With Qingyun out of the running, Minato Namikaze became the undisputed choice for Fourth Hokage with Hiruzen Sarutobi's support. All that remained was to inform the Daimyo of the Land of Fire of the result, and Minato Namikaze could officially take office as Konoha's Fourth Hokage.
Although Orochimaru had known the outcome long ago and had little interest in the Hokage position, the enormous gap between his vote count and Minato Namikaze's still left him feeling irritated.
Combined with Hiruzen Sarutobi's recent attitude toward him, all of this stirred a sense of danger in Orochimaru.
Besides, Orochimaru felt constrained in Konoha. Many of his experiments could not be carried out as he wished, so he began considering leaving the village.
Once the results of the Fourth Hokage election came out, Hiruzen Sarutobi planned to take them to an audience with the Daimyo of the Land of Fire.
Before he could leave, however, the ANBU suddenly sent him intelligence that made his expression change drastically.
Orochimaru had been conducting human experimentation in Konoha. During the war, he had stolen many corpses, and he had also used a considerable number of prisoners as test subjects, torturing them to death.
Hiruzen Sarutobi could hardly believe such a report. Although he knew Orochimaru had once been deeply entangled with Danzo and loved conducting all sorts of experiments, he had never imagined Orochimaru would be so depraved as to experiment on living people.
But the ANBU's intelligence was extremely detailed. It even recorded which experiments had been performed on which days, leaving Hiruzen Sarutobi no room for disbelief.
Heartbroken, Hiruzen Sarutobi decided to investigate personally. Of course, he did not intend to kill Orochimaru. If everything in the report was true, he hoped to capture Orochimaru alive and imprison him before stepping down, thereby sparing