That unspoken understanding between clever people

Hiruzen Sarutobi was a shrewd one.

He knew perfectly well that, by this point, the truth no longer mattered.

Just as Shikaku Nara had said, their immediate priority was to reassure everyone.

After all, the war was still raging. Who had time to investigate a case?

Besides, only a few Uchiha had died.

The village was already wary of the Uchiha. Losing a few more was actually a good thing.

Even if they hadn't died in the village, sooner or later he would have found a way to whittle down the Uchiha's numbers on the battlefield.

The Uchiha had to be kept in check. They couldn't be allowed to grow too powerful.

Under those circumstances, dead was dead. It didn't matter.

With that in mind, Hiruzen Sarutobi settled on the official line right then and there.

As a bonus, they could drag the Hidden Cloud Village's reputation through the mud while boosting the Hidden Leaf's morale.

What did you call that? A win all around!

So he gave the order without a moment's hesitation.

Shikaku Nara moved swiftly, immediately sending people to spread the news throughout the Shinobi World.

As the story spread further and further, the Hidden Cloud Village's reputation ended up utterly mired in the mud.

There was nothing they could do.

With photographic evidence right there, it was hard not to believe it.

Especially given the state of those three Uchiha corpses. It looked as though they hadn't resisted at all.

Before Might Duy showed what he could do, everyone in the Shinobi World assumed that only the Hidden Cloud Village had taijutsu monsters of that caliber.

The entire Hidden Cloud Village was left speechless.

They had a bellyful of curses stuck in their throats, but couldn't get a single one out.

The blame had been pinned on them so firmly that they practically wanted to cry.

Word had it that, after learning of this, the Third Raikage hurriedly issued a statement to the Shinobi World, declaring that it was all slander from the Hidden Leaf. He was an upright, honorable man who wouldn't stoop to such underhanded tricks.

Unfortunately, nobody bought it.

The Hidden Leaf acted even faster, releasing all the evidence left behind when a team of Hidden Cloud Village ninja had sneaked into the Hidden Leaf to steal Kekkei Genkai two years earlier and been caught.

This time, the Hidden Leaf didn't say a word. It simply presented the evidence.

That silence hit harder than anything they could have said.

The Third Raikage was completely shut down.

He couldn't utter a single word.

Furious and utterly aggrieved, he smashed everything in his office to pieces.

Damn it all.

He was absolutely livid.

If he'd actually done it, he would have accepted the consequences of being exposed.

The problem was, he could swear to the heavens that he hadn't done this!

He was a victim of the setup too!

But nothing he said mattered anymore.

Right now, not a soul in the Shinobi World believed him.

Even Hidden Stone, his secret ally, thought the Hidden Cloud Village had appalling integrity. They took every precaution whenever they negotiated with his village, and the distrust in their eyes drove the Third Raikage mad.

The weight of this blame was too much for him to bear.

He silently vowed that the real culprit had better pray he never found them.

Otherwise, even if the Third Shinobi World War ended in a ceasefire, he would still tear that bastard apart.

It was utterly sickening.

In stark contrast to the gloom hanging over the Hidden Cloud Village, morale in the Hidden Leaf soared because of the incident.

Especially when fighting the Hidden Cloud Village on the front lines, everyone charged in with bloodshot eyes.

Clearly, the Hidden Cloud Village's dirty tricks had disgusted them beyond endurance, and now they were all burning for revenge.

Meanwhile, in the Hidden Leaf.

Inside the Uchiha Compound.

Jin Uchiha, the man responsible, had no idea how great a storm his actions would stir up.

He was sitting in his living room, entertaining his guest, Shisui.

"Can you tell me about it?"

"What exactly happened?"

"Wasn't all that commotion today a bit excessive?"

"Of course, if it's confidential, don't tell me."

Unable to help himself, Jin Uchiha asked.

Looking at Shisui sitting before him, he couldn't suppress his curiosity.

Shisui smiled and shook his head. "Don't worry. We've cleared everything up."

"It's not really a secret, either. Yoshio Uchiha and the other two died last night."

"And we've established that it was a Hidden Cloud Village conspiracy from start to finish. They wanted to stir up internal unrest in the Hidden Leaf."

"What vicious ambitions!"

"Fortunately, the Hidden Leaf has the wise Nara clan. Their leader, the Nara Clan Leader and Jonin Commander, Shikaku Nara, exposed the Hidden Cloud Village's entire conspiracy with his analysis."

"And the whole Shinobi World has already been informed."

"We have to make everyone in the Shinobi World see just how dirty the Hidden Cloud Village is."

After hearing that, Jin Uchiha's brain froze.

What did any of that have to do with anything?

A Hidden Cloud Village conspiracy?

How come I, the guy who actually did it, knew nothing about that?

Although he had indeed intended to shift the blame onto the Hidden Cloud Village, he'd only casually left himself a fallback to conceal his involvement.

Honestly, even he hadn't known how much good it would do.

He'd thought he would count himself lucky if it merely kept the investigation from reaching him.

Looking at Shisui, who was brimming with righteous indignation and seemed ready to grab a blade and rush to the front lines, Jin Uchiha didn't know what to say.

Wasn't this kid a little too earnest?

Still, he had a vague feeling that something was off.

As he thought it over, his brows furrowed.

"Shisui, don't get worked up just yet."

"Tell me about it in detail. Since this involves me too, I want to understand exactly what happened."

"What did the Nara Clan Leader say?"

Jin Uchiha made his tone very serious.

Indeed, he wouldn't dare take a single word from the Nara clan's leader, the current Jonin Commander, lightly.

The man was widely recognized as one of the sharpest minds in the entire Shinobi World.

He wasn't some green kid like Shisui, believing whatever people told him.

He needed to grasp every detail before he could make an accurate judgment.

Shisui didn't hold anything back. He dutifully recounted everything that had happened earlier, repeating Shikaku Nara's assessment almost word for word.

After hearing it and giving it a little thought, Jin Uchiha understood everything.

He was now absolutely certain that Shikaku Nara had made it all up to fool people.

Sure, the story sounded coherent, complete with motives, a sequence of events, and even the culprits' thought processes.

But what was the problem? What sort of people were they dealing with in the Hidden Cloud Village?

From the Third Raikage down, they were all muscleheads who believed in nothing but their fists, with muscles where their brains should have been.

Did they have the brains for this?

What a joke.

Looking back through the Hidden Cloud Village's history since its founding, when had it ever used its brains?

No matter what happened, their approach could basically be summed up in one word—charge.

In the entire series, Mabui was practically the only person in the Hidden Cloud Village with any brains who could analyze a battle.

But that woman was the Fourth Raikage's secretary. Right now, the Third Hokage was in power, and Mabui was still just a child, about his own age.

Could she be devising strategies for the Hidden Cloud Village?

What a load of crap.

Which raised a question.

If he could figure this out so easily, could Shikaku Nara—the brains of the Hidden Leaf and widely recognized as one of the village's brightest minds—really fail to see something so obvious?

Absolutely not.

Even if political maneuvering in this world was admittedly crude because individual combat power was so high, anyone with a functioning brain could more or less guess how the Hidden Cloud Village operated.

And this was the Nara clan, the pinnacle of intelligence in the world of Naruto.

He couldn't even figure that out?

Who was he trying to fool?