Similarly, Nawaki also knew that when Rin was learning the flying dagger from their teacher, he had also broken it down into several stages for her.
He figured that the training for the Flying Thunder God could probably be broken down in the same way.
"You want to take a shortcut?"
Li Anshi looked him up and down, surprised. "Nawaki, you must understand, becoming a great ninja isn't just about learning jutsu."
"Every jutsu has its strengths and weaknesses."
"To an experienced ninja, these are no secret at all."
"That's why renowned ninjas have a unique mastery of their signature techniques."
"If you rely on shortcuts to learn a jutsu, it might take you even more effort to improve upon it later."
"Otherwise, the moment you encounter a ninja who knows your jutsu's weakness, even if they are a step below you in strength, they could defeat you by exploiting that knowledge."
"Remember, in a ninja battle, a single mistake can be the difference between life and death!"
This was no empty threat to scare Nawaki.
Take Kakuzu, for example. He was a ninja who had survived a battle with the First Hokage.
Regardless of how he survived, the fact remained that the Hidden Waterfall Village had sent him to assassinate the First Hokage. In the end, under pressure from Konoha, when Konoha demanded accountability, the Waterfall Village had directly branded Kakuzu a rogue ninja, denying that he had been acting on the village's orders and framing the assassination attempt as Kakuzu's own personal action.
Li Anshi didn't know how strong Kakuzu had been before the assassination attempt.
But he estimated he was at least at the level of an elite jonin.
After being backstabbed by his village, Kakuzu had stolen their secret technique, Earth Grudge Fear, and fused it with himself. After mastering it, Kakuzu absolutely possessed the strength of a Kage-level powerhouse.
And even among the Kage, he was considered a strong one.
However, after his abilities were figured out by Shikamaru Nara, he was suppressed in battle for a long time and was finally killed by Naruto Uzumaki's Rasenshuriken.
"Nawaki, if you're just treating the Flying Thunder God Technique as a transitional jutsu, then there's nothing wrong with this training method."
"But if you want to make it your core technique, like your great-granduncle did, then this method of training carries a great risk."
"This..."
Hearing this, Nawaki hesitated.
It was true that he wanted to learn the technique as quickly as possible so that he could appear by his comrades' side the moment they were in danger.
However, his ultimate dream was to become Hokage, to be the one who could shoulder the pressure for his sister.
If he were to lose the strength to pursue that dream for this reason, it was something he could not accept.
"Don't dwell on it."
Li Anshi resealed all the other books into the scroll and handed it to Nawaki.
"This belonged to your family in the first place. Now it's being returned to its rightful owner."
After Nawaki took the scroll, Li Anshi continued, "There's no point in you worrying about this now."
"After all, whether you can even sense the fluctuations of space is another matter entirely."
"Only if you can sense them will you have earned the right to worry."
"But if you finish these three books and still can't sense the spatial fluctuations within a certain period, it means you simply aren't qualified to learn the Flying Thunder God Technique."
"For the next month, I will bring you here to train."
"If you can sense the spatial fluctuations within this month, we'll continue with the training."
"If more than a month passes and you still can't sense them, then even if you do sense them later, you likely have no talent for this technique."
The bodyguards of the future Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, were a clear testament to this.
Minato had not been secretive with his guards, passing the technique down to them.
But unfortunately, their sensitivity to spatial fluctuations was too low, making it impossible for them to master the jutsu.
Later, it was Minato and his wife, Kushina Uzumaki, who improved upon the technique with sealing jutsu, allowing his bodyguards to achieve spatial transfer by forming the "Flying Thunder Formation Technique" as a group.
"At that point, you should adjust your training focus and reconstruct a jutsu system that is best suited for you."
"After all, without the ability to sense space, even if I gave you a step-by-step training method, you would never succeed."
A ninja's jutsu system was the fighting style that best allowed them to exert their strength.
For example, the coordinated battle formation of the Ino-Shika-Cho trio, with the Nara controlling, the Yamanaka sensing, and the Akimichi attacking.
Or the Third Hokage's Five-Element Combination Jutsu, and the White Fang of Konoha, Sakumo Hatake's, White Light Blade technique...
"I understand, Sensei."
"Don't worry, if I really don't have the talent for it, I won't waste any more time on it."
Nawaki nodded.
The Flying Thunder God Technique was the jutsu that had earned his great-granduncle the title of "fastest in the ninja world."
His great-granduncle had left the jutsu in Konoha's Scroll of Seals.
However, in all the years since his passing, only Sensei Li had managed to master it.
Did the others not want to learn it?
What a joke!
This was a space-time ninjutsu.
Who wouldn't want to master it?
One didn't need to train it to the level of the Second Hokage; just being able to escape in a crisis would be enough.
But after so many years, no one besides Li Anshi had successfully mastered it.
They all stumbled at the hurdle of sensing spatial fluctuations.
Even though Nawaki was the grandson of Hashirama Senju, he couldn't be certain that he possessed the ability to sense space.
For the time that followed, with Li Anshi accompanying him, Nawaki began to read through the books he had been given.
Whenever he encountered something he didn't understand, he would ask Li Anshi, who would then explain it to him.
If it were any other jutsu, even a low-level one like the Three Basic Jutsu, Li Anshi was probably less proficient than Nawaki.
But the Flying Thunder God Technique was something Li Anshi had learned based on the research left behind by Tobirama Senju.
Even before he had obtained the final, completed version of the jutsu, he had already been able to instantly teleport his marked daggers into his own hand.
Therefore, when it came to this technique, Li Anshi could say that his current proficiency was in no way inferior to the Second Hokage's.
Of course, he also knew that all his achievements with the technique were thanks to him standing on the shoulders of giants like Tobirama Senju and Minato Namikaze.
To take it a step further would be much more difficult for him.
In the end, he himself was not a research-type genius.
He could reverse-engineer how to achieve existing techniques, but to ask him to innovate and develop new ones was a challenge of a completely different magnitude.
And he couldn't afford to waste time on the Flying Thunder God Technique.
His most important task right now was still to improve the quality of his internal energy-chakra and enhance his physical strength, laying the foundation for his future breakthrough to the Xiantian realm.
Even among those at the Xiantian realm, there were differences in strength.
He had no desire to achieve the weakest version of it.
In fact, if possible, he wanted to achieve the "strongest Xiantian."
The Xiantian realm was achieved by opening the bridge between heaven and earth, allowing one to directly absorb the primal energy of the world and transform one's internal energy into a higher level of "true qi."
At the same time, because they could directly absorb this energy, a Xiantian powerhouse could rapidly recover their true qi. As long as the consumption and recovery were kept in balance, they could achieve a state of being "endless and unceasing."
And in terms of power, "true qi" was naturally more than ten times stronger than "internal energy."
In the ninja world, breaking through to the Xiantian realm was to cultivate "senjutsu."
The "true qi" refined from absorbing the primal energy of the world was the "senjutsu chakra" refined from absorbing natural energy.
In the world of Wuxia, breaking through to the Xiantian realm could lead to qi deviation if one couldn't completely control the initial influx of primal energy, resulting in severed meridians and the loss of all martial arts.
Cultivating senjutsu in the ninja world was equally dangerous.
If one couldn't perfectly control the refined senjutsu chakra, one could very well be turned into a stone statue by the natural energy of the world, or be directly assimilated by it and die.
Li Anshi could well imagine that if he couldn't completely refine the natural energy absorbed into his body into internal energy-chakra before his body was fully assimilated, then his breakthrough would fail, and he would die.
He might turn into a stone statue, be dissolved, or have his spirit corroded by the natural energy, turning into a berserk monster like Jugo.
To perfectly break through to the Xiantian realm, both physical and spiritual strength were indispensable.
The stronger the body, the more natural energy it could bear, increasing the time one had before being assimilated.
The stronger the spirit, the better and faster one could control the senjutsu chakra, thus avoiding assimilation.
Of course, improving one's physical and spiritual strength was not without its drawbacks.
The stronger they were, the more natural energy would surge into his body when he opened the bridge between heaven and earth, and the less time he would have to refine it.
However, he would not let this danger stop his path to becoming stronger.
This was a crisis, but to overcome it was to seize a great opportunity.
If he successfully refined all the natural energy that surged into his body into senjutsu chakra, the powerful chakra would, in turn, temper his body to a higher level, raising his limits.
Furthermore, this would also represent the quantity of senjutsu chakra in his body.
His body would also be strengthened into a "Sennin Body" comparable to Hashirama Senju's.
No, it should be said that his "Sennin Body" would be even stronger.
…
Time passed, day by day.
On the border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Rain, with Tsunade stationed there, the provocations from the Rain ninjas towards Konoha had become much less frequent.
The intensity had also waned.
It seemed as if they were being suppressed by Konoha.
However, everyone knew that this was the calm before the storm.
Once the ninjas of the Rain had fully digested the supplies sent by the Cloud and Stone villages, it would be time for war between the Land of Rain and Konoha.
Otherwise, the Rain Village, having consumed the resources of two great villages, would face a pincer attack from both of them.
At that time, the Rain Village would very likely be destroyed in the attack, following the old path of the Whirlpool Village.
This was the consequence of breaking an agreement.
But if the Rain Village attacked Konoha as promised, as long as they could drag Konoha into the quagmire of war and make them show a hint of weakness, then the neighboring Cloud, Stone, and Sand villages would all swarm them.
Although Konoha was currently the number one great village, with its overall strength a good deal higher than the others, it would still suffer considerable losses if attacked by four villages at once, including the Rain.
The Mist Village next door, seeing Konoha under siege, would certainly jump in, wanting to get a piece of the pie.
More importantly, perhaps in this Second Great Ninja War, the other great villages had never thought they would actually defeat Konoha.
After all, Konoha had Li Anshi and his Little Li's Flying Dagger. Once he was deployed on the battlefield, their ninja forces would be powerless to fight back.
What they were thinking was to strike at Konoha's active forces before he was deployed, reducing their strength to a level comparable to their own.
At that time, they could use Konoha village itself to threaten him.
The moment they discovered he had been deployed, the great villages would advance in a straight line, directly attacking Konoha.
If he didn't want Konoha to be destroyed, he could only stay within the village to defend it, unable to go out and threaten their grand armies.
This was a point that the higher-ups of the great ninja villages were all well aware of.
Even many of Konoha's higher-ups knew this.
However, unlike the other worried leaders, the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, was as calm as could be.
Besides Li Anshi's team and Tsunade, Hiruzen was one of the few who knew that he had mastered the Flying Thunder God Technique.
There was still some time before the outbreak of war.
As long as he arranged for Nawaki's team to go on a few more missions outside the village during this time, covering all directions of the Land of Fire, and had Li Anshi leave his marks while they were on these missions, then no matter what plots the other villages came up with, they would ultimately fail.