"Rustle, rustle..." The soft sound of feet trampling through grass came from the shadows around them. Before long, however, the owner of those footsteps seemed to encounter some trouble and stopped. The sound of slashing followed, apparently weeds falling to the ground.
"Someone's here." Yugito Nii crouched on a distant tree branch like a lone wolf. Moonlight blurred her figure, and she had long known these two were anything but ordinary.
The sound stopped not far from the campfire, and the moonlight revealed the newcomers.
There were around a dozen of them. Their clothing was mismatched: straw hats, loose coats, and several katana at their waists. Rather than samurai, they looked more like ronin.
The leader had a blade of grass between his teeth. He glanced at the bandaged greatsword on the bandaged samurai's back and nodded.
"That's him. Move!" A jumble of blades being drawn seemed to tear apart the night, and the bandaged samurai's face grew even darker in the firelight.
The ronin charged at the bandaged samurai, who stood with his arms crossed. Zixu had just been about to stop them when someone else moved faster.
"Whoosh..." A frigid wind swept in, and the air around them became bitingly cold in an instant. The wind extinguished the campfire, while dark clouds covered the full moon.
"Clang, clang..." Crisp metallic rings sounded as blades met. A white figure suddenly appeared amid the ronin. Icy blue crystals, like shattered diamonds, coiled around the white-clad samurai's blade, and every slash scattered shards of ice.
The white figure swiftly weaved through the ronin. Once the clouds passed, he slowly sheathed his snow-white sword.
"Blizzard."
Ice crystals covered the area around the dozen or so ronin. Their swinging blades froze in midair, their sword bodies coated in ice. After the white-clad samurai