Naka Territory
This was a small town under the domain of Uchiha Jōsuke, a daimyō of Naka. It had a population of several hundred and was ruled by a family of three Red-Eyes.
The town mayor’s family of three had all rendered meritorious service to Naka on the battlefield. His son, Uchiha Ryō, was even an outstanding student at the Iga Academy.
Most of the townspeople had once served the town mayor, Uchiha Kenga, back when he had been a wandering shinobi bandit. They were essentially a group of civilian bandits.
These people had simply joined Naka early enough to enjoy some of the benefits of the new era. Now, every one of them considered themselves superior to others.
They had no right to bear the Uchiha surname, but neither had they casually chosen surnames for themselves.
They all shared one little dream.
They wanted to capture a shinobi and break his legs, then establish a Shinobi Primary School like the one in Qingshui Town, so their children could eventually pass the entrance examination for the Middle Division of the Iga Academy, become a seated officer of the Thirteen Court Guard Squads, and perhaps one day earn the opportunity for their entire family to take the Uchiha surname.
Qingshui Town was a neighboring town. Its mayor was an educated man who had taken in several disabled shinobi and established a Shinobi Primary School to teach the children of the town.
The only problem was that he was somewhat lacking in human compassion. Despite being fellow people of Naka, he actually refused to let the people of Feishui Town send their children there to study.
This left the people of Feishui Town cursing their own mayor for being useless while spreading all sorts of scandalous rumors about Qingshui Town.
Those shinobi hadn’t really been taken in by the mayor of Qingshui Town, they claimed. Most likely, the powerful mayor had broken their legs and imprisoned them!
Hmph. Their own mayor really was useless. He couldn’t even capture a single shinobi.
If it weren’t for his son, who was studying at the Iga Academy and returned home during the summer vacation to teach classes, the villagers’ spit alone would have drowned the mayor.
Now, the reason they refrained from cursing their mayor wasn’t out of respect for him.
They were simply giving face to his son, Uchiha Ryō, the Vice-Seat of the Eighth Court Guard Squad of Iga.
After all, he was the most promising child for miles around.
The Iga Forty-Nine Halls had thirteen classes. Everyone wore uniforms consisting of black inner garments and white haori. The class leader was called the Captain, the class committee members were Vice-Captains, and the remaining students were ranked by academic performance as First Seat, Second Seat, and so on.
They called themselves the Thirteen Court Guard Squads.
And Naka Shrine was their spiritual court.
Uchiha Ryō had already obtained an exemption from the entrance examination. Once he graduated, he would be able to join the Shinsengumi.
That was an impressive achievement.
The people of Feishui Town took great pride in him.
The weather was pleasant today. The temperature was around twenty degrees, and the sun was shining brightly. It was perfect weather for going outside.
Taking advantage of the fine weather, the people of Feishui Town came out of their homes one after another. Some hung their clothes out to dry, while others turned over the grain from the autumn harvest.
The people of Naka casually tossed the grain around, sending kernels flying in all directions.
The refugees who had fled here, however, immediately dropped to their knees. They gathered the scattered wheat ears with both hands and respectfully piled them together, hoping that such a humble gesture might persuade the people of Naka to take them in.
Even unprocessed grain like this was enough to make the starving refugees drool.
Unfortunately, such behavior could not move the people of Feishui Town.
These people had all once been bandits, and they understood people like the refugees before them better than anyone.
The refugees had not suddenly risen up and attacked or tried to steal the grain simply because they were incapable of defeating them.
Anyone who could survive a journey from the Land of Rain, a land caught in the middle of four great powers at war, had not done so by being a good person.
The good people had already died along the road!
The people of Feishui Town were merely the lucky ones.
And these refugees were merely the unlucky people of Feishui.
That was why the townspeople absolutely could not show them any kindness. Everyone in Feishui Town understood people like themselves far too well.
The moment you showed even the slightest weakness, they would swarm over you like locusts and take everything you possessed.
The moment you pitied them even a little, they would use every possible way to act pitiful and exchange it for all your sympathy.
"Go away! Go away!"
The villagers waved their farming tools and drove the refugees away.
As for the wheat ears the refugees had gathered, the villagers did not even bother taking them back. They simply let the refugees carry them away.
The good life in Feishui Town belonged to everyone. They certainly couldn’t casually let a bunch of strangers from who-knows-where take a share of it.
And the root cause of this regional discrimination was entirely Kei’s fault.
Without his cheat-like system, Kei would have been a typical incompetent ruler. He was simply too concerned with his own enjoyment.
The life of a feudal lord was not nearly as pleasant as people imagined. Even something as basic as toilet paper had only become widely available after Kei gained his system and acquired points.
Before that, only shinobi could afford paper, and even their paper was extremely rough. The villagers used sticks.
In order to change this situation, Kei exchanged enormous quantities of supplies to satisfy his own selfish desires.
As a result, large quantities of processed foods flowed from Naka into various regions. Kei had more points than he could spend, so he used every possible method to make life resemble modern society.
Even without the internet or smartphones, at the very least, clothing, food, housing, and transportation had to meet modern standards.
Therefore, the people of Feishui Town did not rely on grain for their livelihood.
They had stable incomes and could buy all kinds of delicious food.
Feishui Town occupied an important national highway, so the bulk of its economy came from collecting taxes.
As the town mayor, Uchiha Kenga, put it:
"It’s not much different from robbing people like we used to. The only difference is that it’s legal now. Even a caravan from Konoha has to pay the proper taxes when it passes through here!"
With such enormous quantities of supplies flowing into various regions, and with money in the hands of ordinary people, Naka’s processed foods were even cheaper than grain.
They were so cheap that people farmed mainly so they would not have empty fields.
After all, they couldn’t let the land lie fallow. The lord would be unhappy if he saw that.
As for the harvest itself, how much money could it really make?
The markets were filled with all kinds of industrially produced canned foods, bagged rice, white flour, as well as the sugar and snacks children loved.
The income from running shops was enough to keep an entire family well fed, so farming had become more of a hobby for many people.
In Feishui Town, growing grain was mainly done to support livestock breeding—chickens, ducks, cattle, pigs, and so on.
Simply growing grain did not make much money. Raising livestock was more profitable.
Some people did not even care about the money and had begun cultivating all kinds of exotic flowers and plants.
This was common throughout Naka.
They simply occupied too much farmland. The lord sitting high above in the Divine Court always had a way to turn wasteland into farmland.
He also distributed all kinds of things that increased crop yields, resulting in Naka having no shortage of food whatsoever.
The cycle continued.
The wastelands that the daimyō had once looked down upon produced more and more. Supplies became increasingly abundant, and all kinds of rare products could be sold at high prices.
As a result, the lives of the people of Naka grew better and better.
Foods that had once existed only on the tables of nobles were now completely beneath the notice of Naka’s villagers.
The reason was simple: noble cuisine was far too bland. They were too stingy with the oil.
And without enough oil and nourishment, children could not grow properly. The children of Naka certainly could not become the dwarfish people found in other countries.
Yes, the people of Naka called everyone from other regions Wajin—"dwarfs."
Only the people of Naka were considered true human beings.
A small river separated two completely different worlds.
Across the river, the meal of a minor landowner consisted of miso soup, a tofu hot pot, a fish, and a bowl of rice.
That was already considered an extravagant meal for them.
But here, on the Naka side of the river, if today’s lunch did not include braised pork knuckle, the children would throw a tantrum.
The adults, who had once known hardship, looked down on such extravagance. But they could do little when their children complained.
After all, a box of canned pork knuckle was not even worth as much as a handful of dried sweet potatoes.
The disparity in living standards and the satisfaction of their respective ways of life increasingly separated the people of Naka from the Wajin.
Even the monkey kept by Lord Minonanki was considered nobler than a Wajin.
That was the consensus throughout Naka.
After driving away the Wajin, the villagers prepared to eat lunch.
Three meals a day were an ordinary part of life in Naka. And when people were in a particularly good mood, they would even have a late-night snack.
Compared with life here, the existence of a minor landowner who could afford only two meals a day seemed utterly dull.
The refugees left with bitter expressions on their faces while secretly laughing inside.
Another household had been fooled into giving them some food.
With just that bit of grain, they would not starve to death today.
Watching them leave, the people of Feishui Town merely sneered.
"They don’t even eat as well as my livestock!"
Passing through the area, Kei found the scene rather interesting.
The morning after that night, Tsubame had left, taking more than a hundred subordinates of her own with her to make a name for herself.
Kei had forcibly given her some additional manpower before he was willing to let her depart.
Watching Tsubame work hard to improve herself for the sake of their future together, Kei suddenly felt as though he were living off her.
What he did not know was that Tsubame had two reasons for orchestrating Oboro’s marriage and desperately seeking achievements that would allow her to stand beside Kei openly.
The first was exactly that.
The second—and far more important reason—was that she wanted to escape Granny Gen.
Kei’s embrace had nearly made Tsubame lose herself. As a young woman experiencing such things for the first time, she had yet to understand the joys of having freedom outside his protection.
The pleasure she had experienced had almost made her abandon her ideals and willingly become a canary in a cage.
After all, Lord Kei was more than capable of protecting her.
But when she thought of Granny Gen’s methods, Tsubame ultimately rediscovered her ambition to pursue her dreams.
Kei’s protection was one thing, but only having achievements to her name would allow her to stand tall without shame.
Otherwise, Granny Gen had plenty of ways to make Tsubame die of frustration.
Thus, after their one-night encounter, Kei was left alone with nothing to do.
To dispel his boredom, Kei decided to walk around his own territory.
After all, he wanted to build the ideal nation he envisioned.
Yet the women around him had repeatedly taught him one lesson through their actions:
Even people who shared the same ideals could have completely different ways of realizing them.
This made Kei wonder whether the Naka he heard about and observed from his lofty position was actually the Naka he envisioned in his heart.
He wanted to see it for himself.
Who would have thought that the moment he arrived in Jōsuke’s domain, he would encounter such an interesting scene?
"Has racial discrimination already taken root?"
◇ BONUS & SUPPORT
◇ 1 bonus Chapter for every 10 reviews — drop a comment!
◇ 1 bonus Chapter for every 100 Power Stones.
◇ Read 70+ Chapters ahead on P@treon → patreon.com/Sagamaster789