The first basement level of Konoha's Intelligence Department never saw sunlight, and the air was filled with the mingled smell of paper and ink.
Cold white light fell across rows of long tables, their surfaces covered with paper rubbings, rough sketches, and numbered labels.
The Analysis Team's ninja worked in three rotating shifts around the clock. When they were hungry, they had food delivered; when they were tired, they leaned back in their chairs and dozed for a while.
The Hokage's orders were the rules!
No one could defy them.
Especially since the current Hokage was Shihōin Naraku. With his present prestige in Konoha, no one dared neglect his orders.
What was more, their current assignment concerned the Ōtsutsuki Clan.
As a unit of the Intelligence Department, the Analysis Team knew better than anyone what that meant.
So they seized every moment to analyze the intelligence.
But the task did not progress as smoothly as they had imagined.
On the first day, progress was slow.
"These aren't words!"
A bespectacled Chunin looked up, rubbed his dry eyes, and said to the Jonin beside him, "This is more like a kind of..."
"A kind of what?" the Jonin pressed.
"A kind of prayer to a god?!" the bespectacled Chunin offered uncertainly.
Judging by his doubtful tone, he was not very sure whether his own guess was right.
On the second day, they changed their approach. Instead of stubbornly focusing on the writing, they examined the patterns across the entire wall together.
When the paper rubbings were pieced together at their original scale, clues began to emerge.
The entire wall was divided into upper and lower sections. The upper section depicted an enormous tree, its canopy blotting out the sky and sun, its trunk entwined with twisting patterns, and its roots sunk