"No... leads..."
After the Anbu Ninja left, Minato Namikaze murmured to himself twice, then could not help letting out another low murmur. This time, however, his brow furrowed tightly, and the pen he had raised slowly lowered.
His face was already full of worry.
At this moment, the newly appointed Fourth Hokage—whose prestige upon taking office was second only to that of the First Hokage—was filled with concern.
So concerned that he was beginning to feel unsettled.
Yes, Minato Namikaze was feeling restless at this very moment.
What unsettled him was the matter of Chiba's "attack on village ninjas" when Chiba had returned previously. Chiba had originally been innocent in that incident, yet misleading intelligence unfavorable to him had resulted in an extremely malicious false accusation. Although that incident had removed all resistance to Chiba becoming Hokage Assistant, as Hokage, Minato could not merely consider the level of achieving his own objectives.
He still had to pay attention to deeper issues.
In fact, those deeper issues were one of the reasons behind this effort to win over the Uchiha.
And to him, those deeper issues were undoubtedly the greatest threat at this stage.
The intelligence delivered to the Hokage—no, not just intelligence delivered to the Hokage, but intelligence given to all the village's upper echelons—could all be steered toward slandering Chiba. The person secretly framing Chiba could be said to control the village's intelligence system, or at least influence the transmission of intelligence throughout the village.
For a ninja village, the importance of its intelligence system went without saying. It even surpassed the military system and was basically one of the village's most vital systems. Whoever controlled the intelligence system controlled half the village.
If the intelligence system were manipulated properly, that person could even influence the Hokage's actions. After