Houses themselves weren't worth much, especially in a world like Naruto where supernatural power existed. For ninja, throwing up a batch of livable houses in a short time was ridiculously easy.
But was the Leaf really selling worthless houses?
What Haru was selling was the Leaf's future.
It seemed Shikato's perspective still hadn't fully opened up yet. Haru let out a faint sigh.
"Shikato, you know how profitable shops in the Leaf's commercial center are right now, don't you?"
"If the Leaf announces that it's going to build the most profitable and safest commercial district in the ninja world on that empty land, with residential areas, hospitals, entertainment centers, and everything else around it..."
"Would you buy a house or a shop there?"
Shikato nodded without even thinking about it.
He understood the commercial blueprint Haru had been drawing all along.
In the future, the Leaf would become the ninja world's factory, using technological advantages and cheap labor to seize the wealth of the entire world. Every coin it earned would belong to the Leaf itself, without even needing to pay taxes.
The daimyo didn't have the nerve to ask the Leaf for taxes anyway.
Opening a shop in the Leaf's commercial center meant opening a shop in the most prosperous district in the entire ninja world. If someone still couldn't make money there, then they deserved to stay poor forever.
Buying a house to live in worked the same way. Complete supporting facilities, food, entertainment, everything in one place, and on top of that, it was prime real estate. Buy it and just wait for it to rise in value.
"Well, there you have it."
"As long as the Leaf can write a good proposal, then even if we just stick a sign into an empty field, those rich merchants and nobles will line up to hand us money."
"We can collect the money first and do the work afterward."
Haru's words made everything click for Shikato.
This was basically empty-handed wolf trapping.
"Isn't that a little... bad?"
Shikato hesitated.
Not long ago, he had still been a ninja who honestly took missions and earned commissions. Now the Leaf badly needed a new district because its floating population had grown too large, and a huge expense that should have come straight out of the Leaf's pocket was suddenly going to be funded with other people's money.
He still wasn't used to it.
"What's bad about it?"
"The parasites of the Land of Fire are so desperate to settle in the Leaf because they want to jump ship and become the Leaf's dogs. This time, I'm showing mercy by giving them the chance."
Shikato fell silent.
Hokage-sama's words were rough, but the logic was solid.
By now, he had already seen Haru's ambition clearly.
Hokage-sama felt a little cold and wanted to change into a different set of clothes.
"Hokage-sama, brilliant."
Shikato immediately chose to support the idea with both hands and both feet.
There was no point trying to talk Haru out of anything once he had made up his mind.
"Then let's get started."
Building a new district comparable to the Leaf's current urban area involved far too many considerations. Construction sites, labor allocation, infrastructure, everything needed careful planning.
Haru waved his hand and sent Shikato off to prepare a full proposal.
Shikato nodded, feeling somewhat bitter inside. He was about to start another brutal stretch of work. Ever since following Hokage-sama, the amount of business he had to handle kept growing. He was constantly staying up through the night making plans, and more and more hair was falling out.
But it really did make money.
Haru had never been stingy with the people under him. By now, Shikato had already earned enough for three lifetimes of retirement.
So this was the pain of making too much money.
This was another enormous project worth tens or even hundreds of billions. The Leaf's new district wasn't just going to be some cheap scrap pile of houses slapped together with a few Earth Style techniques. Electrical systems, underground drainage, the Leaf's defensive barrier, all of those were difficult issues.
After more than ten days of nonstop work, day and night, Shikato and his team finally produced a draft proposal. From site selection to construction, manpower allocation, and even the details of the new district's defensive barrier, everything had been thought through carefully.
Haru looked it over, found no real problems, and approved it.
Once everything was ready, all that remained was to wait for the big fish to enter and throw money around.
The Leaf's propaganda machine started up again. Within just a few days, people were already lining up at the Leaf's real estate office to pay deposits.
The parasite nobles naturally didn't lack money to buy houses. They sent people over very straightforwardly to line up and pay. For them, it was more a gesture of goodwill than anything else.
Daddy Leaf, please accept my kneeling submission.
The parasites bought entire sections at a time, spending with a level of extravagance that was almost unbelievable. Haru even started to think he had priced the properties too low. Just the nobles alone covered most of the construction funds.
Of course, what they were buying were the premium locations. The rest of the more ordinary areas were being reserved for commoners, and the prices there were much lower.
Even if they still couldn't afford it, Haru thoughtfully provided loans. With the miserable wages they earned in the sweatshops, all they had to do was work for twenty years and they'd be able to pay the whole thing off.
The Leaf earns the money, and the Leaf spends the money.
Not a single coin gets taken home.
This was the Leaf's blessing.
At the very least, after laboring for the Leaf your whole life, you could live out twenty stable years and even own a house in the Leaf. If you got lucky, you might even start a family, and then the next generation could repeat the same blessing all over again.
"How wonderful..."
"Everyone's face is overflowing with smiles. This must be the blessing Hokage-sama was talking about."
Over the past few days, Ashi had followed Haru all over the Leaf, from the sweatshops all the way to the new district's construction site.
Although everyone's hands were constantly busy and even their meals were squeezed into the shortest possible breaks, the light in their eyes was dazzling.
Ashi had fought wars his whole life. He was an old-school ninja who had walked out of the Warring States era, someone who had always wanted to make the Uzumaki Clan prosper and grow stronger.
So he had humbly asked Haru for the secret behind the Leaf's current flourishing condition. Since his little brother Ashi was so eager to learn, Haru of course had no problem enthusiastically explaining it.
Unfortunately, most of what Haru said sounded like strange nonsense to Ashi. Capital, productivity, and all sorts of new terms left him completely lost.
Still, after several days of watching and thinking, Ashi felt he had started to understand a few things.
Haru had given these people stable work. He had given them enough food to eat. He had even given them a chance to buy a home of their own.
And not some cheap wooden shack either.
The houses were made of poured cement. To attract ordinary people into buying property, Haru had even specially made a model home. It was a complete break from the crude wooden houses that could be eaten through by insects. The walls were coated smooth and white, the interior was neat and clean, and the whole place came with a full electrical setup. Every room had lighting.
The design was compact and attractive. Although the space was a little small, only one bedroom and one bathroom, just enough for one person to live in, and although the price was just a tiny bit high, requiring almost a lifetime of labor to pay off, there really wasn't much to complain about.
To the overworked cattle of this era, it was practically unbelievable.
Wars, noble exploitation, natural disasters, and every other kind of misery had already numbed the people of the ninja world. The First Great Ninja War had only made it worse, scattering refugees everywhere while wealth rushed even faster into the hands of the upper class. They had already been conditioned to the point where just giving them food was enough to make them call someone a benevolent lord.
Haru had gone after the nobles, stripped away the wealth they had accumulated over decades and centuries, then turned it into massive infrastructure, factories, jobs, and food.
Who dared speak badly of Haru now?
Even the lower-level ninja of the Leaf had started drifting away from their proper duties, abandoning missions and joining the civilians in actual labor.
That was no small thing.
In the past, ninja had been full-time killing machines. They only knew how to carry out missions and earn commissions. Whoever the client wanted dead, they went and killed.
Now they were beginning to participate in production and construction as well.
That was naturally the result of Haru's deliberate guidance. The idea of turning ninja toward production had always been his own policy, and he had truly been willing to pour money into it.
Education, in particular, had benefited enormously from the parasites' fat wallets. It was because they had fed the Leaf so well that Haru had the funds and ability to carry out large-scale reforms in education.
Now the ninja academy was once again enrolling students in large numbers, but this time Haru had already implemented an educational separation system.
Those with real combat talent followed the old path.
Those who were untalented, the sort who would only ever reach genin level and maybe cast one or two Fire Style or Earth Style techniques before topping out, were sent directly to construction sites to pour concrete instead. Even as genin, their physical ability far surpassed ordinary people.
Chakra was the real dividing line between ordinary people and ninja. Even a lowly genin who could refine chakra could run across walls and leap through trees like a monkey. Ordinary people simply couldn't do that.
Even if the job was just hauling bricks at a construction site, the difference was obvious. An ordinary person could only carry one or two stacks of bricks at a time. A genin could carry at least three.
That was the gap.
Of course, there weren't many ordinary people with the talent to refine chakra in the first place. In other villages, if they found seedlings like that, they would use them whether they had real talent or not, drag them all to the battlefield, and give them a few turns there. None of them could afford to be so extravagant as to send them to construction sites instead.
Only a village with truly solid financial strength could make this work.
And money was exactly what Haru had.
And if it wasn't enough, then he could just go slaughter more pigs.
The Land of Fire had plenty of fat pigs anyway. Even if too many got slaughtered at once, he could always wait a while and raise them up again.
"Hokage-sama, can the Uzumaki Clan achieve this too?"
Ashi's eyes sparkled.
The Uzumaki Clan wanted to progress together with the Leaf too.
Oh, you want progress?
Absolutely not.
The Uzumaki Clan should just join the Leaf directly. Why did they need to "progress" on their own?
Of course, that was only what Haru thought inside. There was no way he would say it out loud.
"Of course you can."
"The Leaf's advanced experience can't really be explained clearly in just a few sentences, which is exactly why the Leaf prepared the exchange student program for the Uzumaki Clan."
"As for the Uzumaki Clan, we'll do our utmost to teach them. We'll hand over all the secrets behind making a village prosperous and powerful. It won't take..."
Haru smoothly began painting another grand picture for Ashi, so vivid that Ashi almost wanted to rush straight back to the Uzumaki Clan and pack up all their young seedlings to send to the Leaf at once.
"Break time. Lunch is ready."
A loud shout interrupted the conversation between Haru and Ashi. Without realizing it, it was already noon.
Haru had originally planned to bring Ashi back to one of the Leaf's high-end hotels that specialized in entertaining foreign guests, but Ashi insisted on dragging Haru along to eat boxed lunches at the construction site instead. He wanted to experience the daily life of the people.
Well... it wasn't even really a boxed lunch.
The site manager called over the cooks and had the day's meal brought out onto the tables.
It was all black protein blocks.
This was Tobirama's latest research product. Insects were naturally high in protein, and the protein blocks in Snowpiercer had all been made from cockroaches. The insects Tobirama and the Aburame Clan had cultivated contained even more protein than cockroaches did.
The only thing that had cost Tobirama a tiny bit of time was the actual method of processing them into protein blocks.
Recently, the Aburame Clan had been raising these insects on tree bark, weeds, kitchen waste, and even straight-up garbage. Their greatest strengths were that they weren't picky, grew large, and reproduced quickly.
The protein block factory had already started production, and now these workers were serving as the first batch of testers.
"How does it taste?"
Haru knew exactly what the raw material was, and for psychological reasons, he hadn't actually tried a single bite yet. Ashi, on the other hand, knew nothing and directly bit into one.
"It's kind of sticky when you chew it. There's a lot of moisture in it. Not really much flavor."
After hearing that, Haru also bit into one. The taste was basically exactly what Ashi had described. As long as you didn't know the raw ingredients were juicy giant bugs, it was actually a decent food.
Two or three blocks were enough to fill an ordinary person up. With a little side dish, it counted as a perfectly acceptable lunch.
After all, in the past, they often had nothing at all.
"Isn't that Hokage-sama?"
Haru wasn't wearing his ceremonial robe today, just ordinary clothes, and there wasn't even an Uchiha crest on the back. Still, someone recognized him anyway.
One stone stirred a thousand waves.
The workers all around the site, each of them eating protein blocks, suddenly turned toward Haru.
Most of the laborers working on the Leaf's construction sites were refugees who had come to the Leaf seeking a living. Many had previously worked in the sweatshops. But because the construction sites paid better than the factories, the men had all moved over to construction work.
The women, having less physical strength, stayed in the factories.
Then when the construction shift ended at night, the men would go back to the sweatshops for a night shift, working until midnight before finally heading home to sleep.
Electric lights really were a wonderful thing.
Haru walked toward the workers and raised a hand in greeting. Instantly, a thunderous wave of cheers exploded.
"How are things going for all of you in the Leaf?"
"Can you all eat your fill?"
"Have you all bought houses in the new district yet?"
Haru fully transformed into the image of a considerate great leader, asking after the workers' food, clothing, and housing.
A rough-looking man at the front grinned stupidly, then answered loudly.
"Hokage-sama, we can eat our fill in the Leaf now. Working in the factory lets us earn wages too."
"And I already bought a house in the Leaf too. Took a twenty-year loan. I'm building my own home now, and my son got lucky enough to get into the school Hokage-sama opened."
As the rough man spoke, his eyes started turning red.
Now life had hope in it. As long as he kept working hard, sooner or later things would get better.
"Hokage-sama, long live!"
"Long live..."
The man's shout set off another wave of cheers from the crowd.
Haru stood among them, bathed in the midday sunlight, his whole figure seeming to shine.
Ashi, standing to the side, was so stirred that he couldn't even speak.
So this was the Hokage of the Leaf?
Absolutely terrifying.
(End of Chapter)
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