"Then we'll be taking our leave, Lord Chiba."
"Mm... mm..."
Under the strange looks the ninjas installing the extraction equipment were trying hard to suppress, the corners of Chiba's mouth twitched almost uncontrollably as he nodded to them and watched them leave.
He was completely... under suspicion...
A bitter thought, bitter beyond measure, flashed through his mind.
Earlier, after opening the door and letting them in, they had followed Yukina's guidance to the bathroom and opened the secret chamber beneath it, one specifically built for Chiba's experiments. The faces of those installation ninjas had changed on the spot.
No matter how you looked at it, it was suspicious! Far too suspicious! Who built a laboratory underground? One look told you it wasn't anything proper—it looked exactly like the kind of laboratory used for forbidden experiments.
At the time, Chiba had not even known how to explain himself. He could only feel that Hirohiko might have some serious misunderstanding about his experiments.
Back then, he had merely made Hirohiko test medicine for him. And Chiba had personally verified every drug beforehand. They had side effects, but none were fatal. No matter how one looked at it, this was a legitimate experiment.
Then, throughout the entire process, Chiba had endured all kinds of furtive glances.
He truly had no idea how to explain it. Yet if he said nothing, he was afraid they would misunderstand. It had been sheer torment.
Fortunately, he had been fairly open about it. At the very least, those installation ninjas believed that Chiba had some other purpose for doing this and was not simply being suspicious, so they had not stopped the installation.
It would not have been a problem if they had stopped work, reported it to the Hokage, and launched an investigation. Chiba had done