The floor of the underground Transfer Room was divided into sixteen sections.
The Cross-Verification Squad did not open it from the center.
The white roots had just contracted toward the northwest, so the center was likely a lure.
The Hyuga jonin followed the thinnest concentration of chakra and found a stone slab untouched by roots.
The Sealing Squad cut through there and first lowered a puppet fitted with a sensory tag.
The puppet triggered no explosion when it landed.
But five steps forward, it lost its right leg.
A spatial rift, too thin to discern with the naked eye, lay hidden in the stone wall.
This was not a complete transfer performed personally by the Masked Man.
It looked more like a remnant left behind when a long-standing spatial passage collapsed.
The Sealing Squad pushed a numbered stone chip into the rift.
After the chip vanished, its sensory marker did not disconnect immediately. It lingered at an extremely distant location for three breaths before going dark.
The other side of the rift was not simply disrupted space. It connected to a region from which a reliable return was impossible.
This resembled the medium used in the Memorial Stone trap, but it was much older and cruder.
Someone had repeatedly tested spatial transfers in the mine tunnels, leaving failed passages behind.
The advance team skirted the rift and discovered a second level of mine tunnels underground.
These Mine Tunnels predated Konoha's transport route.
The wooden support beams had rotted, but some sections had been propped up again with a grayish-white wooden structure.
The structure had no growth rings.
Nor did it resemble ordinary wood.
A medical ninja removed a minute sample and confirmed that it contained the same abnormal plant cells found in White Zetsu.
Someone had repaired this Mine Tunnel