Meanwhile, elsewhere, in the Hokage Office.
Smoke filled the room.
The ashtray in front of Hiruzen Sarutobi was already piled high with cigarette butts, and his brow was tightly furrowed.
Across the desk, the two advisors, Utatane Koharu and Mitokado Homura, looked equally grim and restless.
A week had passed since Genya Uchiha had caused an earth-shattering upheaval in the Land of Fire Capital.
According to Hiruzen Sarutobi's expectations,
his desk should have been piled high by now with formal letters of protest from the Daimyo of the Land of Fire, along with fiercely worded diplomatic notes from the other Four Great Nations and their shinobi villages, perhaps even threatening joint pressure.
After all, a shinobi clan from a hidden village had openly killed people and wiped out a household in the capital, destroyed the Palace, coerced the daimyo, and extorted an enormous sum...
It was practically trampling all over the face of the shinobi world's existing order!
It was an incident serious enough to spark a diplomatic crisis, or even serve as a pretext for war!
Yet nothing came.
Everything was calm.
Eerily calm.
Aside from the initial report that the Daimyo of the Land of Fire had "suffered excessive shock and required quiet rest," the Land of Fire's Daimyo's Office had issued no official statement, as though the ruins and the Mountain-Cleaving Sword from that night had never existed.
The other nations and shinobi villages had likewise remained collectively silent, as if they had agreed on it beforehand.
"This isn't right... something is very wrong."
Mitokado Homura adjusted his glasses, his voice dry.
"Hiruzen, what exactly are they planning? Are they secretly coordinating to deal a major blow to Konoha and the Uchiha? Or..."
Utatane Koharu tapped irritably on her armrest.
"There's no way they'd have no reaction!