"Tap!"
His trembling hand slowly loosened, gently placing the last item taken from the old man's body onto the ground.
"Whew..."
Then came an exhale filled with tremors and a tangle of complex emotions.
"Gulp!"
At that moment, the Konoha ninja surrounding the courtyard, including the four encircled guards and the Anbu Ninja who had come with Chiba, all swallowed as they stared at the sealed tent temporarily erected from white canvas.
A tension more intense than before, yet entirely different in nature, slowly spread through the silence.
It had been nearly an hour.
Had the examination still not been completed?
At this point, the most nervous person had to be the blood-covered Konoha ninja—the first and only suspect in the murder.
After all, he was directly involved in this matter. Whether it was true or not, it would cause enormous upheaval in the ninja world and might even directly worsen the current trend of the Ninja World War, which had been moving toward peace.
To be honest, no matter how elite a ninja he was, facing a situation that could affect the overall state of the ninja world and the war itself left him at a loss. The consequences were simply too great.
He did not even know how to defend himself. Other than panic, he was consumed by anxious uncertainty.
Now, under Chiba's handling of the matter, his state of mind was gradually changing. Honestly, Chiba gave him a considerable sense of security. At the very least, his panic had almost completely vanished, leaving behind only a lingering sense of unease.
In fact, he had begun considering the chain of events behind this incident. But with things having developed to this point, there was no longer any point in doing so. The incident had already happened. Even if