Several days later.
News that the Fourth Hokage would announce a new policy spread among the village's upper ranks of ninja.
Although these ninja made up only a small fraction of the village's forces, there was no denying that they could practically represent all Konoha ninja.
For the village and its ninja clans, the Fourth Hokage's new policy was really only a minor matter with little impact.
But it was a test of how the ninja clans and civilian-born ninja would respond. Introducing sweeping reforms all at once would only provoke fierce resistance, so the Fourth Hokage needed to sound them out gradually.
Without encountering much opposition, the new policy passed smoothly and was implemented, changing the lives of quite a few ninja. The ninja clans were all willing to do the newly appointed Fourth Hokage this favor.
But any attempt to push the reforms further would certainly not go so easily.
Zou Hyuga watched it all in silence. As a member of the Direct Anbu, he accompanied the Fourth Hokage to all sorts of events and knew that he was working to reform the village.
Still, he paid it little mind. He knew that sooner or later, the Fourth Hokage's actions would meet with a backlash from the village's other senior officials. The fiercest opposition would likely come from the elder advisors led by the Third.
Politics in shinobi villages had always been bizarre. Almost every village was caught up in internal strife, each seemingly competing to be worse than the others.
When those internal conflicts became irreconcilable, they would launch a war to divert attention from them, until the cycle began again.
Only when someone so formidable emerged that the entire shinobi world could not stand against them would it enter a brief period of peace.
The formidable