Bang—
Tsunade slammed her fist directly onto the desk, grit her teeth, and said, "Is this a small matter? They actually dared to publicly burn down Konoha's strategic materials warehouse. What if a war breaks out? How will we resist the enemy..."
As she spoke, Tsunade stared intently at them. "I suspect they've been bought off by another country to destroy Konoha's war potential. Don't worry, the Anbu will dig out everything they know."
Homura Mitokado and Utatane Koharu looked at each other, opened their mouths to speak, but ultimately said nothing, walking out with solemn expressions.
Although the events of today were quickly suppressed, people from all factions were unable to sleep, constantly reviewing the impact of the situation.
Aoki Yoru, the person at the center of it all, was actually lying in bed snoring away.
The next day, after a beautiful night's sleep, Aoki Yoru went to work feeling refreshed.
Looking at the office, which was missing a fifth of its people, he laughed aloud and said, "Good morning!"
At this moment, everyone looked at him with eyes full of wariness and unease.
They had already realized that he was the one who set the trap for Sarutobi Takayuki and the others to jump into.
Aoki Yoru ignored them and walked straight into his office.
Looking at the room full of ledgers, Aoki Yoru took a deep breath, fully expanded his spiritual power, and continuously scanned the books in the room.
Since those people had been caught, he believed Kakashi would dig out everything they knew.
When that time came, these seemingly flawless ledgers would have a gap forced open—a gap sufficient to collapse the entire dam.
With his spiritual power, memorizing these was a matter of an instant.
After memorizing all the ledgers, Aoki Yoru walked out of the Logistics Department and headed towards the Mission Department; he hadn't forgotten that he was concurrently managing two departments.
Konoha Mission Department.
As the busiest department in Konoha Village, it was already bustling with noise early in the morning.
Among Konoha's tens of thousands of active Ninjas, at least nearly a thousand came to the Mission Department every day to receive or hand over missions.
The busy members of the Mission Department froze when they saw Aoki Yoru walk in. A glint of vigilance flashed in their eyes, but no one stepped forward to talk to him. They turned back to their work as if they hadn't seen him.
Seeing that no one came to welcome him, Aoki Yoru smiled and didn't mind. He directly fully expanded his spiritual power, found the records room, and walked inside.
Looking at the densely packed mission ledgers piled up like a mountain in the records room.
He expanded his spiritual power, and all the mission ledgers appeared in his mind.
"Oh! Being a connected person really is comfortable," Aoki Yoru raised an eyebrow and couldn't help but sigh.
Easy, high-reward tasks like escorting wealthy merchants and nobles, or transporting merchant caravan materials, were almost all done by the Ninja clans, with the Four Great Clans taking most of them.
Meanwhile, dangerous missions like clearing out mountain bandits and wild beasts were mostly done by those without any power or influence.
Of course, this wasn't absolute; they didn't dare to be so blatant about it.
The Third Hokage wouldn't allow it either; he just looked after his clansmen within the rules.
Aoki Yoru couldn't criticize this either; after all, it was favoritism within the rules.
"Hmm?"
Aoki Yoru suddenly frowned. He had discovered a problem within this vast sea of books.
Although it was scattered among numerous mission records, now that all the records were in his mind, it became very obvious.
The mortality rate of Chunin and Genin who were orphans or from civilian backgrounds with no families was at least fifty percent higher than others.
Of course, Aoki Yoru wouldn't have been suspicious just because of that; after all, it was normal for their strength to be inferior to those from Ninja clans.
However, the missions they were assigned were mismatched with their strength and had extremely high mortality rates, which was clearly abnormal.
After they died, since they had no families, their estates would definitely be reclaimed by Konoha. So, how were those assets handled?
Aoki Yoru immediately recalled the Logistics Department's data in his mind and found that their asset records were very vague, as if deliberately blurred.
For example, a house might be recorded, but a house in the center of Konoha Village and a wooden shack on the edge of the Forest of Death were on completely different levels.
Aoki Yoru's face immediately darkened. He had a terrifying suspicion: some people were using mission assignments to embezzle the estates of these family-less Ninjas.
The personnel from the two departments had joined forces to embezzle their property, and they did it flawlessly.
If Aoki Yoru hadn't been managing both departments and had powerful spiritual power to memorize all the ledgers, he really wouldn't have discovered it.
He believed that the Third Hokage and the two Advisors were unaware. How much could those people's estates be worth? Was it worth them risking universal condemnation?
Once exposed, it wouldn't just be a matter of whether they stepped down; they would have to commit suicide immediately to apologize to the Second Hokage in the afterlife.
But a group of people was using the name of mission assignments to silently prey on the heirless.
Suddenly, a pug ran in with a scroll in its mouth.
"Woof! Kid Aoki, Kakashi told me to give this to you."
"Thanks for the hard work, Pakkun."
Aoki Yoru said as he took the scroll and opened it for a look.
Sure enough, with the Anbu's methods, they had even interrogated out how many times these people had wet the bed as children.
After a long time, Aoki Yoru slowly put away the scroll, a smile appearing on his face.
"Now everything is clear!"
A gap had appeared in those seemingly perfect figures, and all the data would be overturned.
Hokage Building.
Bang—
Tsunade's veins bulged as she slammed her fist heavily onto the desk. This desk, which had been here since the First Hokage and witnessed sixty years of Konoha's changing winds, shattered on impact, wood splinters flying everywhere.
"That damned old man, he actually let such a huge mess happen."
The four clans had used methods like false procurement reports, fictitious loss lists, and embezzlement through forgery in the Logistics Department to take away eighty to ninety million Ryo every year.
One must know that Konoha's annual budget was only about one billion; this was already one-tenth of Konoha's funds.
What she found even more unacceptable was the matter of people from the Mission Department and Logistics Department uniting to systematically prey on the heirless.
Although she was unwilling to believe such a heinous thing existed, she had no choice but to believe it given the mountain of ironclad evidence.
Tsunade could accept a little greed; after all, there wasn't a single department that wasn't greedy. Even in the Medical Department under her administration, embezzlement was constant.
But she absolutely could not tolerate committing such acts of disregard for human life and preying on the heirless.
Konoha's Ninjas should not die because of the schemes of their own people.
Danzo did so many things that incited public outrage, yet why did the old man and the major Ninja clans tolerate him? Besides him acting under the banner of Konoha's best interests, he did indeed do some practical work.
In the victories of the three wars, his intelligence network was indispensable.
But what about these people? They were purely greedy, so evil they had lost their humanity.
Is this still the Konoha my grandfather established? Is it still the Konoha that shields the people from wind and rain? When did Konoha fall to such a state?
"Someone, go and call those two old fogies here for me."