A Lunatic with a Solid Brick Appeared in the Village!

He had obviously been gone for nearly ten minutes already.

"Those two... their bond resonated even across channels?"

Ye muttered to himself, unable to make sense of it no matter how hard he thought.

But that did nothing to spoil his good mood.

Ye happily opened the system balance screen.

Looking at the sky-high number, his account balance had jumped by nearly another two thousand points, and the corners of his mouth rose again.

Whatever.

If he could earn money while lying down, who cared about the process?

With this huge sum, he was definitely going to have a good time drawing from the System Shop tonight.

As for those two classmates currently questioning their lives outside the restroom, there would be plenty of time to fleece them tomorrow.

Konoha's night breeze swept past, and everything was so peaceful.

Humming an unknown tune with his hands in his pockets, Ye walked through the gates of the Uchiha compound.

Meanwhile, on the street outside Konoha's public restroom.

A barefoot boy in a green bodysuit, covered head to toe in mud.

And a thick-browed boy crouching inside the restroom entrance, bare-chested and utterly dead-eyed.

The two knelt beneath the setting sun, their shadows stretched long behind them.

Neither said a word.

Because some pain could no longer be described with words.

The gates of the Uchiha compound were tall and imposing.

Two stone pillars carved with fan crests cast long shadows in the twilight.

Whistling and humming an unknown tune, Ye leisurely stepped over the threshold.

His mood was excellent.

The Guard-Break Points in his account were already enough to support a round of extravagant spending in the System Shop.

He had only just entered the compound's main street when a fully armed squad from the Uchiha Police Force approached from ahead.

Four men to a group, the standard patrol formation.

They all wore dark, high-collared trench coats, with red-and-white Security Force armbands on their arms.

Swords hung at their waists, and their forehead protectors gleamed brightly.

Normally, if the Security Force deployed fully armed, it meant Zetsu had caused something major and vicious to happen in Konoha.

Ye stopped and stepped aside to clear the way, his gaze sweeping over the group.

He quickly noticed something extremely subtle yet strange.

The bearded middle-aged man leading the group walked at a leisurely pace, even turning his head to chat with the member beside him.

The young member behind him openly yawned in the middle of the street, casually straightening his coat collar.

The entire squad gave off an incredibly bizarre air of laziness.

One of them even secretly gave Ye a thumbs-up!

How was this an emergency response? It looked more like an after-dinner stroll.

With both hands in his pockets, Ye turned sideways to let them pass and watched the squad saunter out through the compound gates.

Interesting.

Before he could think further, hurried, heavy footsteps suddenly sounded from the street corner.

"Ye! Wait up! Ye!!!"

Obito shouted at the top of his lungs as he came running from the intersection.

He was drenched in sweat, his goggles hanging crookedly on his forehead and nearly slipping down to the bridge of his nose.

He was gasping for breath, his entire face filled with the relief of someone who had narrowly escaped disaster.

The moment he got close, Obito reached out and tightly grabbed Ye's sleeve. He bent over and took five or six frantic breaths before finally raising his head.

His face was full of post-disaster relief.

"Y-You ran so fast! I looked for you at the intersection ahead forever! You came back early! That's great!"

Ye raised an eyebrow, letting Obito grab him as he replied calmly.

"What did you need me for? Weren't you going to help an old lady cross the street?"

Obito stomped anxiously, lowered his voice, looked around, and leaned close to Ye's ear.

He spoke in an extremely exaggerated and mysterious tone.

"Forget helping old ladies! Something huge happened! Konoha nearly got turned upside down today, did you know that?!"

Ye cooperatively raised his eyebrows.

"What happened?"

Obito swallowed hard, his eyes widening into circles.

"An utterly deranged freak showed up over on Third Street!"

"I passed through Third Street's shopping district just now, and the entire street was smashed to pieces!"

"The fruit stands were knocked over, and apples were rolling all over the street! Every trash can by the road had been knocked down!"

The more Obito spoke, the more excited he became, wildly gesturing through the air with both hands.

"In broad daylight, some completely insane lunatic appeared out of nowhere!"

"He was holding up an extra-large, extra-thick premium construction brick..."

Obito held out both hands, outlining an absurdly huge brick nearly half the size of his head.

"The kind used at construction sites! Solid! One hit to the forehead, and you'd be dead on the spot!"

"That lunatic was chasing Lord Hokage's son, Asuma Sarutobi, through the street!"

Ye gave an "Oh," blinking innocently.

"That serious? Who did it?"

Obito became even more animated, spittle flying everywhere.

"The bystanders said that lunatic wasn't even human! He ran faster than a dog, and while he ran, he kept waving the brick around Asuma's forehead!"

"When I passed by, I saw the fruit stand get knocked over with my own eyes! Asuma ran so hard that his shoes flew off! He was scared completely senseless!"

Obito patted his chest, looking deeply shaken.

"That Security Force squad just now received reports from the shops along the street, and they're specifically going to arrest the thug who seriously disrupted Konoha's public order!"

"This has gotten way too big! Even the Hokage Building has been alarmed!"

"Apparently, someone saw the windows of the Hokage's Office get pushed open!"

"For all we know, the ANBU have already been deployed and are searching the streets for that lunatic!"

Ye looked at Obito's spittle-spraying face, put on an expression of extreme shock, and sharply sucked in a breath.

"Chasing the Hokage's son with a brick? That guy's got some nerve. Is he tired of living?"

While he echoed him aloud, Ye's mind kept calculating.

He quickly worked out the time difference in his head.

Nearly twenty minutes had passed since he had used four Kunai in the dead-end alley to give Asuma a "human outline."

As Konoha's core law enforcement force, the Uchiha Police Force had its headquarters inside the compound, and it took only three minutes to run to Third Street.

Yet they had only deployed after twenty minutes.

At that speed, even a turtle would have arrived by now.

Konoha was not that big, and Third Street was in a busy district.

As the Uchiha Police Force specifically responsible for Konoha's public security, they were only now leisurely assembling and heading out.

There was only one answer.

Hiruzen Sarutobi did not dare interfere.

Ye sneered inwardly.

That old man was shrewd.

He had watched the whole thing live through the Crystal Ball, but Zetsu would never give the order to intervene.

The reason was simple.

Ye had dared to openly chase Asuma halfway across the village with a brick because he had accurately judged Konoha's current political situation.

Even if that old man was currently so furious in the Hokage's Office that he smashed the Crystal Ball.

He still would never dare issue an order for the ANBU to arrest Uchiha Ye.

Why?

Because at the end of the day, this was merely a scuffle between two six- or seven-year-old Ninja Academy freshmen.

The cause was nothing more than Asuma running his mouth on the Training Ground, after which they agreed to settle it at "Training Ground Seven" after school.

Ye had merely moved the Training Ground onto the main road and swapped the Kunai for red bricks.

Neither side had used any serious killing moves. Asuma did not even have a single life-threatening external injury; it was all psychological intimidation.

At most, a fight between two Ninja Academy freshmen could be considered school bullying.

But the moment Hiruzen Sarutobi used his authority as the Third Hokage to forcibly send the ANBU in and define the nature of this incident.

Its nature would completely change.

A private grudge between children would instantly escalate into the Hokage's faction using the village's authority.

To openly target and suppress a genius freshman of the Uchiha Clan.

In this current period, when the Uchiha Clan and the Konoha leadership were mutually suspicious and their relationship had reached an extremely sensitive freezing point.

With the fragile, paper-thin balance between the Konoha leadership and the Uchiha Clan.

An old fox like Hiruzen Sarutobi, who deeply understood the art of political balance.

Zetsu would never ignite this powder keg, one capable of causing civil unrest in the village, merely because his son had been humiliated.