Uchiha Yoru was not even breathing hard.
With just three Sage Arts, the greatest engineering difficulties involved in constructing the reservoir—as well as the problem of filling it with water—had been solved.
After marveling at what he had seen, Tobirama Senju became curious about how Yoru planned to deal with the next stage: excavating canals and completing all the detailed construction work.
Would he solve those with ninjutsu or senjutsu too?
Uchiha Yoru took a deep breath and said,
"The next technique is something I've never used before."
"If something goes wrong, you're not allowed to laugh at me."
He clasped his hands together.
Chakra surged violently.
Natural energy mixed into it.
Then Sage Art was activated.
Sage Art: Wood Release: Deep Forest Emergence
It was still the same familiar routine.
The earth trembled.
Great trees erupted from the ground.
In an instant, the barren mountain terrain transformed into a lush primeval forest.
Tobirama Senju gave Uchiha Yoru a strange look.
He had already seen this brat use Wood Release.
He had also witnessed his Sage Arts.
There was nothing surprising about this.
But then Tobirama saw Uchiha Yoru forming hand seals!
That meant Deep Forest Emergence was only the prelude to the real technique.
The true move came afterward.
More importantly, Uchiha Yoru had never formed hand seals in front of him before.
No matter what ninjutsu he used, he normally just waved a hand or snapped his fingers.
Even large-scale techniques only required him to clasp his hands together.
What kind of technique could possibly force this brat to use hand seals?
Tobirama Senju's curiosity immediately reached its peak.
He focused completely on Uchiha Yoru's every movement.
At the same time, because Yoru had released such an enormous amount of natural energy, Miwa Masayo had been forced to "eat" far too much.
She had no choice but to leave his shoulder to avoid stuffing herself sick.
Sage Art: Sea of Tree Men
A tremendous force suddenly erupted.
Within Tobirama Senju's perception, an extremely complicated technique structure—one riddled with errors—actually activated.
It creaked and groaned as it began operating, linking the newly grown primeval forest to some mysterious existence.
The sea of trees began to sway.
The sound of twisting wood echoed across the heavens.
The great trees within the forest began intertwining with one another.
Two or three trees would twist together.
Sometimes three or five.
Then they transformed into tree men of wildly varying forms.
These tree men came in three standard heights: four meters, six meters, and twelve meters.
Their numbers of arms and legs, as well as the lengths of those limbs, also varied greatly.
Some tree men had an absurd number of legs.
Their structures resembled spiders or even centipedes.
At a glance, they were obviously designed for transportation work.
Other tree men had exceptionally thick bodies and enormously powerful arms.
With a casual sweep, one of them dug a huge chunk of stone straight out of the ground.
Tobirama Senju effortlessly recognized that all these tree men had been created specifically for construction.
But their transformation was not yet complete.
From beneath their feet, soil began crawling upward.
It wrapped itself around their wooden bodies and formed structures resembling armor.
It was precisely these earthen structures that amplified the tree men's mysterious connection, making it clearer and stronger.
Then the tree men divided themselves into groups.
They began working in an orderly fashion.
Their division of labor was precise.
Their coordination was flawless.
Some refined the details of the dam.
Some excavated spillways.
Some dug connecting canals between the reservoir and the river.
Others searched for leaks throughout the dam and sealed them.
Tens of thousands of tree men of various sizes densely filled the construction site.
Yet not a single collision occurred between them.
The speed of construction was astonishing.
Uchiha Yoru stood blankly for a moment before lamenting,
"Damn it. I didn't control the chakra quantity properly."
"I made too many tree men."
Tobirama asked,
"If there are too many, then there are too many. Won't construction simply go faster?"
Yoru shook his head.
"It'll certainly be faster here, but there are more than two thousand construction nodes across the entire Land of Demons."
"My strength can't sustain this level of output everywhere."
"Next time I need to be careful."
"A thousand tree men per site should be enough."
"They can work on their own anyway. There's no need to rush. They can just spend a little more time slowly finishing the job."
Tobirama Senju was shocked.
"What did you say?"
"These tree men don't require you to control them personally?"
Uchiha Yoru answered as though it were obvious.
"Of course I'm not controlling them."
"How could I possibly manipulate tens of thousands of tree men at the same time and make them work?"
"If I tried controlling ten at once, everything would already become a mess."
Tobirama instinctively pressed,
"How did you do it?"
Uchiha Yoru tilted his head and did not answer.
Tobirama immediately understood.
This had to involve one of Uchiha Yoru's deepest secrets.
At minimum, it belonged to the category Yoru liked to call, "too advanced to be conveniently demonstrated."
And indeed, control on such a precise and massive scale was obviously one of a shinobi's most fundamental secrets.
If Sunagakure's puppet masters possessed this level of ability, then one person would not merely count as an entire squad.
One person could count as an entire nation.
And not some small country either.
A great nation on the level of the Land of Wind or the Land of Fire.
This was fundamentally different from Hashirama Senju creating forests and manipulating branches, trunks, and roots to attack.
Hashirama's method primarily relied upon Wood Release's natural aggressive tendencies.
Most of the time, every individual branch and root was not personally directed by Hashirama.
But now, tens of thousands of tree men were performing coordinated tasks with clear divisions of labor.
If their assigned duties were changed from construction to combat, they could truly wage war against the shinobi forces of an entire village.
And there was a very real possibility they would dominate in direct battle.
A shinobi village might be forced to abandon conventional warfare entirely and resort to guerrilla tactics, gradually weakening the tree men before having any chance at victory.
Tobirama Senju sucked in a cold breath.
Then he thought about the replenishment rates of the two sides.
Even though he was already dead, a chill still ran through him.
When a shinobi village lost one shinobi in battle, it took roughly twelve years to raise a replacement.
But if one of these tree men was destroyed, Uchiha Yoru only needed to spend a portion of chakra and another one could stand up immediately.
Even if tens of thousands of tree men were wiped out in a single battle, it would not mean much to Uchiha Yoru.
He could recreate them whenever he pleased.
After all, when he had just created tens of thousands of them, he had not shown the slightest sign of being heavily burdened.
This brat had truly reached the level of a one-man army capable of opposing an entire shinobi village.
He had risen to the same height as Hashirama Senju and Uchiha Madara.
Excavating an artificial canal 127 kilometers long, 250 meters wide, and three meters deep would be an enormous national project for an ordinary country.
It would normally require years upon years of continuous work.
But before Tobirama Senju's eyes, tens of thousands of tree men working together completed the entire canal in less than an hour.
White water surged down the channel.
Eventually, it merged into the natural river and rushed toward distant lands.
Ahead lay tens of thousands of mu of farmland tormented by drought, as well as tens of thousands of impoverished people.
When this abundant water reached them, their lives would undergo earth-shaking changes.
Because the Miko and the shrine officials had notified them in advance, those farmers would know that this was a miracle.
A miracle bestowed by the great deity worshiped by the Miko.
A miracle granted by His Majesty the Heavenly Emperor.
Faith born from hope amid suffering would become an enormous source of support for the Heavenly Emperor, raising His power to another level.
And Uchiha Yoru, as the Heavenly Emperor's Chosen, would become even more invincible.
Looking at the endlessly surging water, Tobirama Senju was filled with emotion.
At the same time, his rational mind began working.
A massive weight dropped heavily onto Uchiha Yoru's side of the scales.
On the opposite side, Hiruzen Sarutobi was finally lifted high into the air.
A decision was made.
[Hiruzen Sarutobi... can no longer remain in power.]
[I need to find a way to remove that foolish disciple as quickly as possible. Only then can the village's safety be guaranteed.]
[Because now, Uchiha Yoru has already become part of the village's "big picture."]
[Tsunade. I need to meet Tsunade again and settle this matter.]
[We'll follow Uchiha Yoru's plan. The Third Hokage must retire as soon as possible, the Fourth Hokage must take office quickly, and Uchiha Shisui should be taken in as a disciple.]
[Right. That child is Uchiha Kagami's grandson. Very good. That is truly excellent.]
[Ideally, there should be no bloodshed.]
[But if it truly becomes unavoidable, bloodshed is not unacceptable.]
Suddenly, Uchiha Yoru's voice interrupted Tobirama Senju's thoughts.
"I'm changing locations."
"Second Hokage, are you coming with me, or are you going back to wait at the Miko Shrine in the Land of Demons?"
Tobirama's waist hunched over once again.
He tucked both hands into his sleeves and lazily said,
"I've already been shocked enough."
"I'm tired."
"I'm not following you around to watch anymore. I'll go back and wait for your news."
"Fine."
Uchiha Yoru then looked toward the tabby cat.
"Rika-chan, are you full yet?"
Miwa Masayo opened her mouth and burped.
Depressed, she said,
"I'm stuffed. I need to go back and digest properly, meow."
The tabby cat looked somewhat dejected and discouraged.
"Yoru, your strength is increasing too fast now, meow."
"I'm starting to feel like I can't keep up anymore, meow."
Seeing the little cat's eyes filling with tears, Uchiha Yoru smiled and pulled her into his arms to comfort her.
He whispered,
"Don't worry."
"I've already obtained something good."
"Once we return, I'll figure out a way to process it using that cauldron."
"I'll definitely turn it into a pill you can safely consume."
"It should help you take a huge step forward."
Miwa Masayo's eyes instantly lit up.
Brilliant light of hope flowed through those sparkling eyes, making them as beautiful as a galaxy.
She excitedly confirmed,
"Really, meow?"
"I'll be waiting for your good stuff, meow!"
Uchiha Yoru smiled.
"When have I ever lied to you?"
"Hmph!"
Miwa Masayo raised one little paw.
Five plum-blossom-like toes spread apart, then curled back one by one.
She complained,
"You've lied to me before."
"At least three times, meow!!"
[Oh no.]
[The little cat is getting smarter and smarter. She's getting harder to fool.]
[No, wait.]
[When did this little cat learn to keep accounts? Terrifying.]
Uchiha Yoru's smile did not change.
He rubbed Miwa Masayo's head and said,
"Don't worry. I definitely won't lie to you this time."
The tabby cat became comfortable under his rubbing.
She voluntarily rubbed her head against her human's hand and happily said,
"Okay, meow."
"I believe you, meow."
"I'll wait for you, meow."
After thoroughly petting the little cat until she was completely satisfied, Uchiha Yoru sent Miwa Masayo back to their nest beside the barrier lake through Flame Leap.
Only then did he greet the sky-gazing Tobirama Senju before leaping into the air.
In the blink of an eye, he disappeared beyond the horizon.
Over the course of one full day and night, Uchiha Yoru visited every construction node throughout the Land of Demons.
There were 2,231 construction nodes across the entire country.
A day had twenty-four hours.
That meant 1,440 minutes.
Including travel time, Uchiha Yoru spent less than forty seconds at each construction site.
His speed could only be described as divine.
Every time he reached a construction node, he used Wood Release to create a primeval forest.
Then he used Wood Release: Sea of Tree Men to transform that forest into tree men of various sizes.
Finally, he covered every tree man with a thick layer of earthen puppet armor.
Then the tree men began working.
Throughout the entire process, Uchiha Yoru did not even stop moving.
He merely slowed down slightly.
As he flew past overhead, he completed every step of the operation.
By the time the tree men began organizing themselves into work teams, he had already accelerated again and vanished into the distance, hurrying toward the next construction node.
In a single day, he created hundreds of thousands of tree men.
Following Tobirama's blueprints, they truly completed the Land of Demons' national infrastructure project within forty-eight hours.
But Uchiha Yoru also experienced unprecedented exhaustion.
Since completing his Hundred-Day Foundation Establishment, this was the first time he had once again tasted what it felt like to be utterly drained.
His head throbbed and swelled.
His vision blurred.
Extreme fatigue caused all kinds of discomfort.
Neither chakra, natural energy, nor even divine power could eliminate it.
He could only endure.
Fortunately, everything had finally been completed.
Uchiha Yoru had pushed himself this hard and worked himself into this state not because of the bet he had never actually made with Tobirama Senju.
He had no choice.
Because he was not the one controlling those tree men.
The entity controlling them was the divine-power server he had modified from Mōryō.
Originally, the time Tobirama Senju spent researching the divine-power sealing formation and the Hall of Heroes was supposed to be Uchiha Yoru's rest period.
But while Tobirama conducted his research, he repeatedly asked questions about economics, politics, government, civilization, and related subjects during his breaks.
From Tobirama's subjective perspective, these were merely half-hour leisure sessions after eight hours of intense work, used to relax his mind.
But in the real world, those questions came one after another without pause.
So Uchiha Yoru simply gave up on resting.
He immersed himself in the Purple Mansion world, sat upon the golden dragon throne inside the Divine Court, gathered divine power and faith, and began modifying Mōryō.
By the time Tobirama Senju made major breakthroughs in his divine-power research, Uchiha Yoru had also completed a deep reconstruction of Mōryō.
He took advantage of the fact that Mōryō possessed a soul but lacked consciousness and transformed it into a divine-power computer for the Purple Mansion world.
Mōryō's chaotic essence was not actually a problem.
In his previous life, Uchiha Yoru had known that within any chaotic system, as long as fixed rules of change were introduced, even the most extreme chaos would eventually produce stable cycles after enough evolution.
Once the first stable cycle appeared, Mōryō would irreversibly begin moving from chaos toward order.
Using those stable cycles, Uchiha Yoru constructed foundational logical rules.
He easily remodeled Mōryō and created a stable computational structure within its soul.
He was not a computer science specialist.
He knew even less about developing artificial intelligence.
But in this supernatural shinobi world, especially inside a spiritual realm like the Purple Mansion, a chaotic system born from what had originally been a super-life-form could solve problems through the power of "I reckon this should work."
He did not understand the underlying mechanism.
But that did not prevent the function from being realized.
It was simply that unreasonable.
Relying on intuition, Uchiha Yoru achieved the functionality he wanted.
The earthen armor wrapped around the tree men was not actually protective equipment.
It was a signal amplification system.
Through the structure of those earthen puppets, the tree men could receive signals from the Mōryō Supercomputer.
Under the supervision of the Mōryō Supercomputer, the combination of tree men and earthen puppets could precisely carry out construction according to the blueprints.
Thus, Uchiha Yoru completed a technique that left Tobirama Senju profoundly amazed.
Wood Release: Sea of Tree Men was not truly a single technique.
It was an enormous engineering system capable of constructing an entire nation.
At the same time, it was also a weapons system capable of destroying one.
The only problem was that the Mōryō Supercomputer was not stable enough.
After all, it had been born from an even larger chaotic system.
When each rule operated independently, their fixed cycles were stable.
But once many rules combined together into a computer system, each became a new variable affecting the others.
Countless fixed cycles gradually began collapsing.
In other words, whenever this stable-order supercomputer system output orderly results to the outside world, chaos simultaneously eroded it from within.
Eventually, its internal order would gradually collapse.
The time required for chaotic erosion to completely destroy the computer system was approximately fifty to fifty-five hours.
Afterward, the rules would re-form stable cycles from within the chaos.
Those fixed cycles would once again assemble into logical rules.
Eventually, the original supercomputer system would rebuild itself.
Because it had repeatedly undergone collapse and reconstruction under accelerated soul-time, the chaotic system seemed to have developed some form of memory.
Although the time before collapse had not increased at all, its recovery time had fallen from more than ten days to only one day.
And that recovery time was still shortening.
In short, the Mōryō Supercomputer was currently a very useful but unreliable semi-finished product.
Unfortunately, Uchiha Yoru had no idea how to improve it.
He could only hope that after enough cycles of operation, collapse, and restoration, some form of mechanical consciousness would eventually emerge.
Put another way...
Perhaps only after a machine spirit was born could the divine-power computer finally be completed.
At this point, Uchiha Yoru genuinely regretted not studying computer science properly in his previous life.
Back then, those skills would have been useless to him.
But who could possibly know what might become useful in their next life?
When Uchiha Yoru returned to the Miko Shrine in the Land of Demons, closed his eyes, and rested while waiting for the newly constructed temple to be completed and the divine-power sealing grand formation to begin operating, his "subordinates" finally arrived.
He was already utterly exhausted.
His head was buzzing.
Then six people surrounded him and started bombarding him with questions.
Naturally, Uchiha Yoru's mood became terrible.
Because of that, he failed to notice that Tobirama Senju's Edo Tensei body had undergone a major change.
Not only had its chakra reserves decreased by a large amount, there were also spatial fluctuations around him that had yet to fully settle.
If Yoru had noticed in time, he would have been able to deduce that Tobirama Senju had used the Flying Thunder God Technique.
And he had crossed an absurdly enormous distance.
Yoru might even have guessed that the Second Hokage had gone to find Tsunade.
Of course, there was no way he could have guessed what Tobirama had done after finding her, or what the two had discussed.
In truth, Tobirama Senju's conversation with Tsunade had been fairly simple.
He told Tsunade that Uchiha Yoru's strength had already surpassed imagination.
He might now possess power comparable to that of the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju.
Then Tobirama clearly expressed his extreme dissatisfaction with his disciple, Hiruzen Sarutobi.
He demanded that Tsunade return to Konoha and help force the Third Hokage to end his term as soon as possible, allowing the Fourth Hokage to take office.
Everything Tobirama Senju said instantly sobered the drunken Tsunade.
She was completely dumbfounded.
Stammering, she said,
"B-But... I don't want to become Hokage."
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