Chapter 539: How to Achieve Peace?
Compared to Naruto, Sasuke's demeanor was much more reserved. He just smiled faintly and said nothing.
But beneath those indifferent black eyes hid the same determination and will to fight.
Two boys, one as calm as water, the other as high-spirited as fire. Their outward appearances were completely different, but Haruno Sakura could tell that their thoughts were pretty much the same.
"Having confidence is a good thing. But also be careful not to be careless!"
Haruno Sakura stared into Naruto's eyes and said in a deep voice.
She rubbed the top of the boy's head. Naruto's hair was cut a bit shorter than before, looking more crisp and neat, and also pricklier.
Among the three, Naruto had executed the fewest high-level missions and had the least experience, which was also what Haruno Sakura was most worried about. He had always been called the number one unpredictable ninja by Kakashi, a title that was half praise and half criticism; sometimes this wonderful unpredictability was very useful when facing difficulties, but in this kind of extremely dangerous mission, Haruno Sakura would rather he be more steady and cause fewer accidents.
It was gratifying that after following Jiraiya to gain experience for more than two years, Naruto had become much calmer.
He had grown up.
"I understand." His expression was solemn, and he nodded seriously.
The dinner that followed was probably the last hearty and delicious hot meal the three could eat in the next few days.
As the saying goes, those living on a mountain live off the mountain, those living near water live off the water. Although the coastal Mist Ninja Village was not as rich in supplies as Konoha and couldn't gather a sumptuous banquet to entertain distinguished guests, the dinner here wasn't coarse tea and plain rice either. Delicious fish soup, fresh and huge sea shrimp, and an adequate supply of seafood allowed the inland Konoha visitors to enjoy a good meal.
"When we came, I heard you say, Sakura, that Mist Ninja Village is very poor, but it doesn't look that bad now." Naruto said indistinctly while eating heartily.
"At least the food is pretty good."
In terms of enduring hardships, he had followed Jiraiya up mountains and down to the sea over the past two years, eating in the wind and sleeping in the dew, passing through many poor and remote places, much harder than Haruno Sakura and Sasuke who had stayed in the village all along. Although the latter's work was dangerous, Konoha was extremely prosperous, so much so that their daily treatment in Konoha could be considered enjoyment compared to most areas on this planet.
"Mist Ninja Village is one of the five great villages after all, no matter how poor, it won't be that poor." The girl glanced at him and said lightly, "Just entertaining us with a meal of local seafood products, it's not like they can't even afford this."
"Mm hmm." Sasuke buried his head in dealing with the crab in his hands, casually nodding in agreement a couple of times.
He was also very interested in seafood—right outside his door was the Naka River, and he often ate bonito flake rice balls when he was young. The current seafood feast suited his appetite perfectly.
"The seasoning is average, but it wins in the freshness of the ingredients, it's a delicacy even without dipping sauce." After sucking up the crab roe, Sasuke slowed down and began to comment admiringly while handling the white, tender, and crystal-clear crab meat.
He raised his head and happened to see Haruno Sakura sitting upright, a faint smile on her face, her plate and cup clean and tidy, her posture very elegant and unhurried—you know, when eating a seafood feast heartily, no matter how much attention you pay to posture, you will more or less get a bit messy.
Sasuke was slightly stunned, noticing that among the three, only Sakura hardly touched her chopsticks.
"You're not eating?" The black-haired boy asked while chewing crab meat.
"I'm not interested in seafood." Haruno Sakura smiled slightly.
What's amazing is that in her previous life, she was also born in a coastal area, but the sum of two lifetimes couldn't make Haruno Sakura generate any strong appetite for seafood.
Naruto obviously couldn't understand this. In his worldview, this table of seafood, even without seasoning and only roughly processed, was top-grade delicious food. He completely didn't understand why Sakura, whose sense of taste was normal, wouldn't be interested in this delicious food, just as he never accepted that there were people in this world who liked to eat salty tofu brains.
"It's very delicious, Sakura, try some." Naruto enthusiastically handed over a freshly peeled shrimp stick, "Didn't you say, ninja can't be picky eaters!"
You know, in many places he visited over the past two years, ordinary commoners might find it hard to eat such food in their entire lives. He sympathized with those people very much, but couldn't help them; and what principles lay behind this, Naruto also couldn't figure out.
"Uh... thanks." Haruno Sakura raised her delicate eyebrows and helplessly ate it.
"I'm not a picky eater. I just don't like eating it, it doesn't mean I hate eating it." After finishing, she shrugged and explained, "If I wanted to eat these, it's just a matter of a Water Release and a fishing net."
"...That's true." Naruto scratched his hair and gave a silly laugh.
"This is not a problem at all for Water Release ninja. During the fishing season, a single round trip might yield hundreds of thousands of catties of catch!" Sakura sipped her fish soup and continued, "So no matter how poor Mist Ninja Village is, feeding themselves and entertaining us isn't a difficult problem."
And this didn't even count the artificial breeding part.
She paused and looked at the two seriously: "In short... don't think of Mist Ninja Village as a weak and easily bullied small ninja village just because they need our support!"
Sasuke buried his head in his dinner, didn't speak, and secretly curled his lip.
The little fox frowned and thought for a while, suddenly asking: "Since Mist Ninja Village can feed itself and isn't afraid of being invaded by other countries, why do they still fight wars?"
"Hm...?"
Sasuke stopped his chopsticks, Haruno Sakura put down the fish soup in her hand, and both looked at Naruto.
It was rare for him to ask such a deep question.
"Yeah, why?" The black-haired boy also showed a puzzled expression.
The girl was somewhat surprised and pursed her lips.
"...What is the root cause of war?" She also asked herself under her breath.
This question was not that easy to answer. In both the Earth of her previous life and the Naruto world of this life, war and peace were eternal problems for humanity. Even on Earth with a higher level of civilization, after the smoke of World War II cleared, small-scale wars still occurred frequently—in fact, from the end of WWII until now, humans had only had 26 days completely without war. And in the Naruto world, a new round of World War was approaching them at a visible speed.
"Most statements say it's because of people's inflated desires... Humans won't be satisfied just by filling their stomachs; every country and ninja village hopes to get more resources, land, and population. These things cannot be obtained by peaceful means..."
Haruno Sakura weighed her words and said slowly.
"Hmph, the deep-rooted bad habits of humanity... insatiably greedy, desires difficult to fill." Sasuke sneered and commented.
"But just saying this, I feel it hasn't deeply penetrated the core of the problem, a bit superficial." The girl continued.
Some also say war stems from population growth and hunger... that's the view of the Malthusian school on Earth. Or from the perspective of historical materialism, it occurs when sharp opposition appears between the three classes of ninja, peasants, and nobles (landlords) with the development of private ownership, leading to oppression and the oppressed.
But indiscriminately applying these theories from her previous life to the Naruto world would also cause problems. Just like applying Communism in China also requires considering the national conditions, becoming Socialism with Chinese characteristics... ahem.
Simply put, the social models of the Earth world can often be simplified into binary oppositions: slaves and slave owners, peasants and landlords, workers and capitalists, etc., but in the Naruto world, ninja, commoners, and nobles are a ternary opposition, unable to be further simplified. Forcibly dividing them into a superpowered class (ninja) and a mortal class (ordinary people composed of commoners and nobles) or a ruling class (ninja plus nobles) and a ruled class (commoners) for analysis would only produce a bunch of fallacies. Because these three are opposed to each other, but in the confrontation, cooperation between two to deal with the third frequently occurs; for example, when squeezing the citizens, commoners will find that ninja and nobles are in the same gang, and when ninja villages ask daimyos for funding, the daimyos and nobles will feel that the ninja, who act superior just because they have chakra, are not their kind, and the commoners who let them ride roughshod over them look more pleasing to the eye. As for when a ninja village loses a battle and has its funding deducted by the daimyo, it's another look... under different scenarios, the relationship between the three is complex and complicated. From a mathematical perspective, a two-body problem is clear and solvable, while a three-body problem is complex and chaotic, generally having no analytical solution. So analyzing deeply, what exactly is the root cause of war, the answer to the problem is really not that simple.
For Haruno Sakura herself, she of course had her own thoughts and ideas, but she wouldn't express them to the two of them here and now.
"So I don't know the answer either."
After analyzing a whole lot, Haruno Sakura, a liberal arts scum, finally concluded righteously.
"Anyway... the standard answer is to fight for resources, right?" Sasuke glanced at Naruto, who looked a bit dizzy from listening, turned his head and said to Sakura.
"Yeah!" Naruto finally heard a familiar sentence and hurriedly echoed, "That's what the Third Hokage-sama said!"
Haruno Sakura shook her head.
"That is the purpose of war, not the root cause of war." She stirred the cooled fish soup in front of her, looked at the two, and said calmly.
Sand Ninja Village and the Land of Wind had always longed to get rich and rainy land, and the Land of Earth and the Land of Lightning also envied the large flat plains of the Land of Fire; wars broke out to fight for land and grab expansion space. This answer was standard and correct enough, but the girl felt it didn't delve deeply enough into the essence.
Sasuke and Naruto frowned tightly, looked at each other, and simultaneously gave up thinking.
"Alright then..." The black-haired boy sighed and said, "Then what is the correct answer?"
Haruno Sakura smiled faintly.
"I said, I don't know either. However, what the correct answer to the problem is isn't important, what's important is learning to think about this problem..."
"I hate using my brain the most." The little fox pouted and said, "And it's not our turn to worry about this kind of thing, let's just not think about it!"
For a hot-blooded idiot, this kind of problem was truly too out of syllabus.
The girl fiercely grabbed Naruto's hair and glared at him: "Idiot! Don't you want to be Hokage? As Hokage, it is necessary to think about these problems!"
"But these are too complicated."
Naruto responded with a bitter face.
"Then is there a more concise and clear answer? For example..." He scratched the back of his head and asked, "A method to achieve peace in just a few simple steps?"
A method to achieve peace simply?
What a big tone. Billions of people in two worlds have longed for peace, yet peace has never truly been achieved.
But in the Naruto world...
Haruno Sakura thought for a moment and chuckled lightly: "There actually is a simple method."
"Only need two masters of the First Hokage level to appear again, working together to express the desire to maintain world peace, then wars will no longer break out between ninja villages..."
At least back in the day, when Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha were alive, no ninja village dared to provoke disputes.
A powerhouse with absolute strength might be able to deter the whole world, forcing people to suppress the restless desires in their hearts, right?
The girl just said this jokingly, but Naruto and Sasuke nodded thoughtfully.
"Alright, alright!" Haruno Sakura finally smiled, "Think about these things slowly, there's no need to give an answer right now. Let's focus our attention on the mission first!"
A night passed without words.
Early morning, Haruno Sakura woke up on time.
After simply washing up, when she walked out the door, Naruto and Sasuke had already gotten up and were packing the equipment for the trip.
"You're awake." Sasuke bit a bandage in his mouth, carefully wrapped it around his calf, tied a knot forcefully, and then raised his hand to greet her indistinctly.
"Hn."
The girl responded faintly, her gaze sweeping over the shurikens, kunai, and other ninja tools arranged neatly on the table, as well as the already neatly packed belt, and the black sealing formula on Sasuke's wrist, and nodded.
"You guys are ready too..."
"Then, let's set off."