"I could sneak into your homes in the middle of the night, stab you to death, then slip away without anyone knowing. The next day, I could announce that all three of you had died suddenly. Easy enough. But I'm not interested anymore."
The more Xuan Zhe said, the paler the three of them grew.
"Then... then why haven't you done it?"
Hiruzen Sarutobi's voice had begun to tremble. He could no longer maintain that calm facade.
"Plenty of reasons. But the main one is-it's too easy to be any fun."
Back when Xuan Zhe had yet to reach the threshold of Kage Level, he had moved out of Konoha partly because he was thoroughly disgusted by all its bullshit.
The other reason was that he had genuinely wanted to avoid the four old foxes on the Elders Council for a while.
But now, those people were like four little loaches in his hands. He could crush them with a casual squeeze.
Instead, Xuan Zhe was no longer in such a hurry to act.
As far as he was concerned, that bunch could no longer stir up any trouble anyway.
That was also why he had not bothered attending today's council meeting to decide Shimura Danzō's fate.
But there was another important reason-Xuan Zhe wanted to see how Orochimaru, that "good disciple," would "repay" his teacher.
That ought to be rather interesting, right?
After Xuan Zhe finished saying all that,
the three across from him fell utterly silent, as quiet as the dead.
Hiruzen Sarutobi had always thought Xuan Zhe wanted to get something on them and throw them into prison, just as he had done to Danzo.
That was why he had kept his head down ever since he had been stripped of his position as Hokage.
He had