The priest lay sprawled on the floor like a puddle of mud, his eyes hollow as he intermittently spat out everything he knew.
In Sasuke's Genjutsu world, his pitiful willpower had not even lasted a minute. The rest had been nothing but Sasuke's personal venting.
"The strange illness... is poison..." The priest's voice trembled, filled with broken hoarseness. "Extracted... extracted from the Valley of Hell... released through the water supply... into the slums..."
Naruto listened expressionlessly, his fingers tapping rhythmically against his knee. So that was it. A complete industrial chain. Create panic, then sell the cure.
"The Holy Water... the Holy Water also comes from the Valley of Hell... It can only temporarily suppress the poison; it can't cure it at all... They'll keep getting sick, keep buying... keep buying..." At this point, the priest suddenly began to laugh hysterically, saliva trickling from the corner of his mouth. "Money... so much money..."
Sasuke's gaze grew colder and colder, and the hand gripping the priest's throat unconsciously tightened.
"Who is behind all this?" Naruto asked, his calm voice abruptly cutting off the priest's laughter.
"It... it's Minister Fujita... the minister of the Land of Hot Water... He controls the Valley of Hell... the Chinoike Clan... those monsters... they're all his 'materials'... It was him... all him..."
Afterward, the priest told Sasuke everything he knew about Fujita.
His secret residences, his fetishes, his life before becoming a minister...
All the clues connected. A high-ranking official of a nation had penned up a clan with a Kekkei Genkai, treating them like livestock, squeezing value from them, then using the suffering of the nation's people to amass wealth and power.
Naruto did not feel much turmoil inside. He had seen this sort of thing far too often in another universe. Using faith and