Chapter 151: Winning Outside the Rules (Second Update)-What to Do If You Look Too Intimidating(A new village emerges as dawn breaks.)

"Clack!"

The explosive collisions of the bamboo swords drowned out all other noise within the kendo hall.

The consecutive, rapid-fire impacts caused the surrounding students to instinctively hold their breath. To their eyes, Aoki Tsukasa and Sakai Sayoko seemed to separate and close in a blur, their bamboo swords reduced to mere afterimages.

Tsukasa's bamboo sword slashed downward fiercely, connecting with his opponent's face guard. Yet Sayoko remained unperturbed, simultaneously countering by resting her own bamboo sword against Tsukasa's throat. The two touched and instantly separated, returning to their original defensive middle-guard stances. They had exchanged blows for over a dozen seconds, trading multiple hits, yet neither scored a point.

*Tch, she really is a bit troublesome.* Tsukasa's expression beneath his mask was grave. His opponent's strength was by no means weak. While she fell far short of the unfathomable Saeko-senpai, she was undoubtedly the strongest opponent Tsukasa had faced thus far.

Though Sayoko's physical prowess and explosive power lagged far behind Tsukasa's, her extensive experience—particularly in parrying and counterattacking—was formidable. Tsukasa had repeatedly attempted to overwhelm her with sheer strength, only for her to redirect his momentum and nearly dislodge his weapon, forcing him to exercise much greater caution.

Circling the edge of the arena slowly, Tsukasa and Sayoko suddenly fell into a stalemate, halting their previous fierce onslaughts.

Beneath her mask, Sayoko's cherry lips parted slightly as she panted in short breaths, desperately trying to conceal her massive exhaustion: *This bald guy is ridiculously strong! Even the instructors who taught kendo at the foreign dojo back then barely matched this kind of raw power! If his technique weren't still a bit crude, I probably wouldn't have lasted this long.*

*What should I do? How do I break this deadlock?* Sayoko's mind raced for a countermeasure.

Tsukasa was naturally experiencing the exact same thing. His understanding of kendo lacked depth; in a pure fight for survival, he was confident he could finish his opponent within three rounds. Yet confined to the complex rules of a kendo match, he felt somewhat constrained.

How could he break through her defense and score a point?

Tsukasa licked his lips and narrowed his eyes slightly. Flashes of his previous victories flickered through his mind, gradually forming a strategy.

"Die!" Tsukasa roared, lunging forward as his bamboo sword struck toward Sayoko's head like a flash of lightning. Holding nothing back, he unleashed an amount of power far exceeding his usual output, bringing his sword crashing down toward Sayoko in the blink of an eye.

Sayoko's pupils contracted. She hastily raised her sword with both hands to block, but the sheer weight of Tsukasa's mountain-splitting strike sent a wave of intense pain through her arms, forcing her body to bend slowly under the duress.

*Damn it, you still want to suppress me with pure strength?* With Tsukasa's bamboo sword pressing agonizingly close to her face, Sayoko gritted her teeth, took a sharp breath, and let out a piercing cry: "Ya!"

She put every ounce of her remaining strength into pushing the bamboo sword upward, attempting to slide it along Tsukasa's blade toward his hands.

Tsukasa was never going to let her succeed. With a slight retraction to deflect her blade, he poured power back into his weapon, launching a ferocious counter-strike directly at Sayoko's oncoming sword!

"Clack!" Numbness spread through Sayoko's hands, making her feel as though the webbing between her thumbs and forefingers was tearing. Suppressing the pain, she drew a sharp breath, stubbornly refusing to let her weapon be knocked aside.

*What is this guy trying to do? Is he trying to shatter my sword?*

A flicker of panic crossed Sayoko's eyes, but she quickly regained her composure: *If you want to knock away my weapon before hitting me, then I'll take the offensive!*

In a split second, Sayoko dropped low into a crouch, unleashing a horizontal slash straight at Tsukasa's abdomen.

*I see it!*

Tsukasa's pupils contracted. Her bizarre and erratic maneuver began to trace a predictable path in his vision. Flicking his bamboo sword downward, he intercepted and struck Sayoko's weapon once more.

*Damn it!*

Sayoko felt her palms grow sticky—whether from sweat or blood, she could not tell—and her hands had gone practically numb. Yet she knew that if she failed to secure this round, winning the next would be an insurmountable task.

*Just hold on for twenty seconds. After twenty seconds, the first round ends, and at worst, it's a draw!*

Sayoko's former arrogance evaporated, replaced by a desperate longing for a mere tie.

*This guy is an absolute monster!*

Staring at the masked Tsukasa before her, Sayoko's eyes trembled slightly: *This guy... is improving every single second!*

An attack that worked once would never succeed a second time—this was the despairing reality Sayoko felt when facing Tsukasa.

*I refuse to lose here! Defense always breeds vulnerability; how could anyone ever win solely through defense?!*

Taking a deep breath, Sayoko stepped back to evade Tsukasa's thrust, holding her breath tightly.

"Yaha!"

"Ya!"

She launched a frantic barrage of attacks, her sharp kiai mingling with the crisp cracks of clashing bamboo swords, deafening within the hall.

"Clack!" "Clack!"

With absolute focus, Tsukasa tracked her sword path, entirely abandoning thoughts of how to counterattack. At that moment, his sole objective was to locate where the enemy's bamboo sword was, and then—slash at it!

To Sayoko, this remained a proper kendo match. But to Tsukasa, it had devolved into a simple game of striking a moving target with a bamboo stick.

And as long as his reaction speed remained unaffected and his body could keep up, a game like this held zero difficulty!

Indeed, this was Tsukasa's strategic philosophy: a kendo match was like a game of chess. Compared to experienced opponents with a vast repertoire of moves, Tsukasa was admittedly inferior. But did that mean Tsukasa had no way to win? Of course he did!

That was to flip the chess board over and resort to hand-to-hand combat! You're great at chess, are you? Ever seen a fist the size of a sandbag?

Screw your techniques, screw all those messy intricacies! I'm not looking at any of that. I'm just going to brute-force my way through, and I'm going to knock your bamboo sword away! Without a sword, even Tōdō Saeko would be crushed by Tsukasa in a kendo match!

The more he fought, the more exhilarated Tsukasa became, while Sayoko's bamboo sword grew noticeably sluggish.

"Hah!" Tsukasa roared in excitement, his bamboo sword striking toward Sayoko's blade once again with the speed of lightning.

"Clack! Crack!" The pupils in Sayoko's eyes—visible beneath her mask—contracted violently and then widened. Her mind went completely blank as she stared in disbelief.

The very tip of her bamboo sword was visibly caved inward.

*How is it possible? How could anyone strike a bamboo sword so hard that it deforms?*

Taking advantage of that fleeting moment of distraction, Tsukasa delivered yet another blow, landing squarely on Sayoko's weapon.

In truth, had Tsukasa aimed directly at Sayoko's body just then, she might not even have been able to react. Thus, her sword... was knocked away.

"Clack! Clatter."

The bamboo sword dropped to the floor with a crisp sound, rolling away in circles. Unarmed, Sayoko stood frozen in place, while right before her face, the tip of Tsukasa's bamboo sword rested steadily against her throat.

"Red side!"

"Ipon!"

Saeko's lips curved into a faint smile as she raised the red flag high, gazing at Tsukasa with a look that blended tenderness and deep admiration.

The surrounding students erupted into cheers that had been suppressed for far too long.

"Boss Tsukasa!"

"Too cool!"

"Awesome!"

Matsusaka Daibu was so excited he threw his arms around Saiki Kusuo's shoulders, shaking him like a ragdoll while shouting wildly into his neck: "We won! We won!"

"Waiyō High!"

"Banzai!"

"Atsukasa-kun! Banzai!"

"So strong!"

"So handsome! I love you, Tsukasa!"

Hearing what sounded like an extraordinary declaration mixed into the cheers, Tsukasa turned his head with a slightly flushed face and a silly grin.

*I guess I count as having a female fan now, huh?* Tsukasa felt as though he had finally made something of himself.

Then, Tsukasa spotted a female student with multicolored hair and exceptionally distinctive facial features staring straight at him with glowing eyes and a flushed face.

Noticing Tsukasa looking back at her, the one-in-a-million-looking female student grew even more overcome with emotion. Her unusually round, bulbous nose twitched, and the thick layer of white powder on her face began shedding like falling rain. Her huge mouth stretched into a wildly excited grin as she cried out: "I love you so much, Tsukasa! My name is Sakasaki Miko, let's go on a date! Tsukasa-kun~ Suka-kun~ I like you~"

*Sorry, excuse me, I saw nothing!*

With lightning speed, Tsukasa whipped his head back, turning a deafening blind eye to the endless cries behind him. He looked at Saeko's gentle, smiling face and let out a sigh of relief—*Thank you, Senpai, you just saved me the cost of eye-bleach.*

Saeko blinked at him, signaling that the match was not yet over.

Regardless of whether Saeko-senpai could see his face through the mask, Tsukasa offered her a reassuring grin, banishing the terrifying image of the nameless female student to the back of his mind, and turned his attention back to his opponent.

Sayoko kept her head lowered. The bamboo sword at her feet had finally stopped rolling, lying quietly by the side.

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PS: For friends curious about who Sakasaki Miko is, feel free to look her up on Baidu...

The author clutches his face, painfully massaging his fingers, and mutters in quiet despair: "Am I out of my mind? Why did I start updating three chapters a day this early? Why? I only have a tiny stockpile of chapters, what on earth was I thinking..."

"Clatter." A recommendation ticket landed on the desk, and a reader patted the author on the shoulder: "Keep it up."

The author's expression improved slightly.

"Clatter." A generous pile of tips fell onto the desk, and a reader nodded with a smile: "Three chapters a day is pretty good."

A brilliant smile bloomed across the author's face: "Three chapters a day is truly wonderful."