Inside the Anbu Interrogation Room, the lighting was dim, and the air carried a faintly oppressive atmosphere.
Aoki Uchiha was bound to a chair, fine beads of sweat seeping from his forehead.
He kept his head lowered, not daring to meet Hatake Sakumo's eyes.
At that moment, he felt as though things could not possibly get any worse.
He had only just accepted the Hokage's assignment and officially begun monitoring the Uchiha Clan and Chiyo Uchiha.
In less than a week,
he had barely seen Chiyo Uchiha a few times before his suspicious movements caught the attention of Sakumo's Anbu.
In the end, under Sakumo's orders,
three elite ninja had ambushed and knocked him unconscious before bringing him to the Interrogation Room.
Previously, when the balance of power had been rearranged, the Third Hokage had deliberately allowed part of the Uchiha Clan's authority to overlap with that of the Anbu led by Hatake Sakumo.
He had believed that this would plant a wedge between them, and that with time, the two sides would develop a rift.
Chiyo had seen through that scheme long ago.
When he later went to Sakumo's home for dinner, the two of them reached an agreement to cooperate.
Not only had the Uchiha Clan and the Anbu not grown further apart, they had become increasingly coordinated.
And the area where Aoki operated was precisely the area where their authority overlapped.
It belonged to the Uchiha Clan, yet it was also under the Anbu's jurisdiction.
Nothing had gone the way Aoki had expected. It seemed that every calculation had failed.
Sakumo's subordinates
were now elites from the major clans. Capturing a "suspicious" Aoki Uchiha had taken little effort.
Hatake Sakumo stood before him, his gaze cold.
He held a report in his hand, one that detailed Aoki