Toxic

"Minister, that is..."

One team member stared at the familiar Black with Red Clouds robe in the sky and spoke to his captain in surprise.

"It's someone from Akatsuki."

The Shinobi Department Minister's face was equally grave.

As for intelligence on Akatsuki, they only knew a rough outline.

Japan had used the Death Warriors selection method to enter the Fourth Great Ninja War and frantically gather information from every side. What they learned vaguely indicated that Akatsuki had been the key organization behind the outbreak of the Fourth Great Ninja War.

Unfortunately, intelligence in other areas was far scarcer. Still, now that they knew the outcome, they could work backward through conventional information and determine that Akatsuki had quite a number of S-rank rogue shinobi.

For example, Uchiha Itachi. Orochimaru!

And Deidara and Sasori of the Red Sands, who had raided Sand Village not long ago.

Every one of them was ruthless.

When Deidara and Sasori of the Red Sands had launched their surprise attack, if it had truly been just the two of them, then with Sunagakure's cooperation, they could have helped them through the crisis.

But they had no desire to offend Akatsuki at this point. Being targeted by them would be troublesome.

As for Sunagakure, taking another step back, if Shukaku remained within Sunagakure, there would definitely be no chance to obtain him. If he were taken away, however, there might still be a sliver of hope.

Of course, given how terrifying Akatsuki was, they would at most conduct some probing and intelligence gathering. The target of this mission was not the One-Tail beast.

Japan should still be withholding some information. From their confident expressions and the things they had let slip, they seemed likely to have discovered the identity of Akatsuki's hidden boss!

This was the