The last large-scale battle on the Crescent Continent Continent was already a dusty history that I don't know how far ago.

Even small-scale clashes have largely been confined to a few border areas. As the Rigal people are accustomed to, city-state-to-city, lord-to-lord, small wars that occur almost once a year or two are not seen in most parts of the country.

What does peace mean?

On a broader level, it means a steady increase in population. Without war, the largest population consumption movement ever invented, all that remains is natural disasters and food shortages that accompany the explosion of population, which will once again control the growth of the population.

And from a narrower level, which is closely related to the current environment in which we find ourselves, the long-term peace has obviously had a very significant impact on the warrior class of the Moon Country.

The two sides of the battle were a high-ranking samurai of Wato with a beard and high braids, and Yajiro, a young master.

Henry and the others all came from their camp, and some of the young Yiren who were interested in martial arts and fighting also came, but more were still busy with their own affairs.

They enclosed the woodland on one side, while the samurai and ashigaru enclosed on the other side, and the clearing in the middle was the arena for the two of them.

Yajiro clearly enjoyed this kind of jousting fight, and he was skilful in holding the wooden knife and standing in a good position.

The same was true of the other samurai, both lightly armed, holding the tip of their wooden swords at their opponents, vigilant, and neither side immediately attacked.

"Sort of, weird. The young master's posture was still very correct, but for some reason, compared to the battle with the sage that day, Mira always felt that the two of them looked strange today.

"......" Henry glanced at her, but before he could break through, the two of them attacked separately.

"Smack!" closes the distance, and then controls the distance with small steps, Yajiro attacks first but is immediately blocked by the opponent. He took the time to glance at this side in the middle of the battle, and then instead of retreating in the usual way of the Moon Country, he re-attacked and did not retreat, but advanced, according to the Rigali method, and struck him in the armpit while pulling away the samurai sword on the other side.

"Hoos! On the other side, a samurai with a long stick shouted loudly, apparently acting as a referee or something.

"Whoa—" The samurai, who had been hit in the chest, took a few steps back, rubbed his left armpit, and then hung his head, "Lost in the next place." And he retreated to the rear.

"Good!"

"Worthy of the young master!"

A series of cheers erupted among the samurai behind him, and the defeat in a moment was not the opponent's release, Yajiro's reaction speed was extremely fast and he used the foreign sword skills he had learned from fighting with the sage before, and he was slow in the face of an unfamiliar situation, and it was natural to lose.

The samurai looked very proud, and even the bearded samurai who was defeated looked at Yajiro with a look of relief and nodded repeatedly.

After only one encounter with Henry, he quickly understood the gist of Rigalese blocking and applied it to actual confrontations, proving that he was indeed talented and a clear man who was willing to take matters into further.

It's just that the young man's heart is still very easy to guess, and he glanced at Henry for a moment before he started, and after using this technique to defeat the opponent samurai, he looked again arrogantly, and Yajiro was already almost writing the word on his face.

"Next!" he turned and called again, and another samurai on horseback came out of the ranks. Most of these people had just become a samurai on horseback, and their faces looked very young, a few years older than Yajiro.

"Please give me advice, young master. The young man, who was a little taller than Yajiro and about 1.7 meters, bowed, and then also took a gesture of holding a knife. It's just that unlike Yajiro's favorite mid-position, he holds his sword up in a higher position, apparently intending to take advantage of his relative height advantage to attack from above.

Those who were knowledgeable in the room could tell this at a glance, and Yajiro was the same, but he didn't change his posture. First, the mid-position starting hand can be attacked and defended very well-balanced, and secondly, even if he uses the high-position starting style, because the height gap will become the strength of hitting the enemy with his own shortcomings, but he will fall into a disadvantage.

- He knew where his flaws were, at least when his opponent was also using the Tsuki Kuni martial arts, and Yajiro knew how to deal with them.

When facing Henry before, the sage put on a move that he had never seen at all, and he didn't know how to deal with that situation, which was probably an isolated case. But although the martial arts of the Southern Barbarians are indeed different, everyone is a person with two hands and two feet, and there is still not much difference in some basic routines.

Therefore, Yajiro's failure at that time was not entirely due to the gap in technical strength, but to the psychological level.

What he should do is to respond to change with the same. Wait for the sage to make a move, and after confirming the attack distance and approximate moves, find the corresponding restraint from the martial arts you have learned.

Of course, it is also questionable whether our Sage Sage, who knows this, will reveal his attack range and sword skills. But all in all, what Yajiro should never have done was to shake off the uneasiness in his heart that he didn't know anything about Henry's starting hand at that time. Without knowing how the opponent will use the weapon, closing the distance is equivalent to burying the opportunity you may have to fight back.

He was still a young man, lacking the composure and composure of an older swordsman, and he used his temperament rather than skill to control the sword in his hand, so that he could have played normally and could have fought two or three more rounds, but he was easily knocked down by impulse.

But this is clearly not going to last forever.

Yajiro is a reflective person, he is not the classic incompetent boy who is blindly unruly. He thinks, he learns, he changes.

There is an old saying in the country of the moon called "Shibei should be impressed for three days", which is translated into the popular language of Rigal, which probably refers to the fact that talented people will make great progress even if they have not seen each other for a while, and they must not keep holding on to each other's past mistakes and shortcomings.

Yajiro is clearly the one who fits this statement.

Or maybe the reason why the opponent was a samurai who was very familiar with his own family, after realizing that the young samurai on the other side had restrained himself, he did not attack directly like in the first round, but tentatively advanced and retreated several times, all in small steps with breathing, obviously still recuperating his strength.

The two of them swayed from side to side like a balance together, and there were a few times in the middle to close the distance, but Yajiro didn't get close enough to attack, just tentatively, kept approaching and posing as if he was going to attack, but he didn't really attack.

- Compared to the battle with Henry, he has become much calmer.

This work after a few attempts, and the young samurai on the other side took the initiative to attack Yajiro by virtue of his taller stature. He also took small steps to close the distance, and when he reached the attack distance, he extended his hands directly to the longest range with a large upper slash, and struck Yajiro with the tip of the wooden knife.

The young master of the Qingtian family can only retreat, because his arm length is not as long as the opponent's because he is shorter, and if he wants to fight the attack distance, he will be hit before the weapon can reach the opponent.

But he didn't immediately retreat, but avoided the attack within the limit distance with small broken steps, and then closed the distance from the side again.

- This is a tactic designed to target the drawbacks of the upper attack, although the slash is powerful and heavy, but the movement of raising your hands above your head is obvious and large, which means that you can be prepared to dodge in advance and seize the time to close the distance while the opponent's knife is not retracted -

But with such a flaw, the Japanese samurai naturally had a way to solve it, and I saw that the young katana had not yet slashed to the end, and immediately flipped his wrist into a slash and struck again towards the little young master who was about to rush to the side.

"It's a flash!"

"Yes, Ah Yong, your kid's swordsmanship has improved a lot!" There was another sound of admiration among the onlookers, and Yajiro urgently staggered and blocked the young samurai's combo with the "click" of the wooden knife in his hand.

"Boom-" The smooth wooden knives slid away when they collided, and Yajiro once again opened the distance with small steps, and then struck Yuyu's head with a small margin, while the wooden knife was still in the middle position.

"Drink ——!" The young samurai raised his weapon and rushed back to defense, but because of this action, the foot that was sideways on Yajiro's side lost its defense, and the little young master didn't use a lot of force to swing the wooden knife to turn around, and immediately retracted it and hit his calf, and then another knife took advantage of Yong's loss of balance and hit him in the chest.

"Hoos! The samurai in charge of the referee shouted again.

"Oh!"

"Sure enough, the young master is stronger!"

The successive attacks looked so powerful that even the people who were standing here and watching were stunned by the Doctor, the Oiran, the missionary, and the stunned young man who was standing on the side.

"Lost under the bottom. The young warrior rubbed his aching calves and stood up. Yajiro glanced back at Henry again, his face full of defiance.

“...... It's weird. "Our little girl Luo'an frowned, and although this scene did seem to be very ornamental, she always had an indescribable sense of disobedience in it.

The knives are dazzling, the movements are clever, and the control of the attack distance between the two sides is just right.

Yajiro and Yong's strengths and weaknesses are very clear, but-

It's just how you look at it, what's wrong.

The sage noticed Mira's thoughtful little expression, so he faintly said:

"You want to change their weapons to real swords. ”

"Huh?" the girl tilted her head, confused.

"Ah——!" Then he suddenly sighed.

"No wonder it looks so weird. The white-haired girl said this, and since the two of them did not avoid suspicion and used Avenella, the samurai who had stopped for the time being and did not continue the competition turned their eyes to it.

"What kind of Nanban words do you say crookedly, if you have an opinion, say it. Although the bearded samurai, who looked relatively rude, could not understand Avenella, it could be seen from his expression that the two were not appreciating Yajiro's technique, and he was very displeased, and he frowned and said in a loud voice.

"If you change to a real sword, the beautiful skills just now won't work. The sage changed to the language of the Moon Country, shrugged his shoulders, and said this.

"Huh?!" "What are you talking about, Nanban?" "You're looking for something, aren't you? "Don't don't, don't argue, he's the one who won the battle against the young master—" Miscellaneous discussions rang out one after another, but Yajiro was unexpectedly not angry, he raised his hand to stop the samurai, and then took the initiative to speak to the sage for the first time in so long since yesterday's provocation was violently beaten:

"What do you say?" the young master's tone was still a little arrogant and blunt, but it could be seen that his enterprising spirit for improving his sword skills exceeded his arrogant self-esteem.

"You're on a point system, right? The sage held up a finger, and Yajiro nodded. Other people who could understand the Chinese language of the moon also looked at Henry.

"I've been here in the past, so I know a little bit about how you fight. Henry continued.

"Because of the perennial peace, the samurai need to maintain their skills in using their weapons so that they do not waste them. But it can't be said that every fight is a real sword, because that would lead to bloodshed and casualties, which in turn will lead to hatred. ”

"Holding a joust on a peaceful day would kill a large number of people, and normal people would think that such an event is problematic. The sage gradually began to convince the crowd with his knowledge of all this, and all of them, including the samurai and ashigaru, nodded approvingly and listened quietly.

"But how do you choose the winner without killing someone, or even further, without injuring someone?" he continued, "and it's a series of points that can be fatally scored by referring to the vital parts of the human body and the like." Am I right?"

"Yes, the head is forbidden to attack, because it is too easy to kill. The limbs and torso are used as scoring points, with the torso being the most. Yajiro nodded and replied.

"So that's the problem. Henry's eyes narrowed: "You may not have noticed the problem yourself, but my lovely disciple has never been exposed to this kind of competition, so she has noticed." ”

"What happens when the purpose of wielding a weapon changes from 'killing the opponent' to 'scoring by touching'?" the sage shrugged, "What used to be a slash that required a large stride with the help of a calf and waist to increase the power has become a more flexible small step. The swinging movement is also very light to increase the reaction speed. ”

"That is, because the purpose is only to score, and scoring only needs to hit. Before you know it, you forget about it in order to win. He said word for word:

"How to kill with a real sword. ”

"Because you win by scoring just by touching your opponent, it becomes a game of speed. In order to pursue speed, he used a wooden instrument that was only half the weight of a real sword, and in order to pursue speed, he did not even hold a sword, and he did not use the strength of his waist, calves, shoulders, and arms, and even used a little strength of his wrist, because as long as he touched it, he would be scored. Unlike real swords, unlike swordsmanship that kills enemies, you need to consider whether your attack has caused enough wounds and whether it is enough to knock down the opponent. ”

"It's all about being flexible and fast, and being able to touch the right spot to score is the win. Therefore, swordsmanship has also been transformed unconsciously. ”

"No matter how nice it sounds, how gorgeous it looks. Henry shrugged: "This kind of thing, it's just sports." ”

“.......”

"......" the samurai fell silent.

It's like a direct taunt in the face, but naturally it's not that our Sage has a bad personality itself. Although the Luo An girl, who understood all this, couldn't help but roll her eyes again and silently say the sentence "Mr. Sage is really a bad adult", but what he said sounded so ugly precisely because he hit the nail on the head.

There's no way around it, because they need to somehow determine who wins, and they can't actually kill someone.

If the two sides of the fight with a wooden knife are too hard, the opponent will inevitably become resentful if he is broken or disabled, and when the samurai families are intertwined and intertwined, the injury of one person can lead to a feud between two large families or two domains.

Swordsmanship is a killing technique, and you don't want this skill to become unfamiliar and lost, and you don't want someone to die or be seriously injured in the confrontation.

No matter how you say this, it doesn't make sense.

"You Nanban!" "What nonsense!"

But even if the truth is correct, the samurai obviously can't accept it in terms of self-esteem.

"Here we go again. Mira sighed, and the crowd of passionate warriors rushed towards the sage.