When Osamu opened his eyes again, he found himself sitting in an unfamiliar room.
Although the room was unfamiliar, looking at the three other old faces sitting at the same table, he roughly guessed his current position.
“The Uchiha Clan has been making moves again recently.” “Tobirama-sensei was right—the Uchiha Clan is an evil clan!” …
Osamu calmly observed the expressions of the other three, then maintained his silence.
He rapidly absorbed Danzo’s memories of this point in time and deduced that this was the eve of the Uchiha Clan’s planned rebellion—the moment before Shisui Uchiha was about to propose going to observe the Uchiha gathering, after which Danzo would steal one of his eyes.
Listening to Homura Mitokado and Koharu Utatane chattering away endlessly, Osamu felt only intense annoyance.
Why was the Uchiha Clan making moves?
Didn’t these old codgers understand?
Because they didn’t get what they deserved.
The shameless high-ranking officials of Konoha had failed to give this clan—which had founded Konoha alongside the Senju and charged at the forefront in several Ninja World Wars—the respect and resource compensation they were owed.
If only they could restrain their greedy faces even a little, share the fruits of battle with the Uchiha Clan, and treat them like the heroes they were, why would the Uchiha Clan ever come into conflict with the village they had helped build?
They even dragged out their late mentor, Tobirama Senju, as a shield.
Tobirama Senju indeed liked to speak ill of the Uchiha, but he had always used a carrot-and-stick approach with them.
He had never prevented the Uchiha Clan from participating in the village’s operations, nor had he ever usurped the Uchiha Clan’s Battle Merits.
He had hoped the Uchiha Clan could adopt a sense of family under the umbrella of the village, that they could slowly and gradually fade out their clan-centric ideology, and interact naturally with the other villagers.
Yet Hiruzen Sarutobi and his dear classmates had forcibly pushed the Uchiha Clan from the center of the village to its very edges.
Osamu took a long breath, suppressing the impatience deep in his heart.
If he remembered correctly, the former site of the Uchiha Clan had now been turned into a commercial street.
And this group of sanctimonious fools in front of him had seized ownership of most of those shops.
These vermin…
were already bent on sucking the marrow from the Uchiha Clan’s bones.
When the Land of Wind was constantly eyeing them like a hawk, the Land of Earth never ceased its border harassment, and the Land of Lightning occasionally stirred up provocative trouble— These fools were already killing the donkey after it finished grinding the grain.
Danzo, who was usually the most hostile toward the Uchiha Clan, was surprisingly quiet today.
Homura Mitokado and Koharu Utatane spoke until their mouths were dry, yet they hadn’t received their old classmate’s agreement.
Stopping their talk, they looked at him together with urging eyes.
Osamu gave the two of them a cold glance, then looked toward the Third Hokage sitting behind the desk with a benevolent expression.
Hiruzen Sarutobi.
He too was waiting for his “Darkness of Konoha” to speak up and declare his stance.
Danzo Shimura would definitely agree to conduct a bloody purge of the Uchiha Clan.
All Hiruzen Sarutobi needed to do was refuse, wait for the bloody conflict to end, and then put on his hypocritical mask of helpless benevolence to pluck the final fruits.
The Uchiha Clan: young adults, shinobi, the elderly, women, and children—nearly ten thousand people in total.
Osamu looked coldly at the mask Hiruzen Sarutobi had worn so long that he had come to believe it himself.
Then, in an unnaturally calm tone, he spoke.
“Hiruzen Sarutobi, high-level village missions have always been personally assigned by the Hokage, right?” Hiruzen Sarutobi thought Danzo was going to attack the Uchiha Clan’s greed by citing the huge proportion of high-level missions they took, so he closed his eyes and nodded, confirming it was so.
Osamu saw through what the old bastard was thinking, his gaze turning even darker.
“Then, Hiruzen Sarutobi, can you tell me…
in recent years, how many high-level missions have the shinobi of the former Senju Clan taken?” Seeing Hiruzen Sarutobi’s face suddenly flush bright red, Osamu continued to speak, word by word.
“It couldn’t be…
zero, could it?” “It’s about time Root conducted an investigation to see just how many members of the Senju Clan—who gave up the Senju surname and actively integrated into Konoha—are actually still alive.”