A war of words against the assembled scholars

Uchiha Mai had read Romance of the Three Kingdoms and The Fifteenth Year of Wanli thoroughly, and watched House of Cards, Yes, Prime Minister!, In the Name of the People, The Legend of Zhen Huan, Palace Scheme...

When it came to power struggles, slander, and framing others, he was an expert, well versed in assuming motives, fabricating charges, politicizing issues, drawing tenuous connections, forcing choices, and all manner of political maneuvering.

His barrage left Danzo and Mitokado Homura utterly dumbfounded on the spot.

Wait, all we said was that we supported Hatake Sakumo. We didn't say anything else. How did this suddenly become a plot to undermine the Hokage?

Everyone had their specialty. Strong as ninja might be, the power struggles within the Konoha High Command were downright childish.

The entire village had only a few tens of thousands of people, and its politics were painfully petty. Most of its leaders' political maneuvering was on the level of Country Love, if not worse.

In all of Konoha, only Sarutobi Hiruzen had any real skill at it. Of course, without the overwhelming advantage of being Hokage, even he would have been nothing special.

The two Hokage Advisors, Mitokado Homura and Utatane Koharu, were useless incompetents who occupied their positions without doing any work.

If Sarutobi Hiruzen hadn't been desperate to bring Danzo under control back then and promised them those two advisor positions, neither of them would ever have qualified.

Uchiha Mai was barely twenty, yet he dared to open fire on two of the Hokage's assistants and advisors. Such aggression genuinely shocked everyone in the meeting room.

To Uchiha Mai, however, this was merely standard procedure.

Ji An and Zhang Tang under Emperor Wu of the Western Han, and Yan Shifan during the Ming dynasty's Jiajing reign, had all excelled