Whether the news was true or not, to the two Konoha salarymen—the fired contestants from the Interrogation Division and the men whose usual job was guarding the village gates—it was nothing more than a joke.
But to Uchiha Itachi, it represented an entirely different possibility, one capable of overturning his entire understanding of life.
As the broadcast continued, a voice kept surfacing in the depths of Itachi’s mind.
What if...?
What if, just what if, all of this were true?
What a wonderful world that would be for the Uchiha.
The others couldn’t understand what this meant, but Itachi could.
Every word of the broadcast hinted that another real world existed on the other side of the transmission.
Could this represent another possibility?
Another possibility in which the Uchiha could actually exist?
A Konoha ruled by the Uchiha.
A Konoha where everyone loved and respected the Uchiha.
It was a possibility that young Itachi had never even dared to dream of.
The reason young Itachi was known for possessing a "Hokage’s mindset" wasn’t merely because Konoha’s higher-ups had deliberately praised and elevated him.
Even when he was young, he had been able to infer the direction of Konoha’s political situation from the public news broadcasts.
In other words, he could hear the hidden meaning behind the news.
Other people listened for entertainment.
Itachi listened for what lay between the lines.
Even when he heard reports from the distant past, young Itachi could discern the information hidden beneath them.
For example, when the First Shinobi World War ended, a coup by the shinobi of the Land of Lightning had spilled over into Konoha and resulted in the death of Konoha’s Second Hokage.
It was an old piece of history by the time Itachi was young.
Whenever members of the Uchiha Clan spoke about it, everyone in Konoha focused only on their anger.
But Itachi could hear something else.
He could hear the backlash caused by declining national strength.
Without the First Hokage, Konoha had already begun its decline.
Then there was the Second Shinobi World War.
Konoha had launched it under the banner of avenging the Second Hokage.
Yet after the war ended, Konoha proclaimed itself one of the victors.
When Itachi compared that claim with the reports coming from throughout the shinobi world, however, what he saw was exploitation of the smaller nations by the great powers.
All Five Great Nations had emerged from the Second Shinobi World War as victors.
The countries that suffered were the small nations surrounding them.
The Five Great Nations had already begun to decline, so they used the war to drain resources from the nations around them and bought themselves several decades of peace in return.
And now the Third Shinobi World War had ended as well.
Konoha had obtained the status of a victorious nation by effectively surrendering to the Land of Earth.
The entire Land of Fire celebrated as though it had won a glorious victory.
But Itachi understood just how weak Konoha had become.
Konoha no longer possessed the strength to fight another major external war.
He had been born in this village.
He loved this village.
But he also understood that this village could no longer afford to keep throwing itself into pointless struggles.
The people at the top were compromising everywhere simply to survive.
The wealthy and powerful shinobi clans were transferring their assets elsewhere.
The common people, intoxicated by propaganda proclaiming Konoha’s supposed strength, proudly believed that Konoha was the number-one village in the shinobi world—the master of the entire shinobi world.
The ideals that had existed when the village was founded had already been reduced to empty slogans.
The Uchiha, who had been among the heroes who built Konoha in the first place, had instead become the legacy of the leaders’ erroneous ideology—a hidden source of internal unrest that could be exploited by counter-revolutionary forces, bringing catastrophe upon Konoha, the Land of Fire, and the various shinobi clans.
And those Uchiha, who had been labeled a "hidden threat," hadn’t even figured out who was truly their enemy and who was their friend.
Instead, they behaved like children who had simply decided to give up.
Their attitude seemed to be:
Since you think we’re a threat, then fine—we’ll become the threat you say we are.
Unable to even understand the basic principles of construction and development, they continued farther and farther down the wrong path.
Compared with all this misery, the Land of Fire led by Nanga on the other side of the broadcast might have sounded as though it was surrounded by enemies on all sides.
Yet the confidence in those broadcasts was something Konoha couldn’t even compare with.
Konoha merely talked about victory while being unable to produce any achievements worthy of a victor.
The Uchiha on the other side were actually directing the course of the world.
Having understood all of this, Itachi’s heart let out an endless cry of anguish.
I could have endured the darkness if I had never seen the light.
Something inside the boy had changed.
Before the Konoha "dregs" hanging there could properly digest everything they had heard, a lazy male voice suddenly replaced the news broadcast.
"Hello? This is Uchiha Kei. Can you hear me?"
The instant that voice sounded, all of Nanga erupted.
The moment they heard it, the busy people of Nanga stopped what they were doing.
Body Flicker Technique, aerial movement techniques, Space-Time Ninjutsu...
In an instant, everyone converged on Nanga Shrine.
The small mountaintop of Nanga was soon occupied by more than five hundred people.
"Is that Lord Kei?"
"Is that really you, Lord Kei?"
"Lord, where are you? Are you coming to take us home?"
"Lord, have you been resting properly?"
The previously deserted Nanga Shrine suddenly became lively.
People knelt across the shrine grounds.
Questions and concerned voices rose one after another.
The broadcast was completely interrupted, replaced by a slightly immature male voice coming from the divine statue.
"Quiet, quiet! You’re giving me a headache!"
The moment those words were spoken, Nanga fell silent.
Itachi finally understood.
The real person has arrived.
This was the Uchiha Kei whom the news had mentioned repeatedly.
The all-powerful "Lord Kei."
Judging by his voice, he didn’t sound very old.
Itachi couldn’t understand how someone so young had accomplished everything described in the broadcasts.
At the same age, Itachi himself was exhausting his mind trying to figure out how the Uchiha could compromise with Konoha.
What he understood even less was the degree of obedience these Uchiha displayed.
Itachi had seen fanatical Uchiha before.
But he had never seen united Uchiha.
A single sentence from this person had been enough to make everyone fall silent.
What kind of control was that?
The proud and unruly Uchiha had never shown such respect to anyone.
Even Itachi’s father, the clan leader, didn’t receive this kind of obedience during clan meetings.
Even Uchiha Madara, the legendary "God of the Uchiha," had never made the clan obey him so completely.
Young Itachi desperately wanted to meet this Lord Kei.
With a mixture of curiosity and investigation, he asked,
"Who are you? Just who are you people?"
Although Itachi had already guessed the answer, he wanted confirmation from their own mouths.
Before he could receive an answer, however, he was struck hard across the face.
"Lord said to be quiet. Can’t you understand?"
Blood Wind was furious.
An Uchiha in Nanga actually dared disobey Lord Kei?
How was that any different from committing a crime against Heaven?
But before Blood Wind could finish his indignation, Blood Wind himself received another hard slap.
Old Taku glared at him warningly.
Even Itachi could read the imaginary words written in that gaze:
Lord said to be quiet. Can’t you understand?
What kind of execution, trust, and control was this?
Even the most devout Buddhist believers Itachi had ever seen wouldn’t display such fanaticism toward the Buddha they worshipped.
The voice suggested that Lord Kei himself wasn’t very old.
So why could he make the proud Uchiha Clan submit so completely?
What kind of achievements had he accomplished to receive such reverence?
It was frightening.
Truly frightening.
The collective fanaticism and cohesion of the group even made Itachi feel an urge to join them.
This was a sense of belonging he had never experienced before.
And it was precisely the sense of belonging he had always yearned for.
The voice seemed to recognize him.
Once Itachi finally fell silent, Kei spoke.
"Oh, it’s Itachi. What? You guys arrived and immediately found Itachi?"
Itachi, being mentioned by name, strangely felt as though he had just been praised, even though there wasn’t a single word of praise in Kei’s statement.
Before Itachi could respond, Gen’nosuke, as the leader, answered first.
"No, Lord! When we arrived in this unfamiliar place, we immediately returned to Nanga to see what had happened. Itachi came looking for us, so we captured him!"
Gen’nosuke absolutely refused to let a prisoner steal his chance to speak to their leader.
The voice on the other end of the broadcast became even more languid.
"Oh, I see. So which timeline are you in right now?"
That confirmed it.
From Lord Kei’s question, everyone finally understood.
They had arrived in a different, split timeline.
Koshiro immediately answered,
"Lord, it’s Year 58 of Konoha. Ten years in the future!"
"That’s right!"
Gen’nosuke hurriedly added,
"Lord, I have a question. The Land of Wind had clearly accepted our offer. Why did things suddenly turn hostile again?"
Even after arriving in another dimension, Gen’nosuke was still worried about his own future.
He had never had a particularly good reputation in Lord Kei’s eyes.
And now, judging from the news, the accomplishment he had nearly completed had suddenly suffered a complete reversal.
That impoverished Land of Wind had actually dared to make trouble for Nanga.
Did they have too many people again?
Did they need another Sand shinobi population-reduction campaign?
Uchiha Kei was speechless at Gen’nosuke’s thought process.
They hadn’t even figured out their current situation, yet the first thing they cared about was this nonsense.
Were they really that confident in him?
Were they so certain that he would definitely find a way to bring them home?
Kei, who had begun idly biting his fingernail, answered Gen’nosuke’s question helplessly.
"Heh. You really did it this time. You secretly worked with the Kazekage!"
"Unfortunately, the Kazekage disappeared while secretly meeting with you, and then you disappeared as well. Under those circumstances, if the Land of Wind didn’t make a fuss, how would they possibly maintain their dignity?"
Kei’s answer startled Gen’nosuke.
"Ah! Did the Kazekage travel through time with us too?"
"No."
Kei immediately denied it.
"It’s just that there was a fellow named Sasori in the Land of Wind. His parents were both killed during a war with Konoha, yet the Kazekage actually wanted to become Konoha’s lapdog."
"So that radical young man assassinated the Kazekage. The timing happened to coincide with your meeting with him, and that became the spark that ignited the war between Konoha and the Sand shinobi."
To be honest, Kei rather liked Sasori.
He had used his own clumsy methods to try to resurrect his parents.
At the same time, he was willing to act to avenge them.
There weren’t many people in Naruto with values that straightforward.
It was a pity that they stood on different sides.
No matter how much Kei liked him, they were never destined to walk the same path.
Kei sighed.
"He actually accomplished it."
Sasori had indeed ignited the war between Konoha and the Sand shinobi.
In a sense, he had achieved his revenge for his parents.
Hanging in the air, Itachi listened to the conversation.
He remembered that the beginning of the Third Shinobi World War in this timeline had been almost identical.
Yet even after the war had ended, Konoha still didn’t know what had actually caused the war with the Land of Wind.
Meanwhile, the people on the other side of this transmission already knew the details so thoroughly.
What kind of intelligence network did they possess?
Gen’nosuke became even more furious after hearing Kei’s explanation.
There was also a trace of jealousy.
How could someone who had caused Nanga trouble receive a sigh of regret from Lord Kei?
"Damn that bastard! The Sand shinobi actually produced someone like that? If Lord has already figured everything out, why is the Land of Wind still making trouble?"
That bastard really deserves to die.
I wonder if someone like him exists in this world too.
If I get the chance, I’ll kill him.
Naturally, Kei hadn’t actually investigated the matter.
He already knew the history of Naruto.
Once the outcome was known, working backward from it made it easy to reconstruct the truth.
But that had nothing to do with whether the Land of Wind and Nanga should go to war.
Whether a war happened was a matter for both sides.
As long as one side refused to cooperate and surrendered quickly enough, the war couldn’t continue.
Kei shook his head on the other side of the broadcast.
"Just because I’ve figured it out, do I have to tell the Land of Wind?"
"Who do those Sand shinobi think I am? Have I spoiled them too much?"
"Zhujun will teach them how to behave."
Kei’s attitude was very clear.
He wanted to fight the Land of Wind.
Without a war, how could he force the Land of Wind to cede territory?
Kei wanted to occupy the Loulan region of the Land of Wind.
And the Sand shinobi had conveniently handed him a justification for war.
Gen’nosuke and the others had disappeared in the Loulan region.
Kei believed that this was the location of the temporal rift.
For Uchiha Kei, conquering the shinobi world had already become boring.
He had begun considering something much more ambitious:
How to conquer every timeline.
Hearing this, Koshiro became somewhat worried about his wife.
But then he thought about the Sand shinobi’s methods.
They had little more than puppets and poison.
His wife possessed large-scale chakra-draining Ninjutsu, which could easily locate the Sand shinobi controlling the puppets.
Furthermore, Nanga’s medical techniques rendered the Sand shinobi’s poison techniques practically meaningless.
With that in mind, fighting the Sand shinobi didn’t seem like much of a problem.
Lord Kei had never allowed his own people to suffer losses.
The Land of Rivers, however, was at a disadvantage in terms of shinobi numbers.
There were also large numbers of Sand shinobi secretly infiltrating the country, making the situation difficult to handle.
If they dealt with those problems properly, it would become a major accomplishment.
Unfortunately, the credit would go to his wife.
Meanwhile, he was increasingly starting to look like a man living off his wife’s achievements.
"We’ve caused you so much trouble, Lord."
Koshiro lowered his head in shame and sincerely apologized.
Kei, however, didn’t mind.
"If you didn’t cause me trouble, wouldn’t that make me look useless?"
"Solving your problems is my job."
"Yes, Lord!"
Hearing their leader’s comforting words, everyone became excited.
Lord Kei’s love for them had never changed.
Just as their love for Lord Kei had never changed.
The cry of "United as one!" echoed throughout Nanga.
At that moment, Uchiha Kei’s tone suddenly changed.
"Oh, that reminds me. Itachi should have one of Shisui’s eyes on him. Remember to bring it back to me. I should be able to synthesize another Mangekyō Sharingan with it."
Gen’nosuke immediately understood what Kei meant.
He asked excitedly,
"So, Lord, that means we can return, right?"
The question made Itachi, still hanging from the rafters, feel strangely disappointed.
He had developed an inappropriate degree of goodwill toward these Uchiha.
Kei, however, gave the expected answer.
"Of course. Just treat this as a trip abroad."
"By the way, there’s an old saying: when traveling far from home, it’s better to have plenty of money. Did you bring enough?"
Koshiro, the head of logistics, nodded furiously.
"More than enough, Lord. We brought enough wealth to buy the entire Land of Wind. You don’t need to worry about us!"
"Oh? In that case, have fun."
"I’ll take care of everything as quickly as possible and bring you home."
"Until then, don’t cause trouble. Take care of yourselves, and whatever you do, don’t die in another world."
"Cross-timeline calls are exhausting. I’m signing off. Stay safe."
Uchiha Kei was still the same considerate leader.
The Uchiha, having received their leader’s concern, answered in unison.
"You’ve worked hard, Lord!"
Unfortunately, once the commander was far away, his orders were not always obeyed.
The moment the connection ended, Gen’nosuke hooked an arm around Koshiro’s shoulders.
"Koshiro, what kind of souvenir should we bring back for Lord Kei?"
As he spoke, he turned toward Uchiha Itachi with an ominous grin.
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