The old-style Sealing Wax Ring had returned.
That discovery unsettled every archivist in the Hokage Building.
Because the Sealing Wax Ring was different from the Old Seal.
The Old Seal was used to stamp documents, leaving clear marks.
The Sealing Wax Ring was more often used for low-level handovers, sealing brief orders, and temporary dispatches.
It carried little authority.
But it was used in a vast range of situations.
Precisely because it carried little authority, many people had never considered it truly dangerous.
Gen saw it differently.
The more low-level, commonplace, and inconspicuous an old object was, the easier it was for the old-shell system to exploit it.
High-level authority drew scrutiny.
Low-level authority, by contrast, could slip through the cracks again and again.
A temporary clerk like Arai would not trust a note with no known source.
But if the note bore an old-style wax seal, he would assume it was a supplementary instruction left over from some old procedure.
That was the most dangerous thing about the old system.
It did not need to force people to commit crimes.
It merely made ordinary people believe they were following the rules.
When the Sealing Wax Ring repository was opened, Crow and the head of the Archives Room both witnessed it.
Wooden boxes were laid out in rows.
Every ring number had a corresponding registry entry.
Ring numbers marked as destroyed should not have appeared in the repository.
Those not destroyed should have had a recorded storage location.
But when they reached the ring number marked "destroyed but not recovered," it was not in the repository.
It was not in the recovery cabinet.
Nor was it in the box of destroyed remnants.
It seemed to have evaporated from the system.
Danzo immediately said, "Since the actual ring is missing, it