Time flies, and in the blink of an eye, a week has passed.
Under Ryoko's tireless maintenance of school justice, the line of students providing him with lunch boxes at the Ninja Academy grew like a rolling snowball day by day.
It must be said that bullying is an extremely common phenomenon in island nation culture.
When you see one cockroach in your home, it means the number of cockroaches in your house is already very high.
When Ryoko observed carefully, he could always bump into a few scenes of the strong bullying the weak.
Upholding the philosophy of maintaining justice and peace, he successfully gained a large number of reformed people through physical persuasion.
However, as the number of people increased, hidden dangers gradually surfaced.
Many fined students didn't dare tell their families the truth. After giving their lunch boxes to Ryoko, they could only go to school on an empty stomach.
As everyone knows, Ninja training requires a lot of physical energy and Chakra, and the refinement and synthesis of Chakra depend heavily on physical energy.
Being in a state of hunger for a long time makes it easy to experience weakness and fainting.
Finally, during a routine Taijutsu training class, the problem erupted.
"Thud!"
"Thud!"
On the training field, during a long-distance endurance run, several students had unsteady steps and pale faces, looking like they were half-dead.
After consuming a large amount of physical strength, they collapsed directly to the ground, lacking even the strength to crawl back up.
Seeing this, the Chunin teacher in charge of Taijutsu training frowned, his first reaction being to scold them.
"Laichuan, Beitiao... what on earth are you guys doing? You've only run this far and you want to slack off? Get up immediately and continue!"
Based on his experience, this training volume should have been far from these students' limits.
But under his stern urging, the students who had fallen struggled a few times but couldn't even stand steadily, eventually collapsing powerlessly to the ground again.
Only then did the teacher realize something was wrong. He rushed forward and knelt down to check carefully.
His originally serious face first showed doubt, then gravity, and then became incredibly strange.
After all, with so many children having problems, he originally thought someone was attacking these students, but upon careful investigation, he discovered that these guys were actually starving.
"Nonsense!"
The teacher was both shocked and angry. His voice suddenly rose as he shouted, "What's wrong with you? Why didn't you eat your fill before training? Don't you know this will damage your bodies?"
"How are you supposed to train if you've gotten yourselves into this state?"
Facing the teacher's stern questioning, the students' eyes flickered, they stammered, and their faces were filled with embarrassment and fear.
They also had grievances they couldn't voice. After all, bullying classmates and then being counter-bullied didn't sound very good.
But under the pressure of the teacher's stern gaze and repeated questioning, their psychological defenses finally collapsed.
With tearful voices, they intermittently told the whole story of how they were threatened by Akimichi Ryoko and forced to hand over their lunch boxes for a long time.
"It was Akimichi Ryoko from Class 1-A. He made us give him the lunch boxes we eat at noon..."
"He said we were bullying classmates and it was a punishment..."
"We haven't eaten lunch for almost a week..."
Hearing these absurd words, the expression on the Taijutsu teacher's face turned from shock to anger.
"You're saying that together, you actually couldn't beat a single first-year student?"
He looked at the students in front of him with a look of disappointment, feeling like they were beyond help.
He didn't care much about bullying classmates, as long as no one was injured or killed.
But for several upperclassmen to lose to a lowerclassman was simply the Waterloo of his teaching career.
The Taijutsu teacher looked at these students, who were weak-limbed and weeping from hunger, and felt speechless.
What a bunch of useless trash. Expecting them to reclaim their dignity themselves was probably hopeless.
He turned to look at the others in the class and found a few more trembling students who were also dizzy with hunger.
His anger flared up again, and he asked about the specific situation and the number of people.
This inquiry revealed something major; he found that this was not an isolated phenomenon at all.
Besides the students in his own class, students from other classes and even higher grades were being threatened by the other party.
A rough calculation showed that the number of people involved had reached thirty or forty, and there was no shortage of children from Ninja Clans.
This news completely shocked him.
"This... this is no longer as simple as children's squabbling!" The teacher felt the severity of the situation. "With so many students involved, including several children from Ninja Clans, if not handled properly, there will be big trouble."
He regretted asking those extra questions, feeling his scalp tingle.
After thinking it over, he felt this matter was beyond his scope of handling and must be reported upward.
In the Hokage Office.
Hiruzen Sarutobi listened to his subordinate's detailed report. His hand holding the pipe paused in mid-air, his face filled with bewilderment.
"What? The lunches of thirty-eight students were all eaten by Akimichi Ryoko alone, and many students fainted from hunger during training?"
He repeated the number, feeling a bit of a headache.
Although he occasionally used the Telescope Technique to check on the school's situation and knew that the kid Ryoko was using the name of maintaining justice to reap benefits for himself, he didn't expect this "business" to have expanded to such a scale.
The children involved came from different classes. Besides civilian students, they also included Ninja Clans like the Sarutobi, Aburame, Kurama, Hyuga, and Uchiha, which made even him, the Hokage, feel it was a bit tricky.
"Sigh..."
Hiruzen Sarutobi took a heavy drag on his pipe, slowly exhaled the smoke, and shook his head with a wry smile.
"This child is certainly working hard just for a bite to eat!"
He had only looked away for a moment, and this kid had developed a massive tribute-paying organization right under his nose.
You could say he's smart, but all that shrewdness is spent on eating; you could say he's making a mess, but he happens to be on the side of maintaining justice.
Moreover, eating more than thirty lunch boxes by himself—this appalling appetite also indirectly confirmed that the rumors of him bankrupting the Root's budget were probably not groundless.
"Alright, I understand the situation. You may leave now." Hiruzen Sarutobi waved his hand, dismissing the reporting Ninja.
He pondered for a moment and finally felt he couldn't just let it go.
The Ninja Academy is the place where Konoha nurtures its new sprouts; he couldn't allow Akimichi Ryoko to run wild.
Food is a small matter, but if these new sprouts of Konoha are starved, that's a big deal.
"Send someone to invite Akimichi Torifu, the head of the Akimichi Clan, to my office," he instructed the Anbu at the door.
Soon, Akimichi Torifu, having received the news, arrived at the Hokage Office.
His face also carried a hint of doubt, not knowing why the Sandaime had suddenly summoned him.
Could it be that they were going to war with other hidden Villages again?
But after thinking it over, he felt it was unlikely. After all, the Ninjas of several Villages had suffered heavy losses, making it difficult to start a new war.
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