Kuroto was unaware of what discussion was taking place at the Hokage office after he left, and coming back to his house, Kuroto found a black crow standing at the windowsill of his room.

Letting the crow in by opening the window, Kuroto removed the small scroll box tied to his limb and took out the scroll that the scroll box contained. ​​

The secret letter was sent by none other than Shisui, it briefly mentioned the situation of the past week. The secret letter also had the information that the Uchiha Clansmen have also started to consider the authenticity of these rumors and started to doubt the possibility of Shisui being a member of Amatsukami.

After reading the letter, Kuroto destroyed it and sighed, "It seems that the powers of the rumor mill really can't be underestimated!"

It's not hard to understand that the real reason these rumors are really being effective is that the Village has still not found any information about Amatsukami, so they can't help but speculate whether Uchiha Shisui really is a member of Amatsukami.

Solving this problem is not much difficult, as long both Homusubi and Uchiha Shisui make a public appearance then the rumors will obviously be proved to be false.

It's just that creating an all-new Homusubi is not so easy and that's the thing he has been busy with for all this while.

Putting away these unnecessary thoughts, Kuroto wrote a reply in the scroll box and tied it to the crow's feet.

The content of the letter has two words, "Be Patient!"

After that, Kuroto reopened the windowsill and let the crow fly out of the window.

…

Uchiha Clan

Two Anbu of the Root subdivision were hiding in bushes and monitoring the Uchiha Clan.

At this time, one of the Root Anbu pointed towards the sky and said, "Look, it's the same crow that flew out a while ago!"

The other Root Anbu observed for a while and said, "That's not a simple crow, knock it down!"

Whiiish…

A few Shuriken were shot and immediately hit the crow in the sky.

When the two Root Anbu rushed to the place that the crow fell, all they saw was the corpse of the crow exploding into a cloud of white smoke.

Poof…

And by the time smoke disappeared, only one black feather remained on the ground, there was no sign of the crow whatsoever.

Picking up the black feather, the two Root Anbu looked at each other in confusion…

At this time, Uchiha Shisui's home.

After removing the letter tied to the crow's feet, Shisui unfolded it and read, "It says, 'Be patient!' Does that mean Kuroto-san has some way to prove that the rumors are false?"

Itachi asked, "What is the possibility?"

Shisui shook his head, "I don't know!"

…

9 days later.

These past 9 days, Kuroto did not let Ryota discover his presence and silently observed Ryota's progress in cracking the Four-Symbols seal.

And Uchiha Ryota did not disappoint him either, in just 9 days Ryota has almost cracked the seal.

"With this pace, Ryota should be able to get himself free from all the Fuinjutsu restraints as he completely unlocks his chakra after cracking the Four-Symbols Seal." – Taking a short pause, Kuroto continued, "Therefore, today will be the day of the Despair Test!"

Soon the sun sank in the western Horizon, and it was already past twilight.

…

Prison Dungeon, Uchiha Ryota's Prison Cell.

Currently, Uchiha Ryota had his eyelids shut tightly and he was completely focusing on precisely controlling the minimum amount of chakra he could extract to destroy the Four-Symbols Seal that was sealing his chakra.

After these days and nights of hard work, Ryota found that unexpectedly his Chakra control has increased tremendously, and he couldn't help but wonder, "It seems that not everything is going downhill for me!"

At this moment the sound of wood wheels moving along the stone floor reached his ears.

As soon as he heard this sound, Ryota immediately paused, subsided all his chakra movements, and pretended to be in a semi-unconscious state.

He knew that this sound was made by the wooden puppet who is responsible for replacing the nutrient solution and water every day.

Initially, Ryota thought that there was a puppeteer hiding somewhere and controlling that wooden puppet, but after careful observation for a couple of days, he found out that there were no Chakra threads connected to the puppet's body and even the color of the chakra on the puppet is not avaiable.

And this discovery again surprised him!

As an elite Jonin, Ryota is no stranger to the puppet masters of Sunagakure.

And he can easily recognize that this puppet is the work of a chunin level puppeteer, a lot of such puppets were seized during the time of the third shinobi great shinobi war.

Precisely because he knows the origin of this puppet that he is more shocked that the puppet is autonomous, that is, it is functioning without any operator!

Looking at the wooden puppet that left the prison cell after changing the water injector, Ryota thought, 'Is this some kind of new technique developed by the village?'

This was a doubt, but Ryota soon suppressed his thoughts and concentrated on continuing his plan to escape here.

He should be able to break free of the Seal within a few hours.

'Apart from those wooden puppets, I don't know if there are other guards present here!'

Although he believed that the people who attacked him were high-level combat powers of the village, he stills think that not many would be aware of this kind of torture and dirty work of the village, because if this kind of information about the village's plan to steal the Sharingan becomes public knowledge, then the risk is too great, so the less staff involve the safer everything will proceed!

The reason he was worried about the guards is that Ryota knows that his body is not in a proper physical condition to partake in battles, so if the strength of the guards is too strong then it will be difficult for him to escape from here!

Time continued to pass and the sealing technique was being cracked step-by-step, with the rising hope of finally regaining his freedom, Ryota's heart started beating more and more furiously in excitement.

But at this moment, a familiar sound of footsteps sounded.

'He is back!? Damn it, it is still the ninth day!"

A series of emotions flooded in Ryota's heart, surprise, resentment, and annoyance flashed in his heart but he couldn't do anything and had to stop midway!

After a while, a person walked into the prison cell and said to him, "Well, the decision has been made from above, tonight is your execution!"

.

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Read up to Chapter - 456 on P.a.t.r.e.o.n. Page: p-atreon.com/Milta_translations