True Desire

Performance of a Hundred Puppets—this was Sasori's ultimate technique in the original work, said to have destroyed an entire country.

Qi did not know how it had been in the manga, but he was certain that, on the current Hokage Continent, no country had been destroyed. Strong or weak, every nation was still standing just fine...

The only thing he could be sure of was that this puppet army before him, which included the Third Kazekage, numbered far more than a hundred—and every single one of them was a human puppet!

This meant that the puppet legion before him would absolutely not be as easy to deal with as it had been in the manga. The Performance of a Hundred Puppets in the manga had relied on sheer numbers, without even basic puppet mechanisms. But the impressive chakra intensity emanating from this puppet horde was enough to prove that they were something on an entirely different level.

Was he afraid?

Qi suddenly asked himself that question.

For decades, a simple saying had circulated among the elite jōnin of the entire shinobi world.

Want to know what the power of Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara had been like? Then go destroy a fully organized shinobi army by yourself! If you cannot do it, you have no right to know!

After entering this circle, Qi had learned that saying as well. He had once asked himself—did he dare?

A fully organized shinobi army meant having everyone from jōnin down to the lowest-ranking genin, numbering at least in the thousands. There might not be elite jōnin among them, but for people of the present era, this had already nearly surpassed the scope of individual power. After all, no one dared guarantee that their chakra could sustain such expenditure.

Not even the Seven Ninja