However, Li quickly dismissed that possibility. If someone in a dimension on the level of the Hokage could rival him, that would be truly absurd. For now, he could only assume that someone had secretly interfered with these people, causing them all to disappear.
Of course, this was not the time to think about that. The urgent matter was rescuing Hinata.
With that thought, Li swiftly followed Hinata's scent. Before long, several strange figures appeared in his sight. They advanced with peculiar steps, yet moved incredibly fast. What made Li frown even more was that there was not the slightest trace of Chakra flowing through their bodies.
Puppets?
Li instinctively thought of it, then drew a breath in confirmation. The more than twenty figures before him all appeared to be puppets rather than living people. Though their movements were stiff and strange, they did not feel awkward at all. They looked like relatively sophisticated puppet tools.
Moreover, there were no Chakra Threads connected to them. Li had no idea how their controller was operating them.
The masters of puppetry were undoubtedly from the Sand Village. However, the puppet Ninjutsu there all relied on puppet Chakra Threads. Since these puppets had no Chakra Threads on them, it could be ruled out that Sunagakure had sent them to cause trouble.
If they were not controlled through Chakra Threads, then among the people Li had seen in the world of Naruto, there was indeed one person capable of doing this—Nagato. With his immense mental power and the Rinnegan's special abilities, he could easily control his six bodies, and those six bodies could unleash astonishingly terrifying power.
Of course, Nagato was already dead. There was probably no one left who could achieve that degree of control.
Other than Nagato, Li truly could not think