Previously, with Li Anshi's presence on the battlefield, only five Jonin had been stationed there.
Li Anshi, Jin Uchiha, Shikafuku Nara, Takuji Akimichi, and Shin Yamanaka.
This time, Hiruzen Sarutobi had only brought some Chunin from the Stone Village front; the only Jonin was Sasuke Sarutobi, the head of the Sarutobi clan.
"Everyone, although the war is over, we cannot let our guard down."
"Therefore, I plan to have Clan Head Sarutobi serve as the commander of this camp. Shikafuku, Takuji, and Shin, you three will assist him."
"The ninjas in the camp will be rotated every three months."
"Clan Head Sarutobi and you three will be rotated every six months."
No one in the tent, including Li Anshi, had any objections to Hiruzen Sarutobi's arrangements.
Since it was no longer a state of war, Konoha couldn't possibly have these ninjas garrisoned here for their entire lives.
A three-month rotation meant these ninjas would be stationed here for three months at most. After that, the village would dispatch another group of ninjas to relieve them, allowing them to return to the village to rest.
Of course, garrisoning the border was also considered a mission, and the village would naturally issue mission rewards to the border ninjas according to the mission rank.
However, compared to wartime, there were few battles with other ninjas. Thus, Genin were mostly paid at a C-rank mission rate, Chunin at a B-rank rate, and Jonin at an A-rank rate.
The payment cycle was also no longer daily, but based on a five-day period.
After one rotation, the garrisoned ninjas would have completed eighteen to twenty missions of their current rank.
Compared to the ninjas in the village who frequently undertook missions, this number was indeed a bit low.
But the reward for a garrison mission was much higher than that of an ordinary mission.
Of course, with every gain comes a loss.
Although becoming a garrison ninja offered better pay, they had less freedom than the ninjas in the village.
Moreover, ninjas in the village could train to the point of exhaustion to improve their strength.
Garrison ninjas could at most maintain their training to prevent their condition from declining.
It was impossible for them to waste large amounts of chakra and stamina on rigorous training.
And for a ninja, everything else was illusory. Only strength was the foundation that allowed them to survive mission after mission.
Therefore, if possible, most ninjas did not want to come to the border to become garrison ninjas.
But a ninja village couldn't possibly leave its borders undefended.
Thus, the rotation system was born.
This way, everyone would be rotated to the border for garrison duty, which ensured fairness to a great extent.
After confirming the ninjas who would remain, Li Anshi and the others began to withdraw from the camp and head back to Konoha.
However, unlike when they had rushed to the battle, everyone's mood was much more cheerful on the way back.
Upon returning to the village, they were all treated as heroes. The villagers offered sincere thanks and smiles to the ninjas who had fought on the battlefield to protect them.
Even Li Anshi felt a little giddy amidst the cheers of the villagers.
But soon, his heart returned to its usual calm.
In Li Anshi's view, the common people of the ninja world were a people whose minds were not yet enlightened.
The villagers of Konoha were no different.
Now, they cheered for them as "heroes" because they had won a victory. But if the higher-ups made a move, they would also "spit" on them.
Now that he had taken Sakumo Hatake's place, earning a reputation that allowed others to abandon a mission without being deemed a failure, Li Anshi didn't know if the scene Sakumo Hatake would face in the future would one day play out before him.
However, what he could foresee, what Li Anshi was certain of, was that he was not Sakumo Hatake.
If Konoha truly dared to test him with such an attitude, he wouldn't mind letting them experience the terror of the "Little Li Flying Dagger."
…
Rustle…
He opened the door to his shop, and a cloud of dust billowed up.
"Pfft, pfft, pfft…"
Li Anshi puffed out his cheeks, blowing away the dust that was about to hit his face.
"Tsk, this loss seems a bit substantial…"
After the dust settled, Li Anshi glanced at the wooden carvings in his shop.
More than a year had passed since he was conscripted as a ninja and left Konoha. Due to the materials used, most of the wooden carvings had been damaged by insects.
The kunai and shuriken toys carved from softwood had mostly rotted and could no longer be sold.
"It seems that to reopen my shop, I'll be busy for at least a week or two."
Li Anshi sighed.
It couldn't be helped. Li Anshi couldn't reopen his shop with empty shelves, could he?
And even with his current carving skills, it would take some time to restock the carvings.
"Hey~"
"Anshi, with your current strength, the reward from a single mission is more than you'd make selling carvings for a year."
"Are you still going to keep this carving shop open?"
Li Anshi wasn't surprised by the voice coming from behind him.
Although he wasn't holding a flying dagger and his perception wasn't as freakishly sharp, Li Anshi was, after all, a powerhouse who had reached the "Jonin" stage. The possibility of Tsunade following him without being noticed was almost zero.
It was just that since Tsunade hadn't spoken, Li Anshi had pretended not to notice her.
Now that she had spoken, Li Anshi feigned surprise as if he had just discovered her. "Oh, if it isn't Lady Tsunade."
"What's wrong? If I remember correctly, you've already lost this shop's rent to me for the next fifteen years."
"If you want to collect rent, you'd better come back in fifteen years!"
Tsunade rolled her eyes at Li Anshi's teasing.
"What, can't I come to collect the sixteenth year's rent?"
Tsunade said this with perfect justification.
After all, she had done such things at his shop many times before.
When she had hidden at his place on the day of the Second Hokage's funeral, it hadn't been a random choice.
In the two years she had known Li Anshi, Tsunade had already collected the rent for his shop up to five years in advance.
If she hadn't won over three million Ryo and left it with Li Anshi, who then spent it, his rent would now be paid up to twenty years in the future.
Of course, both Li Anshi and Tsunade knew that as long as she wanted to collect rent from him, he wouldn't refuse, even if it was for a hundred, a thousand, or even ten thousand years.
Well, that was on the premise that Li Anshi had that much money.
If he didn't…
Alright, a trip to the casino with Tsunade, betting against her, was a one-hundred-percent guaranteed win!
"You can, you can."
"So, Lady Tsunade, would you like to collect the sixteenth year's rent now?"
Li Anshi took out a pair of gloves and a rag from his workbench drawer and began to clean the shop.
"Forget it. You haven't even opened for business yet. Collecting rent from you now would be bad luck."
Tsunade shook her head, followed behind Li Anshi, and also took out a pair of gloves, helping him take the unsellable wooden carvings from the shelves and throw them into the trash can.
"Wait, Tsunade."
Seeing her just toss the carvings away, Li Anshi quickly said, "All the carvings in this shop need to be thrown out, but if you throw them like that, several trash bags won't be enough."
"You have to do it like this—"
As he spoke, Li Anshi took a wooden carving from a nearby shelf, walked to the trash can, let chakra flow from his hands, and ground them together like a millstone—
Crackle—
Instantly, the wooden carving in his hands turned into shattered wood chips, fluttering down into the trash can.
"See?"
Tsunade raised an eyebrow, picked up another carving, and rubbed it as Li Anshi had.
However, perhaps because she wasn't skilled enough, or because of her chakra's properties, Tsunade couldn't easily grind the carving into powder as he did.
"Interesting."
Tsunade's eyes lit up.
Grinding a wooden carving into powder didn't require immense strength; it required infusing the carving with chakra and destroying it completely in an instant.
Currently, Tsunade's chakra could instantly destroy a third of a carving. She had to grind each one three times.
She could feel that if she could grind the carvings as easily as Li Anshi, her chakra control would definitely see a huge improvement.
In fact, Tsunade's control over her chakra was not low.
It was no joke. Medical ninjas had extremely high requirements for chakra control, and Tsunade was one of the best among them. Her mastery of chakra, if not at its peak, was not far from it.
It was just that, compared to Li Anshi, she was still lacking.
For the next while, Tsunade forgot why she had come to find Li Anshi, having a blast playing with the wooden carvings in the shop.
Li Anshi was happy to let her be. After moving the carvings next to her, he began to clean the rest of the shop.
Half an hour later, Li Anshi had finally finished cleaning. The only part of the shop that remained untouched was the area around Tsunade.
"Need my help?"
Seeing that there were nearly a hundred carvings left beside Tsunade, Li Anshi squatted down and asked her.
"Are you kidding?"
Tsunade gave Li Anshi a sidelong glance. "I'm clearly the one helping you, right? Why would you think I need your help?"
"What, does dumping your own work on me and making me your laborer give you a great sense of accomplishment?"
"I'll pay you. Five hundred Ryo!"
"Shopkeeper, please, I insist you leave this all to me!"
Li Anshi smiled but didn't actually watch as Tsunade ground away the carvings. He picked up a carving himself, rubbed his hands together, and it turned to powder, falling to the ground.
"Tsunade, shouldn't you all be enjoying the praise of the villagers right now? Why did you want to come here?"
Hearing Li Anshi's words, Tsunade paused, and the carving in her hand crackled and burst.