Regardless of whether Aoto stood in place or actively ran towards him, the result was the same! There would be no hindrance in utilizing his ’secret technique’!
The distance between the two was merely ten paces.
For the two charging straight at each other, this distance was covered in the blink of an eye!
In just an instant, Aoto stepped into the range that Shinno’s ’odd skill’ could reach, and at that moment, Shinno gathered the strength in his arm and struck heavily with his blade!
However, at that precise moment, Shinno suddenly felt a sense of abruptness. This sudden feeling rapidly expanded.
This was all because... he realized Aoto’s eyes were not looking at him.
With his eyelids drooped... his line of sight was so low it seemed to be looking at his own feet... No! He was looking at the shadow stretched long by the moonlight!
Shinno’s face was instantly filled with shock and horror.
He wanted to stop the slash... but it was too late! His hand could not stop the momentum!
The uncontrollable blade whipped up a whirlwind and slashed upwards from below towards Aoto’s body.
In that instant.
In the same instant Shinno’s blade slashed out! A strange brilliance flashed in Aoto’s eyes.
In the same instant Shinno’s blade slashed out! The trajectory of Aoto’s movement changed abruptly!
With force at the tip of his toe, he leaped lightly to the left, dodging Shinno’s ’secret technique’, landing steadily on the railing of the bridge behind Shinno!
— So that’s it... This is how he makes his attack range longer...
Aoto finally saw the full picture of Shinno’s ’secret technique’ to extend his attack range.
In reality, Shinno was swinging the blade by pinching the very end of the handle with the second joints of the index and middle fingers of his right hand!
Using only two finger joints to pinch the very end of the blade handle... Naturally, the attack range was broader than usual!
Shinno adopting this stance, hiding the blade and both hands behind him, must be to prevent opponents from discovering he was holding the blade with his fingers.
Impressive... Aoto silently gave a brief commendation in his heart to this opponent who used such an odd skill.
Then, in the next instant, a picturesque scene unfolded on this moonlit long bridge.
After leaping onto the railing behind him to the left, Aoto immediately used the post under his feet as a force point and leaped up!
Towards the front... Leaping high towards Shinno!
Aoto’s high-speed movement caused Shinno’s pupils to momentarily lose focus.
In that instant when his vision became slightly blurred due to defocusing, his vision was filled by a figure leaping to a height higher than the moon!
He held a long sword, draped in moonlight over his shoulders!
Bathed by the clear moonlight behind him, outlining his figure, yet because the moonlight was too dazzling, it instead made his body appear shrouded in darkness, only a rough silhouette could be discerned.
And in that expanse of dark silhouette... Only his flame-like bright pupils still sparkled brilliantly! Like the dazzling stars of the galaxy!
The sword Qi emitted by the sword he raised over his head was like a Wandering Dragon flying in the night sky of Edo!
A man and a dragon descended from the sky, bringing along an unstoppable momentum! Bringing a momentum that seemed to cut through everything!
Buzz...!
The blade’s body emitted a hum...
The fallen blade edge cut through the moonlight!
At this time, Shinno finally snapped out of his extreme shock.
There was no time for exclamations or curses... His rapidly paling face, disregarding the momentum pushing his body forward, concentrated all his strength on his toes, and in desperation, leaped backward, trying to get away from Aoto, away from Aoto’s blade!
But it was too late.
Just as his feet lifted off the bridge for the backward leap, an intense pain as if tearing his entire body apart shot from his chest!
Ghost-Slaying’s blade edge slashed from Shinno’s left shoulder straight down to his right abdomen, nearly cutting his entire upper body diagonally into halves!
"Cough! Cough, cough...!"
A large amount of blood sprayed from his mouth, nose, and wound.
Shinno’s own backward leap, combined with the impact of Aoto’s slashing strike, sent Shinno flying backward.
After flipping backward, drawing a beautiful parabola, Shinno crashed heavily to the ground, and under the influence of inertia, rolled several times before his body finally came to a halt.
And when Shinno’s body finally stopped, he had already rolled out of the duel arena, out of this wooden bridge, lying weakly on the riverbank of the bridge’s east shore.
"Ha...! Ha...! Ha...Ha...! Ha...!" Overwhelming feelings of exhaustion and weakness flooded Aoto’s waist and legs, causing him to stumble forward, almost collapsing, but he stabilized himself by supporting himself with Ghost-Slaying on the bridge deck.
The earlier decisive strike... It drained both Aoto’s strength and spirit.
Now Aoto only felt as if two giant boulders were pressing on his shoulders, nearly unable to stand straight.
"Mr. Tachibana!"
The excited shout of Mukiwa came from behind.
Familiar footsteps approached from behind... Mukiwa hurriedly sprinted to Aoto’s side with quick, small steps, reaching out to support Aoto’s body.
"You won! You won!"
Mukiwa’s delicate face glowed red with excitement.
Using his arms gripping the sword for support and exerting effort to straighten his upper body, Aoto revealed a smile filled with weariness to Mukiwa.
"Winning wasn’t easy..."
After speaking, Aoto took a deep breath, withdrew the sword from the bridge deck, and slowly walked towards Shinno.
Before Shinno completely stopped breathing... this duel was still not over.
This 10,000-word Chapter makes up for the missed update from the day before yesterday’s monthly ticket bounty.
This Chapter, all 10,000 words of it, is entirely dense with fight scenes, featuring paragraphs like the ’bridge post leap’ with swordplay flair and the sinister trick of ’finger pinching sword’ and the tactical ’judging the opponent’s strike timing by shadows’.
Such quality would be a real shame if not voted on (leopard-head crying.jpg)
Aoto’s ’marvelous adventure’ tonight isn’t over yet. Readers who didn’t skip Chapters and carefully read the previous plot should all know—there’s still one more figure yet to appear.
So let’s continue with the monthly ticket bounty! The current number of monthly tickets is 1858, and if it reaches 2000 by the end of today, tomorrow we will have another explosion of over 10,000+ words!

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