Sarada took a deep breath, all the arrogance in her eyes fading away.
She stared hard at Chou, suppressing her panic as she went straight to the heart of the matter.
"What you're saying is hard to believe, but I don't know how to refute it."
"Then spell it out. What exactly is this rule against touching the nobles?"
"What trump card does this Secular Nobility have up its sleeve?"
Chou fell silent for a moment, looking out the Main Hall's window at the gray sky. His voice grew solemn and distant.
"To explain that, we have to start with the Shinobi World Upheaval a thousand years ago."
"The Shinobi World Upheaval a thousand years ago?!"
"You even know about that?"
Sarada and Kisame immediately straightened up and held their breath, fixing their full attention on Chou, afraid to miss a single word.
In all their years roaming the shinobi world, they had never heard of it.
The earliest records in shinobi history only covered the wars around Konoha's founding. Everything from a thousand years ago was a blank.
There were only a few rumors, but those could hardly be taken as fact.
Chou nodded solemnly. "That's right. A thousand years ago, the shinobi world underwent an earth-shattering upheaval. The entire world's order was established back then."
"And over time, it became a set of rules everyone accepted without thinking."
Sarada waited, but when Chou still failed to continue, she impatiently urged him on. "And then? What happened during the upheaval? What exactly is the nobles' trump card?"
Chou spread his hands helplessly. "There is no 'and then.'"
"Huh?" Sarada froze, utterly exasperated. "That's just mean. You can't stop halfway through."
"That's all I know. That's all the organization and my family's elders told me."
"Besides, my task is simply