Looking down at the lifeless Raiya Okazaki, Li Anshi shook his head. He had originally thought that if the Cloud ninjas could directly submit a letter of surrender, he wouldn't have to make a trip to the Cloud Village. But now, it seemed this trip to the Cloud Village was unavoidable.
Let him come!
This was the Cloud Village's response to his proposal. The fewer the words, the bigger the matter.
Undoubtedly, Li Anshi's previous words had infuriated the Cloud Village. If Li Anshi didn't go and extinguish this fire, the Cloud Village might very well take advantage of this momentum to attack Konoha again.
Although Konoha had already defeated the Stone ninjas, and the Sand ninjas had also submitted an alliance agreement, allowing Konoha to face the Cloud ninjas with its full strength, the Cloud ninjas had almost no chance of victory.
But even so, Konoha's casualties would not be small. As far as Li Anshi himself was concerned, he didn't want these Konoha ninjas to pay for his actions with their lives.
"Forget it, losing face is losing face."
Squatting down, Li Anshi took the dozen or so sheets of paper filled with Raiya Okazaki's last words from his pocket and headed towards Konoha's camp.
Since the Cloud Village had already issued a challenge to him, the Cloud ninjas left in the Land of Grass to monitor Konoha must have already received the news.
In this situation, if they encountered Li Anshi, they would undoubtedly transmit intelligence about him back immediately and then launch a suicidal attack. Thus, Li Anshi couldn't possibly learn how to get to the Cloud Village from them.
Returning to the camp, Li Anshi obtained a map of the Cloud Village from Nara Shikafuku, took out a sealing scroll, and sealed all his flying daggers inside before setting off for the Cloud Village again.
Li Anshi knew that this battle with the Cloud ninjas was inevitable. The three hundred flying daggers he carried on his person were not enough to make the Cloud ninjas retreat. In fact, if the Cloud side knew he only had three hundred flying daggers, they would willingly sacrifice three hundred ninjas for a chance to attack him.
With a ninja's ability, once the destination was known, there was almost no need to consider the route; they would head straight there, crossing mountains and fording rivers. The tigers, leopards, and lions in the forest, without chakra and not being ninja beasts, were merely food for Li Anshi.
Along the way, some of the Cloud ninjas remaining in the Land of Grass naturally encountered Li Anshi. Upon seeing him, they used their own methods to report his movements to the Cloud Village in real-time.
As long as they didn't actively attack Li Anshi, he paid them no mind. In Li Anshi's view, it was best to directly defeat the Cloud ninjas in this battle to prevent them from causing trouble when he wanted to do something in the future.
Because this trip to the Cloud Village was for combat, Li Anshi didn't travel at full speed. Instead, he adjusted his pace according to his chakra recovery rate, keeping his chakra consumption and refinement in balance, thus maintaining his peak condition at all times.
This way, no matter when he encountered a battle, Li Anshi could face it at his strongest. After all, Konoha and the Cloud ninjas were still in a state of "war." Sneak attacks, poisoning, assassinations... both sides would stop at nothing. War knew no "justice"; the victor was king!
...
"Almost there!"
Three days later, Li Anshi glanced at the map in his hand, mentally comparing his distance to the Cloud Village.
"If there are no surprises, I should reach the Cloud Village by noon today."
"I wonder what kind of welcoming gift the Cloud Village has prepared for me?"
Putting away the map, Li Anshi concealed his aura and began to lean against a tree trunk, closing his eyes to rest.
The closer he got to the Cloud Village, the closer it was to the start of the war between him and the Cloud ninjas. Both Li Anshi and the Cloud side knew that the Cloud ninjas couldn't possibly let Li Anshi enter the Cloud Village.
Therefore, their battlefield would inevitably be outside the Cloud Village. Only by fighting outside the village could they protect the Cloud Village from being destroyed by their battle.
As for where their battlefield would be, Li Anshi believed the Cloud side had already fully prepared in these three days, just waiting for him to enter their encirclement before launching a fatal blow. Perhaps, from now on, he could encounter an attack from the Cloud ninjas at any time!
...
"Lord Raikage, it's confirmed."
On a relatively flat hill five kilometers away from the Cloud Village, the Third Raikage led over two thousand ninjas gathered there. If the enemy were ninjas like the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, or the Asura of the ninja world, Madara Uchiha, who could casually unleash large-scale destructive ninjutsu that annihilated everything, the Third Raikage certainly wouldn't have let the Cloud Village ninjas stand so densely packed.
But this time, the enemy was Li Anshi, who possessed some kind of powerful flying dagger secret technique. At least, from the intelligence gathered so far, Li Anshi was just a civilian ninja from Konoha and possessed no large-scale destructive ninjutsu. Against such a person, a human wave tactic would have a good effect.
Of course, the Third Raikage also knew that besides ordinary flying daggers, Li Anshi had a more powerful flying dagger secret technique that could instantly kill the rampaging Two-Tails Jinchuriki and severely injure him.
However, the Third Raikage also believed Li Anshi couldn't use such a move many times. Experienced ninjas could estimate the enemy's chakra quantity and quality based on their attacks.
In the Third Raikage's perception, the quality of Li Anshi's chakra was very high, even stronger than Tailed Beast chakra. In the entire ninja world, perhaps only the "Dust Release Chakra" of the Third Tsuchikage, Onoki, could compare in quality.
But in terms of quantity, Li Anshi was far behind. Of course, this wasn't to say Li Anshi's chakra was scarce. The Third Raikage estimated that Li Anshi's chakra was three times more than that of an ordinary Cloud Jonin. Compared to the terrifying strength Li Anshi displayed, his chakra quantity became his biggest weakness.
A ninja's strength came from chakra. Once Li Anshi's chakra was exhausted, no matter how strong he was, he would become fish on a chopping block before so many Cloud ninjas.
The reason Hashirama Senju, the God of Shinobi, and Madara Uchiha, the Asura of the ninja world, possessed such terrifying dominance was inseparable from their own vast amounts of chakra.
Any ninja who had witnessed Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha fight was invariably awed by their terrifying power. That was a realm they had to look up to. Therefore, they revered Hashirama Senju as the "God of Shinobi."