After all, even though the two were "mecha warriors piloting giant robots," they weren't invincible in the Ninja World.
From what Bai Sui had seen in the Ninja World, the two might indeed have been unmatched in one-on-one fights, but they could still be subdued by a group.
After all, in the eyes of the shinobi clans, the two's act of founding a village was tantamount to digging up their roots. Though various factors had made those people somewhat narrow-minded, they weren't fools. Naturally, they could see the problem.
Faced with such an act, even shinobi clans that usually couldn't stand one another would set aside their grievances and join forces, at least temporarily.
It was only because years of warfare had weakened the clans to their lowest point that Madara and the others had been able to found a village through their personal strength.
Moreover, the other villages might have been called villages, but it was clear they weren't like Konoha, which had all but erased the shinobi clans. Instead, those villages were more like councils established by the various clans.
This journey had made Bai Sui feel a faint sense of estrangement toward the shinobi clans, but that wasn't the main thing. What mattered most was that he had seen the Ninja World as it truly was.
To be honest, when he'd watched the Naruto story before, he'd thought it was ridiculous that eighty thousand shinobi had been deployed in the Fourth Shinobi World War. But after seeing the entire Ninja World for himself, Bai Sui could only say that this was what it looked like after a period of recovery.
During his travels, Bai Sui had discovered that at the peak of the Ninja World, any group that could be considered a shinobi clan had at least a hundred or so fighters. Those with fewer than that didn't qualify as a clan. Of course, most of those hundred or so were Genin.
And Bai Sui knew of nearly two hundred clans that were small enough to have only that many fighters. Since these clans were spread throughout the Ninja World, and the wars caused frequent upheavals, their numbers fluctuated greatly.
The larger clans had around a thousand fighters at their peak. After all, without that kind of manpower, how could the Uzumaki Clan have dared to speak of establishing a country?
Based on what he'd learned during his travels and what he'd confirmed himself, Bai Sui had estimated the numbers.
The Ninja World had a population of roughly thirty million. About five hundred thousand were shinobi and their clansmen—one hundred thousand shinobi and around four hundred thousand clansmen without the talent to become shinobi. Samurai, monks, onmyoji, and shrine maidens together numbered around one hundred thousand. The nobles, officials, and their servants totaled roughly three hundred thousand, while ordinary soldiers numbered around 1.2 million.
Of course, these figures were for the Ninja World at its peak. After years of war, only the nobles and the soldiers under their command had remained relatively unchanged.
After all, the Ninja World during the Warring States period had truly been chaotic, and quite a few shinobi clans had been led by people with unstable minds. Without sufficient forces to protect themselves, how could the nobles have survived to this day?
Did they really expect the shinobi to obey them and refrain from attacking just because of the administrative relationship between the Feudal Lords and the shinobi? Don't make me laugh. Some clans would even turn on their own people when they went mad, let alone the so-called nobles, who seemed as weak as ants in their eyes.
The reason was simple: the nobles had enough strength to protect themselves. By working together, they had managed to keep the shinobi under their control.
That's right. They had banded together to sow discord among the shinobi, doing everything they could to set the clans against one another through honor, supplies, and other means.
After centuries of effort, they had driven wedges between the clans, some of which could never be mended. To keep the clans divided, the nobles even continued to invest vast resources year after year.
Bai Sui had also discovered that the nobles were far more than they appeared to be. Their research behind the scenes had never stopped, and they had achieved quite a lot.
For one thing, all the places in the Ninja World that were out in the open looked very primitive, including the Daimyo Mansions. But in their hidden laboratories, they were already using electricity. The technology was crude, but things like electric lights already existed.
To be honest, Bai Sui admired the Feudal Lords for this. It wasn't that they couldn't have lived more comfortably or made their lives more convenient. But generation after generation, they had safeguarded their beliefs, all so that one day they might resolve the problem of the shinobi.
Bai Sui had discovered that the nobles might know more about shinobi than the shinobi themselves. Some of their lineages stretched back so far that they could be traced to centuries before the Otsutsuki descended.
The families of nobles with long histories had records of Otsutsuki Kaguya and the two brothers, Six Paths. And ever since the shinobi they had created came into being, the nobles had kept a close watch on them.
The Feudal Lords possessed abundant resources. If they wanted to become shinobi, all they had to do was introduce some shinobi blood into their lineages. But throughout the Ninja World, only the nobles of a few newly established small countries had shinobi blood.
The reason was that they believed shinobi blood was a means by which demons had invaded this world. After all, the ancestors of every noble family that had survived to this day had lived through Kaguya's creation of White Zetsu with the Infinite Tsukuyomi.
When Kaguya had first descended from the heavens, people might have thought she was a goddess. But after that apocalyptic event, no one would think so again.
So the nobles had worked hard to keep their bloodlines pure. Though they coveted the power of the shinobi, they wouldn't let their own blood be tainted.
As the shinobi developed, they naturally wanted to climb higher. After all, no one wanted to have someone ruling over them. Many shinobi had therefore tried to establish countries.
But the nobles had destroyed those countries by every means available. When they wiped out the first shinobi country, it had taken the nobles a tremendous effort to make that decision.
After all, they knew of the Sage of Six Paths, and stories and legends about him still surfaced throughout the Ninja World from time to time. Since the nobles had no idea how he would respond, they had been prepared to fight him to the death.
Yet during the country's destruction, although a few minor incidents had occurred, no Otsutsuki had appeared to intervene. It was after that that the nobles began targeting the shinobi clans.
By then, however, the clans had already grown powerful. After several hard-fought battles, the nobles shifted from direct confrontation to secretly sowing division.
Through their tireless efforts, the nobles had also married into some of the great shinobi clans and planted many spies among them.
Those spies were loyal to the nobles—or rather, to what they believed were pure-blood humans. They wouldn't even trust their own descendants if their blood wasn't pure.
With the help of these spies, the nobles gradually brought their plans to fruition, shaping the Ninja World into what it was today.
Bai Sui couldn't say whether the nobles were right or wrong. After all, it all depended on one's point of view.