A flicker of cold mockery passed through Orochimaru's eyes.
Even though he had defected from the Leaf, he was "exceptionally concerned" about it!
Over the years, as an outsider, he had seen more clearly than anyone else, and he had grown increasingly intolerant of its festering ailments!
As for the Hyuga clan's shameful incident?
He had already defected at the time, and the news had naturally been told to him in person by that "intimate ally" Danzo, as a casual jab at Hiruzen Sarutobi's incompetence.
The details might have been maliciously embellished by that old dog Danzo, but the cold, hard facts were chillingly real:
The Cloud Village delegation, under the guise of a "peace treaty," had attempted to kidnap Hinata Hyuga, the heiress of the main family.
Hiashi Hyuga, in order to protect his daughter and his family's honor, had killed the leader of the kidnappers on the spot.
As a result, the Cloud Village had turned around and threatened war, demanding that the Leaf hand over the head of the "perpetrator," Hiashi Hyuga.
And the result?
Hizashi Hyuga had died in his brother's place!
Heh.
The Leaf's second-largest clan, for the sake of peace negotiations, was forced to offer the clan head's life as a price, and only escaped the ordeal when the clan head's younger brother stepped in.
In the end, the Leaf had gained a humiliating peace!
Tsk, tsk.
"Nine years ago, the envoy of the Land of Lightning, in the name of peace..."
Orochimaru, in a cold tone, retold that bloody, humiliating historical fact. His golden snake eyes pierced Hiruzen Sarutobi like needles.
The old, wrinkled face was still tense, his complex eyes making it impossible to discern his specific emotions.
"Lord Third,"
Orochimaru's voice suddenly rose, his words as precise as a surgeon's scalpel, cutting open Hiruzen Sarutobi's deepest scar: "When Hizashi Hyuga took his brother's place and signed the peace treaty with his life..."
He leaned forward slightly, like a venomous snake locking onto its prey: "Tell me, in that moment, what was in your heart? 'Relief'? Or 'gratitude'?"
He could almost picture the scene: when the heavy burden of "peace" finally fell, perhaps his master's old face had actually... shown a look of release?
Heh.
This is the Leaf Village you protected?
This is the compromise you—Hiruzen Sarutobi—enacted in the name of a "Hokage"?!
Meanwhile, up above.
Naruto's action of eating the watermelon instantly froze.
That actually happened?
A memory flashed back for a moment... he remembered!
He had actually been there, waiting to catch a glimpse of the action, but there were too many people, and he left without seeing anything.
He had never imagined such a drama had unfolded later on!
If he had been Hokage at the time, he would have beaten the Raikage so badly his own mother wouldn't have recognized him.
As for the Third's choice, it was indeed muddled!
He probably hadn't read The Six Kingdoms' Theory and didn't know about the tragedy that followed "ceding five cities today"!
It could also be a lingering effect of the Nine-Tails attack; the village was weak at the time.
Perhaps he had seized the opportunity to strike at the prestigious Hyuga clan? It wasn't impossible.
There were too many reasons.
Ultimately, it came down to this—his fist wasn't hard enough!
If the old man had his current fighting strength at the time, would he have needed to compromise like that?
He would have just used the Black Hole Rasengan as a warning!
And if that didn't work, he would add a world-destroying Dust Release!
But Naruto suddenly paused.
In the fleeting moments of the fight, he had casually saved Hinata... the headband of the guy he killed was from the Cloud Village, wasn't it?
Good grief! The Cloud Village, those "peace-lovers," were stirring up trouble in the Leaf again?
The Raikage, huh?
Just you wait! I'll find a good day to pay you a visit for a "physical chat"!
But speaking of which, Hinata felt surprisingly light when he held her?
At the center of the confrontation, Orochimaru's golden snake eyes did not waver in the slightest.
Although he believed that his "insurance policy" would prevent him from truly disappearing from this world, the shadow of Edo Tensei going out of his control still haunted his thoughts.
The ground of trust had vanished.
What if death no longer meant a certain resurrection, but a high-stakes gamble with many variables?
He, Orochimaru, never gambled with his existence!
In order to survive, every possible avenue had to be held tight at this moment!
"What's wrong, sensei?"
Orochimaru's voice carried a cold mockery: "The peace bought with the Hyuga clan's—no, the Leaf's—humiliation has left you speechless?"
Hiruzen Sarutobi remained silent, the furrows on his wrinkled forehead deepening.
That silence was neither an escape nor an admission of defeat; it was soaked in the bitter calculations of that bloody era.
The Night of the Nine-Tails had caused immense losses to the village, with nearly half of the shinobi casualties.
The wound from the Tailed Beast had not yet healed, the blood on the Leaf was still fresh, and the war cries of the Land of Earth and the Land of Lightning were already being lit on the borders.
In the end... with the bodies of shinobi piled into mountains and the village's lifeblood nearly drained, how could a person barely able to stand accept a new deathmatch?
Those turbid yet still sharp eyes were like those of an aging hero.
Orochimaru's snake eyes captured every fluctuation in Hiruzen's gaze—pain, guilt, perseverance... and the helpless compromise emanating from the aging aura.
Disgust, like a venomous serpent's tongue, licked at Orochimaru's heart again.
It was this indecisiveness!
Hiruzen's benevolence? His generosity?
Within the village, these might have been a binding agent. For him, Orochimaru, they were a great blessing.
If not for that, he would have been crushed by those "benevolent" hands when he defected.
Even Danzo's Root was able to grow unchecked thanks to this "tolerance."
But once those hands reached the diplomatic chessboard—it was a fatal weakness!
What a fierce and powerful "God of Shinobi" the young Third Hokage had been!
But with old age, his edges had been smoothed down by time, leaving behind only pathetic... compromises?
Didn't the "drastic change" he had planned for the Leaf also contain his intolerance for this senility and compromise?
The Leaf Village had become a stagnant pool under the Third Hokage's hand!
While other villages were sharpening their weapons and preparing for war, the Leaf was indulging in a false dream of peace.
Heh, if not for his drastic plan, it would eventually become a pile of historical dust, swallowed up and forgotten among the nameless ninja villages!
However,
Orochimaru's cold thoughts suddenly paused. He looked sharply at the figure on the rooftop who was eating a watermelon.
The outcome might not be certain after all!
His snake eyes swept past the conspicuous white hair next to him, and a hint of cold calculation appeared in the depths of Orochimaru's eyes.
He knew what to expose and what to hold back—he craved a way to survive, not a death sentence!
"If this 'Hyuga tragedy' isn't heavy enough..."
His voice suddenly became even colder, like a snake's hiss, precisely stabbing at the Third Hokage's deepest pain: "Then what about the cause of 'Sakumo Hatake's' death?"
"Didn't you always cry out that the 'Will of Fire begins with protecting your comrades'? Why was the 'White Fang' senior, who was willing to bear the shame of 'mission failure' for his comrades and endure the scorn of thousands, ultimately driven to a dead end by the Leaf Village's own 'gossip'?"
The Will of Fire? Orochimaru scoffed at it.
But at this moment, it was the sharpest spear to pry open his teacher Hiruzen's defenses!
Crack!
Naruto's watermelon-eating stopped abruptly.
Sakumo Hatake? Hatake? My teacher Kakashi's... father?
"Died from gossip"?
He turned his head to look at Kakashi.
He couldn't see his teacher's expression under the mask, and his dead-fish eyes were surprisingly calm, but the hand he had clenched into a fist had knuckles that had turned white!
Naruto's heart pounded. It seemed to be true.
As an orphan, he had no father or mother to tell him stories of the past.
And since he had been hated by the villagers from a young age, as an "outsider" with little access to information, he was almost completely ignorant of the Leaf's old secrets.
What could his three shop-owning clones have possibly dug up?
Aside from earth-shattering events like the Night of the Nine-Tails and the Uchiha massacre, he was as clueless as a blind man touching an elephant!
So... this was the first time he had ever heard of such a secret.
Did his teacher Kakashi have such a past?
Heh, he had never asked about it. It wasn't like he could just grab his teacher Kakashi and ask, How did your dad die?
That would be too rude! Adults should have boundaries.
Naruto silently noted it down, planning to find an opportunity to investigate it in the future.
The smile in the depths of Orochimaru's snake eyes grew colder and sharper.
This trial was far from over!
"If the 'old scars' from before could still be brushed off with a 'for the greater good'..."
His posture was still elegant and composed, but the words he spoke were a devastating bomb:
"Then—what about the 'Uchiha clan massacre'?"
He was completely an outsider to this matter. No, in fact, he was even a "victim" of the massacre.
Why shouldn't he bring it up?
And thinking of the Uchiha, the captivating power of the Sharingan once again appeared in his mind!
Too bad Sasuke probably won't get it!
Orochimaru's voice took on a maliciously "pitying" tone, "Under the senile gaze of your eyes, clouded by the fog of 'peace' and 'stability,' that family which once stood shoulder to shoulder with the Senju to light the bonfire of the Leaf..."
He took a step forward, glaring at Hiruzen Sarutobi's suddenly pale face, his snake eyes seemingly trying to pierce the deepest part of his soul!
"Ultimately turned into historical dust!"
"The reason?"
A cold, sarcastic smile played on his lips, his words like poisoned daggers, "It was nothing more than your senility, foolishness, compromise! And the inevitable, bloody price for your self-righteous 'control'!"
"This is just an insignificant link in the chain of consequences!" Orochimaru's voice suddenly rose.
"If not for today, if not for my 'surgery,' which is destined to bear the shame, more and deeper decay and rot would have surely eaten this giant tree hollow!"
He spread his arms as if embracing the entire Leaf Village, but his golden snake eyes were locked on Hiruzen Sarutobi's bloodless face:
"So... sensei! Ending the shackles that your fossilized body has placed on the Leaf..."
"Isn't that also a... deeper form of 'protection'?"
On the rooftop, Naruto forgot to eat his watermelon.
Hiss... what a perfect logical loop! He could make black sound white.
As a bystander hearing these secrets for the first time, the level of manipulation was so effective that even he, a spectator, felt something being pricked in his heart for a moment.
Unfortunately, Naruto's soul was that of an adult.
A one-sided story? No sane person would believe it!
His ability to sit firmly on the throne of "anti-fraud elite" in his previous life wasn't just because of his three-digit bank account balance; it was because of his steel-like will to chant, "I can't hear you, you're just a blabbering fool!"
Orochimaru's snake eyes swept over them like a cold breeze: Jiraiya's body was stiff, but his eyes were burning with a wavering hope; the Third Hokage closed his eyes in pain, but his weathered face now showed no sign of distress!
An alarm rang in his mind: this old man's self-control... was far beyond his expectations!
Such a potent medicine couldn't even shake him?
His gaze suddenly fixated on the blond teenager not far away.
The final bargaining chip was right here!
"If this is still not enough to move your heart of stone..." Orochimaru's voice suddenly shifted to Naruto, the final syllable carrying the sticky, cold venom of a snake's hiss:
"...Then, what about Naruto-kun's matter?"
Naruto, who had just finished eating his charred watermelon rind, heard Orochimaru mention his name.
My business... is also involved in this?