The record fragment was not removed from the stone platform immediately.
Black Zetsu was nearby.
Any movement could trigger the final command within the scraped layer.
The Land of Rivers first documented the surface cracks.
The Uchiha examined only the traces of eye power.
The Land of Rain compared the black portion against the remnants of the fourth authority.
None of the three parties could see the others' complete results.
The record fragment passed the first round of source verification.
Madara's chakra lay in the earliest layer.
Black Zetsu's scraping had occurred afterward.
Obito remotely identified the stone platform's location and Madara's habits in his later years.
His testimony served only as a fourth piece of supporting evidence.
His time living in the secret chamber did not qualify him to authenticate all the writing alone.
The materials examiner brushed out ordinary mineral powder from beneath the fragment.
The powder had preserved the pressure of three separate instances of writing.
The examiner did not read the text for its meaning.
He only confirmed that the three pressure marks came from different times.
The earliest incisions had already fused with the stone's weathered layer.
The second inscription had been made at least several years later.
The scraping had occurred later still.
For the first time, the Uchiha's eye-power observations and the material dating agreed on the sequence of events.
Black Zetsu could not dismiss the entire record as something the Tracking Team had hastily fabricated.
Nor could Madara's chakra prove that he had personally written every word.
The strokes still had to be compared with other remnants in the secret chamber.
Only after three matching turns, two habitual abbreviated strokes, and a private timekeeping symbol all matched was the record marked as highly likely to have been written by Madara himself.
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