All Things Breathe!

"Your true strength?"

Li narrowed his eyes slightly. If he used his true strength, let alone Asama Ryoma, who was merely a Swordmaster, even a Great Swordmaster could be killed in an instant. But this was only a contest of swordsmanship. Li's ultimate goal was to gain a deeper understanding of what the sword path truly was. The Naruto world possessed immense power; if he unleashed everything he had, he might well be able to stand at the pinnacle of this world. However, as the system had said, the purpose of traveling through time and space and experiencing the cycle of worlds was not for Li to rely on the strength he had already gained to show off and steal women. It was to master more power, then combine it with the power he had acquired to forge his own path of strength. Li guessed that this had been the intent behind the system's original warning.

"Since you refuse to use your true strength, then let me tell you this: with swordsmanship at the level you just displayed, I can defeat you within one minute!" Seeing that Li remained unmoved, Asama Ryoma took a deep breath. His pupils contracted as he charged at Li, Dark Purple dancing rapidly in his hand.

Swordsmanship could be divided into two types: domineering and gentle. Much like the relationship between vertical and horizontal, gentleness was vertical, while domination was horizontal. The vertical path slipped past the opponent's defenses to swiftly kill the enemy, while the horizontal path relied from beginning to end on overwhelming force to sweep everything aside, stripping the opponent of any ability to resist, forcing them into a dead end before cutting them down with a single strike. The greatest examples were Shanks and Mihawk. Shanks's swordsmanship followed the vertical path,