Konoha, on the western outskirts, in a remote area.
In the past, this had merely been a desolate corner overgrown with weeds, rarely visited by anyone.
But now, the sprawling weeds had been thoroughly cleared away, and there were visibly more people coming and going. Quite a few Konoha ninja, wearing forehead protectors and green flak jackets, moved back and forth among them.
Several buildings had already been erected on the open ground. Judging from the somewhat rough joins in the walls and the scattered dirt around the ground that had yet to be cleared away, these buildings had clearly been hastily completed only recently. Those tall, smooth stone walls had likely been formed directly with Earth Release ninjutsu, taking only a few days at most.
At that moment, in a meeting room on the fifth floor of the headquarters building at the center, beneath the plaque reading "Ninja Way Origins Research Society," five people sat around an oval conference table.
Higashino Shinichi, Minato Namikaze, Kurenai Shinku, Shibi Aburame, and Rō Inuzuka.
They had been elected as temporary representatives to oversee the society's preparatory work. Although the society had yet to be formally established, there was simply too much preliminary business to handle, and Shinichi could not shoulder all of it alone.
For one thing, he wanted more people to feel involved, fostering an atmosphere of collective progress from the very beginning. For another, the number of applicants had far exceeded expectations. Calling everyone together to discuss every matter, big or small, would be neither practical nor efficient.
Especially since they were still at war, everyone was busy with missions and could not simply sit down for meetings whenever needed.
Thus, at Shinichi's suggestion, all those who had expressed interest in joining voted to select five representatives to handle organizational