After seeing the first newspaper, Ōnoki could not resist collecting the others.
Everything before him really challenged his view of the world. From a shinobi's perspective, were these things fit for ordinary people and low-ranking shinobi to read?
Wasn't this leaking their own intelligence?
Still, he was a very intelligent man. His thinking might have grown somewhat rigid, but he was, after all, someone firmly established in the Tsuchikage's seat!
He soon thought of many possibilities. After careful observation, he discovered that this intelligence actually had little effect on the village.
To put it plainly, it was merely scraps of intelligence and would not have much impact on a village's overall situation.
Moreover, releasing this intelligence could even intimidate the surrounding villages, letting them know that Konoha was watching them all along.
Such silent intimidation could deter quite a few people, which, in a sense, amounted to subduing the enemy without fighting.
In his view, this was a very clever approach indeed!
Yet that thought did not last long. When his subordinates collected the earlier newspapers, he suddenly felt that the situation was nothing like what he had imagined.
Who was Orochimaru?
He was Hiruzen Sarutobi's student, one of the Konoha Sannin, and one of Konoha's commanders!
In any village, someone like that defecting would be covered up tightly, without the slightest detail being disclosed.
Yet this so-called newspaper had exposed it outright, with the Anbu's approval, no less?
What did that mean?
There were only two possible meanings: either Konoha was embroiled in internal strife, or this newspaper was not something Konoha itself had established!
Konoha's internal strife was already quite clear. Reporting Orochimaru's affairs did not seem normal at all.
Moreover, the report explicitly stated that the information came from the Anbu, and the Anbu were troops subordinate