"Hanzo, did you send a ninja to the Land of Hot Springs to deliver a message to me?"
As he spoke, Hiruzen Sarutobi took out the scroll he had brought with him as evidence and held it out to Hanzo.
"I was under the control of Sharingan Genjutsu during that time," Hanzo said coldly. Still, he reached out, took the scroll, and opened it.
After reading it, Hanzo tossed the scroll to Yahiko of his own accord, then turned to Hiruzen Sarutobi. "I don't know where you were, and I know nothing about the Rinnegan."
Hiruzen Sarutobi nodded, but his expression grew grave.
A mysterious figure calling himself Madara, who possessed a powerful Sharingan capable of controlling Hanzo and was suspected of being a Uchiha ninja.
Could this person be connected to the Uchiha Clan?
Could the Uchiha Clan even be behind all of this?
It wasn't that Hiruzen Sarutobi was being overly suspicious. The Uchiha Clan had been unruly ever since Konoha was founded.
There was no need to recount what Madara Uchiha had done. Even during the Second Hokage's tenure, Setsuna Uchiha, a representative of the Uchiha Hawks, had been dissatisfied with the Second Hokage's Police Force policy. He had incited and plotted a clan rebellion, hoping to wrest control of Konoha from the Senju Clan.
After the plot was exposed, the Second Hokage chose to punish them lightly to appease the Uchiha Clan, merely imprisoning Setsuna Uchiha, the ringleader.
Since then, the Uchiha had staged no open rebellions, but the Hawks within the clan had never lost influence. Instead, they had continued to promote the idea that the Uchiha should seize control of Konoha.
That was why the First and Third Hokage's factions had kept the Uchiha under close watch ever since the First's death.
Just as