The news that Root's main force had been intercepted and eliminated in batches did not reach Konoha until three days later.
It was not news Shinichi had released—it was Danzo who discovered it himself. Of the four teams sent out to rebuild the outer strongholds, three failed to send back their contact signals on schedule. The last team was stopped and questioned by a patrol at a crossroads in the Grass Country. Though no one was harmed, their entire route had been exposed. That very night, Danzo raised the alert level at the old compound base to maximum. All personnel on standby had their leave canceled, access codes were encrypted, and anyone entering or leaving had to travel in pairs. But what truly enraged him was a report Elephant Face submitted the next morning.
The report stated that the chakra remnants of the three missing teams had all been found at the edge of the Death Forest. There were no signs of fighting, no corpses, no blood—only faint traces of dissipated chakra. They had not been ambushed and killed. They had been silently erased. Six people, three different locations, the same method. At the end of the report, Elephant Face wrote in an extremely cautious tone: "Preliminary assessment: there may have been only one attacker."
Danzo closed the report and lightly tapped its cover twice with his fingers. His right eye was concealed beneath a seal. In the candlelight, the pupil of his left eye contracted once. Then he handed the report back to Elephant Face and said in a completely emotionless voice, "Send Yamanaka Fū to see me."
Yamanaka Fū was a distant relative of Inoichi Yamanaka. By seniority, he called Inoichi "cousin," but the two had not spoken in a long time. It was not because they were