A few months passed since Rei led the occupants of the Harima village into Uzushio, causing it to experience a mind-shattering change.
After setting the new occupants in, Konan's and Rei's clones were made to thoroughly educate the people from the Harima village for the entire first month. It was quite a bother too since there were around two hundred people from the Harima village.
From the experience, it was obvious it was a waste of clones that could do something else so Rei used the portal to bring back all the Uzumaki from the Biri-Biri company under some kind of fake pretense. These people had to wear a hair-color altering seal anyway since the Uzumaki clan members were a highly sought-after commodity even now in the ninja circles of the Elemental Nations. It would not do, to have an abundant amount of bright-crimson-haired people in one place.
Rei just had to put the Secrecy Seal on them, dismiss them from the company, and bring them to the Uzushio Village to teach and prepare the new occupants for their future work as traders. Rei wanted to recreate the Uzumaki clan under his order anyway so this was something that had to eventually happen.
What took him by surprise, however, was how obnoxiously grateful the Uzumaki clansmen were. Rei finally understood why Naruto was... well, Naruto. Apparently, it was in his blood.
It was not as if the Uzumaki people were stupid. They just couldn't live without showing their gratitude for being saved. Rei was actually very flabbergasted when he realized he would not need to put any effort into bringing them under him since... they already recognized him as their leader. In the end, the sullen Rei reluctantly expended five clones to teach them useful Seals and the basics of sealing. If they decided to be so loyal, it was his duty to make them useful, no?
Just like that, the first clan of Uzushio was formed, numbering twenty-three.
For the following month, Rei and Konan were run ragged, gathering any and all Uzumaki they could get their hands on without people noticing and the Uzumaki clan count in the Uzushio quickly rose to an astonishing hundred and fifty-two... without anyone in the Elemental Nations even realizing.
At least, Tsunade was making their work easier by settling the newcomers in the village by herself.
It was also quite annoying explaining to over a hundred people their heritage and then persuading them to come to Uzushio. Fortunately, most of them lived in remote places with harsh conditions so many jumped at the offer and only a few of the wealthier ones had to be brain-raped of their recent memories through seals after vehemently refusing to join no matter what Rei or Konan did. Alas... their loss. Literally.
Slowly, twenty educated Uzumaki from the Biri-Biri company taught other Uzumaki what the Biri-Biri company deemed as the basics of necessary knowledge for their employees. These then taught others and the chain reaction continued until Rei found himself with a village full of people that could knowledge-wise pass for an average merchant.
But Rei was not satisfied and ordered them to scram and learn intermediate and advanced stuff before bragging in front of him! What good are merchants who are unable to swindle even nobles, much less the Daimyos, to him? He needed real professionals!
Rei also started going rounds around the places where people were treated the worst for various reasons. Whether it was because their feudal lords were stingy pieces of shit or because the countries were so poor there was just no way to survive... Rei collected them all like pokemons.
The size of Uzushio was gradually expanding, day by day tens of new people were brought into the town by Rei. Naturally, since Rei himself brought them over, he was regarded as their 'savior' and the new leader. He could only shake his head in exasperation while thinking... 'Orochimaru, you really are a genius. It's so easy to get loyal followers by saving desperate people, ku, ku, ku!'
As the population grew bigger, Rei suddenly found himself in a need to create farmlands. His main supplier of food was the Biri-Biri company and while it cost him exactly nothing since the company was his, he would rather Uzushio be self-sufficient than digging into his pockets. Even if he didn't pay for the food, the company supplied it at loss to its profits... which meant in the end, Rei suffered loss anyway.
It was such a sad fate too! Hence, the villagers had to learn how to farm. It was all for the Greater Good of Rei's pocke-, ahem, of Uzushio's well-being!
Most of the people Rei brought to Uzushio came from small rural villages that focused on farming anyway so getting the Uzushio farming project started was not such a hard thing. A lot of farmers wanted to continue their life-long profession but Rei first ordered them to get a proper education. Only when they attained at least an intermediate level of knowledge did he allow them to sign up for a piece of land around Uzushio to start their farms.
Well, not like the intermediate level was something extremely tough. Even an average farmer could pass the test with an acceptable grade in two months if he put his all into it. For basic grade, three weeks were enough while the advanced would take half-year. These timeframes were naturally for average people so the few geniuses that were found actually managed to learn it a lot faster. One even attained advanced grade in under three months.
Honestly, finding talent through this method while also making sure that Uzushio's future will be assured to become extraordinary due to the intelligence of its occupants was much easier than Rei previously thought. There were only a very few of those who refused to learn... mostly because the level of education provided to peasants and farmers in the world was abysmal at best.
There were civilian schools... but these were only in big towns or ninja villages. Even then ninja school had much higher requirements in things like math and even then it was only learning stuff that could potentially help in their future ninja careers like calculating throwing angles, distances by the shadow cast on the ground, etc. The civilian school mostly focused on things like how to run a business, and so on. These were for daughters and sons of wealthy merchants, after all. Other kids were simply homeschooled. The ninja schools also mainly focused on brainwa-, uh, indoctrin-, ahem, well, teaching the kids who their owner is, or the so-called Wills of Elements.
The most educated people were generally nobles followed by wealthy merchants. What Rei was creating in Uzushio... no noble could be bothered by it. Nobody in this world would educate the entire village to the level surpassing even merchants or nobles in some subjects. Well, nobody ever accused Rei of being sane...
Thanks to the education, the farmers who signed up for a piece of land didn't have a hard time grasping some 'advanced' farming techniques or usage of farming tools Rei provided. He, Tsunade, and Konan could use Mokuton and they made sure to create special trees they gave to that small village in Amegakure when they first started their journey all over the Uzushio. Putting the effect of that together with some special seals and farming tools... Rei estimated a harvest could be up to six times a year with the yield being three to five times as bountiful as normally seen in this world.
Rei was basically using Nature Energy and Sealing Arts to shamelessly cheat his way through. His shamelessness power level reached 9000 when he created an auto-gathering paper tag for crops that could gather them in a certain radius. Naturally, thanks to the Secrecy Seal, the villagers had enough chakra to activate them on their own. The tag had a sealing matrix with a seal that gathered the crop and deposited it into a special storage seal on it. Honestly, being a farmer was probably the easiest profession in Uzushio with the number of cheats Rei provided for them. Whether it was planting, watering, or gathering... The farmers were basically just supervisors who sat in their rocking chairs while fishing most of their days away.
Well, food supply was the most important thing when it came to self-sufficiency so Rei had it well covered while making sure the people would love doing the job since the taxes were extremely high at 50% of each yield. Alas, with six harvests per year and the cheating farming tools provided for free... especially since the order was done by Rei, their savior, the farmers reluctantly relented. It was only when they calculated their losses and gains did they find out that the tax didn't even matter. They would get rich by just sitting on their asses, tending to their plots of land from time to time by taking a stroll through it and activating the seals.
In a short six months... Uzushio had over three thousand inhabitants and over fifty farms all around. The people were getting more knowledgeable, showing their talents in various fields. It was a lot of work for Rei, Konan, and Tsunade while Mei and Ringo were closed in their workshop, trying to make progress in making a special sword close to one of the Seven Swords of Kiri and blowing the place up at least once per two days.
The Uzushio Village was very small for now. Not even one-fifth of the whole place was filled but something great, something never before seen in the Elemental Nations was steadily being created.