As December of the Great Lunar Calendar 4164 comes to an end, even though it has been a troubled year, the New Year celebrations with lights and colorful decorations still come as usual.
The New Year Festival in Kazuto is the same as in many other places, and there is a series of etiquette to ward off disasters and welcome the new year.
Because most people light oil lamps and candles, as the earliest part of the activity to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new, cleaning up the smoky traces left by the lighting of lamps in the past year has become a mighty national movement.
The specific date specified by Xinjing is generally one of the days from December 13th to 15th when converted to the Rigal calendar due to the discrepancy between the Great Lunar Calendar and the Rigal Calendar. On this day, everyone will put on their headscarves and aprons and work hard to clean away the soot accumulated over the year.
The sight of squalid people in linen clothing appearing in groups is a sight to behold, although it has little relevance to Henry and his party as travelers.
Remove dust, remove ashes, offer incense and pray for blessings.
Most Kazuto families have small shrines, which contain statues of gods or Buddhas and the spiritual tablets of old friends. Their native beliefs are very different from those of the White Church of Rigal. Rather than having specific creeds, they are more a mixture of ancestor worship, the Crescent Continent’s native polytheistic teachings from which the witches came, and those from Abserra in the distant past. Nowadays, a faith called Buddhism has become extinct even on the other side of the prairie.
The temples and ordained monks dotting the mountains are mostly Buddhist beliefs that have been localized by the Kazuto people, while the shrines where the witches belong are a form of belief native to Crescent Continent. However, a Kazuto civilian would not devoutly believe in only one of them. Instead, he might recite the Buddha's name at home and visit a shrine when going out.
This wonderful mixed state is incomprehensible to the monotheistic Rigal people. Conflicts between heretics and pagans can often trigger large-scale wars in Rigal. The same situation may have existed in Kazuto's history, but now it happens to be in a delicate balance, so it's all blended together.
Religious belief and secular power have always been two methods used by monarchs to rule the country. Even high-ranking religious figures in Crescent Continent, which seems to have a very different social structure, still have a strong voice.
But let’s get back to where we started.
The massive cleaning and dust removal activity in mid-December is to "say goodbye to the old", and what is being prepared at the end of the month is to "welcome the new".
The Japanese New Year is more complicated and more ritualized than that of the Rigar people. They have to change into new clothes, cut their hair, dress up nicely, put on their best clothes, and go to places like shrines to pay homage.
Throw money in, ring the bell, and make a New Year's wish.
Later, gifts or money will be given to relatives and friends to enhance relationships.
It’s lively and bustling with supplies.
The West District, where the foreigners live, is close to the commercial street of Xinjing, and within half an hour's walk you can enter an area full of dazzling products. Goods from all over the Crescent Continent are transported by water and placed on the shelves. Exquisite fabrics and various handmade utensils fill the stalls, row after row.
Even drug stores display various beauty products, attracting the attention of ordinary women who want to dress themselves up every year.
Among the people coming and going, in addition to shoppers of all walks of life, there are also vendors carrying snacks. They shout and sell the desserts and various foods they carry. The aroma of food attracts those who have exhausted their energy from shopping and are empty-bellied. In addition, most of them have some savings as the New Year approaches, and these vendors can always sell out all the food quickly.
Peaceful and relaxed, this is how Henry and his party felt when they walked on Xinjing Street at the end of December.
The gloom of the war between the central and northern parts of the country and the feudal territories seemed to have been completely forgotten by them. No one noticed the fact that the stalls that used to focus on northern products such as various bamboo wares were empty this year. They were just content with the prosperity of this life and thought that all this would happen. Lasts forever.
The more people there are, the more trouble there will be.
Discordant tones arose again among the frolicking crowd, and Henry, Mira, Joshua, Galeva and Lulu stopped to watch.
The tallest sage could roughly see what was going on.
"It seems that someone was caught stealing something." He said, and our Luoan girl said absently "Yeah again" while licking the candy apple.
This is already the fifth time they have seen him during their stay in Xinjing.
Some are happy and some are sad. Even in a prosperous place like Xinjing, not everyone is looking forward to the arrival of the New Year. The expense of paying homage, buying new clothes, and visiting relatives is a huge pressure for people who have spent a year of poverty, and when the pressure is high, people will inevitably tend to take the wrong approach.
"What are you doing? What are you doing!" The noisy voice attracted the attention of most passers-by and roadside merchants. After people quieted down, the sharp voice of the ragged man became extremely conspicuous.
"It's a northern accent again." "Really, why don't these people all go back to the north?" A passerby woman said in a low voice, covering half of her face with a fan.
The war in the north caused the displacement of many civilians. Henry and his party traveled overland for a full year to avoid encirclement and interception before arriving in Xinjing. However, many people smuggled in or dispersed their wealth and took boats to arrive here early.
It's just that the landless samurai turned into ronin are not welcome, but the landless peasants are in the flower-filled capital of Otsuki.
They can only survive like a ditch rat.
Although this time it doesn't seem to be the latter.
The man with a stooped body, unkempt hair, and ragged clothes suddenly had dark blue hair.
He held a few pieces of fine silk and tried to sneak away, but the waiter in the clothing store grabbed him by the corner of his shoulders. Even though they had become ronin, theft still did not happen often to the arrogant Xinyuezhou nobles, so the waiter in the clothing store suddenly didn't know what to do.
He held the ronin by the shoulders with one hand and a stick in the other. If he hadn't seen the opponent's hair color and the waist knife hidden under the broken feather fabric, he would have hit him with a stick on the spot.
Now that he discovered that the other party was not a commoner but a noble, he just froze there and refused to let go, but he didn't know how to take further action.
Seeing that the other party was intimidated by his identity, this northern nobleman who had become a wanderer became more confident. He lowered his voice that had become shrill due to timidity to increase the deterrence.
"If you let go now, I can still forgive you for your rudeness." He straightened his stooped figure, deliberately pushed aside the feather fabric to reveal the handle of the waist knife, which was as damaged as his clothes, and put his hand on the scabbard with his thumb. Live in the sword.
"Let's go, let's go." Seeing that the conflict was about to turn ugly, other passers-by and merchants hurried away, leaving only a few brave ones hiding at the corner of the street and peeking secretly.
They faded away like the tide, making Henry and his party who stayed behind more conspicuous. However, the people in the clothing store and the ronin only took a look at them and regarded them as curious and ignorant southern barbarians, and ignored them.
Ronin's threats made the waiter lower his blood-stained stick. He visibly flinched, but he looked back and the boss behind him kept winking at him to keep him from letting go. The stalemate continued for a while.
The waiter's physique is considered tall among Kazuto, with a height of more than 1.7 meters and a relatively fat body. Although the ronin carries a knife on his waist, years of displacement and malnutrition have made him thinner than this commoner. One side was intimidated by appearance, and the other was intimidated by identity and weapons. In this way, the two sides reached a delicate balance. A minute later when most of the other passers-by had withdrawn, they were still in a stalemate.
And it was at this time that the sound of "ta-da-da" footsteps sounded behind Henry and his party. The Luoan girl who had eaten half of the candy apple turned around and saw that the comrades from the training center who were wearing special formations with a crescent moon emblem were rushing towards them in groups of 6. They were obviously among the civilians who had just escaped. Someone went to report to the official.
The huge Xinjing has a large population, so security problems often occur. In order to solve this problem, a security agency called the Hoshinosho established by the royal family of Otsuki Kingdom came into being.
The director of the enforcing office is named "Yori" after Kazuto, and the official who is a low-level samurai who is responsible for solving problems under his command is named "Doshin".
Judging from the identity marks painted on the haori and jinkasa of these people, they should be the "Dinghui Toxin" of the same heart - that is, officials who are stationed in a certain area and are only responsible for the security affairs of that area.
The Tongxins appeared very quickly, and the fact that they were both nobles and officially appointed security personnel made the civilians who saw it feel at ease - they came out more boldly to watch, and the waiter of the clothing store also had a stalemate with them. The ronin in the middle turned to look this way——
But it was at this moment that the sage spoke calmly:
"It's going to be worse."
The shaved forehead was dripping with cold sweat, the eyes were wide open, the lips were trembling, and the satin fabric, which was obviously very precious, could hardly be held in the hand and was about to fall to the ground.
This ronin must be a first-time offender. The arrogance of the samurai allowed him to stick to his duty even though he was skinny and skinny in the poverty-stricken days. However, the gentry class in Xinyue Continent is already overcrowded, and there is no place for the ronin who fled from the north.
Perhaps days like this finally wiped out his fighting spirit, and when the New Year came, everyone else's face was full of spring breeze and the flowers were blooming everywhere, which touched his self-esteem, so he decided to take a risk and take advantage of the crowds of people to fish in troubled waters and steal expensive satin in exchange for money. .
But regardless of the original intention and psychological process, the first-time and unsuccessful theft was a stalemate, and the officials who arrested him appeared.
With enough tension and excitement from taking risks, he had already put his hand on the knife handle.
What happens next is not unexpected for Henry and his team who have combat experience.
"Haha!!" Under the distressed eyes of the clothing store owner, the satin fell to the ground. The waist knife with an old handle but still well-maintained blade was pulled out and slashed at the clerk who was holding on to him.
The fat clerk was frightened by Ronin's habit of yelling before slashing, which was characteristic of Japanese swordsmen. He subconsciously took a step back, and this step could mean the difference between life and death.
The tip of the waist knife passed over his chest and cut through the skin and fat but failed to damage the bones. The bone-piercing pain caused the clerk to scream like a slaughtered pig and curled up into a ball, and also made the clerk who wanted to run past him and snatch the satin back The store owner tripped and fell, causing the dog to chew on the mud.
"Ouch!" One was covering his chest, and the other was covering his front teeth that had hit the floor. The two people in the clothing store huddled together. The ronin, who was emboldened because of the blood on the knife, lowered the bleeding tip and turned his head viciously to look at the six concentrics who quickly ran over to surround him.
"Hey! Thief, put down your weapons!" The leader of the group shouted loudly, but the Luoan girl behind her who had finished eating the candy took a look and wrinkled her pretty eyebrows.
"They don't even have knives?" she said.
"Tongxin is not allowed to draw swords, only non-lethal weapons are allowed." Henry said as he watched these officials pull out the ten iron hands from their waists.
"The usage of the Ten Hands is quite similar to Rigar's swordsmanship." Although the red-haired swordsman was blind, he heard this information from their conversation and spoke.
The Juju of Wajinkanzai is a metal weapon about 30 centimeters long and as thick as an adult man's thumb. Usually there is an extra branch that grows like a tree branch, and their usage is the closest to the characteristics of Rigal's swordsmanship among the Crescent Continent martial arts factions——
Use the gap between the branches and the main body to jam the opponent's weapon.
Just like the use of the gauntlet of Rigal's sword skill, this is a product based on the idea of using offense as defense, actively restricting the opponent's weapons, and destroying the opponent's weapons to complete the arrest.
But its flaws are also obvious.
It requires too much experience, courage and skills.
Weapon fighting is one inch short and one inch dangerous. Most of Kazuto's waist swords are about one meter long, and the sharp blade alone is 70 centimeters. The Tongxins did not have any protection except for the metal or patent leather formations on their heads. They reached out and tried to catch the opponent's blade with ten hands that were only one third of the length of the waist sword, which was a great test of their timing judgment and personal physical fitness.
What's bad is that these 6 Tongxin also look like novices.
They surrounded Ronin in a half-moon formation. Ronin turned his back to the clothing store, lowered his weight and held a knife in both hands. The colleagues shouted to him several times to surrender, but to no avail, they clasped their hands and took a stance, but none of them were too nervous to step forward.
In Crescent Continent, which has been peaceful for a long time, even people committing knife crimes are not that common.
"Oh, they should ask Huo Pi Gai Fang." Some of the passers-by onlookers muttered. Huo Pi Gai Fang is a law enforcement agency established by Xinjing with similar positions to the Enforcement Office. The biggest difference between the two is Yu Huo Pi Gaifang has the authority to draw a sword and kill the gangsters directly, but the people in the execution center can only use non-lethal ten hands.
There was a stalemate, but the targets changed from clerks and ronin to official servants and ronin.
The Tongxins had the advantage in numbers, but lacked sufficient lethality in equipment.
The ronin, on the other hand, was waiting for work. It seemed that after breaking the pot, he no longer had any distractions. As time went by, the posture of holding the sword became more and more stable.
The tendency to pursue a single extreme in everything and everyone made this person abandon other problems and return to the way of swordsmanship.
For a moment, the momentum became overwhelming, making the six colleagues around him afraid to move forward.
"The basics are pretty good." Mira said as she searched for the place where the apple candy bamboo sticks were discarded. Ronin's stance and center of gravity are very good. The sword he holds in his right hand is not close to the sword but a short distance away. The ring finger and little finger are not firmly grasped, and the left hand as the back hand is only kept in contact with the handle of the sword. Smaller exposure.
This kind of grip is not as stable and powerful as the slash after holding it firmly, but it is conducive to the change of direction of the blade. When facing opponents from all sides, adopting this posture allows him to quickly change direction to attack others.
Obviously this person has plenty of experience fighting multiple people. Even if they are fought with relatively safe wooden knives and bamboo swords, he can develop good spatial distance and timing skills.
The co-workers are obviously aware of this.
But they also have their own dignity as warriors, and it would be a shame to hold back.
"Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...haha! I'm gonna catch you without a fight!!!" shouted loudly, and the youngest and most energetic person among them raised ten hands and stabbed him.
