No matter how reasonable Shinichi's words were, they would have found them extremely offensive.
Who the hell do you think you are, Shinichi Higashino?
If I lost, then I lost. You can kill me or torture me if you want, but what gives you the right to educate me?
Shinichi had always used different methods of communication for different kinds of people.
With Konoha ninjas, he could blend his own ideas into the Will of Fire.
To those who trusted him absolutely, he could explain his ideals directly, or, more accurately, his own agenda.
But when dealing with ninjas from other villages, especially those currently at war with Konoha, whether it was the Will of Fire or Shinichi's personal ideology, their effectiveness would be greatly reduced and might even produce the opposite effect.
After all, he was neither a universally recognized leader of the Shinobi World nor some internationally acknowledged mentor of thought.
At present, the name Shinichi Higashino alone did not carry enough weight for him to directly impose his own ideas upon enemy ninjas in his personal capacity.
Therefore, Shinichi chose the Sage of Six Paths.
No matter how vague and mythical the Sage of Six Paths' legends might be, he was still universally recognized throughout the Shinobi World as the Ancestor of all ninjas.
Invoking the Ancestor's name changed everything.
The prisoners' instinctive resistance toward his words would immediately be reduced by a layer, or at the very least not triggered outright, because the person speaking was no longer Shinichi Higashino of Konoha but the ninja ancestor, the Sage of Six Paths.
Even if they did not completely accept what was being said, they would at least listen to part of it, because whether or not they believed the Sage of Six Paths truly existed, they could not confidently and openly refute the Ancestor of all ninjas.
Once they listened to even a portion of it, they would begin to waver and begin to think.
And then they would start building a mental staircase for themselves.
Of course, throughout this process, many people would inevitably raise objections.
What gives you the right, Shinichi Higashino, to claim that your interpretation reflects the Ancestor's true intentions?
Why should you be able to represent the Sage of Six Paths?
After all, no one had ever met the Sage of Six Paths, who knew what he had really thought back then?
But that did not matter, because at that point, it would enter the stage Shinichi loved most, doctrinal debate!
And it would be a doctrinal debate within a framework that he himself had established.
In his previous life, he had at least been a humanities student. He had attended university properly, studied many systematic schools of thought, and read countless historical accounts.
He would not dare claim mastery over them, but in this world, where there were no philosophers, no thinkers, and not even a respectable military theorist to be found, if he still managed to lose a doctrinal debate against ninjas who had spent their entire lives learning how to kill people and had never even seriously read a proper book, then Shinichi Higashino might as well slit his own throat and die.
And through one round of doctrinal debate after another, Shinichi would gradually establish himself as both the spokesperson of the Sage of Six Paths and a mentor of thought, while simultaneously planting the banner of the Sage of Six Paths' orthodoxy more firmly with each passing step.
When people begin asking, what gives you the right to say this is the Ancestor's true intention? They had already unknowingly followed Shinichi into the framework he had created.
The Sage of Six Paths, who had originally been little more than a vague legend, would become increasingly like an unquestionable authority through repeated discussions and challenges, ultimately becoming an indisputable orthodoxy.
They would begin to assume that the Sage of Six Paths was the ultimate standard of judgment, yet no one would realize that from the very beginning, there had only ever been one person sitting in the judge's seat of that debate, Shinichi Higashino alone.
In the future, when these people eventually accepted Shinichi's leadership or entered into cooperation with him, they would not feel that they were betraying their village.
They would rationalize their choices, believing they were not bowing to a ninja from another village but rather following the original intention bestowed upon ninjas by their ancestors and correcting a mistake and deviation that had persisted for a thousand years.
This was not betrayal.
It was a revival.
It was a correction.
To Shinichi, the Sage of Six Paths occupied the same role that the Duke of Zhou had occupied for Confucius in his previous life.
The Duke of Zhou established rites and music, laying the institutional foundations that sustained the Zhou dynasty for eight hundred years, while Confucius spent his entire life transmitting rather than creating, believing in and loving the ancients, dedicating himself to organizing and preserving the way of the Duke of Zhou.
He never claimed to be an innovator, and he always positioned himself as an inheritor and interpreter of the wisdom of the ancient kings, attributing all of his teachings to the restoration of the duke of Zhou's way, as though he were merely repeating the words of his predecessors and had never created anything new himself.
For his entire life, he elevated the Duke of Zhou to an almost sacred status.
Then, along two parallel tracks, he quietly accomplished one of history's greatest reversals, and while alive, Confucius used the Duke of Zhou as his banner.
After death, Confucius himself became the banner, a banner greater than the Duke of Zhou.
The one revered by later generations as the teacher of ten thousand ages was not the Duke of Zhou, but Confucius.
And the tablet of the supreme sage ultimately bore the name of that interpreter who claimed only to transmit rather than create.
This was the ultimate logic of reforming through antiquity.
Use the names of the ancients to establish your own words.
Use the authority of the ancients to establish your own credibility.
An ancestor never weakens the authority of the interpreter himself.
People can only truly understand what that distant Ancestor said and intended through the interpreter.
As time passes, the founder's image ceases to be those vague outlines recorded in ancient texts.
Instead, it becomes the face shaped and presented by the interpreter.
Eventually, a day may come when people look toward the Ancestor, and what they actually see is the interpreter's own face.
And in the end, when reform truly takes root, when an entirely new system and order become firmly established throughout the Shinobi World, who will still care about what the Sage of Six Paths actually said all those years ago?
What people remember is the individual who truly drove everything forward during that era.
Who the Sage of Six Paths was will no longer matter, and he will not even remain a symbol, because Shinichi Higashino will have replaced the Sage of Six Paths as the new symbol in the hearts of the people.
At that time, he, Shinichi Higashino, will be the sage.
He will be the orthodoxy.
He will be the teacher of ten thousand years.
He will be the supreme sage and first teacher.
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