"From your expression, it seems you truly cannot understand my plan to popularize Kekkei Genkai, Shisui."
Rei took a small sip of tea and looked at Shisui's deeply shaken face with a half-smile.
"Are you also one of those boring people whose soul has been bound by the family glory created by Kekkei Genkai?"
"But is that not what Kekkei Genkai are?"
Shisui frowned deeply.
His young face was filled with both confusion and doubt.
"Should Kekkei Genkai not be power that is carefully protected as a clan's and village's trump card? If everyone has a Kekkei Genkai… would it not become easier for enemies to seize?"
"But by the same logic, because the number of people who possess the Kekkei Genkai increases, the ways to use that Kekkei Genkai will also become more diverse. Development of its abilities will become deeper. Exploring the upper limits of that bloodline will also become easier… Ah, thank you."
Rei politely thanked the shopkeeper, who personally brought the food over.
Then he placed the extra-sweet and unsweetened dishes in front of himself and Shisui respectively before continuing.
"Besides, using Kekkei Genkai only as weapons to kill enemies on the battlefield is far too wasteful."
"For example, the Byakugan is very suitable as standard support for medical-nin. While improving their perception and chakra control, it also allows them to see a patient's injuries more clearly and treat them more accurately. Of course, in fields like surveying and mapmaking, the Byakugan should also be quite a useful auxiliary tool."
"As for the Sharingan, its ability to copy ninjutsu makes it very suitable for teaching and ninjutsu development. Although Sharingan holders are more prone to acting emotionally, chakra itself is the combination of spiritual energy and physical energy. Being a little emotional is not necessarily a bad thing."
"As for the Dead Bone Pulse, unfortunately, I have not yet found a method that allows the bones I create to exist long-term in another person's body without causing serious rejection. Otherwise, matters like regenerating severed limbs could already be put on the agenda."
"And abilities like Ice Release and Lava Release go without saying. One could think of a pile of uses with eyes closed. For example, the nobles of the Land of Earth and Land of Wind, far inland, should be willing to open their wallets generously for high-quality seafood transported from the Land of Water in a fully chilled state."
Shisui blinked.
He had originally thought he would hear ideas from Rei about further applying the Byakugan and Sharingan to warfare.
But what surprised him was that Rei spoke instead of applying all kinds of Kekkei Genkai found in the Land of Water, including the Byakugan and Sharingan, to production and daily life.
These ideas were not only novel.
They also opened a brand-new door before Shisui's eyes.
While making him realize that Kekkei Genkai were not only weapons for fighting and killing, they also made him unconsciously feel a trace of goodwill toward Rei that absolutely should not exist.
"Why… would you think about strange things like this?"
After the initial shock passed, Shisui came back to his senses.
Looking at Rei, who was happily eating a skewer of sickeningly sweet three-colored dango, he asked with complicated feelings, "Why would someone like you, born in Kirigakure—the village that praises violence more than any other—think about things so out of place with Kirigakure's atmosphere? Things that have no meaning for war or improving your own strength?"
"Because if everyone thinks only in the way shinobi think, this world will never become peaceful."
Rei swallowed the dango in his mouth.
Then he pointed with the skewer at the merchants closing their stalls outside and the pedestrians passing by.
His tone was calm.
"The profession of shinobi cannot separate itself from violent matters like war, schemes, and assassination. As long as shinobi remain the mainstream of this world, then to maintain their own existence, they will never allow true peace to arrive."
"Only by giving people who possess chakra possibilities beyond becoming shinobi can this world gain the possibility of true peace. They need respectable, stable, abundant work with a future even without fighting. They need to survive and live without relying on violence."
"Only then can peace exist without depending on any single individual. Only then can it become something people spontaneously maintain."
"To unify the shinobi world and establish my order, I must train a large number of bloodline shinobi for my use. Correspondingly, once war ends and peace arrives, I also have the duty to find paths forward for those who no longer need to fight."
Shisui lowered his head and began wolfing down the sweets in front of him.
He had to do something to suppress the panic in his heart.
And to suppress that strange admiration that absolutely should not exist or sprout.
If Rei were the kind of person who only knew how to crush all opposing voices with violence, using that to make others submit to him and achieve superficial peace, Shisui would not actually be so afraid of him.
Because Shisui knew violence would always lose to greater violence.
A false peace achieved through violent suppression would one day nurture a new power strong enough to completely overthrow that violence.
But Rei's thoughts about possibilities beyond being a shinobi provided what seemed to be a fairly good answer to the question Shisui had thought about bitterly yet never solved.
For Shisui Uchiha, who had started thinking about peace and the future of shinobi at an early age, this was no different from a punch striking straight into his soul.
It smashed a hole in the wall of his heart, the wall he had built with his love for Konoha and the Uchiha clan to resist external erosion and influence.
Watching Shisui wolf down food while cautiously glancing at him from the corner of his eye from time to time, the corners of Rei's mouth could not help lifting into a smile of successful planning.
If one wanted to turn an intelligent person with an entirely different position, firm will, and noble beliefs into one of their own, the most effective method was not to do everything possible to satisfy their material needs.
It was to place a book filled with one's own thoughts before them and let them carefully read and observe it.
The smarter a person was, the harder it was for them to turn a blind eye to truth.
And persistence in pursuing a noble ideal was enough to make them decisively abandon their attachment and loyalty to a decaying motherland, standing beside oneself without regret.
This was knowledge Rei had learned before transmigrating, from reading that grand and turbulent stretch of modern history.
Although he did not think his shallow thoughts, theories, and logic could be called truth, nor that they were qualified to shine across eras like those predecessors and inspire generation after generation without regard for national borders, compared to the Will of Fire, which had gradually changed flavor and grown hollow through inheritance and was itself insufficiently complete, they should still be quite attractive.
This was also one advantage of Kirigakure.
Because there had never been a core ideology beyond respect for the strong, no matter what thoughts or concepts Rei, as Mizukage, wanted to promote, Kirigakure's people would not feel too much resistance when accepting them.
And as long as he remained in power long enough, these ideas and concepts that sounded strange at first would slowly become Kirigakure's spiritual foundation.
They would deeply mark every Kirigakure shinobi with his imprint.
They would turn Kirigakure into a radiant lighthouse utterly different from all other shinobi villages.
Then he could more efficiently absorb shinobi from other villages who longed for peace and answers, drawing them under his command and quietly dismantling from within the fortresses they had painstakingly built through bitter thought.
Just as Rei was thinking about how much more influence he would have to apply to Shisui to completely break down his heart's defenses, mobilize his initiative, and make him willingly become a capable subordinate under him, an inconspicuous puff of smoke exploded beside his hand.
Then a small white snake holding a scroll in its mouth appeared inside the smoke.
"Hm? Using the Reverse Summoning Technique to contact me?"
Rei clicked his tongue.
"Nagato, that guy… After dragging things out for so long, has he finally recognized that Kumogakure and Sunagakure will not ransom those two Kekkei Genkai shinobi and decided to sell them to me?"
Rei took the scroll from the white snake's mouth and threw it a soft, chewy dango as payment.
Then he casually opened the scroll, intending to see what reply Nagato had written him.
And then, he saw a short line written in unfamiliar handwriting he had never seen before.
"Will you be one of the choices?"