One simple sentence left Kawano Shinji, who lay sprawled on the ground, utterly astonished.
"You... don't trust Danzo?"
Kawano Shinji's voice was slightly hoarse, his tone astonished.
"I don't believe anything that old bastard Danzo decides is true." Zongyan spoke evenly, making no attempt to hide his contempt.
"Root charged you with murdering your comrades and betraying Konoha. I want to hear why you did those things."
At those words, Kawano Shinji's confusion only deepened.
He had spent a long time in Konoha, witnessed countless missions to hunt down the village's rogue ninja, and been hunted several times himself.
He knew Konoha's rules. Those hunting rogue ninja never wasted words. All they wanted was his head, to exchange for a mission reward.
He had never seen a pursuer patiently question a rogue ninja.
The boy before him really was rather strange.
Zongyan narrowed his eyes as he watched the rogue ninja's conflicted expression on the ground. He truly was curious.
Across his two lives, this was his first encounter with one of the legendary rogue ninja.
At the Ninja Academy and in the words of everyone in the village, rogue ninja were always synonymous with viciousness, cruelty, and treachery.
The teachers repeatedly drilled into them that those who betrayed the village and slaughtered their comrades were the villains Konoha most needed to revile and eliminate.
But Zongyan understood things differently. Not all rogue ninja were so despicable. The example he knew best was his own older brother-Uchiha Itachi.
In the original story, he had become a rogue ninja entirely because of the village's schemes.
So, when facing the first rogue ninja he had ever met, Zongyan still had the patience to ask why.
Besides, there was no malice in the eyes of the man before him, only exhaustion and helplessness.
Kawano Shinji fell silent for a long time before speaking with a bitter smile. "If we had a choice, who would want to become a rogue ninja and spend their life on the run?"
He drew a deep breath and slowly explained why he had defected.
"Do you know what lies beneath Konoha's surface?"
He slowly raised his head, his clouded eyes fixed on Zongyan, filled with numbness and despair.
"Ninja who can't complete their missions are trash, but ninja who abandon their comrades are worse than trash."
He spoke slowly, as though he had sunk into his memories.
"On my first S-rank mission, powerful enemies surrounded our squad and drove us into a desperate situation."
"All we had to do was abandon our badly wounded, trapped comrades, and we could have completed the mission."
"But I couldn't do it!"
"I risked failing the mission and did everything I could to save our badly wounded comrades, but in doing so, I lost the chance to complete it."
"When I returned to the village, neither praise nor understanding awaited me. All I received was endless condemnation and harsh punishment."
Kawano Shinji swallowed, resentment and hurt churning in his eyes.
"The higher-ups and villagers accused me of putting personal feelings before duty and missing a crucial opportunity. They said my softheartedness had nearly caused losses for the village."
"Even the comrades who had carried out the mission with me began accusing me of letting my emotions cause the mission's failure and getting them severely punished too."
At that moment, the convictions he had upheld for years cracked for the first time.
He could not understand what was wrong with protecting his comrades, what was wrong with staying true to himself, or why his devotion to protecting his own people had ultimately made him a sinner in the village's eyes.
After that incident, Kawano Shinji's heart turned completely cold.
"From that moment on, I secretly swore that I would never again let personal feelings interfere with a mission, and never again be 'trash' in the village's eyes."
"Later, I was given a second critical mission."
He closed his eyes, his tone filled with endless self-mockery and remorse, his voice trembling faintly.
"That mission was just as dangerous, and I faced the same choice. To complete it successfully, and to keep the village from calling me incompetent again, I hardened my heart and decisively abandoned my comrades in danger. I completed the mission and returned safely."
"I thought this time I would gain recognition and shake off my earlier disgrace."
Kawano Shinji abruptly opened his bloodshot eyes, filled with despair and bitter irony.
"And what happened?"
"Once again, condemnation from the village and its people came pouring down on me."
"This time, they said I was cold and heartless, that I disregarded my comrades. They said I would stop at nothing to complete a mission, that I had betrayed a ninja's principles and wasn't worthy of being a Konoha ninja!"
"When I saved my comrades, I was trash who squandered a crucial opportunity. When I abandoned my comrades to complete the mission, I was a sinner who betrayed his principles!"
Fate was that absurd, utterly crushing his love for the village.
His voice rose as the grief and anger he had bottled up for so long finally spilled out uncontrollably.
"No matter what I did, I was wrong! No matter what I chose, the village wouldn't show me the slightest tolerance! Tell me, why should I stay in that disgusting village?!"
After saying that, the middle-aged man actually began to sob aloud.
From that moment on, he had seen the filthy, twisted reality beneath Konoha's gleaming exterior. His heart had turned to ashes, and he had ultimately been driven into a corner, left with no choice but to flee Konoha and become a rogue ninja despised by all.
Uchiha Zongyan and the others beside him could not help falling silent.
They began imagining what they would do if they encountered something like this.
The answer was that there was no solution!
It was an impossible dilemma.
Konoha's villagers all praised its light, bonds, and justice, portraying the village as the warmest haven in the Shinobi World.
Yet only those truly at the bottom, caught deep within the game, understood how cold, hypocritical, and cruel the rules behind that gleaming paradise were.
A ninja's principles had never been the standard by which to live. The village's interests were the only correct answer.
Those who complied were crowned with glory, while those who defied them were cursed and despised. Right and wrong were never determined by one's conscience, but defined by the higher-ups according to their needs.
The others accompanying him remained silent, their eyes holding an indescribable mixture of feelings.
Putting themselves in his place, if they fell into such an impossible dilemma, with mission rules on one side and their comrades' lives on the other, they would be blamed no matter what they chose. There was simply no way out.
Only after a long time did Kawano Shinji's sobs gradually subside. His reddened eyes had long since run dry, leaving only a deathly emptiness.
All his grief, anger, resentment, and hurt had ultimately become bone-deep numbness.
He lay sprawled on the ground in silence.
For him, being able to pour out all the suffering he had bottled up for years had already lightened his heart considerably, even without asking for understanding.
Zongyan watched the numb-eyed man before him, his own thoughts rather conflicted.
Kawano Shinji's experience had never been an isolated case.
Hadn't Kakashi's father, the legendary White Fang of Konoha, lost his life for the same reason?
The darkness and double standards at Konoha's lower levels had eaten away at countless ninja's original convictions.
Although Zongyan felt considerable sympathy for Kawano Shinji, he still needed to carry out his mission. He could not let Danzo get leverage over him and use it to make trouble for the Uchiha.
But the man before him had spent years upon years in the Anbu, moving through Konoha's most secret shadows. There were surely things he knew that Zongyan did not.
After a brief silence, Zongyan spoke slowly, a probing note in his voice.
"You spent many years in the Anbu, moving through Konoha's shadows. You've seen the village at its most real and most hidden."
He bent forward slightly, looking straight into Kawano Shinji's hollow eyes.
"Aside from what happened to you, do you know any other hidden secrets about Konoha that people don't know?"
At those words, Kawano Shinji's unfocused gaze stirred slightly, and he instinctively asked in a hoarse voice:
"What do you want to know those things for?"
Zongyan's expression did not change. His tone remained calm, but he slowly offered a bargaining chip powerful enough to sway a person.
"You don't need to know my purpose. You only need to understand that if your information is useful enough to me, I might let you go."
At that, a flicker of the will to survive burst into Kawano Shinji's hollow eyes. "Really?"
The squad members standing by instantly paled at those words and instinctively cried out:
"Captain! What about our mission?!"
Their mission was to kill the rogue ninja Kawano Shinji and bring back his head as proof. If they let a rogue ninja go without authorization, how were they supposed to explain themselves?
Zongyan waved a hand behind him, cutting off his squad member's protest.
"I have my own plans."
Before you continue