After causing such a big ruckus in Konoha, Zoro leaves to continue his life as a bounty hunter. He doesn't care what will happen to Konoha or what Konoha will do to him.
If they decide to be his enemies, then he will simply fight them. Fighting against one of the 5 Great Shinobi villages is obviously a big threat to his life, but he also won't just bow to them and let them do whatever they please with him.
But because he has caused such a big incident in Konoha, Zoro can't stay in the Land of Fire for now. He isn't afraid of Konoha's attack, but it will be very troublesome if he keeps getting chased by Konoha ninjas.
So it's better for him to go to another country where Konoha ninjas can't move freely. For now, he goes to the Land of Water which is close to the Land of Fire.
Zoro does things as usual while keeps gathering information about Konoha to see if they are putting a bounty on his head or not.
Even if he doesn't care if they become his enemies, he still needs to know whether they will come at him or not so he can prepare himself.
Strangely, even after 2 months, there's still no news of him being wanted by Konoha. There's no way they don't know that tornado blade was his attack because Minato should have seen it when Zoro fought Kurama.
So Zoro tries to check what happened after he attacked Root HQ. He buys the information in black market while also looking for a hunting target.
"Heh, so that's how it was."
Instead of him, Konoha was judging Danzo as the criminal. It was because they found a lot of crime evidence inside Root HQ, especially in the room where Zoro killed Danzo.
Embezzlement, working together with criminals like Orochimaru, taking illegal jobs using Root members, and the most shocking is a plan to eradicate the Uchiha clan and rebellion against the 4th Hokage to take his position.
With so much evidence being found, even the 3rd Hokage and the advisors couldn't defend Danzo again by saying "he did everything for the village's sake" as usual.
After everything is revealed, Root is obviously disbanded. Their cursed seals are removed and replaced by different seals.
No one can be sure whether these Root members are loyal to Danzo out of their own free will or they are forced to follow his orders.
So even if he doesn't like it, Minato decided to put restrictions on them using seals to make them obedient to the village.
They are placed inside the official Anbu so they can be monitored. But those who clearly did a lot of crimes to help Danzo are punished.
Some of them even run away from the village and are labelled as missing nins with bounties for their heads.
Konoha was busy cleaning up their internal structures because of Danzo's incident. Minato forms a special investigation team with the people he trusts.
One of the results is he changed the Hokage advisors. He removes the old people and replaces them with his own people.
Minato chose Nara Shikaku and Yamanaka Inoichi as his personal assistants. Then he chose Hyuga Hiashi, Uchiha Fugaku, Jiraiya and Tsunade Senju as his advisors after removing the Elders from the village's organization structure.
Unknown to Zoro, Minato has been waiting for a chance to reform the village's organization structure and Zoro gave him the perfect chance.
That's why Minato doesn't put the blame on Zoro and makes it that everything is his plan. He tells the public that his men have found out about Danzo's crimes and then a fight broke because Danzo was resisting.
"So he used that incident to increase his influence while also preventing me from taking the blame. He's smart."
Minato also used that chance to help Uchiha clear their name that was stained more after the 9 Tailed Fox incident. They couldn't help much at that time because Danzo ordered them to stay behind.
Zoro is surprised to know that Minato is ruthless enough to put more blame at Danzo about the 9 Tailed Fox incident. Saying that Danzo was also working together with the criminal who claimed to be Uchiha Madara to attack the village because of his plan to crush the Uchiha clan.
So now the Uchiha clan is indebted to Minato and by taking Fugaku as one of his advisors, Minato can be closer to the Uchiha clan. He and Fugaku were already quite close and so are their wives, so they can work together just fine.
Minato also used Danzo's incident to get Tsunade back to the village. He told her about how Danzo and Orochimaru used the 1st Hokage's DNA for their experiments and Danzo's transplanted right arm was the result of that.
Zoro is very impressed by how Minato squeezed every benefit he could get from Danzo's death. His impression of Minato is a kind person who would never use others' death for his benefit, but it seems he is wrong.
Minato may be a kind person, but he knows that just kindness won't make him a good leader. He also needs to be decisive, ruthless, cunning, and even be evil sometimes.
Kindness is still needed, but just being kind will not help him lead the village well. The 3rd Hokage is the best example of how excessive kindness, toleration, and friendship ruined the village under his leadership.
Because he pitied Danzo, he allowed Danzo to build Root. Because he tolerated Danzo's action, everything Danzo did was judged to be for the village's goods. Because he valued his friendship with Danzo, Danzo used it to do a lot of crimes.
Minato also values those things, but he knows the limits, unlike Hiruzen. That's why now he also dismissed Hiruzen from the village's leadership structure because he doesn't want the old man to make the same mistakes.
As ruthless and ungrateful it looks, those who know the truth like the clan heads really support his decision. Even Hiruzen agrees with that decision because he knows he can never do that even though he knows he should do that.
A lot of changes happened in Konoha in such a short time and Zoro is involved in those changes. He never intended to make such big changes, but the situations forced him to change the story.
"This is all because of Obito and Danzo. If only they didn't attack me, then I won't even get involved in these things. They were the ones who ruined their own plans."
Zoro didn't plan to change the plot, but he also doesn't care if the plot changes. He just wants to do everything as he pleases without care about the effects of his actions.
"Well, seems like I can go to Konoha just fine anytime. Then I can just hunt Konoha's missing nins again from now on. Though I guess I need to be careful about these missing nins from Root. They might come at me for revenge because I ruined their lives."
Zoro leaves the matter about Konoha because it won't really affect his life. Everything he did in Konoha was hidden and only known to some people. So he won't be affected by the changes in Konoha and he is grateful for that.
After knowing why Konoha doesn't go after him, Zoro continues his work as a bounty hunter. He hunts missing nins from different hidden villages so he can visit all the shinobi villages in this land.
But he only hunts A-Rank missing nins or lower even though he knows he can hunt S-Rank missing nins. The reason is information about S-Rank missing nins is expensive.
Also, there aren't that many S-Rank missing nins and chasing them is difficult because these guys won't stay in a place for too long. They are also very good at hiding and making traps for their pursuers.
Basically, the rewards he will get aren't worth all the effort he needs to hunt them. Besides, he can get the same reward from an S-Rank bounty by hunting 2 or 3 A-Rank missing nins.
Zoro decides to just go after the S-Rank missing nins when he stumbles upon them by chance. There's no need to actively look for them and waste his energy.
That's why he never thought that he would find an S-Rank missing nin so quickly. After all, he is just traveling while hunting easy missing nins as usual when he finds a trace of an S-Rank missing nin.
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Chapter 64. Zetsu
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