In an instant, the chill emanating from the longsword in Third Elder's hand grew ever stronger. Li understood that Third Elder was condensing chakra onto the blade—frost-aspected chakra, at that. Li could do the same, but for someone from the Shinobi World like Third Elder, achieving such a technique was practically as difficult as climbing to the heavens.
The difficulty was for no other reason than the fact that swordsmanship had long since declined in this world. Unless one came from a family that had practiced swordsmanship for generations, or had no talent whatsoever for Ninjutsu and was forced to cultivate swordsmanship, anyone wishing to pursue the martial path had only one proper route: Ninjutsu.
Compared to swordsmanship, Ninjutsu held an immeasurable advantage. Leaving aside everything else, in group battles alone, Ninjutsu completely suppressed swordsmanship. You might be able to use sword aura, but with less chakra consumption, Ninjutsu could unleash attacks that were more powerful and covered a wider area. That point alone was beyond what swordsmanship could compare to.
Furthermore, sword aura had only a single attribute. It could basically only unleash pure chakra attacks, which could often be countered without effort. Only lightning-aspected chakra could be attached to a sword blade. And anyone capable of adding lightning-aspected chakra to a sword already possessed chakra control so powerful that it was practically inhuman. Such a person would undoubtedly be far stronger using Ninjutsu than using a sword.
Yet Third Elder had actually condensed water-aspected chakra onto his blade. Not only that, he had lowered its temperature to such an extent. From the looks of it, this Third Elder's chakra control and chakra reserves had both reached Kage-level!
For someone like that to be hiding within the Uchiha Clan truly surprised Li. But even so, did he think that