Chapter 68 (Patreon)

“Let’s go to Yakiniku Q. My treat.”

Kushina suddenly set aside the clothes in her hands and spoke to everyone around her.

She had just spotted Roy approaching, though she couldn’t tell from his expression whether he had found what he was looking for.

Meanwhile, at the Shimura residence, Danzō’s face had turned grim.

He had sensed the barrier seal inside Root’s base being breached.

That could only mean the secrets hidden within the sealed chamber had been discovered.

For all these years, Hiruzen Sarutobi had been willing to protect him because Danzō always presented his actions as being for the sake of the village.

Even if Hiruzen knew that some of those decisions were driven by Danzō’s personal ambitions, his contributions to Konoha had always been enough to outweigh his transgressions.

That was why Hiruzen had repeatedly dealt with him leniently and had even helped conceal some of his actions.

But in truth, Danzō had done far more than Hiruzen knew.

For the sake of his own ambitions, he had betrayed Konoha’s interests more than once.

He had preserved evidence of those dealings as insurance against the people he worked with. If any of them tried to betray or expose him, he would have enough leverage to drag them down with him.

That was precisely why he had constructed a separate secret chamber inside Root’s base and protected it with a powerful sealing barrier.

Yet someone had still found it.

“Hiruzen, you bastard… You’re actually having ANBU search every corner of the base. Just what are you planning?”

Danzō’s expression shifted repeatedly.

He suspected the rumors spreading through the village had finally forced Hiruzen to sever their ties.

If that happened, every crime would be placed squarely on Danzō Shimura’s shoulders.

Meanwhile, Hiruzen would keep his hands clean and continue to be revered as the Third Hokage.

Danzō could no longer remain in Konoha.

At any moment, ANBU could break down his door with orders to arrest him.

“Hiruzen Sarutobi, if you intend to cast me aside, then don’t blame me for retaliating.”

A cold light flashed through Danzō’s eye.

He summoned the small messenger snake he used to contact Orochimaru and entrusted it with a message.

Afterward, he took out several reports that he had not yet transferred to Root’s base.

He carefully selected records of incidents that Hiruzen had either personally ordered or helped suppress afterward.

If he was going down, Hiruzen would not escape unscathed.

Most of Root’s shinobi were still being interrogated under ANBU supervision, but Danzō had other pieces available to him.

Several puppets supplied by Orochimaru were still under his control.

However, Danzō had no intention of mobilizing Root’s forces now.

Leaving Konoha was merely a strategic retreat made for the sake of survival. It did not mean he would never return.

Root was the foundation of his power.

When he eventually returned and reclaimed his position, he would still need them.

At Yakiniku Q, everyone ate their fill before returning home.

Kushina left Naruto in the care of Kaorui and Nono Yakushi, then quietly led Roy into the bedroom.

“Roy-kun, how did it go? Did you find everything?”

Roy nodded.

After reciting his Zanpakutō’s Shikai release command, he drew the blade from Kushina’s chest.

“Release.”

Everything he had retrieved from Root’s base appeared at once, forming a large pile across the floor.

Among the items were intelligence reports stored in scrolls, along with letters exchanged between Danzō and various individuals.

Before Kushina could examine any of them, however, her attention was immediately drawn to the bottles and jars scattered among the documents.

One jar contained a lump of flesh whose origin was impossible to identify at a glance.

The others held Sharingan with varying numbers of tomoe, along with a pair of ruined Byakugan.

There were also several strange eyes with slit-like pupils and blood-red sclera.

“You found all of these inside Danzō’s base?”

Kushina stared at them in shock.

Whether it was the Sharingan or the Byakugan, neither the Uchiha nor the Hyūga would ever allow their dōjutsu to fall into the hands of outsiders.

Whenever a clan member who had awakened their dōjutsu died, their eyes had to be recovered.

At least the ruined Byakugan could be explained. They had probably belonged to a member of the Hyūga Branch Family and had been destroyed by the Caged Bird Seal upon death.

Perhaps one or two Sharingan could have been taken from the Uchiha under the pretext of research.

But this many…

Even Roy had been surprised when he first discovered them.

There was only one Three-Tomoe Sharingan among them, but the Uchiha clan had not yet been massacred.

Where had Danzō obtained so many of their eyes?

Surely he hadn’t secretly ordered Root to rob the graves of dead Uchiha.

Another possibility was that these eyes had originally belonged to Tobirama Senju’s collection and had later been inherited by Danzō.

Roy considered that explanation far more likely.

Tobirama understood the Sharingan better than even most members of the Uchiha clan.

That knowledge could only have come from extensive research.

Perhaps the Uchiha had willingly provided the eyes of deceased clan members as research materials.

Madara’s defection, followed by the First Hokage’s death in its aftermath, had placed the entire Uchiha clan under suspicion.

If they wanted to prove that they had no intention of following Madara, cooperating with Tobirama’s research would have been an effective way to demonstrate their loyalty.

Furthermore, not every Uchiha could awaken the Sharingan.

Even among those who did, many never progressed beyond One Tomoe or Two Tomoe.

The clan might have hoped that Tobirama’s research would provide theoretical or technical support that could increase the chances of their members awakening and developing the Sharingan.

Unfortunately, Tobirama died during the First Shinobi World War before he could publish the results of his research.

Of course, these were merely Roy’s guesses.

If he wanted to uncover the truth, the most direct solution would be to use Edo Tensei to revive Tobirama and the Uchiha who had lived during that era, then question them personally.

As for the eyes with blood-red sclera and slit-like pupils, Roy recognized them immediately.

They were the Ketsuryūgan—the dōjutsu of the Chinoike clan.

Like the Sharingan, the Ketsuryūgan possessed exceptional hypnotic and genjutsu abilities. Combined with its other unique powers, it had once earned a fearsome reputation throughout the shinobi world.

However, powerful dōjutsu were often accompanied by equally severe burdens.

The Chinoike clan’s history had been even more violent and extreme than that of the Uchiha. In the end, they had been banished and confined, while the Uchiha were entrusted with keeping watch over them.

“Roy-kun, what is this?”

Kushina did not recognize the Ketsuryūgan.

However, since those eyes had been stored alongside the Sharingan and Byakugan, she guessed that they belonged to another Kekkei Genkai dōjutsu.

What caught her curiosity even more was the unidentified lump of flesh.

“It’s probably a fragment of Hashirama Senju’s flesh—or tissue extracted from his cells.”

“Hashirama-sama…? You mean the First Hokage’s remains? Danzō must be insane! He actually dared to—”

Kushina suddenly stopped.

She had remembered the human experiments that the Third Hokage had supposedly ordered to be terminated.

“The Third Hokage… He…”

“The Second Hokage may have been involved as well,” Roy said with a shrug.

He wasn’t making that assumption without reason.

Mito Uzumaki had still been alive when Hashirama died.

If she had personally sealed Hashirama’s remains, there should not have been anyone in Konoha capable of breaking through her seal.

The most likely explanation was that Tobirama had approached his sister-in-law and persuaded her to cooperate under the pretext of protecting Konoha.

When it came to human experimentation, Orochimaru had merely followed a path Tobirama had already opened.

After the Second Hokage’s death, the Third Hokage and Danzō took over the research involving Hashirama Cells.

Only later did Orochimaru join Root and become the project’s lead researcher.

The experiments appeared to produce no useful results.

Worse, Danzō and Orochimaru eventually began using Konoha’s civilians as test subjects, forcing the Third Hokage to terminate the project.

However, the two people overseeing the research completely ignored his order.

They stopped the experiments publicly, only to continue doing whatever they pleased in the shadows.

“So that’s why you had me seal Minato’s remains instead of allowing him to be buried in the cemetery?”

Minato had been born without the backing of a shinobi clan, yet he had mastered the Flying Thunder God Technique created by the Second Hokage.

His Chakra reserves had also been great enough to perform a sealing technique involving a Tailed Beast.

His body alone possessed immeasurable research value.

Then there was Edo Tensei.

With even a fragment of Minato’s remains, they could summon an immortal Minato Namikaze whose body would continuously regenerate and whose Chakra would constantly replenish, turning him into the perfect weapon.

If Minato’s body had not been sealed, neither Danzō nor Orochimaru would have allowed such an opportunity to escape their grasp.