Sixteen Years Old, The Fourth Generation of Mizukage

Hearing Senju Hashirama's sincere question without any hesitation, Kaguya Rei couldn't help laughing when he asked this question. Then, he turned his face sideways and faced the same person who also didn't understand why he was asking Senju Hashirama. Jiraiya and Hatake Kakashi, who asked this question, shook their heads and said:

"Before coming here, we seemed to be discussing when the Will of Fire began to deteriorate, right?"

"Then now, I can give you a clear answer... The so-called Will of Fire has deteriorated from the moment it was proposed. The inheritance and interpretation of the Will of Fire by successive Hokages are nothing but promotion. It’s just a process of gradually deepening its deterioration and corruption.”

"From the beginning...it went bad?"

The first person to respond to these outrageous remarks was neither Senju Hashirama, who proposed the concept of the Will of Fire, nor Jiraiya, who was most deeply infiltrated by the Will of Fire, but Hatake, who looked lifeless. Kakashi, he pulled his forehead protector to cover his missing left eye more tightly, and then asked softly:

"From the very beginning, you should treat everyone in the village as family and protect them, right? Isn't this wrong?"

"If the person who proposed this idea was not the first Hokage Senju Hashirama, but the second Hokage Senju Tobirama, it would be right."

Kaguya Rei shook her head and gave an answer that made several people present couldn't help but look at each other:

"But the person who proposed this idea was Senju Hashirama, the god of ninjas and one of the most powerful ninjas after the Sage of Six Paths. So this idea naturally became a breeding ground for errors."

"Why?" Kakashi still only used the simplest words to formulate his question, "Why can't the first generation of adults, but the second generation of adults can?"

"Because compared to Senju Hashirama, Senju Tobirama is very weak. He is so weak that he has to use forbidden techniques like Earth Reincarnation to protect his village from being overthrown. He is so weak that he will be pursued by a small group of rebel forces within Kumogakure. To the point of death, he was so weak that as soon as he took over Konoha and became the Second Hokage, the four major ninja villages who had been suppressed by Senju Hashirama and dared not breathe could not wait to start the first ninja war."

Kaguya Rei glanced at Senju Hashirama with a complicated expression and continued:

"Because Senju Tobirama is just a mortal, the concept of protecting the village and treating everyone in the village as family is appropriate for him and is in line with his personal abilities. As long as he does this , he is already a qualified or even excellent Hokage."

"But Senju Hashirama can't do that."

"Why? Just because...the First Generation Master is too strong?"

Jiraiya's eyes went back and forth between Senju Hashirama and Kaguya Rei, and then he came to such a somewhat unacceptable conclusion with a complicated heart.

"Well... the Sannin is worthy of being a Sannin. You have finally shown your true value and proved that you are no worse than Orochimaru and Tsunade who have mastered the core skills, Jiraiya."

Kaguya Rei chuckled softly, agreeing with the answer given by Jiraiya, then turned to look at Senju Hashirama, and asked in a slightly positive tone:

"I wonder if you understand what I mean, First Hokage-sama?"

"I don't understand." Senju Hashirama admitted this frankly, "If it's Madara, he might be able to keep up with your thinking, but if I say it, you might have to listen more, look more, and think more. Only after thinking about it can you understand what you are talking about.”

"Then let me put it in a more understandable way," Kaguya Rei didn't worry, she just put her fingers together and squinted her eyes slightly and said to Senju Hashirama: "What do you think you are in the eyes of ordinary ninjas? Where is the existence, the First Hokage?"

"A particularly strong ninja?" Senju Hashirama thought for a moment and naturally gave the answer he had in mind.

"Is it just a ninja?" Kaguya asked back with a half-smile.

"What else could it be?" Senju Hashirama narrowed his eyes, "I can't say that you are like Madara...thinking that we have surpassed humans, are you gods?"

"Is not it?"

The person who said this was Kaguya Rei from the third direction. As he walked out of the shadows and flickering candlelight, the two clones, each with their own responsibilities, nodded gently to the main body. , and then disappeared from the sight of several people, and it was at this time that the expression of solemnity and pressure really appeared on Senju Hashirama's face.

"In the Battle of the Valley of the End more than thirty years ago, the battlefield between you and Madara Uchiha stretched for hundreds of kilometers, permanently changing the terrain and coastline of large areas, and creating the Valley of the End. This is an unprecedented area in the ninja world... No one dares to intervene in the battle between you."

"During the battle to defend Konoha a few months ago, the battle between Uchiha Obito and I permanently created more than a dozen large lakes no larger than Konoha outside Konoha Village. After hundreds of kilometers of fighting, we split mountains and cut off Yue cut off the river and divided the sea, causing the earth to collapse and the sky to change color... No one has the courage to face this moving natural disaster."

Kaguya Rei, who was walking slowly, stopped in front of Senju Hashirama. After the sage mode was turned on, the white eyes that shrank into snake-like vertical pupils looked particularly scary. In addition, he no longer concealed his full-blown eyes. Senjutsu Chakra, Orochimaru, Jiraiya and Hatake Kakashi who were present, even had the feeling that they were facing beings whose life levels were not at the same level at all.

"For ordinary ninjas, we can defeat the entire ninja world with one person, and have the ability to reshape the ninja world into what we want. Even if we face natural disasters that symbolize the wrath of nature, we can single-handedly transform the ninja world into what we want. What's the difference between its peaceful existence... and a real god?"

Kaguya Rei looked at Senju Hashirama, the only one present who was not overwhelmed by his aura, and asked calmly.

"...Power is not the reason why we regard ourselves as superior gods."

Senju Hashirama helplessly lamented the weakness of his current body, while repeating what he once said to Uchiha Madara to Kaguya Rei:

"Those who are self-sufficient because of power will eventually become slaves of power... From your perspective, you shouldn't be unable to see this possibility."

"But powerful power will make the people conquered by it naturally regard you as a god," Kaguya Rei tilted her head, her white vertical pupils staring closely at Senju Hashirama's unwavering eyes, and whispered softly said:

"And if you, the god of ninjas, make any overly petty decisions, then the mortals who believe in you can calmly and rationally sink and alienate the 'god's' decision step by step on this basis. You have in your own hands a hateful tool of partisanship and dissent.”

"Konoha's will of fire is deteriorating and corrupting from the source little by little."

Kaguya Rei squinted at Orochimaru who was looking thoughtful, Jiraiya who closed his eyes and smiled bitterly, and Kakashi Hatake whose eyes became more and more hollow, and continued:

"The god of ninja who calmed down the troubled times, the concept he held when he founded the new thing of Ninja Village was to protect all members of Konoha as family members, so the countless ninjas in the ninja world were naturally divided into It has become two identities outside of Konoha and Konoha."

"The ninjas of Konoha are your family, so the ninjas who are not Konoha are naturally labeled as outsiders and enemies. Therefore, it was originally possible to complete the integration, unification and even under the will of the two gods you and Madara Uchiha. It is the ninja class of change, which has been cut into distinct camps of 'family' and 'enemies'."

"From the moment the God of Ninja sprouted the will of fire in his heart as long as he protected the village and his family, Konoha was destined to fall into an all-out war with all people who were not Konoha ninjas, and would never be able to escape. And when After you killed Uchiha Madara and further transformed the Will of Fire into protecting the village at all costs, Konoha and even the entire ninja world fell into a vortex more dangerous than the quagmire of the Warring States Period. among.”

"At least during the Warring States Period, you didn't need to worry about someone from the same clan stabbing your vitals with a knife. But in the era of Ninja Village, as long as you use the righteousness of 'protecting the village', even if you are the closest to you, Companions and relatives who are so close that they have entrusted each other with life and death may also become the killer who stabs your heart with a knife."

"Have you felt the consequences of God's disqualification?"

Upon hearing this, Senju Hashirama's expression darkened completely.

Kaguya Rei's narration is not difficult to understand. You only need to listen to the beginning of each topic, and you can naturally follow the ideas he provided to deduce the subsequent series of results. Even for the convenience of understanding, Kaguya Rei He also deliberately reduced the number of issues in this statement, but the more it was like this, the more clearly Senju Hashirama could feel a bone-deep coldness, and a kind of sincere... sadness.

He originally thought that he truly betrayed his original ideals when he made up his mind to kill Madara Uchiha and completely bury this close friend who once shared the same ideals and could understand each other. But after Kaguya Rei He said that he had already embarked on the opposite path when he was establishing Konoha.

Are you really wrong?

Maybe so.

The initial thought of myself and Madara was that only through heart-to-heart communication and mutual understanding between people can we achieve final peace. However, if we keep moving forward with this ideal in mind, we should not classify anyone as an enemy. go.

So did you do it yourself?

Apparently not.

Even if you ignore Kaguya Rei's claim that he is the god who changed the ninja world, and just consider the problems of the Konoha family, the will of fire that he has inherited has clearly deviated from his and Madara's original ideals. …

Seeing Senju Hashirama's expression getting lower and lower, Jiraiya, who had been listening, couldn't help but take a deep breath, and then took the initiative to speak out:

"Mizukage-sama, do you have too high demands on the first-sama? No matter how much you praise his position in your heart, the first-sama was just a man who had just emerged from the chaos of the Warring States Period and was trying to survive in a world of war. We are just humans who have carved out a new path in chaos... Since we are humans, we will inevitably make mistakes, right?”

"Senju Hashirama is not an ordinary human being. In other words, a person who has mastered the power of gods has the responsibility to guide the world and guide mankind."

Kaguya Rei shook her head, and then sighed with some envy:

"As for the demands being too high... that's because Senju Hashirama is both a winner and an idealist who almost got a good death."

"I protected my younger brother Senju Tobirama and became the strongest ninja in the world. I realized my childhood dream and created a new era for the Ninja Village. My thoughts were recognized and passed down from generation to generation. He has been sung and worshiped by history as the god of ninjas, and even his blood successor Kinkaidū, which stands at the top of the ninja world, has not been passed down and spread through the bloodline of the Senju clan..."

"Compared to the loser Uchiha Madara who lost his family, his ideals, his best friends, and even his life, Senju Hashirama lived too successfully...so successfully that even I, I’m not sure if I can have an ending like him when my life comes to an end, with almost no major failure to speak of.”

"For this hateful senior who left a lot of hidden dangers to future generations, but got a good death himself, is it too much for me to be a little harsher and more demanding in my words?"

Alas, I was writing, deleting, and in a blink of an eye it was four o'clock again...

As a result, I have only written most of what I wanted to write, and the rest will have to be written after I get up tomorrow...

Grandma, why don’t I have the hand speed to write 10,000 words in three hours? If I had this hand speed, would I need to worry about the broken chapters being placed poorly, resulting in incomplete expression of ideas? ?