Uchiha Yoru created three shadow clones and sent them off to patrol and stand watch, while he himself sprawled out beneath the shade of a tree and fell fast asleep.
After a fierce but short battle, followed by a storm of his own making, and still no shinobi had come to investigate after several hours, that was enough to prove there were no shinobi active in these nearby waters.
With Yoru's understanding of the various hidden villages, at the very least, no powerful shinobi belonging to any village would appear here within the next twelve hours.
As for rogue shinobi with no allegiance, they were usually weak. Real experts were rare among them, and they posed no threat to him.
The only exception was Kakuzu, the bounty hunter. But that man was obsessed with money. To avoid wasting effort, he would never kill a shinobi with no bounty on their head. Since Uchiha Yoru carried no bounty, there would be no intersection between the two of them. So after putting basic vigilance in place, he slept without concern.
In the depths of that heavy, pitch-black sleep, Uchiha Yoru slowly woke up.
But almost immediately, he understood.
He was having a lucid dream.
That kind of dream where you clearly know you're dreaming, but still can't wake up.
Uchiha Yoru did not panic, because he knew lucid dreams were a perfectly normal phenomenon. Usually, when the body was exhausted but the mind remained overly stimulated, people were more likely to enter that kind of dream.
This morning, he had gone through lightning tempering. His body had repeatedly swung between destruction and rebirth. Even though he had recovered in the end, the fatigue accumulated in the process was terrifying.
At the same time, successfully breaking through into a new stage of foundation building had brought a mixture of joy, excitement, and unease, pushing Uchiha Yoru into an unusually heightened state. Only after eating and drinking his fill had he finally felt a level of exhaustion he could no longer resist.
In this condition, he perfectly met the requirements for a lucid dream.
After confirming the situation, Uchiha Yoru laughed in delight.
To be able to have this kind of dream now—his luck was truly unstoppable.
The owner of a lucid dream could think normally and, with himself at the center, do anything he wanted.
Of course, if what he wanted to do was something from reality, then it would only be imagination in the end. When he woke up, it would still have only been a dream.
But if what he wanted to do concerned the mind itself, then it was absolutely real.
And the advantage of lucid dreams didn't stop there.
Thought had no sense of time.
So long as the dreamer didn't fall asleep again within the dream, he could remain there indefinitely, doing anything he wished. No matter how much time passed within the dream—even a thousand years or ten thousand years—when he finally woke, only an instant would have passed in reality.
The only problem was that lucid dreams, like sudden enlightenment, were things one could only encounter by chance.
Since he had been lucky enough to run into one today, if he failed to seize this heaven-sent opportunity to resolve the hidden dangers in his mind, then he, Uchiha Yoru, would be the number one fool under heaven.
Truth be told, Uchiha Yoru's path of cultivation had been going fairly smoothly so far.
But only he himself knew how many hidden dangers had been buried within his mental world, and how many secrets lay concealed there, unknown to anyone else.
After this breakthrough, many of those hidden dangers had begun to surface.
For example, his fourth heart-aspect had appeared in his mental world not long after the breakthrough, yet even now it still had not fully taken shape.
That was obviously a problem.
But he had no idea what exactly was causing it.
Perhaps it was the presence of Xiao Ke, that foreign monster, disturbing his spiritual world.
Perhaps it was because lightning-aspect natural energy was too lively, destabilizing the heart-aspect.
Or perhaps it was because he himself had not clearly determined what lightning meant. After all, the heart-aspects were manifestations of his own heart. When contradictions filled the deepest part of his mind, the heart-aspect would naturally be affected as well.
In any case, the power of the fourth heart-aspect continued to grow, but it was like a shapeshifter, its form constantly changing, never able to settle into stability.
For the moment, that caused no obvious problem.
But if it were left to develop unchecked, it would absolutely disturb the balance between the heart-aspects, and from there spread into the balance among the various natural energies. At some point in the future, it would trigger the most terrifying kind of crisis and ultimately lead to Uchiha Yoru's death.
Now that he had entered a lucid dream, he had unlimited time.
He could examine his heart bit by bit, resolve the contradiction in his understanding between lightning and wood, and perfect the position of the fourth heart-aspect.
Yes.
Uchiha Yoru had already understood that the problem lay with himself.
He had already confirmed that the Five Elements did not exist in the shinobi world, yet his traditional understanding of Wood still kept interfering with his judgment of lightning.
This was a textbook case of an obstruction of understanding.
There had been a similar issue before, between Wind and Metal.
But in the shinobi world, wind-aspect natural energy shared quite a few similarities with Metal in the traditional Five Elements—sharpness, killing intent, purification, and descending suppression.
And the difference between them was also easy enough to understand. Metal was restrained and still, while wind was agile and ever-changing.
Relying on those similarities, along with the clearly distinct differences, Uchiha Yoru had more or less accepted wind taking the place of metal, and in his mental world had shaped the third heart-aspect, Feifei.
But between Wood and lightning—
Did they share even a single real common point?
If he had to force one, then yes, both represented vitality to a certain degree.
But the vitality of wood and the vitality of thunder were not the same thing at all.
And because of that, Uchiha Yoru simply could not accept lightning replacing and occupying the position of Wood.
That was why the corresponding fourth heart-aspect could not stabilize.
After who knew how long spent sorting through his thoughts, Uchiha Yoru finally found the problem.
That realization alone let him relax considerably.
It was enough just to find the problem.
What was truly frightening was not knowing where the problem lay. That was the kind of situation where one had strength but nowhere to apply it. Once the issue was found, no matter how hard it was to deal with, there would always be a way to solve it.
And the solution itself was actually simple.
He needed to completely discard Five Elements theory, rebuild a new theory of natural energy attributes suited to the shinobi world, and, based on that entirely new understanding, reconstruct his comprehension of power itself. Only then could he determine the form of the fourth heart-aspect and complete the final step of his third breakthrough in the Foundation Establishment stage.
Within the lucid dream, Uchiha Yoru began hypnotizing himself.
He did not use Sharingan genjutsu, because genjutsu targeted the physical body, and the body belonged to the real world. Changing that in a dream would be useless.
What could be altered in a dream was the mind, memory, and understanding.
So the method he chose to reshape himself was learning and research.
Using those two incomparably painful tools of mental reconstruction, he slowly ground away his superstition toward Five Elements theory.
Yes.
Superstition.
In certain worlds filled with spiritual energy, Five Elements theory might be a metaphysical truth.
On Blue Star in the age of the end of Dharma, Five Elements theory was superstition.
And in the shinobi world, where chakra filled everything, Five Elements theory was superstition too.
If a theory could accurately explain the world, it was truth.
If it could not, it was superstition.
Uchiha Yoru tortured himself through endless learning, slowly rebuilding a worldview in which the Five Elements were superstition within the shinobi world.
As that learning stretched on through a span of time too long to measure, he redefined the five attributes of natural energy in the shinobi world, and confirmed the relationships between them—cyclical restraint, but not cyclical generation.
From the moment he rebuilt his worldview, the attributes of natural energy acquired new names.
They became the Five Spiritual Natural Energies.
For now, this existed only within Uchiha Yoru's mind.
But as the pioneer of the entire system, as his strength continued to grow, his worldview would eventually come to overwrite the worldview of every immortal in the shinobi world.
Uchiha Yoru's study within the lucid dream went on for who knew how long.
By the end, he was exhausted to the limit.
His eyelids felt as heavy as Mount Taihang and Mount Wangwu, and his willpower was no longer enough to sustain him.
If this had not been a dream, exhaustion of this level would have killed him.
Uchiha Yoru knew he no longer had the strength to do anything further.
But being able to successfully rebuild his worldview already left him deeply satisfied.
How difficult was it to rebuild one's worldview?
He had thought he understood before.
Only now did he finally truly understand.
If it weren't done in a lucid dream, using an immeasurably long stretch of time to wear it down little by little, then the only other way would be to shatter one's worldview completely and rebuild it from scratch.
As the old saying went, it was easier to change a kingdom than a person's nature.
A person's worldview could practically be treated as their very nature. To destroy it required true and overwhelming force.
The force of an advanced civilization could do it.
For example, that lighthouse nation, inheriting the very essence of capitalism and feeding on the wealth of Blue Star for a hundred years, had constructed a civilizational high ground that no doubt shattered the worldview of countless rabbits.
The force of a sage's thought could do it too.
The thoughts of the saints through the ages, once spread, were themselves a large-scale process of reshaping worldviews.
And finally, the force of fate could do it as well.
In this world, there were always fragile and sensitive weaklings who, when faced with the tragic fate of life and death, separation and loss, would have their worldview utterly broken.
In other words, the Uchiha clan truly produced a remarkable number of spiritual weaklings.
Darkened, collapsed, broken people appeared one after another among them, yet because of their collapse, their bloodline granted them terrifying power.
[No wonder the Second Hokage was convinced that the Uchiha bloodline itself was evil.]
In the lucid dream, Uchiha Yoru finally drifted into an almost comatose sleep.
When he woke in reality, the very first thought in his head was actually criticism of his own clan, and that left him feeling deeply annoyed.
[What Senju Tobirama said does make a certain kind of sense, but if the Uchiha are branded by that sentence, then doesn't that make them sinners burdened with original sin from birth? That absolutely won't do.]
[I am Uchiha. Even if I argue from the perspective of my own backside, I still have to overturn that statement of Tobirama's.]
But then Uchiha Yoru thought of Madara, Obito, Itachi, Setsuna, Shihou, and the others, and could only scratch his head and sigh.
"That's going to be a long and difficult road…"
"What's going to be a long and difficult road, nya?"
Miwa Masayo had woken up as well. Stretching lazily, she asked the question in a sleepy voice.
Uchiha Yoru had no desire to discuss that subject with her, so he said instead, "Nothing. The timing's just about right. Let's go watch the sunrise."
"We already watched it yesterday, nya."
"Then I'll teach you a cultivation method for watching the sunrise."
"Okay, nya."
All the sleepiness vanished from Miwa Masayo at once. She jumped onto Uchiha Yoru's shoulder and asked eagerly, "What cultivation method is it, nya?"
"It's called drawing in Dawn Purple Qi."
"I don't get it, nya."
"In the instant just before the sun rises, there will be a brief moment when purple qi surges between heaven and earth. At that time, if you circulate your own power and open your mouth to take a deep breath, you can absorb a little of that purple qi."
"That sounds amazing, nya. What does it do, nya?"
"Can it make me run faster, nya? Can it make me live longer, nya? Stay young, nya?"
"...I don't know."
"Nya?"
Uchiha Yoru shrugged helplessly.
"Dawn Purple Qi is too faint. You only absorb a tiny amount each time, so I still don't know what its exact effects are."
Miwa Masayo immediately understood.
"So your intuition told you it was something good, nya. I trust your intuition, Yoru. If we both absorb purple qi together, will we interfere with each other, nya?"
"I don't know that either. We can try and see."
"Okay, nya."
For the following month and more, nothing else happened to Miwa Masayo and Uchiha Yoru.
Every morning, they woke up to draw in Dawn Purple Qi and watch the sunrise. In the mornings, they each trained their bodies. At noon, they enjoyed lavish seafood meals. In the afternoons, they each cultivated their own immortal arts.
At night, Uchiha Yoru sometimes developed forbidden techniques, and at other times reflected on the inspiration he had received while teaching the genin of the study group.
As for Miwa Masayo, every night she tried to absorb moonlight.
In the stories Uchiha Yoru had told her, the yao race relied on moonlight to awaken the bloodline of their ancestors and become incomparably powerful.
Unfortunately, all her attempts failed.
That only proved once again that this was another immortal tale that belonged firmly in the category of superstition.
...
And while the two of them enjoyed their regular, leisurely reclusive life, Kirigakure—who had declared war in a hurry earlier but then shown no real movement—finally began to mobilize.
Kirigakure had originally been formed mainly by ninja clans expelled from the Land of Fire. That loose coalition of losers huddling together for warmth had, from the start, suffered from a structural inability to centralize power.
Kirigakure's performance in the previous two great developments of the ninja world had not actually been poor. That was because the First Mizukage and Second Mizukage had both been strong enough to subdue the various clans through sheer personal strength, using their own prestige to conceal the village's flaws.
But the Third Mizukage lacked the necessary strength and prestige. So the problems within Kirigakure were exposed completely.
Ever since declaring war on both the Land of Lightning and the Land of Fire in October, they had done little but argue over whom to attack and where to strike.
The strong clans could not persuade one another. Whenever the Third Mizukage tried to offer an opinion, he was met with collective resistance from the clans. And so Kirigakure continued to bicker all the way to the end of the year, until finally, through Genji's coordination, they managed to reach a preliminary consensus.
Attack the Land of Fire.
Throughout the decision-making process, the Third Mizukage had been deliberately ignored by the major clans, including the Yuki clan.
They were intentionally stripping the Mizukage of his authority.
After two generations of rule under powerful Mizukage, they had long since grown tired of sacrifice. The elite shinobi painstakingly raised at great cost by their clans would obey the Mizukage's commands and die on the battlefield. That was simply too great a loss.
Why should it not be shinobi from some other clan who died instead?
Kirigakure's performance in the previous two wars had given these clans a false impression. They believed that even without a strong Mizukage, they themselves could perform even better in war—winning more, losing fewer shinobi.
If the Mizukage could do it, then so could they.
No—
They could do it better.
The Third Mizukage actually thought the same.
And that was what deeply troubled him.
He feared that once those large clans gained more military merit through war, Kirigakure might truly split apart.
With worry weighing on his heart, he said to Genji, "The Kaguya clan, the Hozuki clan, and the Yuki clan all have their own agendas. If we don't weaken them, then Kirigakure's future will be division."
"Third Mizukage-sama, you should know that Second Mizukage-sama had already made plans long ago. Through the ninja academy, he intended to raise civilian shinobi and balance the power of the three great bloodline clans. Do you now have a new idea?"
"Genji-sama, I know Konoha's academy system has been very successful, but Kirigakure is different."
"We simply don't have that much money."
As an island nation, the Land of Water had the weakest economy among the Five Great Nations. In fact, it was even poorer than the Land of Wind.
As a result, the support the daimyo could provide to Kirigakure was extremely limited.
When the national economy was weak, commerce could not thrive.
And with weak commerce, Kirigakure could not receive many missions.
That meant they simply had no money to invest in education.
"We only produce fifty genin a year. This year there's only Zabuza. And among the talented ones, the best still come from the clans. At this rate, when will we ever achieve Second-sama's objective?"
"The facts have already proven that Kirigakure cannot walk Konoha's path. We need a new way of thinking."
"Third Mizukage-sama, you've also seen the terrible impact that the Bloody Mist policy had on the ninja academy. We only just managed to use the Zabuza incident as a reason to end that policy. Are you planning to implement it on an even larger scale?"
"Yes. The new Bloody Mist policy will target the three great bloodline clans directly. It will focus on weakening them and paving the way for smaller clans like the Terumi clan and the Hoshigaki clan to rise."
Genji had no way to refute the Third Mizukage.
The harm the three great clans had brought to Kirigakure was too great. Almost everyone understood that they needed to be weakened.
In fact, the Second Mizukage had been born from the Hozuki clan, while the Third Mizukage himself was from the Yuki clan. Yet after becoming Mizukage, both had worked to weaken the great clans—including their own.
That alone proved that even the elites within the three great clans understood this truth.
It was simply that each person's position was different, and, as always, where one sat determined how one thought.
In the end, Genji agreed to the Third Mizukage's plan.
Because of the peculiar way Kirigakure had been founded, he was unable to foresee what would come next—
That once killing began, it could no longer be stopped.
At least, not by ordinary people.
But there was one man who had personally lived through slaughter and therefore could foresee it.
After Genji left, that man appeared inside the Mizukage's office.
And the dignified Mizukage paid him no notice at all.
Watching Genji's departing figure, he softly said, "Then let the slaughter begin from Kirigakure."
"Only by destroying the three great bloodline clans can I better seize control of Kirigakure."
"Only then can I release enough powerful rogue shinobi into the world and create even greater chaos."
"Only by first destroying the village order Hashirama created and weakening the Five Great Villages can I take the tailed beasts from their hands, revive the Ten-Tails, carry out the Infinite Tsukuyomi plan, and then…"
"...save the shinobi world."
Cough cough cough cough—
Suddenly, he began coughing.
The coughing grew more and more violent until he bent over completely, specks of blood splattering from his mouth. Only then did he stop, breathing in ragged gasps.
A dark figure rose from the floor and asked with concern, "Madara-sama, your body is getting weaker and weaker. You must return to the base as soon as possible."
"I know!"
Uchiha Madara wheezed heavily, speaking with difficulty. "But I can't go back yet! Once I return, I'll never be able to leave again. So before I go back, I have to place the deepest possible hypnosis on the Three-Tails."
"Only after making the necessary preparations can my successor control the jinchuriki and continue destroying Kirigakure."
"Have you found the Three-Tails' location?"
"I have."
"Then let's go."
"We'll finish this step, then return to the base… and wait for my successor."
"Please follow me."
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