Chapter 32: The Iburi Clan

“Old man! I’m back!” The window of the Hokage's office was pushed open from the outside, and a drunken, stumbling Jiraiya tumbled inside.

Hiruzen Sarutobi, who was sitting in the Hokage's special chair processing documents while lost in heavy thought, was startled by Jiraiya's sudden arrival. He turned around just in time to see Jiraiya stumbling and falling to the floor from the window.

The Anbu ninjas hidden nearby, responsible for protecting the Hokage, suppressed their reactions and silently averted their eyes.

“Ah, you've returned at a good time, Jiraiya.” Hiruzen Sarutobi rotated his chair and picked up his pipe. He had just taken two puffs when he caught the heavy scent of alcohol radiating from Jiraiya.

Hiruzen's eyebrows furrowed instantly as he asked, “Where have you been all this time?”

In the 51st year of Konoha, following the end of the Third Shinobi World War, Jiraiya and Tsunade had both chosen to leave the village for their own respective reasons to travel and train.

Of the Sannin, only Orochimaru remained in the village, but he was preoccupied with various experiments and had even aligned himself with Danzo.

Before Orochimaru's use of Konoha ninjas for live human experimentation was exposed, he had actually already lost his eligibility to become the Fourth Hokage.

Because he had chosen the wrong side by cooperating with Danzo, he had become politically distanced from his teacher, Hiruzen Sarutobi's faction.

Therefore, Orochimaru's defeat to Minato in the election for the Fourth Hokage had been long predestined.

“Wasn't I just gathering inspiration in the Land of Hot Springs?” Jiraiya scratched the back of his head as he stood up from the floor.

After the war between Konoha and Kumogakure broke out, although Jiraiya had not gone to the battlefield, he had been traveling through the borders of the Land of Fire and the Land of Hot Springs. This way, if the war situation changed or if Hiruzen had an urgent matter, he could appear immediately.

Once the peace treaty between Kumogakure and Konoha was signed, Jiraiya had made a trip back.

“Speaking of which, I have something to discuss with you too, old man,” Jiraiya muttered, helping himself to a cup of tea from the pot on the desk.

“The Great Toad Sage has prophesied that the shinobi world will face an unprecedented disaster; the entire world will be shrouded in darkness!” Jiraiya said heavily after finishing his tea.

“Mm, so you want to find the Child of Prophecy who can save the shinobi world, is that it?” This was not the first time Hiruzen had heard Jiraiya talk about things like the "disaster of the shinobi world" or the "Child of Prophecy."

He was long used to it.

To a Kage of a village like himself, such prophecies inevitably held some unknown secrets behind them.

The owners of the Three Great Sage Regions were not human, after all. To say they cared for the future of humanity—ha, as if.

“No! This time the situation is even more serious!” Jiraiya's face flushed slightly as he struggled to argue his point.

One moment he was talking about the "Child of Darkness who would destroy the shinobi world," and the next he was speaking of a "disaster the shinobi world has not seen in a thousand years."

Hiruzen remained noncommittal, nodding slightly, and reached out to slide a scroll across the desk toward Jiraiya.

“Orochimaru has defected.” Hiruzen's casual sentence left Jiraiya frozen in place.

Once he snapped out of it, Jiraiya exclaimed in shock, “Old man! You must be joking! How could Orochimaru possibly—”

Before he could finish, Jiraiya saw the testimonies of Konoha ninjas who had survived Orochimaru's live human experiments on the scroll Hiruzen had handed him.

His hands trembled as he took the scroll and began to read carefully.

It contained detailed records of the ninjas rescued from Orochimaru's secret laboratory during this operation, the vast amount of experimental materials found, and the horrifying experimental logs.

After reading through the materials, Jiraiya's expression turned solemn, and he remained silent for a long time.

Even the prophecy of the "Child of Darkness" was pushed to the back of his mind.

“I'm going to go catch him right now!” Jiraiya slammed the materials onto the desk and leaped out of the window with aggressive momentum.

Holding his pipe, Hiruzen Sarutobi stood up from his chair and stood by the window. Watching the afterimage of Jiraiya moving rapidly across the village rooftops, he let out a deep sigh.

——————

Northern Land of Fire.

Deep within a forest.

"A," wearing a raccoon mask—who would later become the Wood Style ninja Yamato—was currently following Danzo's orders to arrive at the meeting point arranged with Orochimaru.

Arriving beneath the largest, towering tree in this forest, Yamato slowly came to a halt and approached the base of the tree.

A bottomless hollow appeared before him, and Yamato slowly walked inside.

The interior of the hollow was a long tunnel, with oil lamps hanging on both sides to illuminate the passage; clearly, this was not a natural formation.

*Tap—*

*Tap—*

At the end of the tunnel was a sudden, wide underground space, supported by a complex web of interlacing tree roots.

Oil lamps flickered on one of the walls, making it look like a gathering place or a site for rituals.

As Yamato was scanning his surroundings warily, a cloud of smoke rose within the underground space, blurring his vision.

Yamato immediately sensed that this smoke was unusual, carrying a sense of danger.

“Who are you? How do you know about this place?” A hazy voice drifted out from the smoke.

Yamato immediately identified himself: “I am a subordinate of Lord Danzo! I have come regarding the matter of Lord Orochimaru!”

Upon hearing this, a mass of smoke coalesced into a human shape and drifted toward Yamato, circling him once.

The surrounding smoke also gathered into several blurry human shapes, appearing like ghosts and surrounding the raccoon-masked Yamato.

One particular patch of pale red smoke circled Yamato several times.

“This is Lord Danzo's letter.” Yamato pulled a scroll from his robes and handed it to the tall figure of smoke before him.

The latter took the scroll, inspected it, and murmured to himself, “It is indeed Lord Danzo's seal.”

Then, he dispelled his smoky state, transforming into a tall, plainly dressed adult man with a small mustache.

The surrounding smoke also dispelled, returning to human form; men and women dressed in simple, short garments appeared in the underground space.

*‘An ability I've never heard of... is it a Bloodline Limit?’* Yamato looked at the more than twenty figures around him in shock.

“Tenzo! Is it you?!” A young girl's joyful cry caused Yamato's numbed emotions to tremble slightly.

He turned to look. The pale red smoke that had circled him earlier had transformed into a young girl of similar age with freckles and curly hair, her large, watery eyes staring at him.

“Yukimi, it is not Tenzo.” Wata, the man holding the letter and the leader of the Iburi clan, shook his head slightly.

“Then, explain the situation.” Wata returned the letter to Yamato and inquired, “As long as it is for the sake of Lord Orochimaru, our Iburi clan will do whatever it takes!”

“Even if it is to repay the life-saving debt we owe Lord Orochimaru from back then.” Wata's words drew approval from the other clansmen.

Years ago, if not for Orochimaru's Cursed Seal, their clan might have been wiped out entirely.

“Oh? Is that so?” A slightly contemptuous voice drifted from the tunnel entrance.

“Who's there!” Yamato spun around abruptly, raising his kunai.

He hadn't sensed anyone following him when he arrived!

The members of the Iburi clan also grew alert.

From the dim tunnel entrance, a mysterious figure wearing a three-eyed fox mask and a fur-collared robe slowly walked forward.

“How truly pathetic...” As he surveyed the Iburi clan before him, a sorrowful sigh escaped from beneath Menma Uzumaki's mask: “A clan driven to near extinction by being used as human test subjects for Orochimaru.”