Winning Orochimaru over was not an isolated event.
After all, given Director Yamada's usual style, if he had devised this whole chain of schemes with long-term talent reserves in mind, then when the time came to reap the rewards, he should never have cast himself as the villain... that was the sort of thing only the Pot King would do.
Soji, who had always been on twelve-hundred-percent alert against humanity's darker side, would never conduct this kind of psychological stress test for no reason, much less put himself in danger for the sake of looking impressive!
The reason he arranged things this way was, in fact, to pave the way for the entire Horcrux plan.
—The mounting pressure of spell development and the potential benefits of inheriting political assets gave Director Yamada the idea of borrowing another shell to lay his eggs. Thus, compared with Konoha's White Fang, who could be put straight into actual combat, a growth-type character like Orochimaru, still in his developmental stage, was clearly better suited to the second-generation successor of the Yamada Faction currently being cultivated.
To that end, Soji needed, on one hand, to pry His Highness the Cold Lord out of Danzo's clutches and train him personally, lest this rare scientific talent have a moment of madness and throw himself into a chakra application subfield with an obvious ceiling, working himself into some inhuman, unsnake-like, soft-bodied freak. On the other hand, he also needed to leave room for the Yamada Faction's second generation to cultivate staunch supporters of their own!
To use a somewhat inappropriate analogy, this was a little like a feudal autocrat selecting the next cabinet for his heir...
Even if ministers promoted by the late emperor were utterly loyal, it was still difficult to count them among the next ruler's