Hiruzen Sarutobi spoke for quite a while with a genial smile on his face, yet he still couldn’t get so much as a single word out of Fugaku.
Neither resistance nor compromise.
Not a word.
Fugaku simply stood there, silently watching them perform.
Even someone as slow to catch on as Hiruzen could tell by now that something was wrong.
With the hand hidden behind his back, he quietly made a signal.
Better have the ANBU call Minato Namikaze back first.
At the very least, with Minato here, Fugaku probably wouldn’t dare act quite so arrogantly.
On the surface, however, Hiruzen kept the conversation going as though nothing were wrong.
“Since you have no objections to this matter, Fugaku, then carry it out as soon as possible.
If you need anything, the village will provide a certain degree of support.”
Silence.
Still silence.
It became so quiet that a bead of cold sweat slid down Hiruzen’s forehead.
Something was wrong.
Very, very wrong.
Fugaku Uchiha had always been someone accustomed to compromise.
So why was he acting as though he couldn’t care less now?
Hiruzen glanced at Shinya, who genuinely appeared to have nothing better to do and had even picked up a piece of fruit from the table to eat.
Gritting his teeth, Hiruzen pulled a document from the desk.
Clearly, this wasn’t some decision they had made on the spur of the moment.
They had already prepared the written order in advance, complete with the Hokage’s official seal.
“Fugaku, this is a decision issued by the village.
You are required to comp—”
Just as Hiruzen decided to take a harder stance, he looked up and saw three black tomoe appear in Fugaku’s eyes.
And that wasn’t the end of it.
The three tomoe slowly merged together, forming an intricate pattern similar to one they had seen before.
Hiruzen Sarutobi and Danzō Shimura were both old men who had lived from the Warring States Period all the way to the present.
They were people who had personally experienced the era of the First Hokage and Madara Uchiha.
How could they possibly fail to recognize those eyes?
The Mangekyō Sharingan…
Madara Uchiha?!
During the Fourth Shinobi World War, the Third Tsuchikage, Ōnoki, had nearly been reduced to trembling legs when he saw the reanimated Madara, his old trauma immediately resurfacing.
Hiruzen and Danzō came from the same generation as Ōnoki.
More importantly, they had been shinobi of Konoha.
How could they not recognize those eyes?
Young shinobi who had never experienced the Warring States Period could never truly understand just how terrifying the names Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha had been in that era.
For those who had never lived through those times, looking at Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha was like a frog at the bottom of a well staring up at the moon.
But for those who had experienced that age firsthand, merely looking upon those two names was like an ant gazing up at the boundless heavens.
Hiruzen and Danzō might have still been young back then, but they had witnessed Madara’s arrogance as he looked down upon the world.
They had also seen the colossal Wood Golem and Susanoo towering hundreds of meters into the sky.
Was that really a realm humans could reach?
The textbooks might claim that Hiruzen Sarutobi was the strongest Hokage in history.
But Hiruzen himself knew better than anyone.
In front of monsters like Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha, he was nothing but an ant!
What kind of joke was this?!
They had clearly suppressed the Uchiha clan so relentlessly.
So how had another pair of Mangekyō Sharingan appeared?!
And Konoha didn’t have a second Hashirama Senju anymore!
Hiruzen recognized those eyes.
How could Danzō possibly fail to?
He instinctively took a step backward, subtly trying to put Hiruzen between himself and Fugaku.
But unlike Hiruzen, Danzō’s eyes also contained something else.
An unmistakable trace of greed.
Danzō Shimura was obsessed with the power of Wood Release and the Sharingan to an almost fanatical degree.
For years, he had researched the First Hokage’s cells while secretly—and sometimes not so secretly—collecting Sharingan.
All for one purpose.
To obtain the two powers that had once brought an age of chaos to an end.
Most people believed the Warring States Period had ended because the Senju and Uchiha clans reconciled, created the shinobi village system, and established deeper cooperation with the great nations.
But those of the older generation knew the truth.
It wasn’t the Senju and Uchiha who had ended the age of war.
It was Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha.
Just how powerful had those two been?
So powerful that as long as the two of them remained alive, no one even dared start a war.
And reality had proven exactly that.
After the battle at the Valley of the End, Madara faked his death while Hashirama suffered severe injuries.
What happened afterward was simple.
Hashirama died in the morning, and by the afternoon, the First Shinobi World War had practically begun.
Those who had never witnessed Hashirama’s colossal thousand-armed Buddha or Madara’s Perfect Susanoo couldn’t even begin to imagine such overwhelming power.
Anyone who had visited the remains of the Valley of the End would find it impossible to believe that such devastation had been caused by the battle between just two people.
Before that level of power, whether someone was a genin, chūnin, or jōnin made virtually no difference.
They were all the kind of people who could be killed with a single kick.
Numbers were meaningless against shinobi of that caliber.
Even the so-called tailed beasts weren’t worth mentioning before those two.
They were little more than oversized pets.
And yet Fugaku Uchiha—the man they had always considered an easy target they could push around—had quietly obtained that kind of power?
At that moment, Hiruzen’s mind was filled with the image of Madara Uchiha’s Perfect Susanoo towering hundreds of meters into the air and cleaving the peak from a mountain with a single sword strike.
The instant he imagined that scene, Hiruzen found himself sweating just like Ōnoki.
He was terrified that Fugaku might unleash Susanoo right here inside the Hokage Building.
At this point, Hiruzen didn’t even have the energy to care that Danzō had quietly pushed him to the front.
He hurriedly raised a hand.
Not to form a hand seal.
But to calm Fugaku down.
At the very least, he had to stall until the ANBU informed Minato and the Fourth Hokage returned as quickly as possible.
“Fugaku, don’t get worked up.
Whatever the problem is, we can sit down and discuss it properly.
There’s nothing that can’t be negotiated.”
At that moment, Hiruzen missed Konoha’s Little Sun more than ever.
Whenever Minato was around, their side at least possessed some military deterrence of its own.
But when Hiruzen remembered Madara’s heaven-piercing giant of a Susanoo, even he couldn’t help wondering whether Minato actually had the strength to defeat Fugaku.
Minato Namikaze was unmatched when it came to large-scale battles.
Against groups of enemies, he was practically a one-man slaughter machine.
But against a truly overwhelming individual powerhouse, his offensive strength was ultimately somewhat lacking.
They couldn’t exactly expect him to take one of his special kunai and somehow stab straight through Susanoo’s defenses, could they?
More importantly, they were currently standing in the very center of Konoha.
If this were a battlefield, Minato could simply retreat if he couldn’t win.
No one could possibly stop Minato Namikaze once he used the Flying Thunder God Technique to escape.
But if a battle erupted inside Konoha, Minato would have to protect the village.
That might force him to confront Susanoo’s attacks head-on.
Against a Perfect Susanoo, Minato was still one tier short.
So the first thing Hiruzen needed to do was obvious.
He had to stabilize Fugaku.
Konoha had only just emerged from the Third Shinobi World War.
The village simply couldn’t afford the devastation that would result from a Susanoo rampaging through its heart.