Uchiha Yoru's plan for the Tiger Unit was internal division: the three companies would serve as the main framework and become independent from one another, while the non-combat personnel would form an administrative team to mediate the contradictions between the three companies from the center.
There was no debate.
Within the Tiger Unit, no one could refuse something Uchiha Yoru had decided. In fact, no one would even think of refusing.
Following the tradition of his rabbit, Uchiha Yoru did not hide his intentions. He even explained every part of his thinking to the three company commanders and Uchiha Kazushi.
This allowed them to fully understand the difficulties they would face in the future, the actions each of them could take, and the limits of struggle within their contradictions.
When Uchiha Yoru said no one could replace him, everyone silently nodded in agreement. After that, they also accepted the long chain of logical deductions.
But what they found hard to understand was this:
Even if there would no longer be a universally recognized leader, why split into three?
And why did Uchiha Kazushi, someone who did not control any military force at all, exist in this structure?
Uchiha Yoru casually pulled a piece of stone from the ground, molded it like clay into a three-legged cauldron, hardened it, then tossed it to the ground.
Pointing at the three-legged cauldron standing steadily, he said, "This is a tripartite balance. Three-way confrontation is the most stable form within a power structure."
Uchiha Yoru continuously changed the lengths of the cauldron's three legs. As a result, the cauldron swayed back and forth, yet it continued standing firmly on the ground.
"You see that? A three-legged structure has an extremely high tolerance for changes in the length of its legs."
"The three of you are like the three legs of this cauldron. If one of you becomes too strong, it will force the other two to join forces against him. Even if the strongest person's power exceeds the combined strength of the other two, the cauldron still won't easily fall over."
Uchiha Shigenobu asked, "Then what about Kazushi? What is his role?"
Uchiha Yoru pulled three stone needles with sharp tips from both ends out of the ground, then took out a rope and said, "These three senbon represent the three companies. Look, can they stand?"
Everyone shook their heads. Three sticks were not a single whole. They could not borrow strength from one another, so naturally, they could not stand.
Uchiha Yoru raised the rope and said, "This is Uchiha Kazushi. He can get along with everyone, has no sharp contradictions with anyone, and his personality is flexible. His posture is soft."
"So, like this rope, he can bind the three senbon together and form an overall structure."
Using the Daughter Kingdom posture, Uchiha Yoru tied the three stone needles together, turning them into a stable tripod.
Uchiha Kazushi suddenly understood. He asked, "Brother Yoru, I understand. You're like the cauldron above the three legs—solid and steady, able to firmly fix the three legs in place."
"When you're no longer here, I can only connect the three legs together, but that can also maintain balance."
Uchiha Yoru nodded approvingly and said, "You're right. That's why you must be soft enough, but also persistent enough, to keep them maintained as a single whole."
Uchiha Shigenobu, Uchiha Tadamichi, and Uchiha Hiroto looked at one another, speechless.
Uchiha Shigenobu asked, "Brother Yoru, if we want to turn back into a three-legged cauldron, how can we do it?"
Uchiha Yoru thought for a moment before answering, "Two methods."
"First, a new leader appears who can conquer all four of you. With him at the center, the Tiger Unit can be recast into a cauldron."
"Second, a great crisis appears. The four of you cooperate with perfect sincerity and pay a tremendous price to persist until victory. In blood and fire, the Tiger Unit forges an indestructible collective consciousness, and all Uchiha members form an unbreakable friendship."
"With the collective identity of the Tiger Unit, you forge a new cauldron."
Hearing the second method, all four Uchiha went numb. They stared at Uchiha Yoru, dumbfounded, unable to imagine such collective recognition existing.
Looking at their foolish expressions, Uchiha Yoru felt rather disappointed inside, but on the surface, he laughed loudly and said, "We should still look forward to the first condition appearing."
Kazushi immediately nodded in agreement. "Right, right. A new leader appearing is still more likely."
Uchiha Tadamichi asked unwillingly, "Brother Yoru, do you really have to leave? Can't you stay and lead us forever?"
Uchiha Hiroto also said very seriously, "That's right. As long as Brother Yoru doesn't leave, nothing will happen."
Uchiha Yoru smiled and said, "Little brothers, things can't simply go the way we want."
"We are merely a small portion of shinobi within the Uchiha clan inside Konoha Village. I have warned you more than once not to be like the idiots in the clan and think too highly of yourselves."
"As the highest controller of Konoha Village, if the Third Hokage can't move me, then Konoha Village is finished."
"If Konoha Village is finished, can the Uchiha clan survive alone in this era of shinobi villages?"
"If the Uchiha clan collapses, where will we and our families go?"
Uchiha Yoru's words rendered everyone speechless.
But Uchiha Shigenobu still said unconvinced, "We are the Tiger Unit. We can annihilate three thousand Kirigakure shinobi. Our contribution to the village is so great. Facing unfair treatment from the village and the Hokage, why can we only shut our mouths and suffer grievances?"
Shigenobu's question made Uchiha Yoru feel deeply gratified.
This sentence expressed a very high level of understanding, far beyond Shisui, Yashiro, Itachi, even Elder Yomokata and Clan Head Fugaku.
Shigenobu was not entangled in why the Third Hokage would treat them unfairly. Instead, he questioned why they had to suffer grievances.
The greatest highlight in his understanding was autonomy. He did not place the focus of solving the problem on others, but based it on what he himself should do.
"Haha, good question."
"Stripping away all appearances, we suffer grievances because our strength is not powerful enough."
"Little brothers, I ask everyone to shut their mouths, train hard, fight enemies with all your might in battle, and improve your strength step by step. One day, we will become powerful enough that no one can treat us unfairly."
"Pay attention. The strength I'm talking about is not merely hard power. It is also soft power—the power to make everyone in Konoha Village believe that our strength is greater than the Third Hokage's."
"Do you understand?"
Seeing all four shake their heads together, Uchiha Yoru laughed loudly. "If you don't understand, remember it in your hearts. Slowly, you will understand."
"That's all for today. Dismissed."
"Yes!" x4
…
Miwa Masayo watched the four Uchiha leave before jumping onto her litter-scooper's shoulder. She asked, "Yoru, are we setting out now, nya?"
Uchiha Yoru nodded and said, "Let's go. We're going to find the Evil God and play."
Leaving behind a shadow clone to handle daily matters, Uchiha Yoru and Miwa Masayo quietly returned to the Land of Hot Water and began wiping out the resurging cults, trying to search for traces of the Evil God.
There were thousands upon thousands of cults in the Land of Hot Water, but those truly backed by an Evil God were extremely rare.
In one week, Uchiha Yoru swept through half the Land of Hot Water and eliminated several dozen cult organizations, yet he did not find so much as a single hair of the Evil God.
Uchiha Yoru once again flattened a cult, captured its leader, completely hypnotized him, and even squeezed out the secret of how he wet the bed as a child before regretfully snapping his neck.
Miwa Masayo yawned widely and asked, "Another empty trip, nya?"
Uchiha Yoru sighed in disappointment. "Mm. Another pure fraud pretending to be divine. Looks like searching this way won't work."
"I also think it won't work, nya. The real Evil Gods seem very cautious. Like the group we found last time, they really were the ones who ran into our hands on their own."
Miwa Masayo said doubtfully, "I feel like Evil Gods are like mice being watched by cats. Every single one of them hides tightly."
Uchiha Yoru guessed, "It's possible they're hiding from the Sage of Six Paths' hunting."
"The Sage of Six Paths? You mean the Sage of Six Paths is still alive, nya?"
"Mm. He's living quite well in the Pure Land."
"Yoru, how do you know that?"
"Secret. Can't say."
"Then why do you think Evil Gods are hiding from the Sage of Six Paths, nya?"
"I guessed it from the origin of Susanoo."
"Nya?"
"Susanoo is the ultimate power dwelling within the Mangekyō Sharingan. It materializes enormous chakra into a towering war god for battle, an ultimate dojutsu integrating offense and defense."
Uchiha Yoru said seriously, "But I discovered that Susanoo's form and power essence are reflected from a mysterious source. And the feeling that source gives me is similar to the feeling the god we encountered last time gave me."
"But there are differences. The difference is that the Evil God is alive, while Susanoo's source is dead."
"I suspect that the Sharingan's ultimate power may be a divine body transcribed through chakra and ocular power, using a god's corpse as the template."
"If my guess is true, then Susanoo being called the power of a god is not exaggerated rhetoric, but a description of fact."
Miwa Masayo said blankly, "But… but that's all your guess, nya."
Uchiha Yoru said, "Yes. I'm working so hard to find a god precisely because I want to get confirmation from a god."
"If it can truly be confirmed, I want to create a source of divine power that is fully controlled and belongs only to me personally."
"For such powerful strength, I don't want to share it with anyone."
Miwa Masayo asked in confusion, "Yoru, why must you create it yourself, nya?"
Uchiha Yoru answered firmly, "Because the first person to possess the Sharingan was the Sage of Six Paths, and he still isn't dead. I cannot guarantee that he didn't leave a back door in Susanoo."
"If one day my interests conflict with this ancestor's, will my own Susanoo try to kill me?"
The tabby cat completely could not understand this kind of cowardly Dao thinking and could not help saying, "Yoru, isn't that being too careful, nya?"
Uchiha Yoru seriously refuted her. "Rika-chan, this isn't being too careful. This is called having far-sighted vision."
Miwa Masayo admitted defeat and changed the topic. "I can't argue with you, nya. But what do we do now, nya?"
Uchiha Yoru stood up, patted off the dust, and said, "I'm planning to go to the bounty station and see whether I can find clues from underground missions. If that really doesn't work, I'll simply spend money to buy intelligence."
"As wandering shinobi and rogue ninja operating in the shadows, they are the most likely to have intersections with real cults."
Naturally, Uchiha Yoru would not enter the bounty station with his real face.
First, he manipulated his muscles and distorted his facial appearance, turning into a fierce-looking man with a face full of rough flesh. Then he used the Transformation Jutsu to become an ordinary-looking middle-aged man. Finally, he used a bamboo hat and face covering to conceal his appearance.
After fully arming himself with disguises, Uchiha Yoru stuffed Miwa Masayo into his arms, then confidently entered the bounty station disguised as a casino.
The bounty station was essentially an underground shinobi guild, a channel for nobles to bypass hidden villages and purchase military force, supporting many rogue and wandering shinobi.
As time passed, the bounty station gradually freed itself from noble control and gathered enormous flows of capital as well as powerful free shinobi.
Even Iwagakure hired shinobi from the bounty station to assist its own shinobi in solving manpower shortages.
Thus, the bounty station flourished day by day and even showed signs of developing from a black-market platform into a semi-public sharing platform.
When Uchiha Yoru entered the bounty station, the packed crowd and noisy voices inside surprised him slightly.
[I didn't expect the bounty station to be this lively, nya.]
[I didn't expect it either, but it's quite reasonable.]
During the Shinobi World War, most of the Five Great Shinobi Villages' shinobi had been thrown into the war. Because they did not have enough manpower, they were forced to give up a huge mission market.
But the demand for these missions could not disappear automatically. It could only flow into the bounty station, hiring shinobi from small hidden villages and wandering shinobi they normally looked down on.
Just as Uchiha Yoru was checking mission details and carefully searching for clues related to the Evil God, Miwa Masayo suddenly scratched him with her little paw.
[Yoru, Yoru, look quickly! There's a bounty mission for you, nya!]
Uchiha Yoru's curiosity instantly rose to its limit. He slowly raised his head and followed the tabby cat's guidance. Sure enough, he saw his own bounty mission.
The bounty mission's description was actually very accurate.
Name: Uchiha Yoru
Alias: Corpse Burner
Identity: Konoha Jonin
Specialties: Fire Release ninjutsu, taijutsu, and genjutsu
Remarks: Possesses three-tomoe Sharingan, skilled at commanding shinobi units
Bounty: 700,000 ryo
Uchiha Yoru looked at the final piece of information several times. He even counted the zeros with his fingers and finally confirmed that it was indeed seven hundred thousand ryo.
Miwa Masayo said in surprise inside his mind, [Only seven hundred thousand ryo, nya? That's way too low!]
Uchiha Yoru did not care about the money itself.
The key was that his bounty price was only one-fiftieth of Asuma's.
Who were they looking down on?
Uchiha Yoru felt humiliated.
Who?
Who was this blind fool who thought such a tiny amount of money could buy his life?
Alright.
It could only be Kirigakure's Fourth Mizukage.
Was he blind, or was he deliberately insulting him?
Uchiha Yoru's expression became extremely ugly. Fortunately, layers of disguise covered him, so no one could see his livid face.
Without saying a word, he turned past this page and continued checking the details of new missions.
The bounty station was worthy of being an underground intelligence distribution center. Very quickly, Uchiha Yoru found many missions related to cults. Most of them involved kidnapping people and accidentally abducting members of noble or wealthy households.
These mission descriptions all contained relatively detailed cult information. Some even included specific locations, names of important figures, and photographs.
This greatly facilitated Uchiha Yoru's investigation, especially since the photographs had the greatest value.
These photographs were not taken by cameras, but were images replicated through ninjutsu, able to vividly convey a great deal of information.
For Uchiha Yoru, who had faced an Evil God directly once, he could directly see the characteristics of divine power infiltration from the photographs. Based on this, he could directly judge whether a person had come into contact with a god.
Especially those who had been directly possessed by a god. They were as conspicuous as coal lumps in a flour jar.
In only three hours, Uchiha Yoru locked onto three targets from the mission details. All three were confirmed cultists who had directly come into contact with divine power.
The missions related to these three cultists were not new missions. One of them had even been issued three months ago.
With such a long time, more than one shinobi had definitely accepted the missions, but they had failed to complete them.
They had been able to escape from shinobi without causing the missions to be upgraded, which meant they likely made the shinobi believe their mission failures were due to bad luck.
Of course, the weak gods of the shinobi world were actually very trashy. They could not possibly possess the power of fate or luck. The Sage of Six Paths also could not have defeated such high-level gods.
But being able to disguise things as luck still required extremely powerful information-gathering ability, as well as extremely precise manipulation of details. This clearly surpassed the scope of human capability.
It seemed it could also serve as evidence for the existence of divine power.
Just as Uchiha Yoru intended to continue and browse through all the missions, he saw a newly added bounty mission.
The mission target was actually the Fourth Mizukage, Yagura Karatachi.
And the price was one hundred million!
Even if Yagura Karatachi had the bonus of the Mizukage title, he should not exceed him by this much. This was more than a hundred times higher.
Moreover, who would place a bounty on a Kage?
Right now, there were only two sides directly hostile to Kirigakure: Kumogakure and Konoha Village. Only they had the confidence to directly put a bounty on the Mizukage without fearing retaliation from Kirigakure shinobi.
But Kumogakure was also poor and bitter. Whenever the Third Raikage earned any money, he invested it into ninjutsu research, ninja tool research, and shinobi training. He could not possibly spend one hundred million ryo on a bounty.
So it could only be Konoha Village.
And the only person capable of doing something this shameless yet meaningless was that idiot Shimura Danzo.
Just how much did Shimura Danzo look down on Konoha shinobi and Kirigakure shinobi?
He actually expected rogue and wandering shinobi to kill the Mizukage. His brain must truly be burned out.
Uchiha Yoru's mood became terrible.
One hundred million ryo.
Just wasted for nothing!
Why not give it to me?
Shimura Danzo, even if you had kept it in Root, that would have been fine. Later, I could go rob it. Although Root would still lose the money, that money would still remain in the hands of Konoha shinobi. No matter what, it would be meat rotting in the pot.
Uchiha Yoru no longer had any interest in browsing intelligence. He directly accepted the three confirmed C-rank missions, requested copies of the mission intelligence, and left the bounty station.
Uchiha Yoru did not use ninjutsu to leave quickly. Instead, he walked out of the casino at a normal pace. When he left the relatively prosperous town and entered the deserted wilderness, four masked shinobi surrounded him.
Seriously. I actually ran into such a boring trope too.
There's a recommendation today, so I'm using that as an excuse to add an extra chapter.
Also asking for monthly tickets while I'm at it.
Read 50 chapters ahead on P@treon -> [email protected]/SorenSwiftTL (replace @ with a)