After the Hidden Cloud Village delegation incident temporarily subsided, Shinichi gave himself two days off. It was not really rest—his "vacation" merely switched his nighttime activity from hunting Root members to another task that was just as important, though less dangerous: exploring the Uchiha Clan District.
The Uchiha Clan District lay in the village's southeastern corner, right beside a branch of the Naka River. Several years had passed since the night of the massacre, yet the area had never been redeveloped. Konoha's higher-ups had sealed off the entire district under the pretext of "conducting a heritage assessment," but the assessment had never truly begun—too many people did not want to touch such a hot potato. Danzo certainly wanted to, but the Third Hokage had dispatched ANBU to seal off the scene immediately after the Uchiha Clan massacre, expressly forbidding Root personnel from entering. How well that order had been enforced was difficult to say—with Danzo's nature, he had most likely already sent people to dig around outside the cordon several times. But the district's core area, especially the main family residence and its underground chamber, should not yet have been systematically searched.
Shinichi chose a moonless night to act. He had confirmed the patrol routes for the evening through the dogs at the kennel—the patrol near the southeastern cordon changed shifts at one in the morning, leaving a brief gap in between. Three-Leg had already spent several nights crouching outside the cordon and had confirmed that no Root sentries were operating in the area. Danzo's people had recently been kept under close watch by the Third Hokage, their manpower reduced by more than half; even the rotation frequency at their outer bases had decreased.
As Shinichi passed through the barbed wire of the cordon, he noticed that the sealing tags