Impossible!
There was no way he could know!
They should have taken special precautions against him. Back then, although they had not received any intelligence on him, they had inadvertently obtained information about Uchiha Nobuhiko's whereabouts, and it seemed that Uchiha Nobuhiko had confronted someone.
Even if the person confronting Uchiha Nobuhiko had not been him, Uchiha Nobuhiko had appeared so "openly" that even they had learned of his whereabouts. There was no way he would not have known. And when he left the village, it had been to track down, restrain, or even hunt down Uchiha Nobuhiko. There was no way he could have been unaware of that intelligence.
They had calculated that he could not possibly return to the village!
And they had made arrangements. This had been done in secret; there was absolutely no way anyone else could know!
Even the Konoha personnel responsible for collecting the Uchiha Clan's bodies had discovered nothing, let alone him, who had been outside the village and drawn away by information about Uchiha Nobuhiko.
Impossible! Absolutely impossible!
Before the fallen main seat, Commander Shimura sprang to his feet, eyes wide as he read the Official Order from Taki Chiba in his hand again and again. The faint wrinkles carved by age into the face of the Root leader—no longer wrapped in bandages—trembled along with his increasingly shaking body.
It was as though he had seen something utterly impossible and terrifying.
Was it...
Orochimaru?
After that string of "impossibles," since the event had already happened, Danzo of the past might have remained trapped in that impossible cycle. But Danzo, who had reflected bitterly and even changed the way he thought, quickly began seeking the possibility that had made this impossibility possible.
And amid his chaotic horror, the first person he thought of