The rumors appeared three days later.
There were no notes.
No lists.
No unfamiliar kunai.
Just a few remarks circulating around the outskirts of the Clan District.
The Hokage Building would settle accounts with the Uchiha sooner or later.
The more records they kept, the more frightened they were.
The more backups they made, the more it proved they knew they could not escape.
These remarks had no clear source.
Yet they were harder to deal with than notes.
Notes could be sealed away.
Lists could be traced.
Once a rumor slipped into someone's ears, it would grow shadows of its own.
When Uchiha Gen heard the first rumor, he did not immediately send anyone to make arrests.
He first had the Recorder write down who had heard it, where, when, and the exact words.
When Uchiha Jun heard about this arrangement, his first reaction was still annoyance.
"We have to record rumors too?"
Gen looked at him.
"The less shape something has, the more important it is to give it one first."
Uchiha Jun did not fully understand.
But Shisui did.
The most frightening thing about rumors was how they kept changing.
Today, people said the Uchiha would face a reckoning sooner or later. Tomorrow, that would become the Hokage already preparing to act. The day after, it might turn into someone within the Uchiha having sold out their own clansmen.
If they did not write down the words they first heard, once those words passed through three or four people, no one could say exactly what the original remark had been.
Without knowing that, they could not investigate.
Without an investigation, all they could do was fear.
After reading the records, Fugaku's expression was icy.
"They want our clansmen to feel that all their efforts are pointless."
"Yes."