clan lacks enough ninjas; they can’t keep up with the evaluation metrics you set."
Given the Hyūga main and branch clan issues, the Hyūga had only dozens of usable ninjas. Assigning them to follow Senju and Uchiha ninjas across all Land of Fire cities in half a month was too difficult.
"Oh? What’s your plan?" Tobirama grew alert, asking Naori.
Naori answered honestly: "If personnel are insufficient, we can delay some remote or small-scale cities, sending only Senju and Uchiha ninjas for basic evaluation and supervision."
"Ignore Hyūga supervision? So you Uchiha ninjas can secretly do evil?"
"Not ignore, just delay. Once Hyūga ninjas increase, we can recheck."
"You think I’ll agree?" Tobirama stared at Naori, his eyes slightly sharp.
"I do." Naori’s gaze was unflinching, straightforward.
After a moment.
Tobirama answered: "I agree."
"Thank you, Tobirama-sama!"
"Uchiha Naori?"
"Yes."
"You seem different from other Uchiha ninjas..."
"How so?"
"There’s enough self-restraint in your eyes; but your behavior is very aggressive, or rather, greedy!" Tobirama had to admit, this Uchiha genius girl before him was indeed different from other vile Uchihas...