PS: There'll be another big chapter this afternoon or evening to make up for the missed updates. It depends on how fast Xiao Ye can write, but it'll probably be tonight. This book is almost finished, too; there's just a little more left, maybe around two hundred thousand words. It depends on how much I write about the reforms and the follow-up plot.
Could Naruto have grown strong enough to destroy Konoha in these three years?
Wouldn't he need to be as powerful as the First or Uchiha Madara to do that?
He couldn't make sense of it.
He really couldn't make sense of it.
No matter how much Sarutobi Hiruzen tried to guess what had happened and how things had unfolded, there were still too many glaring inconsistencies and unanswered questions. At that moment, the Third Hokage could only turn his gaze instinctively toward Namikaze Minato.
But the Third Hokage should have been the one who knew best.
How could Minato, who had died in battle fifteen years ago, know the full story?
Besides, after that meeting, as Naruto's father, Minato surely held some resentment toward Konoha and the Third Hokage. Anyone who said otherwise would be lying. Now the Third Hokage was staring at him in shock and demanding answers, which only stirred that buried anger in Minato's heart. But Minato was still Minato. As Hokage—and the gentlest Hokage in history—he couldn't actually pick a fight with Sarutobi Hiruzen here. Hiruzen was his teacher's mentor, and unquestionably his elder. Minato's nature wouldn't let him do something like that.
As he met the different gazes of Hashirama, Tobirama, and Sarutobi Hiruzen,
Minato fell silent for a second or two, then sighed softly. "Second, Third Hokage, you should be the ones who know best. I died in battle fifteen years