The first letter concerning a real conflict arrived more quietly than any of the false alarms.
There were no emergency signal flares.
There was no forceful wording demanding that Konoha deploy troops immediately.
There was only a mud-soaked messenger from the Land of Grass, who delivered a scroll to the Hokage Building before dawn.
Liuchuan Town, in the southeastern Land of Grass, had suffered three attacks in seven days.
Twelve traveling merchants had died.
Four guards were missing.
Most of the medicinal herbs bound for the Land of Fire had been burned.
The area did not have enough ninja to continue protecting the trade route and requested that Konoha send escort and investigation personnel.
The letter bore the seals of a local government office in the Land of Grass, the Trade Route Management Office, and two survivors.
Enclosed were a casualty list, a cargo manifest, the times of the attacks, and three differing eyewitness accounts.
None of this proved there was no trap behind the plea for aid.
But it did prove that at least someone was genuinely waiting to be rescued.
The Hokage Building did not examine only the seals.
The archivists retrieved the trade documents Liuchuan Town had submitted over the past three years and compared the paper, seal ink, and writing habits.
The local government office's seal had a notch left by years of use, and the same notch appeared on this letter.
The Trade Route Management Office's cargo numbers also matched the entry records at the Land of Fire's border waystations.
There was nothing unusual about the messenger's route or travel time, and he had left records of horse changes at two waystations along the way.
These checks could not prove that the letter's authors knew the whole truth, but they at least showed that the