Did the Uchiha really pose a threat?

The Sarutobi Clan alone had monopolized such staggering numbers!

The sheer depth of their strength was enough to make anyone's scalp crawl.

But nowhere was the silence more oppressive than in the Hokage Office.

Hiruzen Sarutobi's face had turned livid, frighteningly dark.

The hidden assets exposed by the Sky Screen had laid bare his decades of discreet maneuvering and secret plans to strengthen his clan.

The other three all turned their brooding gazes toward him, their eyes filled with complicated emotions and dawning realization.

Under their scrutiny, irritation welled up inside Hiruzen Sarutobi. He snorted and forced the conversation in another direction. "What are you looking at me for?"

"Haven't your own clans been quietly building up their strength, too? We're all the same!"

At that, Mitokado Homura and Utatane Koharu looked guilty. They silently averted their eyes, not daring to respond.

Their clans had indeed been secretly gathering strength, just nowhere near the outrageous scale of the Sarutobi Clan.

Only Shimura Danzō gave a cold, derisive laugh. Assuming an air of righteous indignation, he declared proudly, "My Shimura Clan has never been as shameless as you three!"

The moment those words left his mouth...

The entire office fell silent.

Even Hiruzen Sarutobi, who had been seething with resentment moments earlier, was instantly at a loss for words. He had no idea how to refute that.

All three of them knew perfectly well.

It wasn't merely that Danzo had refrained from building up his clan's power.

He was ruthless toward his enemies, even more ruthless toward himself, and ruthless to the extreme toward the Shimura Clan.

In earlier years, the Shimura Clan had stood shoulder to shoulder with the Sarutobi Clan, with little difference in their size.

But after years of Danzo's maneuvering...

The Shimura Clan's pool of talent had withered, and its membership had dwindled sharply.

By now, it had long since been left in the Sarutobi Clan's dust.

For a moment, the atmosphere in the office became exquisitely awkward.

Inside the Akatsuki base, there was dead silence.

Uchiha Itachi stood rooted to the spot, utterly stunned, his pupils trembling and his face filled with disbelief.

He stared fixedly at every secret exposed on the Sky Screen. The horrifying figure of one to two thousand Sarutobi Clan shinobi echoed through his mind, and the beliefs that had taken root in his heart over the years crumbled, inch by inch.

The Uchiha weren't stupid. They were just foolishly naive in certain respects!

He had always believed that the defiant Uchiha Clan was the greatest threat to Konoha's stability.

He had always believed that bearing the infamy of massacring his clan, sacrificing them all, and giving up everything was the only right choice-the only way to save Konoha and preserve peace.

But the truth laid bare by the Sky Screen shattered everything he had stood for, along with his sense of justice.

Could the Uchiha really threaten Konoha?

After a long while, Itachi abruptly turned. His scarlet eyes, cold to the bone, locked onto Orochimaru, brimming with icy accusation.

His gaze conveyed one clear question-was all of this true?

Orochimaru shrugged indifferently. His narrow eyes held the detached mockery of someone who saw through everything as he slowly replied, "I haven't personally investigated the details yet."

"But knowing the old man as I do, this is almost certainly true. It isn't likely to be fabricated."

Itachi's throat tightened. His voice trembled with coldness, carrying a trace of doubt he could barely suppress. "How... did they manage it?"

How had they secretly amassed such terrifying clan strength right under the entire village's nose?

How had they kept it hidden for decades, deceiving the whole shinobi world?

Orochimaru fell silent briefly, then sighed softly.

"It's simple."

"Hiruzen Sarutobi was the Hokage who ruled Konoha for decades. He held supreme authority, controlling both administration and finances."

"And among his old friends, Danzo controlled Root and the Anbu, holding authority over armed force and oversight."

"Mitokado Homura and Utatane Koharu controlled logistics, medical services, and resource allocation."

"All of Konoha's upper-level authority, core resources, financial lifelines, and personnel assignments were firmly in their hands."

Orochimaru narrowed his eyes with a faint, ambiguous smile, each word striking where it hurt:

"Tell me, if they used official duties as a pretext to quietly divert, withhold, and parcel out the village's public resources to secretly nurture their own clansmen..."

"In all of Konoha, who would be in a position to notice? Who would dare investigate? And who could uncover it?"

Those words left no room for any rebuttal.

Uchiha Itachi shuddered, then sank into deathly silence, his heart turning ice-cold.

Yes.

All the village's power belonged to them. Oversight, audits, intelligence, and armed force were all under their control.

They were stealing what they had been entrusted to guard, with no one able to investigate.

Before Itachi could recover, Orochimaru revealed another secret, even more explosive and devastating:

"And you've forgotten the most important point."

"After the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, died in battle, Hiruzen Sarutobi and his associates took control of his entire estate and all his resources."

"What was the status of Minato's wife, Kushina? She was the princess of the Land of Whirlpools."

"You probably don't know this, but Kushina Uzumaki owned two entire commercial streets in Konoha."

"Two commercial streets in central Konoha, where every inch of land was worth a fortune. With the income they generated year after year, just how staggering do you think that accumulated wealth was?"

Orochimaru chuckled and revealed the final truth. "Those properties alone were enough to make Minato's family the richest in Konoha."

"And that wealth, enough to rival a nation's, ultimately flowed into the pockets of the elite Sarutobi, Mitokado, Utatane, and Shimura clans. They quietly divided up every last bit."

Every word was like an icy blade plunging deep into Itachi's heart.

"And the Uchiha Clan's thousand years of accumulated wealth-whose hands do you think that ended up in?"

"With those resources, how many more shinobi could the Sarutobi Clan train in another few years?"

At those words, Itachi felt his chest suddenly constrict. His breath caught, and an overwhelming sense of absurdity, sorrow, and regret surged through him.

"The Uchiha I wiped out... what were they, then...?"

Itachi murmured, his eyes filling with uncertainty and self-doubt for the first time.

The Uchiha, vilified year after year, had neither authority nor influence and had hardly used any of Konoha's resources.

Merely for their defiant temperament, they had been branded a source of rebellion and a threat to the village.

Yet the clans that truly held immense resources, controlled the entire village's lifelines, and secretly maintained over a thousand private soldiers had cloaked themselves in righteousness and ruled Konoha securely for decades.

"Did the Uchiha... really pose a threat to Konoha?"

At that moment, the beliefs Uchiha Itachi had upheld for half his life shattered completely.

He began to question himself frantically.

When it was impossible to distinguish right from wrong...

Nothing was more damning than a comparison!

On the Sky Screen, Sasuke stood still for a long time, digesting all the truths that had just overturned his understanding.

After a long while, he raised his eyes. His gaze was clear, but held a trace of confusion as he looked at Orochimaru on the bed and asked gravely, "So what exactly are you trying to tell me with all this?"

At his question, Orochimaru's lips curved into a knowing yet eerie smile. He abandoned the gradual buildup and went straight to the heart of the matter.

"Sasuke, a clan's strength has never rested on one person's peak."