Public Security Department On the third floor, the lights in the conference room were on all night.
There are one hundred and seventy-one application records stacked on the long table, each of which is spread out and flattened, and the corners are secured with stones. Kabuto Yakushi is not here, but he is still at the Land of Waterfalls experimental base, and his seat is empty.
Senju Chen is sitting in the main seat, with a cup of tea in hand that has cooled down.
"The code name this time is Snow Sweeping." He said,
"When snow falls, it will cover the footprints." Senju Chen placed the fragment in the middle of the table, "What we want to do is to sweep the snow away and see how many feet have been stepped on it."
Uchiha Itachi stood at the other end of the long table, holding the signature booklet in his hand. He was thirteen years old and was not as tall as Shisui's shoulders, but his hand when turning the book was very steady.
"Shisui, Anbu Check the duty schedule, entry and exit records, and key handover orders of the laboratory for the two years carefully." Senju Chen said, "But don't alarm anyone. Just say Public Security Department year-end reconciliation."
"Yes."
"Weasel, the signature booklet and seal, paper, ink, and ink pad are all the same."
"Understood."
Three days later, Shisui came back.
He had three rolls of duty lists in his hand, spread out on the table, and marked eleven places from beginning to end with a red pen.
"Minister, during those two years, the verification laboratory implemented double duty. The system was set by Lord Third. One person unlocked, one person checked, and both signed." Shisui's finger pointed at the first red circle, "In these eleven times of duty, there were two signatures."
"What's the problem."
"The second signature is all Manami." Shisui said, "I checked his mission file. In these eleven days, he was at Land of Grass for nine days, and Land of Hot Water for one day. On the last day... he had a meeting in the Hokage building, and his speech is included in the minutes of that meeting."
The conference room fell silent.
"The person is not at Konoha, but the name is at Konoha." Senju Chen said.
"Yes."
"He signed it himself?"
"The handwriting is exactly the same." Shisui said, "I asked three people from the appraisal department to look at it separately. The conclusions given by the three people were all written by me, even his habit of making the last stroke of the word 'wave' upward."
Senju Chen smiled.
"So either he used a clone, or--"
"Either someone has disguised him." Shisui said.
"Where's Itachi?"
"In the archives, I didn't come out."
The archives room is on the underground floor, and two Chakra devices for dehumidification are turned on all year round. The air is so dry that your lips will crack.
Uchiha Itachi was sitting on his knees on the floor, with a half-meter-wide receipt book spread out in front of him. He had a pair of tweezers in his hand, with a small piece of paper clamped on the tip of the tweezers.
He didn't even raise his head.
"Minister."
"What did you find?"
"Page ninety-one is a later addition."
Senju Chen Squat down.
"How can you tell?"
"Curtain pattern." Itachi held the piece of paper under the lamp, "Konoha official document paper is supplied by three paper mills, and the curtain pattern spacing of each batch is different. There are ninety-six pages in the entire book, and the curtain pattern spacing of page ninety-five is 4.2 millimeters, and only page ninety-one is 4.5 millimeters."
"The paper was changed."
"It's not a replacement, it's just taking out a page and adding another page in." Itachi put down the tweezers, "The needle holes of the binding thread match up, but the thread is new. The wall of the hole where the old thread passed through will turn black, but the new thread will not."
Senju Chen looked at the thirteen-year-old boy.
Tsk, what a brain. In the original book, he was asked to slaughter his entire family. It was such a waste of resources.
"What's on page ninety-one?"
"Signature for the 1,200th component." Itachi said, "The signer's column is a seal with the number 'Yi-Qi-09'."
"The one that was canceled five years ago."
"Yes."
"Is it true?"
"It's true." Itachi said, "There are three chippings on the seal surface, which are exactly the same as the seal left when the registration was canceled five years ago. This seal has never been forged."
Senju Chen stood up slowly.
"The seal is genuine, the person is dead, the paper was added later, and the person who signed it is not present."
"Yes."
"Itachi, tell me your conclusion."
Uchiha Itachi closed the book and raised his head for the first time.
"It's not that someone leaked the secret." He said, "There is a person who has been in Konoha's organization."
"But no one has ever seen him."
On the fourth day, Yamato came back.
When he pushed the door open and came in, his expression was wrong. There were three glass dishes on the tray in his hand, with a small amount of soil at the bottom of each dish.
"Minister."
"What was found?"
"There is dirt in the file box that does not belong to Konoha."
"Dirt that doesn't belong to Konoha?" Senju Chen asked with some confusion.
"Yes, Sir, the soil residue in the file box does not belong to the vicinity of Konoha."
Senju Chen put down the teacup, stood up, walked to the blackboard, and picked up the chalk.
He wrote four lines on the blackboard.
First, the seal is real, but the number is dead.
Second, the signature is genuine and the person is not Konoha.
Third, the paper is replenished and the binding is new.
Fourth, there is soil in the file box that does not belong to the vicinity of Konoha.
"Shisui."
"Here."
"If these four points are true at the same time, tell me what we are going to catch."
Shisui stared at the blackboard and his Adam's apple moved.
"A secret that has been hidden in Konoha for a long time."
"One more step forward."
"... A secret person who has been hiding for a long time and knows how to Earth Release."
Senju Chen Put the chalk back into the slot.
"Itachi, come here."
Uchiha Itachi Stand up.
"This man doesn't have to fool anyone," he said, "He just has to fool paper."
"He used the serial number of a dead person to get equipment to steal information, because the dead person would not come to reconcile the accounts. It used the name of a person on a business trip to sign the duty list, because the person on a business trip would not look back. It put its own files in a box marked 'empty box', because no one would clear an empty box."
"He can transform into anyone, or control others to do things for him."
"He stayed at Konoha for at least seven years, probably longer."
Senju Chen said. He picked up the fragment again and held it under the light.
"He took the components produced by our Konoha factory, rubbed off the marks on Forehead Protector, bypassed seven of our observation heights, and wanted our blast to drown the nine people protecting the food in the canyon. He has been hiding in Konoha for so many years. Is this attack just so that we can fight with Iwagakure?"
"Minister, I still have something to say."
Uchiha Itachi, took out a small glass slide from his arms and pushed it to the middle of the table.
"Ink paste." He said, "The seal on page 91 has something else mixed in the ink paste."
"What something."
"It's black," said Weasel. "It's insoluble in water, insoluble in wine, and won't melt in fire. I watched it all night, and it moved on its own on the glass slide."
Senju Chen picked up the glass slide, faced the light, and lowered his eyelids half a minute.
This is the mark left by Black Zetsu.
"Put it away." He said, "Don't look at it again, and don't touch it again. Put it in the original seal scroll and give it to me tomorrow."
"Yes."