"Minato Namikaze's cousin?" Hiruzen Sarutobi flipped through the intelligence report in his hand, his brow slowly knitting together. "Why hasn't anyone found out about this before?"
The ANBU operative responsible for the report lowered his head and answered honestly, "Lord Hokage, Minato Namikaze truly comes from an ordinary family. His parents were Genin back in the day and died on the battlefield last year. We investigated his family background at the time and found nothing out of the ordinary."
"Besides, with the war on the verge of breaking out completely, more and more people are running to Konoha to seek out relatives and friends. Especially those commoners; they don't want to be drafted by the daimyo, so they can only hide in the village. It's nothing unusual for a few distant relatives to pop up."
Hiruzen nodded slightly. This situation had long been within his expectations.
Aside from wanting to leverage the daimyo's power, his agreement with the Fire Country daimyo to push for war stemmed from a more crucial calculation: using the war to weaken the ninja clans while bringing more commoners into Konoha.
When Konoha was first established, those who moved into the village were basically ninja clans organized by family units. Back then, there was no such group as commoners in the village at all. Later, Hashirama and Tobirama accepted merchants who came here for business, as well as refugees fleeing everywhere in search of asylum, and Konoha gradually acquired its current commoner population.
Yet only thirty-seven years had passed since the founding of the village, and the number of ninja clans still far exceeded the commoners. As long as the various major families united, the vote count during a Hokage's succession could be easily manipulated by them.
To any ruler, this felt like a thorn stuck