At last!
At last! All these years of caution—I wasn't wrong!
Taki Chiba was really alive!
Watching Hada Ichiba enter the place where the two children had gone into Kusagakure, Orochimaru's lips slowly curved upward despite himself. Though he tried desperately to suppress it, the wild joy in his heart still lingered uncontrollably around his eyes and brows.
To be honest, at this moment, he felt that everything he had done, all the years he had lain low, had been because he feared Taki Chiba. He had always believed Taki Chiba was still alive. There had even been scattered, inconclusive bits of information that more or less supported his suspicions. That was why, after defecting from Konoha, he had chosen to join Akatsuki.
An organization backed by a force so terrifying and unfathomable that even he found it frightening.
It was also the organization where Uchiha Nobuhiko had once stayed.
Although he did not know why Uchiha Nobuhiko, practically one of Akatsuki's founding members, had defected without a word, none of that mattered to him at the time. He had joined the organization partly to find shelter. After all, Konoha's pursuit of him had been fierce back then. It was impossible for one man to contend with an entire ninja village.
Even if he was one of the Sannin.
Secondly, through Danzo, he had already learned quite a bit about Akatsuki. The organization also seemed to be preparing for some major undertaking and had been recruiting at the time. Their method of recruiting members clearly indicated that they possessed an exceptionally thorough intelligence network. After all, every member they sought was an S-rank wanted ninja. Such ninja were generally highly skilled at hiding themselves; even major ninja villages had to expend considerable effort to find them. Yet this organization could