At some point, a new voice appeared in Shimura Danzō's heart.
It seemed to possess boundless power, growing louder and louder until, in the end, it roared like a giant.
The voice said:
"They all want to see you lose, but you have to win just to show them!"
"Even if all of Konoha, even the entire Shinobi World, denies you, you can't deny yourself!"
"You can lose to others, but you must never lose to yourself."
"Everyone is waiting for you to fall. That's exactly why you have to stand firm!"
The voice itself was powerful, but its words were even more so.
Shimura Danzō felt a shock deep in his soul.
He listened to those words over and over. All his self-doubt melted away like snow beneath the blazing sun, evaporating in an instant without a trace.
Shimura Danzō had never been so resolute. He stood up solemnly and, facing the direction Hiruzen Sarutobi had gone, spoke to his own heart as well:
"I'm not wrong!"
Yamanaka Chujiu had borrowed Professor Ai's words to give Danzō a powerful boost.
Shimura Danzō was known as the "Darkness of the Shinobi," a shadowy operative of Konoha. Hearing such undeniably correct and deeply inspiring words naturally stirred a resonance in his heart, and he engraved them there of his own accord.
This was the Thought Seal Yamanaka Chujiu had carefully designed specifically for Shimura Danzō.
Danzō was rotten to the core. After doing so many evil deeds, he couldn't help but doubt himself, which was why he kept insisting, "I'm doing this for Konoha."
Encouraged by words brimming with positive energy, his resolve would grow firm, making it almost impossible for Hiruzen Sarutobi to persuade him again.
Danzō's excessive determination turned him into a hedgehog bristling with spikes. He pricked his three old classmates, who had wanted to huddle together for warmth, until they were sore all over, forcing them to keep their distance.
But the dire situation left them no choice but to huddle together again, only to be pricked until they couldn't bear it.
This constant back-and-forth would drain Shimura Danzō's energy, leave him short on time, and make his work more difficult.
He would be so busy that he'd have to spend all his time working, with no spare moments to commit evil.
And if this tug-of-war went on long enough, the Konoha F4 would get used to the distance between them and to no longer standing so tightly united.
When the Konoha F4 stood shoulder to shoulder, they were Konoha's most powerful political bloc: the Third Hokage faction.
But when they couldn't stay united, they were nothing more than two aging Kage Level shinobi and two aging, timid jōnin.
By the time the war ended, Yamanaka Chujiu would surely have grown stronger, while the four old men would have weakened rapidly. Perhaps that would be when the balance of power finally shifted.
When that time came, would Yamanaka Chujiu dare to hold a public rally?
Would he dare to give a speech in a beer hall?
Heh!
But his greatest gain today had been gaining control over Shimura Danzō's mind.
Ever since he'd first targeted Shimura Danzō, wary of a Kage Level shinobi, Yamanaka Chujiu had been exceptionally cautious, stirring Danzō's emotions in line with Danzō's own thoughts.
After trying a few times, he'd found that this gentle, against-the-grain approach worked. So today, he'd boldly tried a new method.
Going by his own understanding and beyond Shimura Danzō's level of awareness, Yamanaka Chujiu had implanted even more powerful words in his mind.
Shimura Danzō had actually accepted those foreign words and willingly understood them as an advance in his own thinking, turning into exactly the person Yamanaka Chujiu wanted him to be.
It was an overwhelming victory in intelligence, a transcendence of human nature, a condescending gaze from on high. It gave Yamanaka Chujiu a thrill unlike anything he'd ever felt.
With his mind at ease and spirits high, Yamanaka Chujiu left.
But his good mood lasted only a short while, because he'd been connected to the Root shinobi who were tailing Hiruzen Sarutobi, Utatane Koharu, and Mitokado Homura.
Through those Root shinobi's ears, Yamanaka Chujiu overheard the three Konoha High Command members whispering and learned some astonishing news.
In short, Konoha's warehouses had suffered a massive shortfall.
The accounts listed tens of thousands of Kunai, more than a hundred thousand stacks of Shuriken, a hundred thousand Explosive Tags, and large quantities of food, medicine, bandages, and other supplies. But none of it was actually in the warehouses.
The warehouses themselves didn't even exist!
Because the corrupt shinobi had been so clumsy, the investigation had quickly caught most of the parasites and recovered a fair amount of the stolen money.
The problem was that the war had already begun. The money couldn't immediately be turned into weapons, food, medicine, and equipment, and the war had cut off many supply channels.
Even when goods were available, prices were skyrocketing. The recovered money couldn't buy even half the quantity of supplies they'd originally been meant to cover.
Hiruzen Sarutobi had racked his brains and secured another sum of war funds from the daimyō, but it was still nowhere near enough to make up the shortfall.
Driven into a corner, he'd decided to cut spending across Konoha's departments and squeeze out whatever funds he could.
That was when he discovered that Root had a massive amount of spending with no clear destination.
Root was, after all, merely a training division under Anbu. But once they checked the accounts, they found that the funds with no clear destination alone exceeded Anbu's entire budget.
In ordinary times, Konoha's money flowed like a great river, so Hiruzen Sarutobi could put up with it. After all, it was Shimura Danzō's department, and given all the dirty work he did, it was understandable that the accounts were unclear.
But these weren't ordinary times. The war had begun, and Konoha was so short on money that everyone was panicking. How could he tolerate that?
So Hiruzen Sarutobi brought along his two old classmates and went straight to Anbu, intending to force Shimura Danzō to hand over some of the funds.
The three of them stormed into Root, but they didn't get back a single coin. Instead, Shimura Danzō ridiculed all three of them.
Because Shimura Danzō had unexpectedly blown up at them, they hadn't even had a chance to explain the real situation to his face. They could only pass along their actual request on the way back, using the Root shinobi as their ears.
And so the news fell into Yamanaka Chujiu's lap.
Yamanaka Chujiu didn't keep it to himself. He turned around and told Orochimaru.
To his surprise, Orochimaru wasn't at all shocked. "When my teacher clung to power and refused to let go, I knew this day would come."
"Fortunately, they were so bad at embezzling funds that they hadn't made up the shortfall in time and got caught red-handed by Teacher Sarutobi."
"They deserve to die."
Orochimaru's meaning was clear. He was also among those who'd embezzled public funds, but his methods were highly sophisticated. He'd pocketed the money without depriving the village of anything it needed, so there was no way anyone would find out.
But he wasn't saying all this to brag to his student. He was passing along a piece of confidential information.
Yamanaka Chujiu couldn't help grimacing. He hated people who spoke in riddles and kept things under wraps. But Orochimaru was still his teacher, the one he'd formally bowed to and sworn himself to, so no matter how much he hated it, he had to go along with it.
So he asked, "Teacher Orochimaru, just tell me what you want me to do."
Orochimaru laughed hoarsely.
He looked very pleased.
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