Chapter 7: Cooking Tea and Discussing Execution

Yamanaka Chujiu quickly understood why he had made a mistake.

Because the Mind Severing Realm was so effective, he had grown accustomed to its sensory feedback and neglected the basic skills of a ninja.

This was normal; those who can see with their eyes will absolutely have inferior hearing compared to a blind person.

But Itachi Uchiha was only five years old; just how much of a genius was this child?

The reason he could not perceive Itachi within the Mind Severing Realm was simple: the child was a psychopath.

Itachi Uchiha was lucky; he was born into the strongest Uchiha Clan, possessed exceptional talent, and was highly intelligent, standing at the destination of many others from the moment he was born.

Itachi Uchiha was also unfortunate, because he had an ignorant and foolish father.

Uchiha Fugaku discovered his son was a genius and believed he could not be raised in the way of a normal person.

So, he threw four-year-old Itachi onto the battlefield.

Four years old—he was still just a child!

Itachi, whose outlook on life, the world, and values had only just begun to sprout, was tossed onto the battlefield to endure the greatest malice of humanity and witness the most brutal slaughter with his own eyes.

Unsurprisingly, his worldview collapsed as a result.

Itachi Uchiha was truly a genius; he did not die from the collapse of his worldview, but relied on astonishing resilience to hold on, using his superhuman intelligence to forcibly stitch his shattered worldview back together.

But his understanding of the world was too limited, so he could only fuse his worldview with a child's imagination, creating a bizarre logic that normal people could not understand.

This laid the groundwork for his sudden self-destruction of his entire clan and the slaughter of his whole family in the future.

The logic of a psychopath's thinking was beyond Yamanaka Chujiu's scope of understanding; because he could not understand Itachi Uchiha's logic, he could not discern his emotions.

Strangely, Yamanaka Chujiu could accurately lock onto Orochimaru, who was also a psychopath.

Yamanaka Chujiu's thoughts raced, but he quickly extinguished the chaotic ideas and looked at the two Uchiha youths, asking, "The Execution Line involves the darkest side of Konohagakure; do you really want to know?"

Itachi Uchiha and Shisui Uchiha shouted in unison, "Please teach us, Senior Chujiu!"

Yamanaka Chujiu confirmed again very solemnly, "I know you have both been on the battlefield and have seen the cruelty of the Ninja World."

"But I must warn you, the truth behind the Execution Line is dark and cruel, no less so than the mountains of corpses and seas of blood on the battlefield."

"Are you truly mentally prepared?"

The two said in unison again, "We are prepared, we are not afraid!"

Yamanaka Chujiu then nodded and said, "Then follow me."

"The Execution Line cannot be explained in just a few words; let's find a place where we won't be disturbed."

By a small stream deep in the Death Forest, Yamanaka Chujiu cleared a patch of ground, gathered firewood, boiled water, and brewed a pot of fruit tea.

The crackling bonfire, the babbling stream, the sweet fruit fragrance, and the white steam together created an atmosphere that made one feel pleasant.

Drinking a cup of fruit tea in the breeze, Yamanaka Chujiu's heart gradually grew peaceful.

The two Uchiha youths were not impatient; they quietly accompanied him as he built the fire, boiled the tea, and drank it, their eyes filled with anticipation.

Especially the five-year-old Itachi Uchiha, who appeared extremely composed.

Taking the time to boil and drink tea, Yamanaka Chujiu sorted through all his past observations, categorizing and organizing the various phenomena of the Ninja World against the Execution Line theory.

While completing this sorting work, he also figured out how he should treat Itachi and Shisui.

He wanted to indirectly influence Uchiha Fugaku through them, to make the Uchiha Clan stand tall, display the strength they ought to have, and become a target that would attract the Third Hokage's attacks.

This was not harming the Uchiha Clan, but pulling them back from a dead end.

Every living Uchiha had immense value to Yamanaka Chujiu.

Yesterday, Yamanaka Chujiu had only gently stirred their emotions to extract surging feelings of great love from the three young Uchiha: Shisui, Inabi, and Tekka.

The emotional volume of one Uchiha youth was worth that of ten children, and the quality was so high that it instantly converted into Chujiu's spiritual energy, significantly enhancing his strength.

Yamanaka Chujiu concluded that the Uchiha were a precious emotional resource and must never be ruined by Shimura Danzo!

Yamanaka Chujiu began to explain, "The so-called Execution Line is a red line that exists in Konohagakure; it is the boundary of life and death after a class descent."

"No matter who falls below this line, they will be executed by the rules and fall into an abyss of death from which there is no return."

Shisui Uchiha could not help but ask, "Does the execution the senior mentioned refer to those villagers from yesterday?"

Yamanaka Chujiu: "Yes, the Shanty Town is hell; the villagers driven into it are doomed."

Shisui was incredulous: "How could that be?"

Yamanaka Chujiu said, "The Uchiha clashed with Root over this today; it will likely be fully exposed before long, and then you will know."

"Many people have seen the executions, but some believe the executions are not a problem."

"In their view, the weak who struggle even to survive are a burden; by discarding useless burdens, Konohagakure can travel light and become even stronger."

"These people firmly believe that those who are executed are the weak, and that they themselves are the strong who will never be executed."

"In reality, they are wrong; the people of Konohagakure are like a pyramid. The Hokage sits high at the apex of the pyramid, and the weak, impoverished villagers are the base of the tower."

"Allowing the villagers at the very bottom to be executed is like letting the base of the pyramid weather and rot; it will inevitably crumble layer by layer, and even the most powerful ninja clan will fall because the base collapses."

"Even the Hokage at the apex could fall, which is why it is called the Execution Line."

Itachi Uchiha licked his lips: "When I first heard Senior Chujiu mention the 'Execution Line,' I felt a strong shock. Now that I understand the meaning of the Execution Line, I feel even more uncomfortable."

Chujiu smiled: "That is why I asked you to be mentally prepared earlier."

He continued to explain how the Execution Line manifested in different ways for different people.

For example, the Execution Line for ordinary villagers is rent.

Among the villagers, only a few veterans who helped build the village in the first year of Konoha were allocated land under the auspices of the First Hokage to build their own houses.

Forty-eight years have passed, and the population of Konohagakure has expanded nearly tenfold.

The villagers who own their own property are still the veterans and their descendants; 99% of the new villagers do not have their own houses and can only live in rented ones.

Because of the continuous influx of population, rent increases year by year, and villagers who cannot afford the rent end up homeless.

And Konohagakure is a military group; the curfew has never been lifted.

The displaced villagers cannot spend the night on the streets and can only struggle to survive in that living hell, the Shanty Town.

Yamanaka Chujiu calmly analyzed, "On the Nine-Tails Night, tens of thousands of houses in Konohagakure collapsed, and the number of displaced villagers was countless, yet their figures could not be seen on the streets; the only possibility is that they were all sent into the Shanty Town."

"I don't know how many people the Shanty Town can house, but being able to accommodate so many people is in itself abnormal."

"But think about it, why would the Shanty Town have such a large surplus capacity?"

The expressions of Shisui Uchiha and Itachi Uchiha changed drastically.