Naka Shrine

Naka Shrine lay hidden deep within the Uchiha Clan Compound.

The sky had not fully brightened, but the lanterns on either side of the stone steps were already lit. Morning mist curled around the torii, and the wooden floorboards were damp with dew, making a faint wet sound underfoot.

Uchiha Fugaku led the way.

Shisui and Itachi followed him, while Tekka led the Konoha Military Police Force in sealing off the perimeter. Jiraiya, Kakashi, and the Third Hokage had come too.

Naruto walked in the middle.

He carried Minato's letter inside his jacket and held the threatening note in his hand.

Mitokado Homura had been taken back to Central Street under the joint watch of the Konoha Military Police Force and Konoha Jonin. Fugaku had planned to return to the clan meeting hall first to calm his people, but the mention of Naka Shrine in the note forced him to change course.

The Uchiha's stone tablet could not be shown to outsiders lightly.

But someone already knew what was written on it and was using it as a threat.

Fugaku stopped before the shrine's main hall.

"Naruto, Naka Shrine is forbidden ground within the Uchiha clan."

Naruto looked at him.

"So?"

Fugaku turned, his gaze steady.

"I can let you in, but you need to understand: if outsiders learn certain things, the Uchiha will pay a price."

Naruto looked at Shisui and Itachi.

"You're already paying it."

Fugaku did not argue.

He pushed open the wooden doors of the main hall.

Inside stood memorial tablets honoring the Uchiha ancestors. The air smelled of old wood and incense ash. A mechanism lay beneath the floor, and when Fugaku formed hand seals, the tatami slid apart to reveal stairs leading underground.

The Underground Chamber was larger than expected.

Its walls bore no decoration. Only a black stone tablet stood at the center.

Writing covered the tablet's surface.

Ordinary eyes could see only the shallowest layer.

Naruto could not read it all, but a system prompt soon sounded.

[High-Level Dōjutsu-encrypted information detected.]

[Decryption requires the corresponding ocular power.]

Naruto looked at Fugaku.

"Read it."

After a moment of silence, Fugaku activated his Three-Tomoe Sharingan.

He saw the first layer.

"The Uchiha and Senju descend from the Sage of Six Paths."

Shisui and Itachi activated their Sharingan too.

Jiraiya's expression turned grave.

The Third Hokage stared at the tablet, conflicted emotions surfacing in his eyes.

Fugaku continued, "The deeper text requires a Mangekyō Sharingan."

Shisui stepped forward.

His Mangekyō Sharingan appeared.

More of the tablet's writing came into view.

But after reading a few lines, his expression changed.

"What is it?" Itachi asked.

Shisui's voice was low.

"It says the Mangekyō Sharingan gains greater power through the loss of someone important, and can eventually lead to the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan. It also says... that to achieve true peace, the Uchiha must use their ocular power to control the will of others."

Fugaku frowned.

"That isn't what I saw before."

Shisui turned to him.

Fugaku's expression darkened.

"My Mangekyō Sharingan revealed part of the text, but it read more like a warning, not an encouragement to control others."

Naruto approached the tablet.

The Nine-Tails growled inside him.

"That thing stinks."

"What kind of stink?" Naruto asked.

"Like that black sludge."

Naruto's eyes shifted.

Black Zetsu.

The system could not decipher the entire tablet, but the Nine-Tails' senses would not deceive him.

Someone had altered the tablet.

Someone had twisted its original message in another direction.

Naruto pressed a hand against it.

The tablet's surface did not react.

But as a Sealing Jutsu seeped into the carved grooves, traces of Chakra contamination appeared around several characters.

The golden markings forced out a thin thread of the contamination.

Black liquid seeped from a crack in the tablet, then quickly withdrew.

Jiraiya's eyes sharpened.

"What was that?"

The Third Hokage's expression changed too.

Naruto did not answer. He turned to Fugaku.

"The tablet has been altered."

Fugaku's pupils contracted.

Shisui and Itachi looked at the tablet at the same time.

Someone had altered the stone tablet passed down through generations of Uchiha.

That was even more serious than the threat in the note.

Many radical ideas within the Uchiha might have been influenced by the tablet. If someone had tampered with it, then the clan's growing extremism over the years was not just the result of pressure from the village. A hidden hand had been at work too.

Fugaku's voice sank.

"Who could alter the Naka Stone Tablet?"

Naruto looked toward the tablet's base.

There was a black trace there, almost impossible to notice, as though liquid had slipped in and out.

"Not the Konoha High Command."

The others' expressions changed at his words.

"You mean there's a third party?" the Third Hokage asked quietly.

Naruto nodded.

"The night of the Nine-Tails' Attack, the Masked Man controlled the Nine-Tails."

"Someone inside Konoha leaked the route to the delivery room."

"The higher-ups let the Uchiha take the blame."

"But this tablet may have been altered long before any of that."

Jiraiya's gaze grew grave.

He immediately thought of Akatsuki and the prophecy he had investigated all these years.

Shisui stared at the tablet, his face grim.

If someone had tampered with even the Uchiha's ancestral tablet, then what the clan's radicals held as truth might be a trap.

Naruto turned around.

"Fugaku, seal off the Naka Stone Tablet starting today."

Fugaku looked at him.

"This is an internal Uchiha matter."

Naruto pointed to the black trace forced out of the tablet.

"Not anymore."

Fugaku fell silent.

Itachi spoke. "Father, Naruto is right. If the tablet has been tampered with, letting our people continue to read it will only leave them open to manipulation."

Shisui nodded too.

At last, Fugaku closed his eyes.

"Seal it off."

Tekka immediately brought his men forward to secure the chamber.

Just then, hurried footsteps sounded outside the shrine.

An Uchiha clansman rushed to the underground entrance, his face pale.

"Clan Head! Something's happened on Central Street!"

"Someone silenced Mitokado Homura."

"Before he died, he left a message in blood saying Naruto is the new Nine-Tails calamity."