And this was only because Li Anshi and the three genin were moving at a normal pace.
They crossed mountains when they encountered them and forded rivers when they came to them.
But even at this speed, it was twice as fast as their previous journey at full tilt.
That was even including the time they took to rest.
If the three of them had traveled at full speed with him, they could have absolutely made it back to Konoha within a single day.
Looking at the familiar gate ahead, Nawaki took a deep breath.
He had learned something.
From the journey alone, Nawaki felt his perception of what it meant to be a "ninja" had undergone a major transformation.
However, he still held a bit of resentment in his heart that Li Anshi had only shown them this way after the mission was complete.
It wasn't hard to imagine that when they had first left the village, desperately following the roads on the map, Sensei Li was probably laughing himself sick behind them.
"Halt!"
Arriving outside the village, the three of them were stopped by the two guards at the main gate.
Although Li Anshi, Nawaki, and the others all wore Konoha headbands, the proper procedures still had to be followed.
The two guards didn't have a Byakugan or Sharingan, nor were they sensory ninjas; they had no way of telling if the people before them were enemies using the Transformation Technique.
Their duty was to check their exit permits to decide whether to grant them entry.
"Hello, here is our mission certificate."
Being stopped did not displease the three of them in the slightest.
They knew this was the guards' duty.
Nawaki immediately took the mission certificate from his pocket and handed it to one of the guards.
"Let me see."
The guard reached out, took the certificate from Nawaki's hand, and carefully checked the date of departure and the deadline for return.
"Oh? A border mission, left eight days ago."
"Your mission efficiency is quite good."
After reading the contents of the certificate, the ninja said in surprise.
To become a gate guard for Konoha, one had to be at least an elite chunin.
For them, completing a C-rank mission in eight days was nothing difficult.
But judging by the age of the three genin, it was highly likely they had just graduated this year.
In eight days, they had traveled from Konoha to the border of the Land of Fire, completed the mission, and returned. Excluding the time to complete the mission, it meant their one-way trip took only three days.
Even for the guards themselves, the most they could do was be a day faster.
It seemed these three little ones were all extraordinary talents.
"Not bad, not bad."
"Alright, you may enter."
The older generation always held a kind attitude towards the young geniuses of the village.
Even if they didn't know each other well, in a time of crisis, they would genuinely give their lives to create an opportunity for the talented juniors to survive.
"Work hard, children."
"The future of Konoha depends on you!"
"Yes!"
After solemnly taking back their mission certificate, the three of them passed between the two guards and entered the gate.
Upon entering the village, the first thing they saw were the children hiding in corners, peeking at them.
For a moment, Nawaki felt a sense of déjà vu.
Once upon a time, he too had been one of those children, watching the returning ninjas from a corner.
Back then, in his small heart, he felt that the ninjas who could freely enter and leave the village were just so cool.
Only after becoming a ninja did he learn that one could not leave the village at will.
If you didn't have an exit permit, or if you failed to return by the deadline, you could be classified as a "rogue ninja" by the village.
The childhood belief that ninjas were free to come and go was just a child's fantasy.
Of course, to put it another way, one could also call it a "dream."
Because he had been restricted as a child, he had fantasized about gaining freedom when he grew up.
But as he got older and learned more about the rules of the world, he realized it was all just a fantasy.
When had that yearning for "freedom" disappeared from his heart?
Time had turned, and now, it was other children's turn to admire him.
With a bitter laugh, Nawaki shook his head and tore his gaze away from the children.
He couldn't even explain to himself why he didn't dare to look at their adoring gazes.
Perhaps, when I become the Hokage of Konoha in the future, I can change the restrictions on villagers and ninjas entering and leaving the village...
After that thought flashed through his mind, Nawaki led Mikoto and Rin towards the Hokage's building.
After submitting their mission report and collecting their commission, the three of them went their separate ways.
Having been away from the village for eight days, both Mikoto and Rin missed their families.
As for Nawaki, although he also dearly missed Grandma Mito and his relatives from the Uzumaki clan with whom he had grown up, he had something more important to do right now.
Clutching his wallet tightly, he did not head home, but instead walked towards Li Anshi's shop.
Sure enough, when he arrived, he saw that the shop's door was open, and a few children were inside, picking out items.
Although he had returned with Nawaki and the others, Li Anshi hadn't re-entered through the main gate. Instead, he had directly located the spatial mark in his shop and used the Flying Thunder God Technique to return, opening for business immediately.
Because he had taken the team out on a mission, the shop had been closed for a week.
This meant that many children's broken wooden toys had not been replaced.
Therefore, just a few minutes after he had opened the doors, many children had come with money to purchase wooden ninja tools.
In Konoha, ever since he had opened his wooden carving shop, children's toys had switched from iron ninja tools to wooden ones.
Although the villagers didn't disapprove of children playing ninja games—after all, they had come from that era too—compared to iron tools, the wooden ones were much safer.
No parent wanted their child to get hurt while playing.
Therefore, the edges of the wooden tools he carved were specially treated to bend upon contact with a person's body.
This way, when children used them for their ninja games, being hit would cause some pain, but it wouldn't cut or draw blood.
It was precisely because of this that his wooden ninja tools had been welcomed by the villagers as soon as they were released.
Even though the iron tools were more durable and would last longer, parents would still choose to buy the wooden ones from his shop for their children.
In the few days his shop had been closed, some children had already gotten injured using iron tools because they couldn't buy the wooden ones.
So, within half an hour of him opening, the stock of tools he had in his shop was almost completely sold out.
"Sensei Li."
Nawaki waited until the children had finished their purchases before entering the shop. He took a stack of bills from his wallet and handed them to him.
"This is your share from the mission."
Being the subordinate of a supervising ninja, while offering many conveniences and providing the genin with more protection and experience from their seniors, did not come without a price.
For every mission completed under the guidance of a supervising ninja, half of the commission had to be given to them.
As for the missions completed by independent ninjas, aside from the "tax" collected by the village, all the earnings were theirs to keep.
From this perspective, the pay a supervised genin received for completing a mission was only one-third of what an independent ninja would get.
In some people's eyes, the supervising ninjas might be exploiting their subordinates.
However, these people probably never considered that if they weren't supervising ninjas, having to look after these inexperienced children, they could be taking on missions of B-rank or higher on their own.
Calculated this way, the pay a supervising ninja could earn was far more than what they got from leading children on low-rank missions.
And if one could become a subordinate of a supervising ninja by offering two-thirds of the mission pay, many independent ninjas would probably be willing to do so.
After all, becoming a subordinate meant you had someone looking out for you, and in most cases, your future promotion path would have a certain degree of security.
Most importantly, it helped them get through the most dangerous phase of their missions.
According to Konoha's statistics, the first year after becoming a ninja was the year with the highest mortality rate for genin.
As long as they successfully survived the first year, their mortality rate would drop significantly thereafter.
Unless there was an unforeseen accident that caused a problem with the mission intelligence from the village, more than thirty percent of genin could successfully be promoted to chunin within five years.
"Mm."
Li Anshi took the money from Nawaki's hand, didn't even count it, and put it directly into a drawer.
On one hand, he trusted that Nawaki wouldn't cheat him on the mission pay.
On the other hand, he felt there was simply no need to count it.
In any case, if nothing unexpected happened, when Tsunade returned from her mission, no matter how much money was in that drawer, she would lose it all.
"Is there anything else?"
After putting the money away, he was about to continue carving kunai and shuriken, but seeing Nawaki still standing in front of him, he looked up and asked.
"Sensei Li, I want to learn the Flying Thunder God Technique."
"Oh?"
His eyebrows raised slightly.
"The Flying Thunder God Technique?"
"Yes."
Nawaki nodded. "On this mission, I exposed many of my weaknesses."
"The most important among them is that I lack the ability to immediately rush to my comrades' side and protect them when they are in danger."
"So, I want to learn the Flying Thunder God."
"That way, no comrade will ever be injured, let alone die, in front of me again!"
"A fine resolve."
Li Anshi nodded.
However, he felt that Nawaki's thinking was a bit naive.
In the future, Minato Namikaze would become the second ninja in Konoha to master the technique.
And his powerful affinity for space would make his mastery of it far surpass even Tobirama Senju's.
He had even developed the second and third stages of the technique based on it.
In terms of speed alone, no one could compare to him.
Therefore, the ninja world had also given him the title "The Yellow Flash."
And yet, this ninja of extreme speed was often a step too late when the people he cared about were in danger.
Li Anshi was certain that if Nawaki learned the technique, the people he wanted to protect would definitely not just be Rin and Mikoto.
At that time, if he was unable to save all his comrades in a crisis due to his own lack of ability, he would probably be in even more pain than he was now.
However, these were things that had not yet happened, and might not even happen at all. He certainly couldn't refuse to teach him the technique for such a reason.
"However, you should know that the most important thing for learning the Flying Thunder God Technique is to have the ability to sense space, right?"
"If you don't have that ability, then even if I were to break the technique down and feed it to you, you wouldn't be able to use it."
"I know."
"But I still want to try!"
Nawaki said.
The scene of Rin almost being hit by the bandit had been haunting him for the past few days.
Although he knew that the blade had ultimately not hit her, the feeling of that moment was not fake.
He did not want to experience that feeling of powerlessness, of letting a comrade be injured or even die, ever again.
The Flying Thunder God Technique was the ninjutsu he would use to deal with such situations.
Whether he could learn it or not was one thing.
But whether he tried to learn it or not was another.
"Alright."
"Since you insist, I will teach you."
After getting up and closing the shop door, he placed a hand on Nawaki's shoulder.
Swoosh!
Nawaki felt his vision shift instantly, and when he could see his surroundings clearly again, he found himself in a forest full of trees.
"Where is this?"
After looking around, he asked.
"The Forest of Death."
"However, this is not the first half of the forest, but the center."
"Normally, no one comes here."
"So, many ninjas have their own training grounds within the Forest of Death."
"This place, you could say, was once one of my training grounds."
After he finished speaking, he held up the index and middle fingers of his left hand.
"Hah!"
With a low shout, a sealing scroll over a meter long and thirty centimeters in diameter appeared before them.