Countess Bloody Mary made an arrow movement. With this move, she ran towards her opponent and applied a stock to the stomach. Njora Hao-Yu defended herself against the blow using the hypothenar region of her right hand. The blade deflected away. The English witch passed him at high speed. She realized the great force of the impact.
The Sino-Kenyan wasn't caught off guard; he turned around extremely quickly. He kept his palms straight and his fingers linked. She made a few hand gestures, all her fingers outstretched and pointed at her opponent.
The witch made a guard movement. A delirious smile filled her lips. She went for a slam dunk. Her front knee was bent and her heel touched the floor of the ring. His armed arm extended forward as far as it would go. The unarmed arm was thrown back to propel her further.
To surprise her enemy, she changed the blade from a foil to a saber. The latter, although shorter, was more flexible. At eighty-eight centimeters long, it had the same weight as the foil. With this change of style, her opponent's head also became her target.
Njora used the same ploy of rebounding the blows out of her range. However, the fencer landed several stock blows. The action forced him to be more offensive. With a cross, his left hand came down on his opponent. Flissssh, a wound opened up on her right shoulder down to her navel. She stepped back, checked the wound and let out a curse. She put herself on guard.
"Is that impossible? You must be hiding a blade between your fingers."
Njora held out her hands, then stood once again on her fighting stance. There was no blade hidden in her hand.
"Be honored, madam. You have known first-hand the power of Tie Zhong."
"Tie... Zhong... Is it some kind of magic?"
"Oh, no! It is the purest and most genuine martial art in the world. In the West, it's known as the 'Iron Palm'. Used to exhaustion by fighters to show off their strength and dexterity."
"Breaking stones using your fists is something anyone can do, but I don't understand how you can cut using only your bare hands."
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"In ancient China, before empires became strong enough to centralize power and achieve periods of peace, there were several wars and tyrants. To ensure the submission of their subjects, these warlords forbade civilians to carry weapons. All to prevent them from rising up. To avoid the law and continue fighting, they created the Tie Zhong."
While the military forces at the service of the tyrant increased their dependence on weapons, civilians carried out their daily chores to practice their physical training. The aim was to forge a fighting style that didn't depend on any weapon, that was easy for the masses to learn, and that allowed the unarmed to fight as equals against the army. This is how Tie Zhong, also known as swordless fencing, came about.
The countess let out a convulsive laugh. She was a master of fencing. She would never admit to losing to someone unarmed. It had become a matter of honor.
"By defeating you, I will also defeat more than five thousand years of history. You're just a half-breed heir to a decadent civilization, sold cheap for the opium of intellectuals. As the good poet would say: 'Life is just a shadow... a story that the idiot tells, full of sound and fury, without meaning anything'."
"Madame, if you weren't so presumptuous, and if your nobility wasn't limited to the title you bear, I'd have the courage to invite you to five o'clock tea."
She marched towards him, without Njora moving an inch. She prepared a crossbow aimed at the fighter's abdomen. At the last moment, she deflected the attack and raised the handle of her saber upwards. The blade lashed out at his opponent's left eyebrow. He struck the countess in the face with a vertical blow.
She paused, defending herself from Njora with a horizontal slash, and broke off, thrusting her body backwards again and again. She put herself on guard once more and responded by counterattacking from where she was with another crossbow. The actions were too quick for the Sino-Kenyan to redirect.
He tried to parry the saber's blow by clapping his hands together. At that moment, the countess increased the blood flow in her palm and made the blade increase in size. It passed close to the young fighter's neck. Before being pierced by the enemy weapon, he tilted his head to the side and was not mortally wounded.
He held the sabre in one hand and struck with a horizontal blow. If he hadn't missed, he would have decapitated his opponent. At the last moment, she pulled the blade, causing blood to gush from the wound. The boy's wounds cascaded with intense bleeding. In addition to the pain, he felt the life draining from his body at a rapid pace. He had to end the fight.
"You're starting to look pale, young man. It doesn't suit a young man to look so rickety."
"The blood of true fighters purifies the rings."
"Yes, but the blood of losers promotes filth everywhere."
"Madame is as expert at fencing as she is at insults."
With nothing left to lose but her life, Njora went after the countess. The Englishwoman didn't back down, but seemed to assume a defensive posture. Despite the setbacks, she had the advantage. Her patron demon, Azazel, was a lover of bloodletting. Being wounded in battle and bleeding didn't diminish her witchcraft. However, she wasn't used to feeling so much pain.
Her victims didn't usually fight back or start a pitched battle. After more than a hundred years, she had found a worthy adversary. One who wasn't afraid to hurt himself in order to hurt her. This made the game exciting and dangerous. Bloody Mary licked the blade of her saber and got a taste of two worlds.
Njora was more than a sum, she was a synthesis. This synthesis used fists as sharp as a sword. Her willfulness in combat bordered on suicidal ideation. It made the witch's veins throb. The fighter didn't stop attacking, even when the Englishwoman counterattacked. In an exchange of blows, he captured the hilt bearing his opponent's saber.