Sarutobi Hiruzen maintained an attitude of not easily interfering with Tsunade's governance. After retiring, he appeared more as a personnel member handling daily affairs in the administrative department.
For Koharu Utatane and Homura Mitokado, this somewhat shared their pressure. Tsunade's exchanges with these two advisors proved limited and often lacked patience.
Having an old comrade coordinating within, when truly encountering matters requiring communication with Tsunade, Sarutobi Hiruzen would step forward. Over nearly one year, this model also maintained surface harmony.
At this moment, Sarutobi Hiruzen rarely stepped into the Hokage's office again, for Uchiha matters.
"Tsunade, you've reviewed the Cloud Village envoy incident archives, right?"
"Yes." Tsunade leaned against her chair back. "Cloud envoy Akai confirmed suffering mental control. Two guards disappeared without reason. Final investigation conclusions point toward space-time ninjutsu."
She paused before raising her eyes toward the Third. "Archives also mention not excluding possibilities of connections with the Uchiha clan."
"Precisely." Sarutobi Hiruzen nodded. "Subsequently, because the Uchiha clan performed actively during incident responses, their suspicions were eliminated."
"However, you previously also mentioned that Fugaku once speculated these series of incidents' backgrounds perhaps relate to Uchiha Madara."
"Few people Uchiha Enblade might contact while borrowing external duty opportunities."
"He harbors dissatisfaction toward current Police Force circumstances. However, as an Uchiha, those he would proactively contact must be Uchiha-related individuals whose ideologies align and possess considerable weight."
"Meaning, judging only among Uchiha-related individuals, remaining options are already few."
After all, Uchiha Shisui already confirmed people he led showed no signs of contacting Uchiha Enblade.
Tsunade closed her eyes, rubbing her brow. "Ah, yes. What remains is only that ghost constantly entangling Konoha."
Sarutobi Hiruzen's gaze became sharp. "I will depart together with additionally dispatched ANBU squads, personally confirming whether Uchiha Enblade truly has connections with that person."
"Understood." Tsunade opened her eyes, gaze calm. "I will immediately notify Shisui returning to the village. Facing that person requires his power."
Compared to possibly appearing Uchiha Madara-related individuals, several extreme Uchiha, under circumstances where Konoha had preparations, fundamentally could not stir up any storms.
Shuji expended several days' time. Manipulating several fine Wood Release root systems patiently groping through deep strata, he finally, with minimal chakra disturbances, soundlessly infiltrated barrier formulas, finding that hidden entrance.
A mix of dust, aged metal, plus certain indescribable sweet fishy scents rushed toward him.
Entering the wood clone's vision was one laboratory obviously abandoned long ago yet not completely emptied.
Orochimaru's laboratory?
This association arose because after walking several steps closer, he saw not far away on display racks, several casually placed snake molt specimens of varying sizes and dark hues.
In the shinobi world, when simultaneously seeing snakes and laboratories, basically no need overthinking. Answers often pointed toward the same person.
However, this guy actually established strongholds so close to Cloud Village?
He recalled Orochimaru seemingly truly infiltrating Cloud Village before.
Infiltrating one of the five great shinobi villages while finding the other party's jinchūriki location, inducing jinchūriki rampages. Ultimately, no one even knew Orochimaru did it.
Purely discussing infiltration and operational capabilities as shinobi, Orochimaru indeed belonged to the most top-tier category.
Since this was Orochimaru's laboratory, internal defensive measures were merely dangerous experimental subjects he left, or snake summoning beasts, or else trigger-type sealing formulas.
Considering this stronghold's location and state, if living experimental subjects or massive summoning beasts existed long-term, Cloud Village probably would have detected it already.
Therefore, greatest possibilities were snakes or sealing traps. For one wood clone, these posed no threats.
Lighting facilities inside the laboratory had long failed. Only slight natural light penetrating from entrances barely dispelled internal darkness.
Shuji, holding the "since already here" mentality, began inspecting various areas within the stronghold.
Storage cabinets and material racks mostly proved empty. Rooms displaying equipment showed similar situations. Only some cumbersome or low-value equipment was left behind.
When sealing this stronghold, Orochimaru obviously took all core research results and important materials.
Shuji still patiently searched, not overlooking any corners possibly leaving information. Finally, in one inconspicuous, seemingly completely abandoned material cabinet's bottom layer, he discovered some casually discarded scrolls and scattered documents, possibly waste products overlooked during cleaning.
He picked up these already yellowed papers, browsing by weak light. Recorded data proved fragmentary and chaotic. Many places showed obvious smudging and revision marks, as if recorders continuously negated their own thoughts.
He unrolled those several scrolls. Scroll contents proved relatively neater. However, remaining charts and data still proved incomplete, like fragments of some complete report.
Benefiting from last year's systematic learning, Tsunade's opened archive access permissions, plus scrolls Orochimaru personally gifted.
Shuji was already fairly familiar with Orochimaru's habitual recording methods and research directions. Even though present materials proved incomplete, he could barely interpret partial contents.
"Chakra extreme activation simulation..."
"Life energy and chakra entity resonance effect observation..."
"High-density natural energy environments, tailed beast tissue sample stress reactions..."
These documents were probably data fragments Orochimaru left when researching Eight-Tails itself years ago.
He seemingly attempted conducting tailed beast tissue in-vitro cultivation or activity maintenance. However, experiments conducted at this stronghold seemingly achieved little.
However, for Shuji currently also attempting utilizing Wood Release characteristics to carry and research tailed beast chakra, these detours Orochimaru walked, recorded failure reasons and observed phenomena instead became alternative inspiration.
Those crossed-out data and incomplete deductions revealed possibly existing traps and difficulties from another angle.
He silently memorized valuable portions, particularly records regarding energy stability and sample interactions with natural energy environments. Subsequently, he returned papers and scrolls in hand to their original positions in broken cabinets, trying not changing their states.
After again confirming this laboratory interior had no other noteworthy discoveries, Shuji carefully cleared all minute traces the wood clone might leave before quietly withdrawing, properly re-concealing the entrance, restoring its original hidden state.