Autumn had arrived.
Escorted by the Akatsuki shinobi army, Lord Light Shadow returned to his loyal Akatsuki Village.
The villagers of Akatsuki, who had long since heard of the army's triumphant return, spontaneously went out ten li beyond the gates to greet them, waiting along the route Uchiha Makoto would take back to the village.
At the very front of the column, Uchiha Makoto caught sight of the long-waiting Akatsuki welcome party at a glance. Finally home.
At the head of the welcoming crowd stood Uzumaki Tsubaki Shizuku. Her face bloomed into an irrepressible smile; she had seen him, too.
He also saw Uzumaki Tsubaki Shizuku.
The two waved to each other.
Unable to wait another moment, Uzumaki Tsubaki Shizuku ran forward and threw herself into Uchiha Makoto's arms.
At the same time.
Music began to play.
Unfortunately, it was not a lovers' reunion tune.
It was Lord Light Shadow's personal theme music.
At this moment.
Uchiha Makoto was not only Uzumaki Tsubaki Shizuku's husband; he was the Light Shadow of all Akatsuki.
Even before Uchiha Makoto reached the crowd, the villagers burst into excited cheers to welcome him.
"Victory!"
"Long live Lord Light Shadow!"
"Long live Akatsuki Village!"
Smiling, Uchiha Makoto took Uzumaki Tsubaki Shizuku by the hand and waved to the fervent villagers. The shinobi of Akatsuki behind him were just as jubilant. War is a monster that can destroy everything. They were lucky to have survived and to return to the home they had longed for, where their parents, lovers, and friends awaited them. The atmosphere burned with heat; almost every face was lit by a smile.
Only the security detail maintaining order behaved as if facing a great enemy, scanning the crowd with vigilance. Not long ago, there had been an assassination attempt on the Lord Light Shadow by shinobi from the Hidden Cloud Village, a sobering lesson.
There were many people on site and many eyes.
This was the time to be careful.
They could not allow any mishap to befall the Light Shadow at Akatsuki's very doorstep. Fortunately, everything remained normal, and amid the cheers Uchiha Makoto entered the village smoothly.
On the way back, Uchiha Makoto noticed that Akatsuki had grown significantly again in scale.
Most obvious were the streets, widened by three or four meters once more, and even lined with structures like utility poles.
The number of villagers coming and going had skyrocketed.
There were also many new storefronts along the road that Uchiha Makoto did not recognize at all.
Kazuma, walking beside Uchiha Makoto, kept talking about Akatsuki's development during this period.
According to Uchiha Makoto's original plan, the key districts to be built in Akatsuki—a residential quarter, a commercial avenue, a technology park, and others—had all been completed and accepted.
The tycoons of the Land of Fire were convening in force to invest in Akatsuki, seeking to affiliate and do business under its name. They had spotted huge opportunity in Akatsuki's armistice agreement. So long as they were attached to Akatsuki, they could more easily tear open the trade barriers set by the Land of Lightning.
More importantly.
The times had changed.
Since the clan wars ended, the era of shinobi villages had begun.
Especially in the great nations.
Take the Land of Fire, for example.
Akatsuki and Konoha had, in effect, redrawn the shinobi order of the Land of Fire.
Since Konoha and Akatsuki were founded, both sides had courted the clans while also incorporating small shinobi factions in the Land of Fire. Most clan concentrations had become the present village headquarters.
Those minor factions or small clans unwilling to relocate, bound by the tide of the times, could only choose to join Konoha or Akatsuki. Though they remained where they were, they still obeyed the mobilization orders of the villages they pledged to.
Scattered across the nation in various sizes, they would serve as layered defensive nodes for the villages.
For now, taking advantage of this special historical moment, these small factions enjoyed some autonomy and played politics as opportunistic fence-sitters, eating from both Konoha and Akatsuki.
There was no helping it. In the early days of village-building, with so much to do, both Konoha and Akatsuki adopted a largely tolerant posture toward these minor groups.
So long as you do not openly defect and broadly heed village orders, we can all get along at this stage.
The daimyo even cooperated with the villages: the daimyo issued pacification missions, and the villages carried them out.
Under joint operations by Konoha and Akatsuki, the unruly shinobi bands, brigands, and rebel rabble within the Land of Fire were either beaten into fleeing to other countries or wiped out entirely. The Land of Fire's turbulent social order was brought under control within the first year.
In a peaceful environment.
Ordinary people's lives could finally catch a breath.
The magnates promptly became active, pouring their savings into factories. With the Land of Fire's vast population and market as a backstop, they recovered the fastest, their influence swelling again and again.
Business, however, inevitably courted collusion between officials and merchants to win policy favor.
Yet because of their station, these tycoons generally lacked illustrious family names and thus held little standing in the Land of Fire. Otherwise, they would not have gone into commerce. Faced with wealth versus power, anyone with sense would choose power without hesitation.
So in such dealings, the merchants often occupied a weak position. Many were forced to become fronts for the great nobles, and the consequences for disobedience went without saying.
Even so, the magnates steadily expanded their power. Of course, if they kept growing, it was only a matter of time before a heavy fist fell. Pigs are fattened in batches; it would be a shame not to slaughter them.
Naturally, they resented the daimyo and nobles above them, instinctively feeling those people were merely lucky, born into the right wombs, and lacked the ability to grow capital quickly.
And indeed, that was the truth.
The magnates wanted their capital to multiply rapidly, even to leverage it for a change in status. Being at others' mercy stuck in their throats like a fishbone.
But for certain unspoken reasons, relying on the big men above them made these goals hard to achieve for now.
They could only seek another path.
With a new era reshaping the world order, the shinobi villages were the obvious choice.
Uchiha Makoto's attitude toward merchants and the policies he advanced were clearly much better than the nobles'.
At the very least, Uchiha Makoto truly intended to drive capitalism headlong into the rotten old shinobi world and smash it.
The nobles were mostly conservative, intent on preserving the old order. With land, resources, and power in their grip, they cared little for so-called capital, progress, or freedom.
Keeping the current system intact mattered more than anything."
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