Throughout Konoha, conflicts were everywhere, but the two departments that were utterly irreconcilable were, without question, Root and the Konoha Police Force.
Both were powerful organizations with their own armed forces, filled with elite shinobi—formidable, well-trained, and more than capable of fighting.
They had authority, wealth, and strength, while also maintaining a degree of independence, able to act as they pleased. In practice, unless the Hokage intervened personally, these departments never yielded to anyone once they made a decision.
Even a stray dog wandering past their turf would end up taking two beatings before getting away intact.
But there was one exception: when the two departments clashed head-on.
"So, am I to understand this as Shimura Danzō's will? First the Medical Corps, now the Intelligence Division—Root's hand really stretches far… You've pushed Aburame Ryōma into the position of Deputy Commander of the Medical Corps. What's next? Planning to strip the Ino–Shika–Chō of their leadership over Intelligence as well?"
Uchiha Hachiyo ground his teeth, caught in a bind under the gaze of numerous shinobi. His temper boiled over, and in the end, he threw caution aside and chose to fight directly.
Whether Kaede Tsukasa was taken away or not hardly mattered. Ninjutsu experiments making a commotion wasn't unusual—though this particular commotion was far too great, clearly abnormal.
But since Root had shown up, chances were Shimura Danzō's hand was involved. That meant the Police Force couldn't just walk away cleanly.
Hachiyo's heart pounded. Most of the Uchiha clan's main force was stationed at the front lines against Iwagakure. Only a small garrison remained in the village. Against a nearly full-strength Root unit…
Still, he had no choice. He had to show strength publicly. If he backed down without saying a word, when the others returned from the battlefield, he wouldn't be able to explain himself. Worse, the hotheaded radicals of the clan would call him weak—a disgrace to the Uchiha.
"Uchiha Hachiyo, think carefully before you speak. Every word out of your mouth represents the stance of the entire Uchiha clan." Root's ninja spoke with their usual cold detachment.
Hachiyo looked around at the gathered crowd of shinobi. Their smirks and their silence only stoked his dissatisfaction. His gaze finally settled on Kaede Tsukasa.
"Captain, the Corpse Processing Unit is indeed conducting secret jutsu experiments here. Lady Tsunade herself is aware of part of it. Because it concerns my personal secret techniques, I couldn't report the details to you…" Kaede Tsukasa said helplessly.
"Hmph. You're Kaede Tsukasa, the one from the Suna front who can control corpses…" Hachiyo frowned, but refrained from openly insulting him. Proud as he was of his Uchiha heritage, he wasn't foolish enough to publicly disgrace a fellow Konoha shinobi who bore him no personal grudge.
At this point in history, though the Uchiha clan's conflict with Shimura Danzō was sharp, they still drew a distinction between Danzō's Root and the village itself. No open enmity existed between the clan and Konoha as a whole.
So lines wouldn't be crossed too recklessly.
"I don't know what Tsunade and Danzō are scheming, but since you're caught between the two, you'd better tread carefully. Don't let Root exploit you."
Hachiyo added his warning: "Your secret technique may be powerful, but it also places you in a dangerous position."
After some more tense standoff, Hachiyo finally pulled back, though with obvious reluctance, bringing an end to the night's dispute.
The other shinobi glanced at the modest Corpse Processing Unit. In the past, they had dismissed it as a trivial fringe department. But after tonight, they remembered it well.
And along with it, they remembered its leader, Kaede Tsukasa—the man who could manipulate corpses, making them wield the ninjutsu they had mastered in life.
Kaede Tsukasa politely answered whenever someone asked a question.
"Honestly, some people's eyes have already changed. They're probably worried about their ancestral graves."
In the end, Kaede Tsukasa watched as the people gradually dispersed and simply spread his hands.
He wasn't so desperate as to dig up the graves of families from his own village. At most, he'd target the graves of enemies.
What these people really feared was that Danzō had seized control of Kaede Tsukasa—or outright stolen his secret techniques—and would then use them for such vile acts.
Root's reputation was simply too foul. Anyone would worry about that.
If Kaede Tsukasa hadn't taken the initiative to mention Tsunade, revealing that he was part of the Medical Corps and one of her subordinates, Uchiha Hachiyo wouldn't have had an excuse to back down so easily.
After everyone left, Kaede Tsukasa sat quietly until dawn, waiting for the next batch of corpses to arrive.
This time, there were fifty-three.
The escorts said nothing, and Kaede Tsukasa didn't ask. He just directed them through the shattered outer wall of the Corpse Processing Unit, having the bodies carried deeper into the laboratories.
"It begins. My technique is far too sensitive. The training period I originally planned must be shortened even further… At the very least, I need tangible progress before Danzō starts forcing commands on me."
Kaede Tsukasa no longer held back his chakra, converting every single corpse at once. Naturally, this slowed the process for each body, but with sheer numbers piling up, his overall training speed still advanced steadily.
A day later, another forty corpses were delivered—but still no bloodline corpses.
Each corpse of a bloodline shinobi was incredibly precious. Killing one was already rare, and retrieving the body afterward was even harder.
Iwagakure's most renowned kekkei genkai were none other than the Explosion Release of their demolition unit and the Lava Release of Roshi.
Occasionally, a Steel Release shinobi would appear, but they were far too rare—and there was no chance of such a corpse falling into Kaede Tsukasa's hands. So there was no point even considering it.
"In the end, I still only have this one Explosion Release corpse… but it doesn't matter. I can always substitute with a corpse stuffed full of explosive tags to mimic the same effect."
After so many years of war, Orochimaru and Danzō surely had more than one Explosion Release corpse in their possession. Those were precious research specimens. Being given even one was already an extraordinary privilege.
Time passed quickly, and in the blink of an eye, five months had gone by.
By then, the small disturbance Kaede Tsukasa had once caused had long since faded into silence. As he withdrew from public view, those who once gossiped about him gradually forgot the name of a shinobi who had once been quite well-known.
From the front lines, however, news of the war kept pouring in.
The villagers of Konoha, who had expected the Second Great War to end soon, were proven wrong. Far from ending, the conflict only grew bloodier as casualties mounted.
Iwagakure's offensives intensified, their mobilized forces swelling ever larger, as though determined to fight Konoha down to the very last soldier.
It was something almost no one had foreseen.
By all logic, only Iwagakure and Konoha were still truly clashing; the other villages had ceased their large-scale campaigns. The Second War should already have been wrapping up.
But Iwagakure's ferocity made it feel as if the real war was only just beginning. It was absurd.
And at that same time, Kaede Tsukasa finally stepped out from the Corpse Processing Unit he oversaw.