Inside the Hokage Building office.
Hiruzen Sarutobi leaned back in his chair, his eyes lowered in silence as he puffed on his pipe.
The air was as stifling as a clay jar under high pressure, making one want to smash through its walls or lift its lid and escape.
"Cough, cough!"
It was not until Utatane Koharu could no longer help coughing that the unbearable dead silence was broken.
"Hiruzen, this matter..."
Mitokado Homura immediately let out a breath, glanced at Danzo, who stubbornly refused to lower his head, then looked at Hiruzen Sarutobi and persuaded him, "This time, Danzo did go a little too far..."
"Only a little too far?"
Before Mitokado Homura could continue making excuses for Danzo, Hiruzen Sarutobi cut him off expressionlessly. "Root was initially only the Anbu's training division. Later, it gradually evolved into an intelligence organization."
The "Anbu," fully known as the "Assassination Tactics Special Squad," was a special unit established by the Second Hokage, Tobirama Senju, and directly under the Hokage's command.
Every Anbu member was an outstanding Ninja selected from the village. Their main duties were protecting the Hokage and preventing foreign enemies from invading Konoha, though during special periods, they also handled reconnaissance, assassinations, and similar missions.
They wore white animal-like masks during operations, and the nature of their missions, along with all other information, was kept confidential.
Under normal circumstances, they had four squads, each with seventeen members and one squad captain, with four teams under each squad.
Each team consisted of four Ninja: one captain and three members.
And Root, which Danzo was in charge of, was essentially equivalent to one Anbu squad.
As squad captain, he commanded four teams, seventeen people in total, fitting the Anbu structure.
But now...
"Root actually dared to conceal such important intelligence from