The next day, in the morning.
A piece of news suddenly spread throughout Konohagakure—the Uchiha clan's elite shinobi had left the village, and among them was Uchiha Keizumi!
This nearly caught all of Konoha's major shinobi clans completely off guard.
The extremism and arrogance of the Uchiha clan were already common knowledge in Konohagakure, and coupled with the village leadership secretly spreading propaganda about the Uchiha's dangerous nature while ostracizing them, this only forced the village's shinobi clans to pay close attention to the matter.
They feared the Uchiha might stir up some kind of trouble.
"They left the village?" Utatane Koharu's brows furrowed tightly. After thinking it over, she immediately went to the Hokage Building and found Sarutobi Hiruzen.
"Hiruzen, did you assign them a shinobi mission?" As soon as Koharu arrived, she asked bluntly: "Hiruzen, you should understand the 'danger' of letting Uchiha shinobi go out on missions, right?"
"Most of their clan members are extreme in temperament. Many Uchiha shinobi, after returning from missions, committed crimes outside—and then were killed by Uchiha Keizumi…"
"No."
Sarutobi Hiruzen cut her off, also frowning in thought. Clearly, as the Hokage of Konoha, he was among the first to receive the intel.
"Keizumi left the village as well. It seems he's the one who took them away." Hiruzen let out a sigh and said: "In total, four people left the village, all of them Uchiha jōnin, including Keizumi."
"In addition, Keizumi's ninja cat is also gone. If this old man hasn't guessed wrong, they probably left the village to hunt down Orochimaru."
Koharu, however, raised another possibility: "Could it be that Uchiha Keizumi took three elite Uchiha with him, attempting to establish an independent branch and continue the Uchiha bloodline outside of Konoha?"
Her instinct was to interpret Uchiha Keizumi's actions with the greatest possible malice.
Hiruzen glanced at her and said: "If that were the case, then why didn't he take Uchiha Izumi? Uchiha Sasuke? Why not take Naruto? Why not take Neji?"
Koharu was left speechless.
"Hah…" Hiruzen exhaled, withdrawing his gaze with helplessness: "What we should really be worried about is—Keizumi's influence within the Uchiha clan is growing stronger. In the past, no one would have followed him out of the village to deal with Orochimaru."
"Back then, within the Uchiha clan, he was an isolated outlier. At that time, Keizumi and Itachi were somewhat alike."
The moment Uchiha Itachi was mentioned, Koharu said: "Hiruzen, I suspect Fugaku and us are no longer of one mind."
Hiruzen lifted his eyelids slightly: "Why do you say that?"
Koharu replied: "If he were truly of one mind with us, why didn't he do everything in his power to stop Uchiha Keizumi? On the surface it looks as though he was powerless, but who can say if it wasn't intentional?
"The reason Uchiha Keizumi's Absolute Justice has grown so strong—I'm starting to suspect that Fugaku planned it all along. Could it be he has joined hands with Uchiha Keizumi?"
For a while, Hiruzen didn't know how to speak in Fugaku's defense.
In recent times, he truly had been disappointed in Uchiha Fugaku, because under his hand the Uchiha clan had become dangerously uncontrollable.
"I'll find a time to meet him and give him some Pressure."
Sarutobi Hiruzen said faintly: "I don't bear much malice toward the Uchiha clan, but I cannot allow them to spiral out of control, nor can I let Keizumi forge the Uchiha clan into an unbreakable fortress."
Hearing this, Utatane Koharu's expression eased slightly.
At least in this regard…
She and Sarutobi Hiruzen shared the same view.
Neither wanted to indulge the Uchiha!
After all…
In the end, they had both once been disciples of the Second Hokage.
But just then, an ANBU shinobi suddenly barged in without even knocking. Before Hiruzen could frown and speak, the man was already reporting rapidly: "Hokage-sama! Your daughter-in-law… the wife of Sarutobi Shinnosuke-sama, Sarutobi Fuko—she… she was killed in her home!"
The ANBU shinobi, unusually, stammered.
And his words struck Sarutobi Hiruzen like a lightning bolt, leaving him stunned on the spot, his face frozen stiff.
The ANBU's words exploded in his mind like a detonation tag.
Hiruzen's thoughts instantly fell into chaos, his eyes losing focus.
His brain seemed to freeze.
Fortunately, Koharu beside him reacted swiftly, her grim face tinged with shock as she demanded of the ANBU: "What exactly happened? Explain in detail!"
The ANBU drew a deep breath, lowered his head, and said: "When a member of the Sarutobi clan delivered a meal to Sarutobi Fuko, no one answered inside. From the door crack came the smell of blood. He immediately pushed the door open, only to see Sarutobi Fuko's blood-soaked corpse."
Sarutobi Hiruzen stiffly rose from his chair. Just as he was about to take a step, he suddenly stumbled.
Luckily, Koharu beside him reacted quickly, reaching out to support him.
"Take me back to the Sarutobi clan!" Hiruzen's voice was hoarse.
Whether ANBU or Utatane Koharu, both could clearly hear the suppressed fury and killing intent in his tone. The Hokage was enraged to an extraordinary degree—he had already conceived murderous intent.
"Yes! Hokage-sama!"
…
When Koharu accompanied Hiruzen to the Sarutobi clan compound, she found the entire clan in a state of collective outrage. On every face she saw seething anger and indignation.
"Hokage-sama!" As soon as the Sarutobi shinobi saw Hiruzen, they surged forward, surrounding him.
They clamored in agitation, voices overlapping, making the scene especially chaotic.
"Hokage-sama! It was I who discovered Shinnosuke's wife's corpse!" A female Sarutobi kunoichi gritted her teeth: "At the time, besides the stench of blood, I also smelled something strange."
"At first, I couldn't recall what it was. Only later, after thinking it over, did I realize—it was the smell of sulfur!"
Another Sarutobi shinobi's eyes were bloodshot: "Hokage-sama! This was absolutely Uchiha Keizumi's doing! Only that magma monster, when using his kekkei genkai, leaves behind that bizarre sulfur stench! Another member of our Sarutobi clan has died at his hands!"
Sulfur smell? Uchiha Keizumi?
Utatane Koharu narrowed her eyes, but didn't speak—she simply listened carefully to all the details hidden within the clamoring voices.
"Hokage-sama! I heard that Uchiha Keizumi left the village today with several Uchiha shinobi. He must have done something shameful and chose to slip away while everyone was unprepared."
"Isn't that bastard supposed to worship so-called Absolute Justice? Sarutobi Fuko was famous for never once doing evil. If she had ever done anything evil, that justice freak would have already killed her."
"But Sarutobi Fuko, who hadn't even stepped outside lately—how could she possibly have become some kind of villain?"
"The only possibility is that Uchiha Keizumi killed the wrong person! Overcome with shame, he decided to leave Konoha!"
Koharu's brows lifted. Could these two matters really be strung together like that?
But thinking it over, the possibility wasn't nonexistent.
In the shinobi world, there was no ability that never made mistakes. Even Uchiha Keizumi's pair of eyes that could see through others' evil would one day err, wouldn't they? If they never erred, then that would make him a God!
Uchiha Keizumi had an extreme obsession with justice. Once his Absolute Justice was tainted with filth… with his kind of extreme temperament, he probably wouldn't even forgive himself.
That was his reason for leaving the village… yes, it did sound plausible.
The premise was simply to ignore the intel on Orochimaru.
"Hokage-sama, we can't back down anymore!" A Sarutobi shinobi's neck veins trembled as he shouted: "If we let that magma bastard run wild like this, Hokage-sama, you'll truly be left without descendants—your line will only have Sarutobi Konohamaru left!"
"And that child… hah! We haven't told him this news for now, he's still in the dark. But one day, he'll learn that both his parents died at the hands of Uchiha Keizumi."
"The hatred of losing his parents will drive him to strike at Uchiha Keizumi, and the only outcome for a 3-year-old child attacking that magma bastard is death, Hokage-sama!"
Faced with one furious outcry after another, Sarutobi Hiruzen closed his eyes. After who knew how long, his trembling voice finally said: "Take me… to see the body."
Surrounded by the Sarutobi clan members,
Sarutobi Hiruzen arrived at a house—the residence of his eldest son, Sarutobi Shinnosuke.
With heavy steps, he walked inside, and before his eyes was a woman's corpse lying on the floor, clothes disheveled.
It was clear that while alive, she had just finished bathing and was preparing to dress. But with only half her clothes on, she had been ambushed and collapsed into a pool of blood.
Sarutobi Fuko had once been an elite of the ANBU. Before the incident with Sarutobi Shinnosuke, she had even been Hiruzen's right-hand aide.
For someone to kill her in an instant, at minimum they would have to be an elite jōnin.
Even then, an elite jōnin would need to rely on ambush to pull it off.
Of course…
If the other party possessed Kage-level strength, then in direct combat they too could wield power to kill her instantly. And as ill luck would have it, Uchiha Keizumi just happened to have such strength.
"Hiruzen, there really is a sulfur smell, and very strong." Utatane Koharu, who had been silent until now, finally spoke: "Aside from that, some of the wooden furniture inside bears charred marks, as if it had been scorched by some high-temperature substance."
Then, Utatane Koharu stepped past Sarutobi Hiruzen, walked a few steps forward, then crouched down, reaching out to pinch lightly at the floor.
She picked up a piece of black material, stood, and handed it to Hiruzen.
"Cooled magma rock." Koharu's tone was subtle: "The sulfur smell is coming from this. And near the corpse, there are plenty of these magma rock fragments."
Saying this, Koharu continued: "I might be the only relatively calm one here. Hiruzen, you should hear my preliminary analysis of this matter."
"I believe there's an eighty percent chance that the one who killed Sarutobi Fuko was Uchiha Keizumi. But his leaving the village today has nothing to do with killing her."
"Because someone like him, after killing, would feel no guilt at all. Unless he truly realized he had done wrong, he would never admit to his mistake."
Koharu spoke in a low voice: "To put it in an improper metaphor…"
"To him, killing Sarutobi Fuko is just a small dish of Absolute Justice, not worth his attention. Hunting Orochimaru—that's the main course, the real dish."
"So, after killing Sarutobi Fuko, he left the village without hesitation, preparing to hunt Orochimaru."
Koharu's field wasn't exactly this, so her analysis was somewhat jumbled. Still, it was enough for everyone to understand her meaning.
—The likelihood that Uchiha Keizumi was the killer was extremely high!
—Only the tiniest possibility remained that the killer was someone else!
The entire Sarutobi clan leaned toward the former.
Because Absolute Justice had tormented their clan enough.
And Uchiha Keizumi had "priors"!
How many outstanding members of the Sarutobi's younger generation had died at his hands?
How many excellent heirs had perished under Absolute Justice's judgment?
The number was nearly impossible to count!
As for the matter of "Sarutobi Sakurako," in the midst of the clan's fury, it had already been forgotten by most.
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