Don't let the Anbu's current size, which seemed to have expanded severalfold, fool you. The scope of their responsibilities had grown considerably as well. Especially with every nation's military strength not declining year-round but instead trending upward, the village's most elite force needed to gather intelligence on the specific movements of shinobi villages across the nations. The high-level spies planted within the major shinobi villages were also handled exclusively by the Anbu.
Therefore, although the Anbu's numbers had expanded to several hundred,
the personnel who could actually be deployed at any time were limited. A considerable number of members had fixed missions to carry out.
For the Third Hokage to pull out two squads totaling fifty Anbu for this search operation was already a substantial number.
After a week of exhaustive searching by the Anbu, they had still failed to find the true trail of the person behind it all. But from the intelligence they had gathered, one thing could be confirmed: the true culprit had not left Konoha's borders. In other words, this person was currently "bound" within Konoha.
Moreover, there was a high probability that others were cooperating with him and covering for him.
There was no concrete evidence to prove it, but judging from all the signs, it would have been difficult for one person alone to accomplish this. At the very least, the Third Hokage believed that without anyone's assistance, he could not possibly maintain such perfect concealment under a full-scale search by the Five Great Shinobi Villages.
And the more it was so,
the more wary the Third Hokage became of this person.
Because it meant that either a high-ranking official within their own shinobi village was protecting the person behind it all, or that person was himself disguised as a high-ranking official of the