"How does one find a group of criminals?" Tenjo said aloud, quietly enough than none of the other passersby on the street could hear. She had come to a stop, uncertain of her current destination, much less how to arrive.

She didn't even know what group it was that she was looking for. It wasn't as though criminals wrote signs with their names and occupations and hung them up on their front doors, or as though they made their locations public to anyone who happened to ask.

Nor was it like she could simply walk up to the guards in the city and ask to be pointed to a local criminal group. That would likely get her laughed away at best, and questioned or imprisoned at worst. Or, would it really?

Disciples of the blade often served to hunt down powerful criminals, and wandering disciples like she had become would often seek them out as challenges to grow stronger or ways to build their reputation.

With that in mind, if she did ask where to find the most prominent group of local criminals, it wouldn't be taken as the strangest request. She judged the odds of it succeeding as likely enough to try it, at the very least.

Tenjo set off back down to the base of the city, trying to find where the stairway that connected the third and second levels was. It was relatively easy to find a way up, staircases or ladders visible above. However, it was nearly impossible to see where the ways down where, the streets and buildings blocking any view.

As she wandered while searching, Tenjo couldn't help but let her mind wander back to the one thing that had been echoing in it, over and over again. Her battle with Kyu-Son, which had been her first loss.

There was something about it that shook her in a way it had no right to. She had lost thousands of sparring matches before, and her confidence in her blade was far from steadfast. It wasn't as though she had dominated every duel with real blades either. The injury on her wrist was more than enough to remind her that it was only due to luck she was still alive.

Maybe if she hadn't had that injury, she would have won. Tenjo felt her teeth clench as her jaw tightened. That was an excuse she couldn't accept. She still had use of one arm in full, and the other one had only ever started to act up when she took those powerful blows head on, which was foolish of her to do anyway.

It wasn't as though she was a stranger to fighting with one arm either. She had been trained in two styles, which she mixed as she fought. This was a fairly common thing, in which a master would take a handful of students and teach them a second style in order to see how well it could be incorporated with the main style of the school.

The first was a style that had developed from a school known as the Black Tortoise. The name was supposedly a reference to the way that a tortoise would relentlessly walk forward, knocking aside sticks, bending grass, and crushing small plants on the way to its goal. Likewise, the style focused on slowly overwhelming the enemy with one strike at a time, never taking risks in favor of coming closer and closer with each blow.

This also meant that it complimented her in terms of physical ability. Her aura was large, relatively speaking. The larger the aura, the more physical abilities would be increased, and the added weight would also grow by a proportional amount.

Lighter auras would have slightly slower and weaker strikes, but be much lighter on their feet, favoring footwork and mobility. An apt comparison would be a normal person’s physical size, which worked in an almost identical fashion with strength and weight.

The second was the Silver Crescent Moon that her grandfather had created, which had a tendency to train to some extent in one-handed techniques, and in switching between one and two hands, due to the nature of the draw cut that it took its name from.

It focused on counter attacks, using the gap created when an opponent struck and exploiting it to end the fight as quickly as possible. The very different nature of the styles is what let them harmonize, with the advance of the first forcing the opponent to act in order to break free, creating the opening for the counterattack.

Likewise, the initial counter could be what placed her in a more ideal situation, where she could slowly start to chip away at her enemy after bypassing a difference in range or power.

It was that supposed adaptability that made her loss all the more vexing. Even though she had been held back by her injury, Tenjo couldn't help but see the fact that it had been able to hold her back as a sign of her lack of ability.

She had been doing fine though, until she stepped on the chair leg and slipped. Her environment was never something Tenjo had needed to worry about before, fighting only on even and clean dojo floors. Being defeated by a broken piece of furniture was almost like a bad dream, something that would be joked about by people over lunch, not a valid concern.

At last the stairway she had been looking for came into view, formed of thick slabs of the same floating rock that made up the rest of the city. The edge had a rail of stone as well, which didn't even come up to waist height. Just taking a peek over had been enough to make her head spin at first, and she marveled at how unconcerned the locals seemed to be about the risk of plummeting to their deaths from a light shove.

When she made her way to the bottom, while now hit with the puzzle of where on this floor the guard headquarters was, an issue occurred to her. The mage guard Meng from before already knew why she was in this city, and her lie said nothing about hunting a criminal of any kind. What more, she had then cemented her image in his mind with her fight, meaning it was even more likely that she would have been mentioned to others, even if he wouldn't be at the base himself.

Reaching the building wasn't as hard as she had anticipated, the stairway leading down the the main road to the city, and the guard center also being farther up on that road. It was right beside one of the entrances, the largest of them all by a notable amount.

In comparison to the one where she had come in, this gate was at least three time the size, leading directly into the guardhouse, and letting in and out dozens of people. The number that poured through in a minute was almost enough to fill her whole village, and there didn't seem to be any sign of slowing.

Tenjo was struck with a new appreciation for the sheer number of people in Oukon, tens of thousands of lives contained in the multitude of gravity defying levels. It also filled her with a new sense of worry as to her search, thinking about how small a fraction of those people being on the other side could result in a veritable army being set against her.

Her gawking was broken off sharply though, when a hand reached for her shoulder from behind. As it landed, she had already started to turn, and behind her were a pair of guards, both with auras still uncondensed, not letting her see their power.

The one who had grabbed her didn't let go, stopping the motion halfway. She motioned to the guardhouse with her free hand, jabbing a thumb at it in a sharp motion as she spoke.

"I've been looking for you," She said. "How about we go have a talk in private?"

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Chapter end

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