"Judging by your face, you really can't understand my plan to make bloodline limits common, can you, Shisui?"
Ren sipped his tea, watching the young Uchiha as if he were looking at something mildly entertaining.
"Are you another one of those boring people whose soul is chained by 'clan glory'?"
"But bloodline limits are supposed to be like that," Shisui insisted, brow furrowed. His young face was a tangle of confusion and doubt.
"Aren't they supposed to be protected—as a clan's, a village's trump card? If bloodline limits become something anyone can have… wouldn't enemies just steal them more easily?"
"And also," Ren replied evenly, "because there are more users, methods become more diverse. Development gets deeper. Exploring the upper limit becomes easier."
He thanked the owner who personally brought the food, then set the sweet dishes and the non-sweet dishes between them.
"And only using bloodline limits as battlefield murder tools is wasteful."
"Take the Byakugan. It should practically be standard issue for medical-nin. It improves perception and chakra control. It lets you see injuries more clearly and treat more precisely."
"And it's great for surveying and cartography."
"As for the Sharingan—copying techniques makes it ideal for teaching and developing ninjutsu. Sure, Sharingan users tend to be emotional."
"But chakra is spiritual energy plus physical energy. Being a little emotional isn't always a downside."
"Shikotsumyaku is trickier. I haven't found a method that lets bones I create remain in someone else long-term without severe rejection. If I solve that…"
"Regenerating severed limbs could become realistic."
"Ice Release, Lava Release… I could list uses all day. Even landlocked nobles in the Land of Earth and the Land of Wind would pay obscene money for premium seafood shipped from the Land of Water fully ice-fresh."
Shisui blinked.
He'd expected Ren to talk about war applications—how to turn the Sharingan and Byakugan into sharper blades.
Instead, Ren was talking about… livelihood. Production. Medicine. Trade.
It was novel—so novel it felt like a door had been opened in Shisui's mind.
Bloodline limits weren't only weapons.
They could be tools.
And the realization—more dangerous than any threat—made Shisui feel the tiniest spark of admiration for someone he should never admire.
"Why… do you think about things like that?" Shisui asked, voice low and complicated.
"Why would someone from Kirigakure—who should worship violence more than anyone—think about things that don't match Kirigakure at all?"
"Things that don't help you in war, don't help your personal strength?"
"Because if everyone only thinks like a shinobi," Ren said quietly, "this world will never have peace."
He pointed out the window—at merchants closing up, at passersby on the street.
"The profession of shinobi can't be separated from war, schemes, assassination—violence."
"As long as shinobi remain the mainstream, they'll never allow true peace to arrive. Their existence depends on conflict."
"Only if people with chakra are given possibilities beyond being shinobi—only if they can live with dignity, stability, and hope without violence…"
"…will this world gain the ability to create real peace."
"Peace that doesn't depend on any single person. Peace that people maintain on their own."
Shisui dropped his head and began devouring the sweets in front of him.
He needed to do something—anything—to suppress the panic inside him.
And the strange, impossible glimmer of longing.
If Ren were merely a tyrant who used violence to crush dissent and force a fake peace onto the world, Shisui would fear him less.
Because violence could always be defeated by greater violence.
A peace built on blood would someday give birth to power strong enough to overturn it.
But Ren's thoughts—about a world beyond shinobi—were offering an answer to questions Shisui had agonized over and never solved.
For someone like Shisui, who had begun thinking early about peace and the future of shinobi, it was a blow straight to the soul.
A crack appeared in the wall he'd built from love for Konoha and the Uchiha—his defense against being influenced, against being changed.
Watching Shisui eat frantically while sneaking glances at him from the corner of his eye, Ren's mouth curled into a satisfied smile.
If you wanted to turn someone intelligent, resolute, and morally driven into your own person, the most effective method wasn't indulging their material needs.
It was placing a book of your thoughts before them—and letting them read.
The smarter someone was, the harder it was to ignore truth.
And devotion to a "higher ideal" was enough to make people abandon loyalty to a decaying homeland without regret—and stand at your side.
Ren had learned that from a certain stormy chapter of history before his rebirth.
He didn't think his crude theories deserved to be called truth, worthy of illuminating eras the way true giants had done.
But compared to the Will of Fire—which had hollowed and warped through inheritance, never truly complete to begin with—
His ideas were, at minimum, far more tempting.
And Kirigakure had one major advantage.
It had never possessed a core belief beyond "the strong rule."
So whatever ideology Ren pushed, the people would accept it with little resistance.
If he stayed in power long enough, the strange ideas would become Kirigakure's spiritual foundation.
They'd brand every Kirigakure shinobi with his imprint.
And Kirigakure would become a beacon unlike any other village—
One that would draw in shinobi from other villages who yearned for peace, who yearned for answers.
From the inside, it would quietly dissolve the fortresses those villages had built.
Ren was considering how much more influence to apply to Shisui—how to fully collapse that wall and awaken Shisui's initiative, making him willingly become a capable subordinate—
When a faint puff of smoke burst beside his hand.
A small white snake appeared, a scroll clenched in its mouth.
"Hmm? Reverse Summoning to contact me?" Ren's eyes narrowed, amused. "Tch. Did Nagato finally accept that Kumogakure and Sunagakure won't pay to ransom those two bloodline shinobi, and decide to sell them to me?"
Ren took the scroll, tossed the snake a soft, sticky dango as payment, and unrolled it—
Then froze.
The handwriting was unfamiliar. Completely.
And the message was short.
You will be one of the choices?
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