"Not a chance!"
Danzo's furious shout echoed through the Hokage's Office, carrying the rage and resentment he had suppressed all day.
He slammed his wooden cane down, its tip striking the floor with a dull thud.
"I am Konoha's Hokage Advisor, the man who maintains order for this village from the shadows!"
"Shimura Ken may have acted a little rashly, but he did it to prevent you Uchiha from stirring up trouble on South Street!"
"Now, not only have you seriously injured Shimura Ken and broken his leg, you expect me to pay these so-called fines of several hundred thousand ryo for him?"
Danzo's eyes were bloodshot as he stared straight at Chikage, who sat opposite him.
"Uchiha Chikage, you're using the Konoha Military Police Force's rules to openly extort Konoha High Command!"
The faint confusion on Fugaku's face instantly darkened.
He took half a step forward, his jonin-level chakra surging as his hand closed around the sword hilt at his waist.
Since Danzo had started throwing a tantrum and refusing to pay, force was the only way to uphold the Konoha Military Police Force's dignity.
Chikage did not so much as look at Danzo, who was on the verge of erupting, nor did he give his uncle any signal as the older man prepared to draw his sword.
He calmly picked up the case file on the desk, held the papers by their edges, and unhurriedly straightened the scattered documents.
Then.
Chikage let out a long sigh.
It was an unusually drawn-out sigh, laden with helplessness and world-weary sorrow, strikingly out of place in the tense office.
He slowly raised his head, looking past the Third Hokage and the senior advisors toward the ceiling.
An expression of wistful remembrance and profound anguish appeared on his face.
"Ah, back in those days..."
The moment those words left Chikage's mouth.
Behind the desk, Hiruzen Sarutobi was about to lift his teacup to wet his throat when his hand shook, spilling scalding tea onto its back.
The elderly Hokage had no attention to spare for the burn. His eyelids twitched, and his heart sank.
Here we go again!
The little bastard was about to start reminiscing again!
Chikage ignored the sudden change in the Third Hokage's expression. He folded his hands in his lap and spoke in a low voice.
"Back then, the First Hokage and our clan's ancestor brought peace to a world of war together, founding Konoha on this blood-soaked land."
"They did it so that every clan and every citizen could live peacefully and equally under the same set of rules."
"After the Second Hokage succeeded him, he showed great foresight by establishing the Konoha Military Police Force."
"To clearly define the law, Lord Second personally oversaw the drafting and promulgation of the first edition of the Konoha Public Security Administration Regulations."
At this point, Chikage let out another sorrowful sigh.
He shook his head and looked at Danzo with sympathy and pity, as though regarding an unfilial junior about to walk down a road to ruin.
"When Lord Second established the system of fines and detention, its fundamental purpose was to uphold the law, punish past offenses to prevent future ones, and correct people rather than destroy them."
"If the rules can constrain ordinary villagers but not those who hold power in the village, then the order he worked so hard to build is rotten at its very roots."
Mitokado Homura's expression was already ugly, but at the words "Lord Second," even his cheeks began to tremble.
Utatane Koharu clutched the collar at her chest, her breathing growing more rapid as she felt her blood pressure shoot through the roof.
They knew Chikage's tactics all too well!
If they let the boy keep dragging out the village's founding history, sooner or later the discussion would escalate to "abandoning the Second Hokage's dying wishes"!
If the higher-ups openly allowed the Hokage Advisor to defy the basic laws established by the Second Hokage.
Then the hundred-plus armed Uchiha downstairs, already on the brink of erupting, would become loyal defenders of the Second Hokage's laws!
If things reached that point, not only would the higher-ups face public condemnation for trampling the law, they would lose even the last shred of justification for sending the Anbu to suppress them!
After those two sighs, Chikage spread his hands.
"Since the Hokage Advisor has decided that the Shimura Clan need not be bound by the Konoha Military Police Force's enforcement regulations."
"If Lord Hokage and both advisors remain silent on the matter, should the villagers take that to mean the higher-ups have tacitly agreed that Lord Second's laws are nothing but wastepaper?"
"If Lord Second's laws apply only to ordinary people, then the equality advocated by Lord First's Will of Fire naturally becomes nothing but empty words."
"And if even the Will of Fire is empty words, then isn't our discussion here in the Hokage Building today about the village's greater interests and unity nothing more than a farce of self-deception?"
Direct, clear, each point building on the last, every link locking into place!
He had gone straight from a refusal to pay a fine to the collapse of the village's legal legitimacy!
Beside him, Fugaku stared at Chikage, blinking with his mouth hanging open.
He realized that not only could he no longer follow Chikage's train of thought, he was beginning to lose track of how the young man had elevated the discussion to this level at all.
Weren't they just collecting compensation for the shops that had been smashed up?
How had a few sentences turned Danzo's refusal to pay into the higher-ups preparing to personally destroy the legal foundations laid at Konoha's founding fifty years ago?
"Stop talking!"
A sharp, urgent voice burst through the office.
It was not Danzo who spoke, but Utatane Koharu, who stood nearby breathing heavily.
The elderly female advisor hurried straight to Danzo's side, cutting off the venomous words he was about to spit out.
Looking at Chikage sitting there so leisurely, Utatane Koharu felt a chill deep inside.
Chikage's words were anything but harmless sophistry!
If the argument that "the Hokage Advisor openly rejects the Second's laws, and the higher-ups tacitly allow those in power to trample the rules" spread beyond this office.
The ninja clans watching from the sidelines in Konoha-the Hyuga Clan, the Nara Clan-would all mentally place the higher-ups in the lawless camp.
Mitokado Homura hurriedly pushed himself up against the edge of the desk and stumbled over as well.
Both had utterly lost their composure, with none of the poise they had once possessed as people in high office.
They were not afraid of Fugaku drawing his sword against them.
Faced with armed resistance, the higher-ups had a hundred reasons to label the Uchiha rebels.
But they genuinely feared the shackles of Chikage's logic, with his constant invocations of "back in those days," "the First," "the Second," and "the Will of Fire."
Every sentence was a trap, and at the bottom of every trap lay a crisis of authority and the collapse of their credibility!
Hiruzen Sarutobi even put down his beloved pipe, rounded the tea table, and hurried to the front of the desk, raising a hand to stop Chikage from speaking again.
"Deputy Captain Chikage!"
In his haste to speak before Chikage could, Hiruzen Sarutobi nearly bit his own tongue.
"Stop! Let's leave the reminiscing there for now!"
"Lord First's profound wisdom and righteousness, and Lord Second's solemn laws-we, as their juniors and disciples, have always kept them in our hearts!"
"Who would dare call Lord Second's regulations wastepaper? No one in this village would ever dare say such a thing!"
Hiruzen's heart bled. Today, he had truly learned what it meant to defeat an opponent without shedding blood, every sentence cutting straight to the heart!
Watching his old friends, who normally stood on his side, speak up one after another to stop him, Danzo felt both fury and a bitter chill.
Holding his cane in one hand, he pointed at Hiruzen and the other two, who had hurried over.
"Hiruzen! Koharu! Homura!"
Danzo's voice filled with anger he could no longer suppress.
"What the hell are you doing? He's nothing but a genin, an ignorant brat twisting the village's laws with his arrogant words!"
"Why should I, of the illustrious Shimura Clan, bow my head and pay some Uchiha brat?"
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