Meeting

"Good morning, Lord Hokage."

"Ah, Xia Yan. Good morning."

Early the next morning, Xia Yan quietly appeared in a secluded forest.

After briefly checking his surroundings, he used the Flying Thunder God Cursed Seal Minato Namikaze had left behind to summon him.

He certainly would not go to the Hokage's office to find Minato Namikaze, and clearly Minato had no such intention either.

That made choosing the time himself and summoning Minato Namikaze the best option!

Sure enough, before long, Minato Namikaze appeared quietly before him, just as he had that night.

Facing Minato Namikaze, Xia Yan greeted him with his usual gentle, seemingly harmless smile.

Minato Namikaze wore a gentle smile as well, though he was also looking Xia Yan up and down.

It had to be said that even if the Senju Clan's genes could not compare with the Uchiha's, they were still quite good.

In particular, being descended from the line of the Second Hokage, Tobirama Senju, had given Xia Yan a head of white hair and a handsome face.

However, Xia Yan himself knew that, strictly speaking, someone like him was an oddity within the Senju Clan.

A typical Senju clansman should have brown hair, but whenever their hair color mutated, their looks would certainly be nothing to scoff at.

One only had to look at Tobirama Senju, then Tsunade, then Xia Yan to see that.

For Xia Yan, however, he actually preferred black hair, because his hair had been black in his previous life, and he felt white hair was far too conspicuous.

Especially on stealth missions in the dark, a head of white hair is like a bright moon in the night.

Unfortunately, genes were not something he could change. After all these years, he had grown used to it, so he had no intention of dyeing his hair back, either.

"It seems you're ready, Xia Yan." After looking Xia Yan over for a while, Minato Namikaze smiled and said, "Then let's begin."

"Lord Hokage, before we begin, I think you should take a look at this." Xia Yan shook his head lightly, then handed a scroll to Minato Namikaze.

Minato Namikaze raised an eyebrow, took the scroll, and opened it straightaway.

He had thought Xia Yan would ask him to teach him first and only give him the intelligence afterward.

Now it seemed that Xia Yan really was an interesting fellow.

Still, Minato Namikaze did not dwell on it. He was truly curious about what Xia Yan had recorded for him.

Yet when he began reading carefully, his expression shifted slightly, then grew rather grim.

The contents of Xia Yan's scroll were merely information about the Anbu and Root based on what he knew and what he suspected.

Minato Namikaze had actually already prepared himself to some extent for this information, yet when he truly saw these records, he still could not help feeling somewhat shaken.

Minato knew exactly how many departments there were within the Anbu's organizational structure. These smaller departments rounded out the Anbu's operational framework.

Yet among these departments, Minato Namikaze discovered to his astonishment that Xia Yan had clearly marked the key personnel in every single one as followers of the Third Hokage!

The heads of the Anbu Interrogation Squad and Intelligence Division, two captains of the Operations Department, and the head of the Anbu were all among them.

With these people in place, it was easy to imagine whom the training and ideological conditioning received by those entering the Anbu would make them loyal to!

And the sole captain who had not been marked as belonging to the Third Hokage had instead been marked by Xia Yan as loyal to a mysterious person.

This annotation made Minato Namikaze frown inwardly. Could someone else be trying to extend their reach into the Anbu?

"Captain Xia Yan." Only after a long while, once Minato had finished reading the entire scroll, did his expression turn exceptionally serious. "Can you vouch for the truth of this report?"

"I'm sorry, Lord Hokage. Besides things I witnessed personally, this report also contains some of my conjectures."

Xia Yan shook his head decisively. He would never admit to these things.

"In fact, Lord Hokage, you know that whether this intelligence is true or not, I would deny its existence, don't you?"

Minato Namikaze fell somewhat silent. Indeed, even in his current position as Hokage, he would not dare readily admit to such a thing, let alone Xia Yan, who was a member of the Senju Clan and merely an Anbu squad leader!

But Minato Namikaze was rather curious. As a squad leader, why had Xia Yan come into contact with so much information?

"Are you a little curious about why I have access to this sort of intelligence?"

Without Minato Namikaze needing to ask, Xia Yan guessed his thoughts. He smiled slightly, then said calmly.

"Lord Hokage, as a member of the Senju Clan who has spent so long in the Anbu, do you think I was simply serving Konoha?

"Even if that was what I wanted, my clan wouldn't want that, so..."

"So you were also tasked with investigating the internal situation of the Anbu and reporting back to your clan, correct?" Without needing Xia Yan to finish, Minato Namikaze immediately understood what he meant.

His gaze was somewhat odd, however. Although he had encountered intelligence like this before, intelligence was one thing; hearing the person himself admit it was quite another.

Xia Yan, however, felt no such burden. He nodded outright, as though he did not care at all that this little secret of his had been exposed.

"Actually, I imagine you've read similar intelligence before, Lord Hokage, haven't you?" Xia Yan asked with a slight smile, though his tone sounded more like a statement.

"Yes, I've read similar reports, but the investigation was halted before they could be confirmed." Minato Namikaze hesitated, then nodded earnestly.

"That's hardly surprising. After all, the Anbu was founded by our forebear, Lord Tobirama, and the Senju Clan still had considerable influence within it."

Xia Yan sighed softly as he said, "Although that influence largely dissipated with the Senju Clan's decline and Lady Tsunade's departure from the village.

"There are still some people and some clans who have chosen to align themselves with us, so we can obtain quite a lot of intelligence as well.

"On top of that, I've been in the Anbu all this time, so naturally, I can verify quite a lot of intelligence too.

"Therefore, the intelligence now in your hands, Lord Hokage, can be considered personally confirmed by me."

"Your clan's intelligence, personally confirmed by you?" Minato Namikaze opened his mouth slightly, but in the end, he fell silent.

Just as Xia Yan had said, the Senju Clan's final, complete decline had come with Tsunade's departure from the village, but some people and some clans still held out hope for the Senju.

Moreover, even in decline, the Senju likely had their own unique resources. With the support of such a clan's resources, obtaining some of Konoha's core intelligence was hardly strange.

The Anbu, after all, had been founded by Tobirama Senju!

And the intelligence Xia Yan was providing him now was clearly his clan's intelligence...