The rain was coming, and the wind was filling the towers. Dark clouds pressed down on the city as if they might crush it.
Konoha had fallen into an unusually strange silence. Yet within that silence, a brutality capable of tearing everything apart was undoubtedly brewing. The Uchiha Clan stood at the eye of the storm. By now, nearly all of the elite ANBU shinobi had gathered around the Uchiha Residential Area.
They had surrounded the area as tightly as an iron barrel. Once the Hokage gave the order, that massive hammer would smash everything before it into dust.
The Uchiha had once been formidable, and so had Konoha. It would not have been an exaggeration to say the two sides had been evenly matched—but that had been decades ago. The Uchiha had declined, and as far as their top-level combat power was concerned, Konoha was no longer what it had been either. But that did not mean the two sides could still stand as equals... Konoha was far stronger than the Uchiha Clan and possessed enough power to annihilate them completely. That was reality.
To the surrounded Uchiha Clan, it was equivalent to having a blade pressed against their throats.
The murder of Konoha's higher-ups was rebellion in the truest sense. That was the consensus of everyone.
However, the Third Hokage had yet to pass judgment on the matter. As the leader of a nation's armed forces, he had to remain rational no matter what. He had to consider the political consequences of his actions. Therefore, every judgment he made had to follow proper procedure. There had to be an investigation before a decision, and a punishment after that. None of those things could be completed in an instant.
Nor could he be blamed for demanding perfection at a