Chapter 552 - Please Enlighten Me (1/2)

Chapter 552 Please Enlighten Me

Yamada stormed into the dojo, only to spot the boy who pointed them in the wrong direction. He glared at the poor kid with the eyes of a tiger.

“Hmph! I’ll deal with you later!”

The boy turned as white as a sheet and hid behind Akane to avoid Yamada’s death-stare.

The samurai ignored Zhang Heng and said to Akane, “This is great. That fight last nightyou attacked me when I was drunk and insulted our Choshu warriors. We get to fight again today.”

Yamada was as shrewd as ever. He spoke first, making sure to cla.s.sify last night’s ambush on a drunk man as foul-play as an excuse for his defeat. But he wasn’t all that wrong. If he had not been so tipsy last night, he would not have lost to Akane, who was only wielding a wooden sword.

Akane was unfazed. It was probably because she grew up in a dojo that she had grown used to such threats. She wasn’t bothered to argue with Yamada, merely gesturing him to enter the building. The entire group entered the main hall.

The children that were training put down their bokuto* and stared. The atmosphere in the dojo had suddenly s.h.i.+fted.

Akane pulled two bokuto from the shelf, one for herself and the other for Yamada.

She threw the sword to him, but he did not reach out, letting the bokuto land by his feet.

“I don’t need it. I brought my own.”

Yamada pulled out the Tachi at his waist.

Instantly, the children went into an uproar. Friendly duels among warriors were nothing unusual, and even if they had trained under different schools of swordsmans.h.i.+p, there were always areas where they could learn from each other, just like research, the more a truth gets debated, the clearer it becomes. Other than training daily, warriors were also required to compete with others to gain experience.

Generally, a wooden katana would be used for obvious safety reasons. It helped to determine who won, and both warriors generally benefited from the maintained peace.

If real weapons were used, lives would surely be put at risk, mostly when the competing party’s skills were on a similar level. Just one wrong move would lead to an inevitable disaster.

Akane did not realize that Yamada had meant for them to use real weapons when he challenged her to a duel. She shook her head.

“I haven’t trained my Myos.h.i.+n-ryū enough. I’m nowhere near my father’s level. I cannot guarantee that I can fight with a real weapon without hurting my opponent.”

“It’s alright. Swords are meant to injure, and life and death are ruled by fate. We can swear that whichever way the duel ends, we will not hold the other party responsible and allow our past grievances to be forgotten,” Yamada answered.

He barely finished when Takeuchi chuckled aloud. “This is about the Choshu samurai’s reputation! Since when did you start calling the shots? Just because you say bygones are bygones doesn’t mean it is.”

Yamada was speechless. Even though what Takeuchi said was unpleasant to the ear, it was the truth. Last night’s incident was about the serious crime of insulting the Choshu warriors. Just because he said it was forgiven did not mean it was. Yamada believed himself to be the better fighter, and it was proven during last night’s fight. Even though he was drunk, he was able to work out the fundamentals of her skills. According to Yamada’s own reasoning, getting rid of Akane will solve the problem, but there was nothing he could do about Takeuchi finding fault with his choice of words.