Hiruzen maintained a deliberately hands-off stance toward Tsunade's administration.
Since stepping down, he appeared mainly as a senior staff member within the Political Affairs Department, quietly handling routine matters. For Koharu and Homura, this arrangement eased their burden considerably.
Tsunade's dealings with the two advisors had grown increasingly sparse—and when they did occur, patience was rarely involved.
With an old friend acting as a buffer, any issue that truly required Tsunade's attention would pass through Hiruzen first. Over the past year, this quiet mediation had preserved a fragile, surface-level harmony.
Which was precisely why his sudden appearance in the Hokage Office felt so unusual.
And troubling.
This time, it concerned the Uchiha Clan.
"Tsunade," Hiruzen began evenly, "you've reviewed the archives on the Kumo envoy incident, correct?"
"Yes." Tsunade leaned back in her chair, arms crossed.
"The envoy—Akai—was confirmed to have been subjected to mental control. Two of his guards vanished without a trace. The final conclusion pointed toward space-time ninjutsu."
She paused, then lifted her gaze to meet his. "The records also note that a connection to the Uchiha Clan could not be ruled out."
"Exactly." Hiruzen nodded. "That suspicion was later set aside due to the clan's active cooperation during the investigation."
"But you mentioned before," Tsunade continued, "that Fugaku once speculated this chain of events might be linked to Uchiha Madara."
Hiruzen's expression darkened slightly. "Uchiha Enjin had limited contact during his external mission. While he's dissatisfied with the current state of the Police Force, anyone he'd willingly approach would have to share his ideology—and be a significant Uchiha affiliate."
"In other words," Tsunade said coolly, "once you narrow it down to Uchiha alone, the list becomes very short."
After all, Shisui had already confirmed that those under his supervision showed no signs of contact with Enjin.
Tsunade closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. "Right… which leaves only that ghost who's been haunting Konoha all this time."
Hiruzen's gaze sharpened. "I'll depart with a reinforced ANBU squad and personally confirm whether Enjin is truly connected to him."
"I understand." Tsunade opened her eyes, her expression resolute.
"I'll have Shisui recalled to the village immediately. If we're dealing with that person, his strength will be necessary."
Compared to a possible Madara affiliate, a handful of radicalized Uchiha would pose little threat—so long as Konoha was ready.
—
Roshi spent several days patiently probing deep underground, extending multiple minuscule roots to map the area inch by inch.
At last, with barely a ripple of chakra, he slipped past the barrier ninjutsu and uncovered the concealed entrance.
A stale breath of dust, aged metal, and an indescribable sweet, cloying odor seeped out.
What met the Wood Clone's gaze was a laboratory—long abandoned, yet never fully cleared.
'…Orochimaru's laboratory?'
The thought surfaced almost instinctively. After taking only a few steps inside, Roshi spotted several preserved snake skins of varying sizes and dark hues, casually displayed on a nearby shelf.
In the ninja world, a laboratory and snakes appearing together rarely required much deduction. The answer almost always pointed to the same individual.
Still, setting up a base this close to Kumo was audacious.
Then Roshi recalled—Orochimaru had once infiltrated Kumo. Slipping into one of the Five Great Nations, locating a Jinchūriki, provoking its rampage… and leaving without anyone realizing who was truly responsible.
Judging purely by infiltration and operational prowess, Orochimaru stood unquestionably among the very best.
Since this was his laboratory, the remaining defenses would likely be limited to abandoned experimental subjects, dormant snake summons, or trigger-based sealing techniques.
Given the base's location and its neglected condition, if any living test subjects or large numbers of summoning beasts had remained active for long, Kumogakure would have discovered it years ago.
That narrowed the real threats down to snakes or sealing traps.
Neither posed any danger to a Wood Clone.
The laboratory's lighting system had long since failed. Only a thin blade of natural light from the entrance struggled to push back the darkness.
With a mindset of Since I'm already here, Roshi began a methodical inspection of the facility.
Storage cabinets and data shelves were mostly empty. Equipment rooms were no different, littered only with bulky, low-value apparatus Orochimaru clearly hadn't bothered to retrieve.
Anything truly important—core research notes, results, research materials—had been taken when the base was sealed.
Still, Roshi continued his careful sweep, refusing to overlook even the smallest corner where information might have been left behind.
Finally, at the very bottom of an unremarkable, seemingly abandoned data cabinet, he found several yellowed scrolls and scattered documents—discarded carelessly, likely overlooked during the cleanup.
He lifted the brittle papers and examined them beneath the faint light.
The records were fragmented and chaotic, filled with smudges, corrections, and repeated revisions, as though the writer had been constantly rejecting his own conclusions.
Next, Roshi unrolled the scrolls.
Their contents were somewhat more orderly, but the charts and figures were still incomplete—fragments of what must once have been a comprehensive report.
Thanks to his studies over the past year, Tsunade's open access to the data archives, and the scroll Orochimaru himself had once provided, Roshi was intimately familiar with Orochimaru's research habits and notation style.
Even with such incomplete data, he could still piece together parts of its meaning.
"Extreme chakra activation simulation…"
"Observation of life force and chakra-entity resonance…"
"Stress responses of Tailed Beast tissue samples under high-density natural energy…"
These were remnants of Orochimaru's past research—likely experiments conducted years ago while studying the Eight-Tails itself.
He appeared to have attempted in vitro cultivation or sustained activation of Tailed Beast tissue, but whatever trials were conducted at this base had yielded little success.
Yet for Roshi—who was now pursuing his own research into using Wood Release to carry and stabilize Tailed Beast chakra—these failed paths were invaluable.
Orochimaru's detours, documented failures, and recorded anomalies became a source of rare insight.
The crossed-out data and abandoned conclusions exposed hidden pitfalls and structural limitations from an entirely different angle.
Roshi quietly memorized the most useful sections, paying particular attention to notes on energy stability and interactions between samples and the surrounding natural energy environment.
Once finished, he carefully returned the documents and scrolls to the broken cabinet, restoring them exactly as he had found them.
After confirming there was nothing else of value within the laboratory, Roshi erased every subtle trace left behind by the Wood Clone, withdrew silently, and resealed the hidden entrance—leaving the underground base once more swallowed by secrecy, as if no one had ever been there at all.
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