Volume 2: Thick and Thin, Wind and Cloud Chapter 33: Gun Technique Training

  The days have entered the cold winter. The goose feather-like snowflakes are floating in the air, covering the entire high-rise city and the town below with a layer of white snow.

  After the sun came out during the day, the heavy snow gradually stopped. The Tengoku Pavilion was covered with white snow, and the foot soldiers inside the city began to sweep away the snow with brooms and clean the stairs. The warriors guarding the city also started their daily training, exchanging wooden swords for one-on-one sparring practice.

  On the training grounds, apart from paired practice with swords, one can occasionally see a robust big man wearing only a loincloth, single-handedly taking on four or five warriors armed with wooden swords.

  On the other side of Ni no Maru, on the riding grounds, a dozen or so mounted samurai with quivers on their backs and longbows in hand galloped their warhorses towards targets thirty paces away to practice horseback archery.

  At this time, warriors had to be proficient in gunnery, jujutsu (not judo), archery, horsemanship, and higher-level ones also had to study cultural Chinese characters. Generally speaking, the most skilled martial arts equipment for warriors was still knives, guns and bows and arrows were relatively rare.

  As a samurai, you must train day and night in the martial arts, a tradition that has been passed down since the Heian period.

  Unless they were samurai with hereditary stipends, having a good martial art was essential for ordinary samurai, as it was their bread and butter and the condition of being employed by the lord. The daimyo would generally give stipends according to one's contribution to the lord's house, ability, and if the samurai became lazy or unsuitable for battle, the daimyo would mercilessly deprive them of their stipend.

  It's just like what bosses often say: an employee's ability must be worth the salary, otherwise get ready to leave.

  During the Warring States period, due to continuous wars and Japan being a land of poor soil, famines and disasters were normal occurrences. At that time, not only farmers but also samurai and even daimyos themselves sometimes couldn't eat their fill. In such cases, some daimyos either reduced salaries or ruthlessly dismissed low-ranking samurai from their households.

  The worst was the Oda family's demon king, who would occasionally expel several inferior members to maintain the progress of his senior generals. For example, old general Sakuma Nobumori, his son Sakuma Nobuharu, Hayashi Michitoki, Ando Moriyuki, Niwa Nagahide and others all belonged to this category of being fired.

  So in Kōfūjō, even if Takeda Shingen didn't urge them on, the warriors under him kept their training state every day, regardless of wind or rain, and no one would slack off.

  Just as the warriors were practicing their martial arts in the city, a small courtyard in Gao Yuan Cheng kept sending out the sound of gunstocks and wooden swords colliding.

  The air was filled with a chilly atmosphere, and occasionally the snowflakes would suddenly swirl up in a big wave. In the corridor of the courtyard, more than a dozen warriors sat in various postures, their wooden swords and armor casually thrown aside, holding their breath and watching the confrontation in the courtyard.

  Li Xiaolong stood with his legs eight feet apart, holding a gun in both hands and standing in the center of the arena. He was wearing a bamboo-made protective helmet on his head. Now the gun head had been removed from his hand, and there were two cotton balls wrapped around the ends of the gun handle, stained with black charcoal powder.

  Opposite him were eight samurai, armed with wooden swords and wearing bamboo armor, slowly moving in a horizontal circle around Li Xiao, their eyes fixed intently on each other, not daring to relax for a moment. Several people grasped the wooden swords tightly, their hands sweating even in the cold winter, and their breathing was uneven, with white mist emanating from their mouths and noses.

  At this time, Li Xiao still had a calm demeanor, his eyes cast downward. He felt that the large spear was now connected to him as one entity, breathing in sync with each other. In such a situation where he was surrounded by multiple opponents on all sides, it was impossible for his line of sight to cover 360 degrees. The opponent also used rapid and slow movements to confuse him, making him feel like everything around him was a potential threat.

  The calmer you are at this time, the more you can concentrate your strength and launch a fierce counterattack against the incoming enemy.

  Time had passed for exactly ten minutes, and Li Xiao was as still as an old monk in meditation. At this time, one of the warriors finally couldn't bear it anymore, holding his wooden sword horizontally and attacking Li Xiao from the left side. Meanwhile, another warrior took advantage of the distraction to charge towards the empty space behind Li Xiao's back.

  At this moment, Li Xiao's large gun was like a giant python, first striking the warrior behind him. A dull sound was heard, and the gun handle happened to poke at the opponent's chest armor, leaving a black charcoal mark. The opponent was also knocked down by the force, with his four legs facing upwards and his back on the ground.

  One.

  Li Xiao let out a loud shout, twisting his legs to dodge the wooden knife coming from the left side. His left arm pulled back on the resilient gun handle like a spring, and with a clean and swift motion, he used the gun butt to knock down another person. Immediately afterwards, Li Xiao held up his gun horizontally to block the wooden knives of two other people who were attacking him.

  Two.

  Then Li Xiao swung his spear in all directions, dancing so densely that the wind couldn't penetrate. In one breath, he forced open several other warriors who tried to take advantage of the short inch of the wooden knife and wanted to enter the circle of Li Xiao's spear to engage in close combat with him.

  Maintain a safe distance with the length of your spear, don't give the enemy any chance to enter the circle. This is the only trick to using a long spear and a samurai sword in combat. As the saying goes, "one inch longer, one inch stronger; one inch shorter, one inch more dangerous".

  Among the eight samurai, two were marked with a black carbon tip and lost, retreating to one side to rest. Six people remained on the field.

  "Mr. Li Xia's martial arts skills have improved again."

  On the top of the Gaotai Building, a small window was slightly open, and its position happened to be facing the corner where Li Xiaobi was fighting.

  Behind the small window, Takeda Shoryu and Yamamoto Kanetsugu were standing with their hands clasped together, carefully watching how Li Xiao could take on eight men alone. These eight men were not ordinary peasant soldiers, they were all warriors of the Takeda family, and several of them had experienced numerous battles.

  When Yamamoto Kanetsugu gave such rare praise to Li Xiao, Takeda Shingen laughed and said: "Yes, a month ago, his strength was about one person challenging four warriors. Ten days later, it increased from four to six people. Five days ago, he could even fight against eight warriors."

  Yamamoto Kan no Suketake shook his head and said, "No, this can't explain anything. It just shows that he's good at group battles, but isn't long-handled weapons supposed to be used in formation battles? If he were to encounter a skilled swordsman, one-on-one duel, Li Xiao wouldn't have it so easy."

  Yamamoto Kan no suke had just finished speaking when Li Xiao kicked another samurai flying and solved another one in the blink of an eye.

  Takeda Shōrai laughed and said, "I don't think so. You don't know that Li Xiao told me yesterday when we were chatting that ten days ago he went to a swordsmanship dojo in Tsuwano-machi where the Katori Shinto-ryu style is practiced and had a one-on-one match against the master of the dojo and six or seven of his disciples, and lost."

  Yamamoto Kanbei's eyes narrowed slightly, Li Xiao went to the town of Biwu, how could he not know? Li Xiao's whereabouts were reported daily by a special ninja to Yamamoto Kanbei.

  In the information brought back from Ninja Den, when Li Xiao went to visit Zhenfang Town, where he went to try his luck, it was simply a challenge. The process was to first enter and defeat the entry-level disciples who practiced swordsmanship in the opponent's dojo, then knock down a dozen or so, and finally use verbal ridicule to force the opponent's master and the master's direct disciple to engage in a one-on-one duel.

  Li Xiao used a large gun to fight against the disciples of the Taoist temple, winning seven consecutive rounds. In the final round, he even broke the ribs of the temple's master. What was even more outrageous was that Li Xiao took away the signboard outside the temple as he left, claiming it was to keep as a souvenir.

  Yamamoto Kan no Suket thought of this and couldn't help but shake his head, unaware that 400 years later in China, there would be a movie called "Fist of Fury" with an actor named Bruce Lee, who was Xiaolong's idol during his school days.

  The most impressive scene in the movie is Bruce Lee using nunchucks to single-handedly challenge a Japanese dojo. After time-traveling, Li Xiao decides to promote this sport and plans to make it one of his long-term hobbies.