Seeing Sarutobi Hiruzen lose his composure slightly, Orochimaru felt a stir in his heart.
As expected...
In Konoha, everyone had bonds of their own. Even his teacher was no exception...
'Although Sensei is everyone's bond—the very center of all the bonds tying the village together...'
Orochimaru murmured silently to himself before quickly continuing his report: "The aerial squad has already taken off, but Ōnoki intercepted them. Forcing their way through would be difficult."
"Minato and Kushina rushed to the front lines, but neither Minato's mutual Flying Thunder God sensing nor Kushina's Mind's Eye of the Kagura could locate Danzō or Seisui's squad."
"They were probably forced deeper into the Land of Earth..."
Hizashi stepped forward and spread out a map of the battlefront compiled from information sent back by Kushina and the aerial squad.
Several large arrows representing troop movements made the situation clear. After Iwagakure and Kumogakure joined forces, the two sides had begun full-scale cooperation for the first time, deploying large numbers of additional troops along the border...
They were obviously reinforcing their defenses to keep Konoha from breaking through to rescue them.
But viewed from another angle, that information also suggested that Danzō and Tobirama had not yet been captured. Otherwise, things should already have progressed to negotiations...
"Sensei, what do you think we should do?" Orochimaru asked thoughtfully.
There were some things that were difficult to say outright in a situation like this.
For more than a year, Konoha had been pursuing its strategy of "controlled warfare."
The absolute core of that strategy was training troops.
When evaluating commanders, casualty rates were the most important metric. Every Konoha Council Member had performed exceptionally well in that regard, and all of them understood what the Hokage wanted.
The goal was to temper the quality of their forces, conduct another round of assessment and familiarization with Amegakure and Kirigakure shinobi, and establish personnel records on them so Konoha could exercise genuine control.
Danzō and Seisui, however, were a somewhat unusual master-and-disciple pair...
One was aggressive, while the other had mastered the Flying Thunder God Technique. As a result, they had taken some actions that went beyond the norm, such as actively hunting down bloodline shinobi from Iwagakure and Kumogakure or leading Root special operations squads deep behind enemy lines...
Overall, though, they were still acting for the good of the village. Their status was special, and their individual capabilities were more than sufficient, so no one had really objected.
Hiruzen had tacitly allowed Danzō and Tobirama to operate that way as well. He had merely emphasized that the overall character of the battlefield still had to be maintained and that they needed to keep within proper limits.
But all of that was built on the assumption that nothing went wrong...
Once something did go wrong, the issue moved into an entirely different dimension.
They had disobeyed deployment orders and ended up trapped inside the enemy's battle formation. As comrades from the same village, Konoha naturally had to save them—but how exactly to conduct that rescue was a delicate matter...
There was an enormous difference between shifting from defense to localized offensive harassment and launching a frontal assault.
It was the same reason Iwagakure, Kumogakure, and Sunagakure had not simply thrown their entire military strength against Konoha all at once when they attacked before, instead probing repeatedly.
A shinobi battle was a battle of intelligence, and the defending side naturally possessed a whole range of advantages.
With Konoha's accumulated strength, a frontal assault was certainly possible. But if an irrational decision caused a chain of casualties, who was supposed to bear responsibility for that?
It was a very complicated calculation.
Clearly, Orochimaru was not the only one who had thought of this. Hizashi had as well.
Hizashi spoke in a low voice: "Hokage-sama, if saving Seisui and Danzō causes your judgment or reputation within the village to become less than flawless, I believe that would be even worse than the two of them being captured."
"You are the most rational and impartial embodiment of the Will of Fire."
The corner of Orochimaru's mouth twitched.
He was really just going to say it that plainly?
What Hizashi was essentially saying was:
Danzō and Seisui disobeyed the Hokage's battlefield orders. If something goes wrong and other shinobi are then made to die for them in a way that violates the logic of the battlefield, that isn't appropriate.
Don't take the blame for them!
If Danzō and Seisui found out about this after they returned, could they even maintain a normal relationship with him?
Clearly, however, Hizashi did not care.
In an almost extreme way, the only person whose every concern truly mattered to him was Hiruzen.
For Hokage-sama, everyone else could be sacrificed.
That was his Nindō.
Because Hizashi was not a hypocritical man. If he himself ever faced the same situation, he would unquestionably choose to fight to the death on the spot and cut his own throat rather than cause Hokage-sama any trouble...
Hiruzen gave Hizashi a rather severe look.
He knew it...
The village talked about the Will of Fire constantly.
But once it passed down from him and through the heart of each individual shinobi, it inevitably became their own personalized interpretation.
Maintaining the original version unchanged was practically impossible.
Yet Hizashi showed no fear at all. His Byakugan stared directly at Hiruzen.
"Hokage-sama, your orders are the direction in which I fight. But there are some things I have to say openly."
"I will follow everything you say, but I still have to voice my own opinion. I cannot betray the trust you placed in me when you promoted me."
Orochimaru sighed softly.
"Sensei, this really is a sensitive issue. Rationally speaking, even if Danzō and Seisui are captured, their personal safety probably won't actually be threatened."
"Iwagakure and Kumogakure wouldn't dare kill them, because that would unquestionably enrage the village. The most likely outcome would be using them to negotiate peace and force us to withdraw our troops."
"And with Iwagakure and Kumogakure heavily guarding the region, while we can't even pinpoint Seisui and Danzō's location, even if we break through their front-line defenses, how are we supposed to find them afterward?"
"The Land of Earth is enormous. Iwagakure and Kumogakure will certainly be hunting them down internally as well. Once we go in, there's no way we'll be able to search freely all the way through..."
"It would be like searching for a needle in the ocean!"
Orochimaru spoke earnestly.
This was an objective analysis.
The battlefield situation combined with the simple act of "finding people."
If they actually wanted to turn that requirement into a workable operation, they would have to collapse the enemy's front line as quickly as possible, then enter the territory of the Land of Earth and split their forces to search...
That made it even riskier.
This was enemy territory. The allied forces of Iwagakure and Kumogakure would certainly resist them every step of the way.
Neither part of the operation had sufficient battlefield logic behind it.
As long as the defensive battle formations of Iwagakure and Kumogakure remained intact, even fighters at the level of Konoha Council Members would have difficulty simply enduring war-scale ninjutsu released by formations of a hundred shinobi at once...
Whether it was Fugaku and Tomie's Susanoo or a jinchūriki's partial transformation, the same applied. War-scale ninjutsu could easily restrict the movements of a fully transformed tailed beast.
Because this was not an encounter battle.
It was a frontal assault against fortified positions.
The attacking side had no choice but to charge straight in and withstand a wave of ninjutsu before they could even have a chance to break the enemy formation.
Hiruzen thought rapidly.
Save them or not?
He had no hesitation at all on that point.
They absolutely had to be saved!
"No..."
"We'll deal with Seisui and Danzō's problem after they come back. Whether they recklessly pushed forward seeking merit or fell into an enemy ambush, that ultimately remains an internal Konoha matter."
"This situation isn't that simple."
"You two should remember that in the Land of Water, I encountered the Second Tsuchikage, Mū, and the Second Mizukage, Hōzuki Gengetsu. They appeared as unusual Impure World Reincarnation bodies and were even stronger than they had been when alive."
Orochimaru and Hizashi nodded gravely.
In the Land of Water, because the Bloody Mist had left many shinobi with major gaps in their education, quite a few had genuinely believed Hōzuki Gengetsu's claim that "the Sage of Six Paths sent him to pass judgment on Kiritori"...
They had practically turned Hiruzen into a shinobi-world version of a ruler chosen by divine mandate...
But shinobi with even slightly more rational thinking scoffed at the idea of the Sage of Six Paths.
How could a Sage like that actually exist?
If he really did, then why had no one seen him in all these years?
There had to be some secretive organization operating behind the scenes of the shinobi world!
As for who the leader of that organization might be, a considerable number of Konoha shinobi already had an answer in mind.
They simply kept quiet out of respect for Hiruzen...
"We have reason to believe that this incident involving Danzō and Seisui was an organized and premeditated ambush, with intervention from a third-party force serving as the unexpected variable!"
"Whatever their objective is—whether they're trying to balance the situation between us and Iwagakure and Kumogakure, or specifically targeting Konoha shinobi—we absolutely cannot give ground!"
Hiruzen spoke with exceptional firmness.
"If we yield one step here, there will be a second step, then a third!"
The reason he thought this way was that Hiruzen trusted Tobirama.
His teacher would not make the same mistake twice.
Tobirama had already once fallen victim to a surprise attack involving the Treasured Tools of the Sage of Six Paths. Having been given another life, with his personality, there was no way he would once again suffer a humiliating defeat because of some hidden danger he had overlooked.
If something had gone wrong, then some uncontrollable external factor had to have appeared—an unexpected variable he could not have calculated.
It seemed Uchiha Madara had come up with another new idea...
Once Hiruzen put it that way, Orochimaru and Hizashi immediately understood.
The two exchanged a glance and nodded.
"If it was Tobirama-sama, then acting this way really would make sense."
"It feels like he's testing Seisui, the new wielder of the Flying Thunder God Technique, while also checking whether Danzō has improved after all these years. Isn't that basically a reenactment of what happened to you back then?"
Orochimaru thought for a moment before continuing:
"Perhaps he's also testing your ability to respond as Hokage? Right now, you're basically in the same position the Second Hokage-sama was during the First Shinobi World War. You have to make a difficult decision..."
It was an emergency, and there were no outsiders in the Hokage's office, so Orochimaru did not bother speaking indirectly. He simply named Tobirama outright.
Hizashi, meanwhile, had clearly spoken privately about Tobirama plenty of times before.
Or rather, after spending all those years monitoring Konoha, he had already heard so many little stories about Tobirama that he had become numb to them...
Hizashi's expression did not change.
He nodded.
"Council Member Orochimaru's analysis makes sense! If the Second Hokage-sama is behind this, then everything suddenly becomes reasonable..."
Hiruzen ignored both of them...
This was a classic example of a stereotype.
There was no point trying to explain it to them—or rather, to all of Konoha!
When it came to Senju Tobirama, the Hokage really was going to have to stand alone against the entire village...
"You're still thinking about this too simply."
"Even if Tobirama-sensei truly is behind this, the man capable of doing something like this is no longer Konoha's Second Hokage. He is a paranoid shinobi of the Warring States Period who has fallen into extreme thinking."
"Even though I'm his disciple, whether it's my family, my sensei, or my friends, if they endanger the village, I will never forgive them!"
Hiruzen borrowed Hashirama's words, then shifted the subject and spoke in a grave tone: "You two need to stay alert as well. Don't keep thinking that because the opponent is the Second Hokage, there must be some room for luck and that this is merely a test between people on the same side."
"Warring States thinking has always been about opportunities hidden inside crises."
"But the crisis itself is real. If you fail to overcome it, you die. The opportunity is merely the reward for surviving the crisis."
"I understand that better than any of you."
"It can even be more terrifying than an actual enemy!"
Hiruzen's seriousness sent a chill through both Orochimaru and Hizashi.
The two of them really had misjudged the situation somewhat...
They had assumed that if Tobirama-sama was behind it, then Danzō and Seisui would probably still have some chance of survival...
But who was Hiruzen?
He was not only Konoha's current Hokage, but also the disciple the Second Hokage-sama had been most satisfied with.
His understanding of that man naturally had to surpass everyone else's!
Orochimaru and Hizashi could not help wondering...
For Hokage-sama to have developed such an impression, just what exactly had he gone through back when he was the Second Hokage-sama's disciple?
Mm.
It must have been rough!
"So the nature of this war has already changed."
"We need to recognize that a hidden third-party organization in the shinobi world has begun moving against Konoha! This is not simply the consequence of Danzō and Seisui disobeying battlefield orders."
Hiruzen habitually established the nature of the issue first.
That was very important to him.
"But what you said also makes sense. Gathering the forces from Konoha's various theaters for a frontal battle would definitely take time. The first problem is simply that it wouldn't be fast enough."
"By the time our troops mobilized and reached the front, even if they could break through the defensive line, there's no guarantee we'd find Seisui and Danzō before Kumogakure, Iwagakure, or that mysterious organization captures them."
Hiruzen continued thinking rapidly.
"And shinobi casualties have to be taken into account. A frontal assault isn't a good option."
Orochimaru and Hizashi listened with complete concentration.
This really was an extremely difficult situation.
If Konoha made a massive show of gathering all its forces and pushed forward at any cost, only for Seisui and Danzō to be captured anyway, matters would become extremely complicated.
Not only would the strategic objective fail, Konoha would also suffer major casualties from a rushed offensive.
That would go against the rational style the village had maintained from the Third Shinobi World War until now.
But if they sent no one and simply watched Danzō and Seisui remain trapped inside the enemy formation, that was unacceptable as well...
"Danzō is Konoha's Hokage Advisor, while Seisui is an important member of both the Research Department and the Uchiha. If anything happens to either of them, the loss to the village would be severe."
"And according to our plans for Iwagakure and Kumogakure, the village intends to bleed them slowly until they can no longer endure it and choose to surrender, forcing them to open their markets to us and pay compensation..."
"That is also a major interest of Konoha."
Hiruzen was explaining the situation to Orochimaru and Hizashi, but at the same time, he was using the process to straighten out his own thoughts and find a way to break the deadlock.
Orochimaru and Hizashi fell silent.
For the moment, neither of them could think of a solution that covered every problem.
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