“Sorry, kid!” The man said again and a punch flew in Leo’s face.
This felt strange. To him it seemed as if everything happened in slow motion. He hadn’t fought with a human opponent for a long time, but the last real duel was with Harold whose movements he could barely follow.
Now though Leo slightly tilted his head, the punch flew by and the man, driven my inertia continued to move forward only to find a stone-hard palm landing on his solar plexus.
Fortunately at the very last moment Leo managed to control himself and didn’t release the lightning Qi, but nevertheless the man immediately fell to his knees, trying to catch breath. For the spectators it looked as if the unlucky guy simply tripped and because of that lost the duel.
The dryad was as surprised as the rest, but still reacted and passed two tokens to Leo.
“Not bad!” She said, “Continue this way and you’ll do good. Before every duel you have to deposit one token and …”
“I’m next!” An eager young man interrupted her, forgetting the proper manners because of his anxiousness.
Clearly the previous duel ended abruptly because of an accident and there was an easy token for grabs. The small crowd was also happy there was a followup and some people sat down, expecting a longer fight while some more rushed over to have a look.
“How many of these I need exactly?” Leo ignored the challenger and asked the dryad.
“Ten.” She smiled back, “In three days the next round will begin and those who have ten tokens will fight for a chance to get up the mountain.”
“Ok!” Leo nodded and passed her a token, “Let’s get this over with.”
He didn’t intend to humiliate the opponent though. After letting the man threw few punches, he landed one on the shoulder sending the man to the ground. Of course, it still hurt, but the guy got up and with a painful grimace thanked him for the duel while rubbing his shoulder.
For the great enjoyment of the crowd, a well built local guy immediately showed up and also challenged Leo, but the fight ended similarly fast and in the same fashion. Obviously these fights would be boring even for a Formation establishment cultivator, to not speak of Leo who already began to plan where to spend the night when suddenly a man, slightly shorter than him came from the crowd and politely asked if he was up for another duel.
Spectators immediately became silent except for the old hag, who cheered, “Finally! A real opponent! Leo, show him how tough the men from the Dryad mountain are!”
Obviously her excitement was caused by the fact that the man’s skin was more grayish compared to the locals, indicating he came from the eastern side of the continent.
Seeing Leo didn’t object, he said, “I’d like to bet three tokens, please.”
The crowd gasped and began to murmur something between themselves and the old madam angrily shouted, “This is how they push everyone out of the competition! Leo! Show the bastard what’s what! Don’t let him bully you!”
One didn’t have to be a runemaster to understand the simple scheme the foreigners employed. As soon as someone promising appeared, they relieved the opponent of the tokens and the guy was immediately out just by loosing only once.
Leo, of course, was not afraid, but nothing was guaranteed in life and accidents could always occur, therefore he said with a smile that could compare to that of a greenlander beast’s expression, “Alright, in that case I bet one token.”
“… but …” The man wanted to object, but no arguments came to mind.
Up until now everyone nicely bet the same amount their opponents did and there were no discussions about it – it only seemed natural. But now even the crowd gasped in surprise hearing Leo’s bet, that is everyone except for the old hag who loudly laughed and rudely cheered, “Hahaha! Good! Now, kick his ass!”
The dryad was also confused for a moment, but then took the token Leo passed and said, “Alright, fight!”
“Shameless!” The man hissed, but didn’t say anything else and attacked.
Leo didn’t expect much and just like during the previous duels allowed the man to throw few swings and when it seemed he had been polite enough, sent out a gentle palm strike of his own. But then the strangest thing happened. Almost as if he was hitting water, Leo’s palm strike went through the man. He was certain he hit the guy, or at least touched him, but the hit didn’t land as expected.
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After receiving the palm strike in a strange fashion, the man somehow turned, rotating his body hundred and eighty degrees, and with a couple of steps arrived behind Leo, who staggered a step forward, and heavily punched him in the back. Apparently the opponent was still angry for Leo’s shamelessness and the punch surely would’ve broken ribs of a regular person, but on Leo it only landed with a loud thud.
The youth didn’t even flinch or sway from the punch. The earlier stagger was caused by his own movement and it was unlikely anyone here could directly throw him off balance, but his curiosity was finally aroused. If that was not a fluke, there were actual close combat experts around here!
The opponent, on the other hand, barely held back an expression full of pain. Punching this guy was just like punching a tree – even a hole in the tree bark clothing appeared almost as if he was an actual tree trunk that got its bark torn off.
The exchange was accompanied by loud gasp from the crowd that expected Leo to immediately fall over, but when the youth did a half roll to the side to make some distance from the opponent and got back to his feet with a smile, no one knew what to think. What shocked people even more was that another exchange happened right after and the result was the same.
Actually Leo was shocked no less than the spectators, for different reasons, of course.
‘How in the world is he doing that?’ He though while observing the gray-skinned man.
Blocking and evading were the basic parts of every close combat technique, but what this man did was completely new, at least in Leo’s eyes. And suddenly it became clear why the foreigners were dominating the competition – either it was an innate ability or more likely martial arts they were practicing. No wonder locals lost – if everyone from the east was proficient in this technique, it was impossible for the men from the Dryad mountain to land a single hit.
Leo’s eyes lit up as he suddenly felt elated. There was something for him to learn in the Greenland realm after all. In all honesty he did feel somewhat down because of the involuntary advancement, but if he learned this skill, it would allow him to fight stronger opponents in the future. And who knows, maybe these guys had even more secrets!
Unfortunately it didn’t go as Leo wished. His opponent was not keen to teach him much or rather, after heartily punching Leo few more times his fists swelled and he became incapable of attacking. In addition, by a careless mistake Leo kicked the man and this time instead of evading and counterattacking the guy took the hit head on, flew into the spectators and passed out.
Leo was left standing in the middle of the free space, awkwardly scratching his head and mumbling apologies. Fortunately, even though passing out was not the typical result of a duel, there were people who immediately took care of the loosing party and the man was carried away under the cheers of an old woman who kept shouting ‘this is what all of you, foreigners, will become!’.
“How many tokens have you got?” Leo was startled by a calm voice, coming from behind.
It was another easterner, around twenty five, maybe thirty years of age. On the first glance he looked weaker compared to the opponent Leo just fought, but the indifferent attitude immediately made the youth weary.
“Four.” The dryad answered in Leo’s stead and passed him a token. Then she smiled and explained, “You can’t get more than you bet.”
“Mhm. It’s fine.” Leo said and then asked the man, “Wanna go for a round?”
“Not today.” The dryad said before the easterner could answer, “The mist is getting too dark – let the people find their way home. There are two more days left till the next round begins so there is no rush. You two can meet here tomorrow.”
“Alright.” The man nodded, but Leo was pulled away by the annoying old hag.
‘Am I cursed?’ He wondered, helplessly looking at the old lady, but inwardly he was happy. He had found something he could learn before leaving the Greenland realm.
Apparently the city was much smaller than Leo first assumed, because on the way everyone already knew about the ‘local’ youth who had won several fights in a row, including one against a foreigner. People kept coming up to him to congratulate, blushing girls were offering him flowers to eat and water to drink. It was as if he was someone important or actually achieved something, but Leo didn’t mind. He was going to achieve something in the next few days – figure out the foreign combat style and learn it!
The only thing that kept spoiling the mood was the old hag who for some reason didn’t let his elbow go and was behaving as if she owned him. Leo gave up on the verbal sparring with her long ago, but hitting an elderly was clearly not ok … or maybe it was after dark and no one was around to see?
The next morning, after a light breakfast the old lady pulled Leo back to the spot where he sparred last night. This time there was a notable crowd and Leo had a hard time getting through, but he couldn’t hide the smile – while people let him pass cheering and patting his shoulders, the old witch was stuck somewhere far behind.
Besides the last night’s challenger, there were gathered quite a few foreigners – both from the east and west. Leo couldn’t guess what was so special about him since from what he heard there were duels happening all over the Dryad mountain city, but he didn’t mind – last night he made a plan. He would accept challenges from everyone, preferably foreigners and practice till dusk without using Qi – purely relying on the physical body, while holding back, of course, in order to not hurt the opponents too much.
The main task was to figure out and learn the strange eastern combat technique and it was clear that at some point he would run out of challengers. But then he would simply go and challenge people himself. Last night the old hag explained that even if he gathered more than ten tokens, he could still challenge others and get challenged, in fact, that was the way how the foreigners left the locals with almost no tokens whatsoever.
“Four!” The challenger from last night came up to the dryad and passed over the tokens.
The same elderly dryad was overseeing this place again and knew what was to be expected. Thus she was not surprised when Leo gave only one with a careless shrug.
“See! I told you! He’s shameless!” Leo heard a familiar voice in the crowd and spotted the easterner he fought yesterday.
There were quite a few people of grayish and bluish skin colors and all of them snickered condescendingly, but the shameless one didn’t care. His opponent didn’t either.
“It’s fine.” He calmly said, took off the upper part of the tree bark clothing and the crowd immediately gasped in shock.
Not because of his well trained, grayish body, of course. On his torso there were at least four long, curved scars, proving this guy had fought with a greenlander beast more than once or maybe even several at the same time. Even Leo nodded approvingly seeing them, but he mostly wondered whether the easterners had a way to fight the ground fog’s toxicity. If there was a secret or trick to it he would gladly trade something valuable – since he intended to return to this place at some point to cultivate under the three Divine tribulation trees, it might be fun to travel on the ground for a change, since potentially there were more interesting things to discover.