In fact, aside from a handful of people like Hijikata, Kondo, and Yamazaki, the other members of the Kondo Group were not much stronger than ordinary people. The reason they could dominate one area was merely because people like Hijikata were too dazzlingly powerful—and besides, times had changed, sir... Even so, the Kondo Group had never expanded outward again.
In the end, they simply lacked the strength! Some armed groups had even started showing signs of wanting to strike back once their wounds had healed and they had forgotten the pain—if the Kondo Group's members had all been as strong as Hijikata and the others, who would have dared entertain such ideas?
Unfortunately, not everyone possessed the talent of Hijikata and the others, nor had everyone, like that gorilla Kondo, practiced kendo since childhood while receiving Hijikata's personal guidance. For ordinary people, comprehending Iron-Cutting from Sougo's cryptic nonsense was basically impossible.
Yet this was by no means because Hijikata and Kondo were hoarding their knowledge. Hijikata had always believed that he himself had comprehended Iron-Cutting from Sougo's inexplicable principles of kendo. Boss Kondo had entered the Swordman Realm because of the remarks Sougo had left behind, and even Yamazaki had faint signs of a breakthrough... Hijikata had merely forgotten Yamazaki's self-discipline. Yamazaki might have been an idiot, but when it came to self-discipline, probably no one in the entire Kondo Group besides Hijikata could match him—Yamazaki was the sort of guy who could live on nothing but red bean buns for months on end. Even after eating so many red bean buns that he went delirious, he could still keep at it. It was genuinely frightening.
Everyone knew that self-disciplined people were terrifying, yet even Yamazaki, disciplined as he was, had only shown vague signs of becoming a Swordman. Thus,