Kondo Swordsmanship had fallen silent... Even Toshiro Hijikata, after being targeted by Sogo in every possible way, had come to understand a "self-taught" sword style. Thanks to Sogo's theory of "no move surpasses any move," Hijikata's "self-taught" style did not really have any techniques to speak of. As the old saying went, he relied on instinct! And so, a rather amusing situation arose. Although Isao Kondo had never believed in keeping his skills to himself, students of Kondo Swordsmanship could not defeat those practicing Hijikata Go Die Style; those practicing Hijikata Go Die Style could not defeat those who had developed their own techniques; and those with self-developed sword techniques could not defeat practitioners of Kondo Swordsmanship... It sounded like a perfect triangular cycle, but the students did not see it that way!
If Kondo Swordsmanship was inferior to Hijikata Go Die Style, and Hijikata Go Die Style was inferior to self-developed sword techniques, didn't that mean the self-taught path was the strongest?
There was no helping it. Kondo Swordsmanship was simply too heavily countered by Hijikata Go Die Style. It was not as though they dropped to their knees the instant they exchanged moves, but they could only hold out for seven or eight strikes at most... Self-developed sword techniques might not measure up to Kondo Swordsmanship, but they were not countered nearly as badly. Sometimes, practitioners of Kondo Swordsmanship were even defeated by those self-developed techniques—despite both sides practicing seriously, how long had they actually been training?
At other dojos, they would not even have qualified as apprentices. The two sides were more or less evenly matched... Of course, if someone had trained in Kondo Swordsmanship for seven or eight years, crushing those with self-developed techniques would not have been a problem. But how long had the Kondo