But now, truly at war with the ninjas of an entire village, Li Anshi was learning what kind of miracles these men, whom he could kill so easily, could create when they gathered together.
First, there was the combined ninjutsu of the ninja squads, which had nearly left him with no ground to stand on.
Then came the kunai with explosive tags, with countless ninjas marching to their deaths, all to prevent him from finding a chance to replenish his daggers…
And now, there were these ninjas, using their lives to hold him here, waiting for the cleansing fire of a Tailed Beast Bomb.
From the start of the battle to the present, less than three minutes had passed. In that time, over five hundred ninjas had died by Li Anshi's hand.
Such losses were no less than those of a war involving a thousand men.
But this time, the Cloud Village's opponent was only one person.
As for Li Anshi, this outcome left him deeply unsatisfied.
Killing over five hundred Cloud ninjas in three minutes was a speed he could accept.
What he could not accept was that he had actually been pinned down by their human wave tactics.
Logically, his flying daggers should have been the perfect counter to such a strategy.
Yet in this battle, he had been the one restrained by their numbers.
The main reason for all this was that Li Anshi himself lacked a powerful movement technique.
For example, the Flying Thunder God Technique.
Without the ability to fly or a movement technique that could not be countered, one would always be vulnerable to being overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
Even a figure as powerful as Madara Uchiha had his body destroyed several times when he faced the Allied Shinobi Forces as a Reanimation.
Only the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, whose Wood Release could reshape the battlefield with a single move, could truly ignore a human wave tactic.
Although he recognized his weakness, the current situation no longer allowed Li Anshi to do anything about it.
Because, through the efforts of these Cloud ninjas, they had successfully used their lives to buy enough time for the Eight-Tails to unleash its Tailed Beast Bomb.
BOOM!
The terrifying sphere of chakra tore through the sky, carrying an endless, dreadful power as it hurtled toward Li Anshi.
Behind this Tailed Beast Bomb, its super-high-speed advance created a long tail of flame.
The gale formed by tearing through the air was like a tornado, ripping apart everything in its path.
For the Tailed Beast Bomb, the two-hundred-meter distance was crossed in less than a second.
BOOM!
Under Gyuki's control, the Tailed Beast Bomb struck Li Anshi's position directly, creating a violent explosion that sent a mushroom cloud rising dozens of meters into the air.
RUMBLE…
After the flames erupted, powerful shockwaves radiated out from the epicenter of the blast.
Many Cloud ninjas were sent flying by the shockwave, landing heavily on the ground far away and crying out in pain.
It was only because of Li Anshi's terrifying daggers that there were no living Cloud ninjas within a fifty-meter radius of him.
At a distance greater than fifty meters from the blast's center, the intensity of the Tailed Beast Bomb's shockwave was greatly reduced.
Otherwise, the Cloud would have suffered at least another hundred casualties from this single attack.
As it was, while many ninjas were injured by the shockwave, not many had died.
"Did we win?"
"That guy must be dead, right?"
The Tailed Beasts were strategic deterrent weapons distributed to the great ninja villages by the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, to keep the others in check.
That naive God of Shinobi had thought that war existed because the weak lacked a deterrent against the strong.
If the weak held a "power" that could threaten the strong, then the strong would have to consider whether they could withstand the retaliation of that "power" before making a move.
If everyone held a "power" that could threaten others, the world would no longer have war.
And the reason the Tailed Beasts were considered a "deterrent power" by the First Hokage was precisely because of the "Tailed Beast Bomb," which could destroy towns and villages.
With such a terrifying attack appearing on the battlefield, all the Cloud ninjas turned their gazes to the center of the explosion.
They hoped that their village's Tailed Beast could kill that demon.
That was right. Although the two sides hadn't been fighting for long, in the hearts of the Cloud ninjas, Li Anshi had already become synonymous with "demon."
In the less than five minutes since the battle began, the Cloud Village had already suffered over six hundred casualties.
Almost every minute, more than a hundred people lost their lives…
Even in a battle between thousands of ninjas, the casualty rate would likely not compare to this.
The bodies piled up like a small mountain around Li Anshi had been their comrades, laughing and talking with them just a few minutes ago…
If Li Anshi still wasn't dead after such an attack, the Cloud ninjas themselves were on the verge of collapse.
Amidst their expectant and anxious gazes, the aftershocks of the Tailed Beast Bomb began to dissipate. Within the thick, fiery smoke, a figure seemed to stir.
Swoosh—
From within the explosion, a white light emanated from Li Anshi's body, forcefully blocking all the flames from his person.
Any flame or shockwave that touched the white light was instantly cut apart, flying past on either side of him and clearing a path before him.
This was a chakra mode unique to Li Anshi, similar to the Lightning Release Chakra Mode.
Of course, in the world of martial arts, such a state had another name—
Man-Dagger Unity!
At this moment, Li Anshi was treating himself as a flying dagger. He let the chakra belonging to the dagger spread outside his body, granting him the characteristic of "piercing through everything."
Neither ninjutsu nor terrain could stop his advance.
However, maintaining this state consumed even more of Li Anshi's energy than throwing a full-power dagger.
Therefore, after breaking through the range of the Tailed Beast Bomb's power, Li Anshi retracted the chakra from his body to conserve it.
"How is that possible?"
"A demon! He's an immortal demon!"
"We can't win. There's no way we can win…"
When they saw Li Anshi emerge completely unscathed from the Eight-Tails' Tailed Beast Bomb, the taut string in the hearts of the besieging Cloud ninjas could no longer bear the pressure and snapped.
The consequence was that a considerable number of ninjas had a mental breakdown. They either lost their will to fight and knelt on the ground in despair, or they burst into tears, crying "I want to go home" as they turned to flee.
Under their influence, more and more Cloud ninjas began to retreat.
It couldn't be helped.
If they could see even a glimmer of hope for victory, they would have gladly given their lives to contribute to it.
But even a Tailed Beast Bomb couldn't harm Li Anshi in the slightest. This directly extinguished any hope of victory for these Cloud ninjas.