Naruto: The Strongest Sage.

Aoba originally thought that the Third Generation would let him and Kakashi investigate Danzo's affairs. Unexpectedly, the Third Generation gave them the task of controlling the situation of the Root.

Aoba thought for a moment and wondered if Danzo had some kind of backup plan. After he died in the outside world, the Root would know directly.

Therefore, the third generation was sure that Danzo was dead. For him, the most important thing was naturally the stability of the Root.

You have to know that the group has been hiding in the dark for these years, and I don't know how much resources they have embezzled to build the root. In addition to illegal experiments such as Hashirama's cell experiments.

The Root also has its own training base, where children collected from orphanages or the Fire Nation receive rigorous training.

Those who survived became members of the Root. However, these children without "talent" usually ended up being cannon fodder and experimental subjects of the Root.

The Root has its own R&D department. The famous Tongue-based Troublemaking Technique originated from here. Various human experiments and secret technique developments have gone even further than the Anbu.

In addition, the Root also has members of various large families, from the Hyuga, to the Ino-Shika-Chou, to the Aburame, and the Inuzuka.

Danzo has not been idle these years. The Root has an intelligence system that overlaps with the Anbu but is relatively independent. A large number of spies have been placed in the five major countries.

These spies would continuously send back various intelligence. Strictly speaking, this intelligence was the greatest value of the Root.

Danzo actually did a good job in his early years. It's a pity that he became obsessed with the position of Hokage and basically did nothing.

Such a huge resource was originally in the hands of Danzo alone. But now Danzo is dead, and the key is that his two assistants, Aburame Tone and Yamanaka Fuu, are gone. The Root is suddenly leaderless.

In order to prevent the Root from causing unrest, the Third Generation immediately sent out a team of Anbu to maintain the situation. However, due to Danzo's incident, a large number of Anbu teams went out to investigate the matter.

The Root needed two high-end fighters to stabilize the situation. After confirming that Kakashi and Aoba were not responsible for Danzo's actions, he immediately sent two people to the Root to take charge.

When Aoba and Kakashi arrived at the Root, there were already signs of chaos.

Danzo is good at brainwashing. Although the Root is cruel, there are many of his diehard followers among them.

The root of the unrest was that some diehard members believed that Danzo's death was caused by Konoha's high-ranking officials. This view was popular among the Root, causing many people to be restless.

However, all this came to a halt after Aoba and Kakashi entered the scene.

Everyone in the Root knew them. Kakashi was an elite jonin who had been famous for many years.

Not to mention Aoba. When many Root ninjas followed Danzo to reinforce, they saw the duel between Aoba and Raikage. They knew that this was the top master of Konoha who "defeated" Raikage head-on.

Although the people of the Root are crazy, they are not fools. The deterrent power of Aoba and Kakashi is still enough. Seeing the two of them, the turmoil of the Root was immediately suppressed.

Aoba took out the Third Hokage's mission scroll. For some reason, it felt like he had taken out an imperial decree. And in terms of status, the Hokage's words were no different from an imperial decree in the village.

After his old lover died, Aoba initially thought that the Third Generation would find someone to take over the Root. But in fact, the first action of the Third Generation was to disband the Root and merge all the authority and resources of the Root into the Anbu.

In this way, the power of Hokage can be said to have reached its peak in the hands of the Third Hokage.

Of course, merging the two departments is not that simple.

There are too many shameful things in the root over the years. Aoba and Kakashi can intervene in this matter as a deterrent weapon. But when it comes to actually recovering various resources.

The one who truly holds power is Nara Shikaku.

From this, it can be seen that in Konoha Village, Sarutobi Hiruzen trusts the Ino, Shika and Chou families the most. As his think tank, Nara Shikaku is naturally adept at handling this matter.

But what Nara Shikaku didn't expect was that when he entered the secret laboratories in the Root, he found two people who shouldn't be there.

Aoba and Kakashi acted as if nothing had happened and were packing and sealing some precious instruments and experimental data in the laboratory.

When he saw Nara Shikaku, he greeted him.

Nara Shikaku stood there in silence for a while. He was confident that with his memory, he would not be wrong. That is, he was the person in charge of this operation, and it was definitely not Kamikawa Aoba or Hatake Kakashi.

But now the two of them were already standing in a place where they shouldn't be standing. This made Nara Shikaku's head ache.

He asked several of his assistants to step aside and walked into the laboratory himself.

"...You two, can't you do this in secret?" Nara Shikaku looked helpless, but his tone didn't sound very surprised.

"How secretive, like these experiments the roots do?"

As Aoba spoke, he threw a stack of information in front of Nara Shikaku. Nara Shikaku just flipped through it and knew that it was an illegal human experiment document.

The key is that the experimental subjects used are children from Konoha Orphanage.

"...You are the ones who killed Danzo." Although it was a question, the tone was certain. At this moment, Nara Shikaku was certain that Danzo was killed by these two people.

No, maybe there were more than these two. You know, according to his intelligence, more than 30 elite members of the Root disappeared with Danzo. But all of them died silently less than a hundred miles north of Konoha without passing on any information.

Nara Shikaku is one of the few people in Konoha who knows Danzo well. He knows that this Root who walks in the dark has many hidden cards in his hands.

And it is precisely because of this that Aoba and Kakashi, who were able to prevent Danzo and his crew from passing on even the slightest bit of information, actually possessed such tremendous power.

Nara Shikaku didn't dare to think too deeply about it.

Over the years, he has been keeping an eye on Kakashi. But he was completely deceived by him. No, the core should not be Kakashi, but Kamikawa Aoba.

Nara Shikaku looked at Kamikawa Aoba with a complicated look. This civilian ninja who had gained fame was much more terrifying than he had imagined.

"Why are you fussing over such a meaningless question as who killed Danzo? Shouldn't Shikaku-sama's problem now be how to explain these dark secrets of the Root to the people outside?

Look at these human experiments. And these, this is the cooperation record with Orochimaru. That is Konoha's S-rank rebel ninja. Lord Shikaku, I'm afraid you have to spend more energy to think about it carefully. "

Shikaku wanted to say that the purpose of my coming here was to prevent all this from being exposed. As long as it was covered up well, the civilians outside would not know what happened here. He did not need to explain anything.

But... now it's no use. Shikaku is a smart man, a very smart one. He already understands the purpose of Kamikawa Aoba and Hatake Kakashi. The other party is waiting for him to make an offer.

In other words, he was waiting for me to bribe them both.