"Sigh..."
After temporarily placating the Cloud Village Delegation, Sarutobi Hiruzen rose to his feet and looked out at the Hidden Leaf Village's nightscape. He looked utterly exhausted.
"Sarutobi, I say if they want a fight, then we fight. The Hidden Leaf Village isn't a place for Cloud Village to run wild."
A man with one eye wrapped in bandages and a face like everyone owed him a million walked out of the shadows.
"Danzo, the Hidden Leaf Village can no longer withstand war. Besides, those people are nothing but clowns. What truly gives me a headache is that Black Shadow that just appeared."
Danzo frowned. He had also heard about Black Shadow. "Is that Black Shadow really that strange?"
Sarutobi Hiruzen took a puff from his pipe without answering.
After a while, just as he was about to speak, someone knocked on the door. Danzo concealed himself in the shadows.
"Come in."
A ninja entered, took out a scroll, and reported, "After Black Shadow vanished, it appeared in Young Miss Hyuga's room. It killed a thief who happened to sneak in, then the Hyuga Clan used Sealing Jutsu to seal it inside this scroll."
"Understood. Thanks for your effort. You may leave."
The ninja left the Hokage's Office Building, and Danzo emerged from the shadows.
Sarutobi Hiruzen looked at the scroll on the desk. The aura within it did indeed match the Black Shadow he had seen.
It truly had not been easy for the Hyuga Clan to seal Black Shadow.
Danzo also stared at the scroll with a frown. This aura was indeed exceptionally bizarre. Even he, whose hands were stained with blood, felt his heart tremble. When was the last time he had felt this way?
"Something this strange should be kept by my Root."
Danzo reached out to take the scroll directly.
"Danzo."
"Danzo, Black Shadow is extremely bizarre. It is no longer something your Root can simply take away. What's more, it killed someone from Cloud Village."
At that moment, Utatane Koharu and Mitokado Homura entered and stopped Danzo.
Danzo looked at Sarutobi Hiruzen. Sarutobi Hiruzen said nothing, but neither did he agree to Danzo's request.
Danzo snorted coldly and turned to leave.
"We heard about the Cloud Village Delegation. What do you plan to do?"
Someone from the Cloud Village Delegation had died in the Hidden Leaf Village. Such a major matter could not possibly go unnoticed by them.
"When they came to sign this peace treaty, the Cloud Village people had ulterior motives to begin with. If my guess is correct, they wanted to use this opportunity to obtain the Hyuga Clan's Byakugan."
Utatane Koharu and Mitokado Homura exchanged glances. On careful thought, it really was possible.
After all, it was not as though the Cloud Village had only coveted the Hyuga Clan's Byakugan for a day or two. What they had not expected was that Cloud Village would actually dare to cause trouble in the Hidden Leaf Village. Were they not afraid of starting a war?
Starting a war?
Only one's own people knew one's own affairs. The Hidden Leaf Village truly could not afford a war right now. If they kept fighting, the village's reserves would truly be exhausted.
"Fortunately, they have no evidence..." Sarutobi Hiruzen recalled what the ninja had just said: Black Shadow had killed another person, and it had been in Young Miss Hyuga's room. "...No evidence proving that the Hidden Leaf Village's ninja killed their people. There is plenty of room to maneuver on that point."
Although the Cloud Village Delegation had come prepared this time, they might not necessarily be able to outmaneuver Sarutobi Hiruzen and the other two, who had been politicians their entire lives.
And the Cloud Village Delegation's only advantage was that the Hidden Leaf Village could not easily go to war at present.
But how much did the Cloud Village people really know about the Hidden Leaf Village's true situation?
Early the next morning, the Cloud Village Delegation once again arrived at the Hokage's Office Building in an aggressive manner.
They headed straight for the Hokage's office, paying no attention whatsoever to the Hidden Leaf Village's people.
When they reached the door of the Hokage's office, one of the Cloud Village people had just raised his foot to kick it open when the door opened on its own.
This left the man who wanted to kick the door in an awkward position. He could only sheepishly lower his raised leg.
"Your Hidden Leaf Village today..."
The Cloud Village Delegation had just been about to demand an explanation when Sarutobi Hiruzen spoke first.
"Everyone from Cloud Village, I know you are deeply grieved by your leader's death. Especially since he died in our Hidden Leaf Village. Our Hidden Leaf Village will give you an explanation."
As he spoke, Sarutobi Hiruzen led the Cloud Village people to a courtyard.
The instant they entered, the stench of blood hit them in the face.
Looking closely, they saw that the entire courtyard was filled with corpses.
"The killers you seek are all here."
The Cloud Village Delegation: "..."
Having been on the battlefield, it was not as if they had never seen corpses. Compared to the grisly battlefield scenes of bodies torn apart beyond recognition, these neatly arranged corpses were actually rather pleasing to the eye.
But that was not the key issue. The key was that among these corpses were several people he recognized.
It was not that he had seen these people before, or rather, that he had memorized their files.
It was because these people were all Jonin!
Two of them were even Elite Jonin!
As for the dozen or so Chunin laid out beside them, they were not so important.
"Last night, while these two Jonin were leading a patrol, they mistakenly took your leader for a thief who had infiltrated the Hidden Leaf Village and killed him." Sarutobi Hiruzen pointed at two of the corpses.
"And these two mistook the ninja you sent out to look for your leader as thieves who had infiltrated the Hidden Leaf Village and killed them as well." Sarutobi Hiruzen pointed at another two corpses.
"When I learned the truth, I was deeply saddened."
"The Cloud Village people came to the Hidden Leaf Village with broad hearts seeking peace, yet as soon as they arrived, two of them died at the hands of our Hidden Leaf Village."
"It grieved me deeply. I immediately ordered the execution of the Jonin who acted, and even had the accompanying Chunin executed with them. I hope your delegation can calm its anger."
The Cloud Village people looked at the neatly arranged corpses on the ground, then at Sarutobi Hiruzen's grief-stricken expression. Their mouths fell open, but they could not say a word.
This... was not how things were supposed to go.
He even began to suspect that the people sent to kidnap Young Miss Hyuga had been discovered and killed on the spot before they could even reach the Hyuga Clan Compound.
Once that thought surfaced, it refused to leave his mind.
Could the Cloud Village people really have been so unlucky as to encounter a patrol led by Elite Jonin?
"That's not right! Where are the bodies? Where are our people's bodies?"
The Cloud Village people finally spotted the flaw.
"This matter pains me even more. Perhaps these ninja had only recently returned from the battlefield and had not yet adjusted their mindsets. The moment they encountered your people, they treated them as mortal enemies and showed no mercy. In the end, they did not even leave behind corpses—they were reduced to ashes."
Upon hearing such an outrageous claim, the Cloud Village Delegation's first reaction was disbelief.
But then they looked again at the neatly arranged bodies. Those were all elite ninja of the Hidden Leaf Village!
Those were things that could not be faked!
This time, the Cloud Village Delegation was completely thrown into disarray.
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