At the Cloud ninja's call, the commanders of the other villages quickly ordered their own ninjas to charge forward.
Of course, they had learned their lesson this time. They only sent the Genin to charge, to exhaust Li Anshi's daggers.
Although these Genin were not strong, that was only in comparison to Chunin and Jonin.
Behind Li Anshi were more than thirty Uzumaki children.
If just three or more Genin could reach those children, they could kill them all in a short time.
If Li Anshi wanted to protect these thirty-odd children, he had to ensure that no ninja could enter a thirty-meter radius around him.
Few ninjas could use a jutsu with a range of one hundred meters.
But if the distance between them was only ten meters, even a Genin could throw kunai, shuriken, and senbon with a certain degree of lethality.
This time, the four great ninja villages had dispatched nearly three hundred Jonin.
"Kill!"
Although they knew their purpose was to expend Li Anshi's daggers with their lives, under the orders of the Jonin, they had no choice but to charge towards Li Anshi, filled with the fear of death.
"Let's go."
Facing the charge of these Genin, Li Anshi didn't even bother to glance at them. After giving a command to the children behind him, he continued to walk forward.
As he moved, his flying daggers were like the scythe of the death god, reaping the lives of every ninja who dared to come within a hundred meters of him.
How long would it take to kill three hundred ninjas, even if they were all Genin?
This was a question that even the powerful commanders of the four great villages would silently calculate in their minds.
At their own killing speed, supplemented by their most wide-ranging ninjutsu, it would take at least twenty minutes.
But now, Li Anshi's killing speed surpassed their imagination.
From the beginning of the charge to the complete annihilation of the force, only fifteen seconds had passed.
The ninjas watching from outside the battle circle knew that these fifteen seconds were not Li Anshi's limit, but the limit of how fast the three hundred Genin could charge.
If all three hundred ninjas had been within Li Anshi's hundred-meter range from the start, would it have taken him five seconds to kill them all, or three?
Silence!
No, in the current situation, the word "silence" was no longer enough to describe the state of all the ninjas outside the battlefield.
It was—a deathly stillness!
Even the commanders of the great ninja villages no longer dared to order their ninjas to attack Li Anshi.
What a joke. Was this because their villages had too many ninjas and they wanted to reduce their numbers?
Forget the Chunin and Genin; even they, the Jonin, could only see a faint white light in Li Anshi's hands, and then their subordinates would fall one after another.
They couldn't even see his attacks. If they went up, their fate would be no different from that of the Genin.
"How is that possible?"
At that moment, the Cloud commander's eyes widened as he looked at Li Anshi in disbelief.
"According to our intelligence, the number of daggers you carry on you is around three hundred."
"But the number of ninjas you've killed now is already over six hundred."
"How could you possibly still have any daggers?"
It was no wonder the Cloud ninja was so shocked; the casualties Li Anshi had inflicted had far exceeded his expectations.
In his initial charge, he had caused seventy-one casualties among the Stone ninjas.
In the previous charge, at least two hundred had died.
And in this final charge of three hundred Genin, they had all been wiped out.
Counting them up, since Li Anshi had arrived in the Land of Whirlpools, the losses he had inflicted on the four great ninja villages had almost surpassed the number of ninjas in the entire Land of Whirlpools.
"Heh heh..."
Hearing the Cloud ninja's words, Li Anshi couldn't help but laugh.
"I must say, you people are truly strange."
"Since you know I have the ability to hide three hundred daggers on my person, how could you not imagine that I would also find ways to improve, to increase the number of daggers I can hide, or even create a jutsu that ensures I never run out?"
"Indeed, before the battle with you Cloud ninjas, my 'Blade Hiding Technique' could only conceal three hundred daggers."
"After these three years of training, my proficiency with the technique has improved slightly, allowing for a certain increase in the number of daggers I can carry."
The Cloud commander's eyes looked as if they were about to split open.
He never would have imagined that his intelligence would have such a massive oversight.
So, the technique to hide daggers on one's body is called the 'Blade Hiding Technique'?
Who could know to what extent the number of daggers Li Anshi carried had increased after his breakthrough?
Was it four hundred, five hundred, or seven hundred?
The loss of over six hundred ninjas, even if they weren't all from one village, was enough to send a chill down anyone's spine.
"I do not enjoy killing."
"But if you wish to use your lives to measure the number of daggers I carry, I do not mind letting the daggers in my hand be stained with blood."
While speaking with the Cloud commander, Li Anshi had not stopped his advance.
And as he moved forward, the ninjas in front of him all retreated, lest they enter his hundred-meter range and be killed by his daggers.
For a time, the entire battlefield took on a bizarre appearance.
The commanders of the great ninja villages no longer dared to order their subordinates to attack.
The ninjas surrounding Li Anshi, without their superiors' command, were not foolish enough to throw their lives away.
Thus, the battlefield now looked as if Li Anshi was a giant bubble. Wherever he went, the ninjas within a hundred meters in front of him would quickly move aside, clearing a path.
The Uzumaki children following behind him all looked at his back with eyes full of worship.
Children, after all, who didn't have a dream of being a hero?
At this age, it was also when they admired the strong the most.
Without a doubt, Li Anshi's performance perfectly matched their perception of a "hero."
Look, these enemies who could destroy the Land of Whirlpools were completely powerless before this lord.
However many came, that was how many died.
Now, they didn't even dare to attack him.
Because of the children's speed, it took Li Anshi over ten minutes to completely pass through the encirclement of the four great ninja villages.
Seeing that there were no more enemies within a hundred meters in front of him, Li Anshi's heart relaxed slightly.
Thankfully, these ninjas held back.
Otherwise, I might have had to reveal my trump card in this battle.
Over the past three years, he had indeed made significant progress with his Blade Hiding Technique.
He could now stack two layers of daggers on his chest, back, arms, and lower legs, increasing the number of daggers he could hide, but not to the terrifying extent the Cloud commander imagined.
The reason he could kill over six hundred people was due to the convenience of his "freedom" spirit.
If those ninjas had looked closely, they would have quickly discovered that at least two-thirds of the bodies only had wounds on their necks, with no daggers left in them.
The deaths of those six hundred-plus ninjas had only cost Li Anshi a little over two hundred daggers.
He still had more than three hundred left on him.
Li Anshi's own deadline for his daggers was two hundred.
Once the number of daggers on him fell below two hundred, he would use the new technique he had cultivated over the past three years—the Flying Thunder God Technique!
Of course, due to the lack of complete data, Li Anshi had not fully mastered the technique.
However, from the information the Second Hokage had left regarding spatial fluctuations, Li Anshi had managed to create a semi-complete version.
This semi-complete Flying Thunder God Technique was not yet enough to support spatial movement.
However, instantly moving a dagger within his perception range to his hand was not a problem.
And perhaps because his "Dagger Perception" was so powerful, transferring a dagger with his mark on it back to his hand did not consume much chakra.
Based on his current chakra reserves, he could use the semi-complete "Flying Thunder God Technique" about three hundred times.
Once the daggers on him were reduced to two hundred, he would begin to use the technique to recall his daggers.
In other words, in an extreme situation, Li Anshi could be considered to have nearly eight hundred daggers.
As his body was enhanced by chakra and as he practiced his "ninja way," the number of times he could use the semi-complete technique would increase.
Perhaps one day in the future, his chakra reserves would be so large that he wouldn't even need to use the "Blade Hiding Technique" to cover his body in daggers.
A thrown dagger, having just killed an enemy, would instantly return to his hand, ready to be thrown again—a state of "infinite daggers."
Or, if his chakra recovery speed was close to the consumption of the semi-complete "Flying Thunder God Technique," then he would also have a "single-shot version of infinite daggers."
The four great ninja villages surrounding the Land of Whirlpools could not possibly divert all their forces to come here and encircle him.
Li Anshi had observed that there were only a little over two thousand ninjas surrounding him.
Even if all these ninjas swarmed him at once, he could still fight his way out with the Uzumaki children.
With the equivalent of eight hundred daggers, even if one dagger killed two people, he could kill half of them.
If one dagger killed three, it wasn't impossible to annihilate all the ninjas here!
It was because of this confidence that Li Anshi had slowly led the Uzumaki children out of the Land of Whirlpools in such an arrogant manner.
On the main road, Li Anshi looked back.
The ninjas behind him had already begun to collect the bodies of their fallen comrades.
Among these bodies, if there were any important figures, their bodies would be preserved.
For those who were not important, they were piled together by village, waiting to be incinerated to prevent the spread of disease.
"Wait a minute..."
The Cloud commander watched with a numb expression as his subordinates moved the corpses.
He remembered the last time he had seen such a scene was three years ago.
Back then, it was also that ridiculously young man who had brought the greatest disaster upon the Cloud Village since its founding.
Three years later, that man's strength had improved again.
Well, to be precise, the Cloud commander wasn't sure if Li Anshi's strength had truly improved.
But for them, an increase in the number of daggers Li Anshi carried was equivalent to an increase in his strength.
Because it meant that if they wanted to encircle him again, they would have to pay an even greater price.
The reason he had dared to act against Li Anshi this time was that he had seen he wasn't carrying a sealing scroll.
If Li Anshi had been carrying one, this Cloud Jonin would absolutely not have dared to make a move.
It was a joke. The last time they dared to act against him was because they had the Eight-Tails Jinchuriki as a trump card.
Only the Jinchuriki's Tailed Beast Bomb could launch a fatal attack on Li Anshi from over a hundred meters away.
Here and now, they had no powerhouse who could threaten Li Anshi from that distance.
Unfortunately, in the end, he had still failed.
The lives of over six hundred ninjas had not been enough to test the limit of the daggers on Li Anshi's body.
Will we, the Cloud, ever have a day when we can strike back at him?
Lost in a haze, the Cloud commander let out a sigh.
Suddenly, he noticed something strange.
He walked over to a corpse, and the Cloud commander knelt down, turning the ninja's head slightly.
"Who took the dagger from his throat?"
Seeing the wound on the ninja's neck, the Cloud commander's heart lurched. He quickly looked up and questioned the surrounding ninjas.
"Re-report, sir! We haven't touched anything on these bodies."
"What?"
Hearing his subordinate's reply, the Cloud commander felt a jolt run through his body. He quickly checked several more corpses.
Sure enough, only a portion of the bodies had daggers stuck in their throats. On most of them, the wound was not a puncture from front to back, but a slice from side to side, as if made by a kunai.
The Cloud commander knew very well what this meant.
"Hahaha, hahahahaha..."
"No wonder we sacrificed so many ninjas and still couldn't exhaust his daggers."
"So, his daggers... they've become strong enough that one can kill three ninjas?"
"There's no chance..."
"We of the Cloud... we have no chance to wash away the shame that man brought upon us..."
"Hahahaha..."
Seeing their commander suddenly go mad, the surrounding Cloud ninjas unconsciously and quietly distanced themselves.
They did not know just how much despair their commander was feeling at that moment.
In the battle outside the Cloud Village three years ago, the strength that supported all the surviving Cloud ninjas was the hope that one day, they could kill Li Anshi and regain their pride.
But in this battle with him, the Cloud commander had discovered with despair that Li Anshi's power was improving faster than the Cloud Village could even produce new ninjas.