In the dark, damp underground base, the echoes of Danzo's tearful lament, which turned truth on its head, still seemed to linger in the air.
Hashirama Senju stood silently at the center of the Impure World Reincarnation array. His profound gaze slowly swept over Danzo's tear-streaked face, the shocking traces of experiments surrounding them, and Orochimaru, whose calm expression concealed something sinister.
His anger had not entirely faded, but immense confusion, sorrow, and concern that "Konoha might be facing annihilation" temporarily suppressed that fury capable of burning everything to ashes.
He could not fully believe this "Danzo," with his sinister bearing and obvious theatrics, nor could he accept "saving" Konoha through such an evil forbidden technique and human experiments.
Yet the words "Konoha divided" and "powerful enemies at the gates" stabbed like icy needles into the softest part of his soul.
That was the land of dreams he had poured his heart and soul into founding alongside Madara.
In the end, Hashirama neither erupted immediately nor believed him completely. He merely closed his eyes slowly, his thick lashes casting faint shadows over his face of reincarnated dust, and spoke with heavy weariness. "...Has Konoha truly come to this?"
He said neither that he believed nor that he did not.
But to Danzo, that question already represented an initial "appeasement" and "an opening to exploit."
Seeing that Hashirama had temporarily suppressed his destructive impulse, Danzo secretly breathed a sigh of relief, knowing he had barely cleared the first hurdle. Maintaining his sorrowful expression, he knocked his forehead hard against the ground twice more before shakily rising with his cane. He wiped the tears and blood from his face forcefully with his sleeve-deliberately. When he turned to Orochimaru, most of that tragic mask vanished in an instant, leaving only cold calculation and