"When you truly realize your dream and your spirit has been elevated, that will be the time you have truly mastered the Little Li's Flying Dagger."
In three days, Rin Hyuga had indeed not disappointed Li Anshi's expectations. She had finally found her own "intent" and, under his guidance, had begun to integrate it into her daggers, gaining the "Dagger Perception."
It could be said that her daggers now posed a significant threat even to jonin.
Only by successfully integrating one's intent into the dagger and unlocking its perception could one be said to have truly mastered the "Little Li's Flying Dagger"!
Yes, the "Little Li's Flying Dagger, never misses its mark"!
Dagger Perception was an extremely special state.
In this state, the master of the dagger could perceive its flight path. When throwing it, they could choose the most suitable trajectory from among many, allowing the dagger to pierce its target with greater speed and power.
This was the truth behind its unerring accuracy.
Rin had now stepped into this realm.
However, his own perception far surpassed hers.
Therefore, when she threw her dagger, he could sense its trajectory, which was why he could catch it with just his index and middle fingers.
"Yes, Sensei."
Rin was not surprised that her dagger had been caught.
After successfully cultivating the ability of "Dagger Perception," she also understood that it was a type of ability based on perceptual dominance.
It was just like the Hyuga clan's Byakugan.
When fighting an enemy, the Hyuga could use the advantage of the Byakugan to discover the enemy first and make a series of targeted responses.
Whether it was setting traps or turning to flee...
It could be said that an ordinary ninja had almost no intelligence advantage when fighting a member of the Hyuga clan.
But if two Hyuga ninjas were to fight, then the contest would be between the dominance of their respective Byakugan and their mastery of their own secret techniques.
Normally, the Byakugan of the main family, not having been damaged by the Caged Bird seal, was a step stronger than that of the branch family in both field of vision and insight.
The one with stronger insight could easily suppress the one with weaker insight.
The Little Li's Flying Dagger was the same.
In a duel between two ninjas who had both mastered the technique, the strength of their perception was basically equivalent to their overall strength.
Without any other powerful secret techniques for protection, the one with the weaker perception had almost no chance of turning the tables.
Especially with a one-hit-kill secret art like this, being even a line weaker meant a world of difference.
Not to mention, the difference between his perception and hers was not just a single line.
She had only just begun her training in the second stage, preliminarily grasping how to integrate her "intent" into the dagger.
And what about him?
He had been practicing his own "freedom" for seven or eight years. His mastery of the "freedom" intent was comparable to Li Xunhuan's "chivalry."
It could be said that even if he were to be thrown into the world of Sentimental Swordsman, Ruthless Sword right now, his dagger would be in no way inferior to Li Xunhuan's.
"For the time being, you should return to your clan and stay there. Deepen your determination to break free from the cage. It will make you more steadfast in the path you have chosen."
"And before that..."
He spread his hands, and in an instant, ten daggers appeared in them. Then, under her curious gaze, he put them away again.
"Your mastery of the technique can be considered a small achievement. Now, the only things limiting you are your chakra and the number of daggers you have."
"As for chakra, I don't have any good methods for that."
"Only as you grow older and your physical energy increases, or perhaps after you experience certain events and your spiritual strength is enhanced, can the quantity and quality of your chakra be greatly improved."
"As for the number of daggers, I have a little trick here. I think it should be quite a useful technique for you. This little trick is called the 'Blade Hiding Technique'!"
"The so-called 'Blade Hiding Technique' is a secret art for hiding daggers on your person and carrying them with you at all times."
"The higher your proficiency in it, the more daggers you can carry. You should have heard some information about me from the elders of your clan, right?"
"Yes."
Rin's eyes widened, and she nodded vigorously. "Both my father and the clan head have told me, especially about your battles, Sensei."
"They said that although there are not many recorded battles of yours, in the three that are recorded, the number of ninjas who died at your hands is close to three thousand!"
Three thousand people...
What did that even mean?
Their bodies could be piled up to form a small mountain, couldn't they?
Never mind the other villages.
Take Konoha, the number one great village in the ninja world. It only had a little over five thousand registered ninjas.
The number of ninjas Sensei Li had killed in three battles was more than half of Konoha's registered force...
Of course, having only a little over five thousand registered ninjas did not mean that was all the ninjas Konoha had.
The ninjas registered in Konoha were those who had to unconditionally obey the village's orders and carry out various dangerous missions to contribute to the village.
However, for the ninja clans that had endured for hundreds of years since the Warring States period, it was impossible to stake the entire clan on the village.
This was not disloyalty, but the wisdom of survival passed down through centuries of change.
If a clan had a hundred ninjas, they would at most register half or even fewer of them with the village.
The rest would become the clan's hidden strength, protecting the family from another angle.
If a registered clansman died in battle, and the family did not want to lose its status, they could have a ninja of comparable strength from within the clan register to take the deceased's place.
As for those clans with few ninjas, especially the small families with only one or two jonin, if their jonin were to die in battle and there was no one in the family to take their place, the family would gradually decline, having lost the protection of a jonin.
Of course, compared to commoner ninjas, the ninja clans with jonin had at least B-rank or higher ninjutsu passed down through their lineage.
As long as the younger generation's talent was not poor, and they mastered the jutsu passed down from their elders, they could be considered quite strong among the chunin.
In fact, if a genius appeared in the clan and possessed jonin-level strength, the village would be much more lenient in its assessment for the jonin rank for a clan ninja than for a commoner.
On one hand, a clan jonin with a heritage was indeed much stronger than an ordinary commoner jonin.
On the other hand, the clans also had their own allies.
For the continuation of their families, these clans, which had formed alliances, would help each other out when one of them was in decline.
This was also a way to leave a path of retreat for their own family.
After all, no one knew if their own family might decline one day in the future.
Especially the small clans with few members. They were not like the large clans, which had geniuses in every generation.
Even if not the kind of extraordinary genius who could lead the family to greater heights, they were still geniuses who could stabilize the family's position and prevent it from declining.
Ups and downs were the norm for small and medium-sized clans.
The most important thing was to have the means to pull the family back up after a fall.
"I help you this time, and in the future, my descendants will help your descendants." By relying on and supporting each other, they had managed to survive from the Warring States period to the present.
Even now, in the era of the ninja villages, these alliances had not been abandoned.
However, such help also had its limits.
At most, after an ally's decline, they would take over most of their assets, preventing the family from being coveted by other clans for possessing wealth beyond its strength.
When the ally's descendants grew up, they would return the assets with interest, or return a portion of them.
This depended on how much the ally's descendants had grown.
If they failed to rise up for two or three generations, it could be confirmed that the ally's family had completely declined.
Naturally, the assets that had already been swallowed would not be returned.
With Konoha's current size, if the hidden ninjas of the clans were also included, the number of ninjas would definitely exceed ten thousand.
However, with Rin's current experience, it was impossible for her to think of these hidden matters.
All she knew was that with three moves, her teacher had killed half the ninjas of a village.
Did that mean that with six moves, he could directly wipe out a great ninja village?
Well, in some respects, her thought was not wrong.
In fact, for the current Li Anshi, wiping out a great village, even Konoha, would not take six moves at all.
"That's right."
Seeing that she knew his battle record, Li Anshi smiled slightly.
Although all these ninjas had been killed by him with his flying dagger, because of that, he didn't have much of a real sense of having killed so many people.
In the end, he had only launched the daggers in his hand according to the trajectory of his perception.
In terms of psychological impact, it couldn't even compare to the first Sand ninja he had killed with taijutsu when he had first gone to the battlefield.
"At that time, one dagger from me could only kill one ninja. So, the reason I could kill so many ninjas in three battles was because I used the 'Blade Hiding Technique' to hide hundreds of daggers on my body."
"Rin, you must have realized it during your first killing mission, right?"
"The Little Li's Flying Dagger is extremely dependent on the daggers in your hand. With a dagger, you are an Asura who kills whoever stands in your way, be it man or god. But without a dagger, you are just an ordinary ninja, as ordinary as can be."
"Therefore, for a ninja who practices the Little Li's Flying Dagger, the importance of the daggers is no less than that of a ninja's chakra. The number of daggers you can carry represents the number of ninjas you can kill."
"Yes, yes, Sensei, I want to learn!"
Drawn into the memory of her first bandit extermination mission by his words, Rin thought of the powerlessness she had felt when she had run out of daggers, and a shiver ran down her spine.
It was from that mission that she had replaced everything in her ninja tool pouch with daggers.
Of course, these daggers were also taken from him.
Back then, with the gambling winnings he had won from Tsunade, he had forged a total of over thirty thousand daggers.
Over the years, more than seven thousand of them had been consumed.
In fact, the number of daggers he had actually used to kill enemies was probably less than two thousand.
However, in his second war with the Cloud, the daggers he had brought in a sealing scroll had been destroyed by a Tailed Beast Bomb from the Eight-Tails Jinchuriki, Blue B, resulting in a loss of five thousand daggers.
He still had about twenty-five thousand left.
The first time he had taught her the technique, he had only given her ten daggers to practice with.
But after her first killing mission, he had also seen her practice routine.
Having to retrieve her daggers after throwing just ten greatly delayed her training progress.
It was for this reason that he had later given her another three hundred.
However, while she could use three hundred for practice, when she was actually in battle, her tool pouch could hold at most thirty.
Even if she strapped another pouch to her other thigh, it would only be sixty.
Although sixty daggers meant she could kill sixty chunin, which would be a great achievement even on the battlefield, for her, throwing sixty daggers would take less than a minute.
This made her seem like a high-burst, but extremely short-sustain ninja.
Anyone, knowing they could only burst for a minute at most, would feel a sense of panic, wouldn't they?
Unless she had some other greater source of confidence.
And for her, what could give her more confidence than being able to carry more daggers?
Li Anshi had also gone through such a stage.
So, he could understand.
This could be considered a kind of "insufficient firepower phobia."
Only more daggers could fill the fear in her heart.
His own "insufficient firepower phobia" had been basically cured after he had learned the Flying Thunder God Technique.
But hers was right at its peak.
A dagger in hand, the world is mine!
Without a dagger, if her mentality was not good, it was not impossible that she wouldn't even be able to display her original strength.
Learning the "Blade Hiding Technique" could alleviate some of her symptoms.
"Listen well, Rin."
"When practicing the Blade Hiding Technique, what we need to pay attention to is the contact surface between the dagger and our body..."