Early the next morning, while doing his morning training, Hyuga Kagami heard rumors that the clan head had been attacked.
This also confirmed that the flesh and tissue Orochimaru had delivered yesterday had indeed come from Hyuga Hiashi.
Although he had already suspected as much, Hyuga Kagami still couldn’t help feeling somewhat disappointed when he thought about how Orochimaru had been able to injure the strongest member of the Hyuga clan so easily.
Granted, there had almost certainly been an element of surprise involved in the attack, but even so, the difference in strength was difficult to ignore.
From Hyuga Kagami’s own perspective, for an ordinary member of the Hyuga clan to reach the level of the Three Sannin through conventional training alone would be extraordinarily difficult.
And when it came to talent, Hyuga Kagami clearly belonged to the mediocre category.
This was obvious from the number of his special gene sequences that were active.
Among ordinary Hyuga clan members, roughly 20 of the 33 special gene sequences were usually active.
An outstanding shinobi like Hyuga Hiashi could have as many as 28 active sequences.
Hyuga Kagami, however, had only 17 active sequences—clearly below the clan average.
If he simply continued along the conventional path, Special Jonin might very well be the highest rank Hyuga Kagami could ever reach in his lifetime.
As for the specific details surrounding Hyuga Hiashi’s attack, the Main Family remained tight-lipped and refused to divulge anything.
Hyuga Kagami guessed that perhaps, during the attack, Hyuga Hiashi had discovered Orochimaru’s identity.
Orochimaru was the Third Hokage’s student and one of the Three Sannin.
Not only did he hold a high position and wield considerable influence, but his identity was also extremely sensitive.
Faced with such a troublesome matter, the Main Family had most likely yet to reach a consensus internally, so naturally, they were keeping completely silent about it to outsiders.
“Orochimaru dared to attack the clan head, which means he obviously isn’t afraid of exposing his identity.
That also confirms my suspicion.
Orochimaru really has finished making his preparations to defect.
He could make his move at any time.”
After thinking it over for a moment, Hyuga Kagami became even more convinced that Orochimaru was about to defect.
Orochimaru’s defection had both advantages and disadvantages for Hyuga Kagami.
The advantage, naturally, was that it would remove the enormous mountain that had been weighing down on him.
The disadvantage was that he would also lose a powerful backer who had been protecting him.
“Other than Orochimaru, everyone who knew I participated in human experimentation died during the war.
As long as nothing goes wrong on Orochimaru’s end, the village shouldn’t be able to trace anything back to me.”
The few people who had joined Orochimaru around the same time as Hyuga Kagami had all died one after another during the war.
After being transferred to the rear lines, Hyuga Kagami had always conducted his experiments in an independent laboratory due to the unique nature of the Byakugan.
As a result, he had never interacted with the other researchers working under Orochimaru.
Aside from Orochimaru himself, no one knew what experimental project Hyuga Kagami was responsible for.
After going through every potential loose end in his mind, Hyuga Kagami calmly resumed his morning training, acting as though none of this had anything to do with him.
For the next few days, the village remained completely peaceful.
Then, on the night of the third day, an ANBU wearing a fox mask suddenly appeared in Hyuga Kagami’s home and escorted him to one of the ANBU’s temporary bases.
The base was located in the northwestern corner of the village.
It covered a large area and was extremely heavily guarded.
From what Hyuga Kagami could detect alone, there were already seven or eight squads of ANBU stationed as guards.
After being escorted into a small private room, Hyuga Kagami frowned slightly.
The room was tiny and completely devoid of furniture.
Sturdy iron bars had been installed outside, and as if that weren’t enough, an ANBU was even stationed beyond the bars as a guard.
Rather than calling this place a temporary base, it would be more accurate to call it a temporary prison.
There was no doubt about it.
For the ANBU directly under the Hokage to mobilize on such a large scale, Orochimaru must have officially defected.
It might have happened today—or perhaps even tonight.
Taking advantage of his Byakugan, Hyuga Kagami calmly observed everything happening throughout the temporary prison.
Hyuga Kagami was neither the first shinobi to be brought here nor the last.
Even after his arrival, many more shinobi continued to be escorted inside one after another.
Without exception, every shinobi being detained had served under Orochimaru.
Altogether, there were several hundred of them, including even several renowned elite Jonin of the village.
But that wasn’t particularly surprising.
During the war, Orochimaru had successively served as commander of multiple military units.
After so many years, there was nothing strange about him having several hundred former subordinates.
After all, under wartime mobilization, the village had more than ten thousand shinobi at its disposal.
If Orochimaru hadn’t even commanded a few hundred subordinates, he wouldn’t have been qualified to compete with the Fourth Hokage for the position of Hokage in the first place.
With several hundred detainees and nearly as many guards, the temporary prison quickly became noisy and chaotic.
Not everyone was like Hyuga Kagami and knew what had actually happened.
Among the hundreds of Orochimaru’s subordinates being detained, quite a few had no idea that Orochimaru had defected.
Naturally, they were extremely dissatisfied and indignant at being inexplicably imprisoned here.
It wasn’t until the Third Hokage appeared that the commotion gradually died down.
The Fourth Hokage had only recently taken office, and many of the village’s affairs, both large and small, were still being handled by the Third Hokage.
In fact, in the eyes of many shinobi, they were still accustomed to regarding the Third as the Hokage.
Under the Third Hokage’s supervision, the screening and investigation process quickly began.
Naturally, the first to undergo questioning and investigation were the several highly capable elite Jonin.
As for someone like Hyuga Kagami, a Chunin who had only been temporarily promoted during the war, there was no chance they would get around to him anytime soon.
Just like that, three days passed.
Hyuga Kagami was well aware of his own situation.
He knew that a wartime Chunin like himself had only been exceptionally promoted to meet the demands of the war.
In terms of actual strength, he was merely at the level of an experienced Genin, so naturally, no one would pay much attention to him.
But after being detained for three whole days without anyone so much as coming to question him, Hyuga Kagami’s dissatisfaction slowly began to build.
There was no doubt that the village’s screening process was not going smoothly.
Many of the detainees simply refused to believe that Orochimaru, one of the Three Sannin, would actually defect from the village.
As a result, they were unwilling to cooperate with the investigation.
Even among the village’s higher-ups, there were disagreements over whether torture should be used.
After all, ordinary interrogation alone made it extremely difficult to determine which of the detainees had participated in Orochimaru’s human experiments and which might be spies Orochimaru had deliberately left behind.
These detained shinobi had all undergone rigorous anti-interrogation training and had just survived the baptism of war.
They were seasoned veterans, not inexperienced rookies who had only just entered the field.
But once torture was brought into the equation, the implications became far too serious.
There weren’t merely one or two people being detained—there were several hundred.
To subject hundreds of shinobi, heroes who had only just helped the village win a war, to torture simply because Orochimaru alone had defected was obviously not a wise decision.
On the fifth day of Hyuga Kagami’s detention, Danzo appeared at the temporary prison.
Danzo personally visited each of the detained Jonin.
Hyuga Kagami had no idea what exactly they discussed, but when Danzo eventually left, he took the vast majority of them with him.
“They were persuaded by Danzo into joining Root!”
Hyuga Kagami didn’t need to think too deeply to figure out what had happened.
If the village couldn’t use torture to thoroughly screen them one by one, then these detained Jonin would undoubtedly become the greatest source of instability within the village.
Therefore, allowing Danzo to recruit them into Root had become the village’s only viable option.
The detained Jonin had clearly anticipated the difficult position they would find themselves in within the village.
As Orochimaru’s former subordinates, the chances of them being accepted by the Fourth Hokage were slim.
And the Fourth was still so young that he might remain in power for another twenty or thirty years.
If they didn’t find themselves a powerful backer soon, they knew their lives in the village would become increasingly difficult.
Thus, joining Root, which operated independently of the Fourth Hokage’s authority, became the best choice available to them.
Over the next few days, members of Root also approached Hyuga Kagami and invited him to join.
Hyuga Kagami politely declined.
As far as he was concerned, even defecting from the village would be preferable to joining an organization like Root—a group that specialized in doing the village’s dirty work, where one’s life was constantly at risk and whose members existed to take the blame whenever something went wrong.
Fortunately, the Root operatives didn’t make things difficult for Hyuga Kagami.
After he refused, they simply accepted his answer and left.
Since the village had already allowed Danzo to recruit so many of the detained Jonin, it naturally wouldn’t permit him to extend his reach too deeply into the ranks of the detained Chunin as well.
Therefore, Root’s attempts to recruit the detained Chunin were more of a formality than anything else.
That was precisely why Hyuga Kagami had dared to refuse.