Shinobi were all perceptive. There was no question about that.
Xia Yan was a perceptive shinobi too. Urashiki Otsutsuki's earlier performance while dealing with his counterattack had already surprised him.
But at the time, Xia Yan had not dared to think along those lines. After all, to him, every one of these Ōtsutsuki seemed like a celestial being.
And they had destroyed countless inhabited planets using the God Tree. Logically, they could not possibly have been what he imagined.
A bunch of people with little actual combat experience, relying purely on overwhelming power.
But after what had just happened, Xia Yan had no choice but to consider that possibility.
And once he started thinking that way, he immediately realized how fucking likely it was!
In the original story, leaving everyone else aside, Kaguya Ōtsutsuki's performance alone had been an absolute disaster.
The mighty progenitor of chakra had faced Naruto and Sasuke, who possessed only the original power of Indra and Asura.
Yet she had been beaten into fleeing everywhere, and had even followed Black Zetsu's misguided instructions.
To put it bluntly, throughout the entire battle, Naruto and Sasuke had completely outclassed her in tactics and combat experience.
Aside from her, Otsutsuki Toneri seemed an even more concrete example.
His individual strength had been immense, yet Naruto had still beaten him senseless after losing his cheats.
Toneri's situation was understandable, though. He had been without eyes since childhood, and had hardly had any opportunities to fight on the moon.
So it was normal for this boy, with no actual combat experience, to be taught a lesson by Naruto, a reasonably normal shinobi who had fought his way through life.
Apart from Toneri, whose case was fairly understandable, Xia Yan felt there was another abnormal one whom he had previously overlooked without