It was well known that Uchiha Shisui and Itachi had both been active in the Hidden Sound Village.
The Third Hokage had even suspected that the so-called Sound Shadow had already been controlled by Shisui's Kotoamatsukami.
Or perhaps the Sound Shadow was simply a puppet of the Uchiha.
Back then, Shisui had explained the effects of Kotoamatsukami to the Third Hokage, but the Third Hokage had never seen Shisui use it and did not know just how powerful it truly was.
As the Third Hokage pondered this, he asked, "What kind of cooperation do you have with the Uchiha?"
Orochimaru had no intention of hiding it. "All of the Uchiha's food business expansion uses my people. Only my people can ensure that their culinary formulas do not leak."
The Third Hokage suddenly understood. No wonder there were so many shops in the Land of Rice Fields. By all rights, their vulnerabilities should have been easy to find, and it should have been easy to copy all those culinary formulas.
Yet over the years, countless people had tried to get their hands on the Land of Rice Fields' culinary formulas, only to return empty-handed.
If they were Orochimaru's people, then it all made sense.
After all, Orochimaru was highly proficient in researching all sorts of curse techniques and forbidden techniques. He had plenty of ways to keep someone from revealing such things.
Moreover, Orochimaru was skilled at raising death warriors. When he had defected, one reason was that the Third Hokage had not truly wanted to capture him.
The other was that most of Orochimaru's people feared no death. If he had forcefully killed Orochimaru, the Third Hokage would have lost quite a few men as well.
So this was how the Uchiha had saved themselves by taking an indirect route.