These people were either Kabuto's second batch of Jinchuriki, or the same batch carrying out requisition missions before Chisen and the others trapped them at the forked gully.
"Where is Sawada Village?" Chisen asked.
The old man used a wooden stick to draw a rough map in the river mud.
His fingers were thick, their joints deformed by years of labor, but he drew the map with practiced ease-he might have been a hunter or woodcutter in his youth.
He drew a winding line in the mud to represent the river at the foot of the mountains, then dotted several villages beside it.
Sawada Village was the southernmost, near the foothills of the Southern Mountain Region.
About half a day's walk north along the river valley from Sawada Village lay a larger town called Zeshimo Town.
Farther north from Zeshimo Town, beyond the start of the hills, was an abandoned mine.
Beyond the mine—his stick traced a large circle in the mud—was the ridgeline where the Otogakure Ruins lay.
When he finished, he tapped the circle marking the Otogakure Ruins with his stick.
"I worked in there when I was young.
Back when Orochimaru was alive, the people of Otogakure hired villagers from nearby to dig tunnels.
They dug for years and hollowed out half the mountain.
Then Orochimaru died, Otogakure disbanded, and nobody looked after those tunnels anymore.
But last autumn, people started going in again-at night, you could hear machinery humming inside the mountain, like a swarm of bees shut in a jar.
Sometimes the water flowing out into the gullies at the foot of the mountain was hot, with white steam rising off it."
"Last autumn." Chisen mentally fitted that date together with the other intelligence.
Last autumn was when Kabuto had gone fully underground after defecting