Hard Bridges, Steady Horses

Only with a hard bridge and a hard horse can you stand firm and fight steadily.

The horse stance is the cornerstone of martial arts. It not only trains one’s “displacement resistance” but also builds “waist endurance” and increases one’s “stamina bar.”

Noren had mastered the horse stance.

Her five toes gripped the ground like roots. The white pearl-like objects firmly clawed into the bedsheet as she leaned backward.

Her thighs were parallel to the ground, knees bent at 90 degrees.

As the old saying goes, the horse stance should rise and fall as if riding a horse.

The girl pressed one hand on the Ruzhong acupoint and the other on the Quchi acupoint. Her horse stance rose and fell, but her back never touched the bedsheet.

All her pores were tightly closed, locking in a flood of sweat.

With her right hand forming a “flower-picking” mudra, she bit hard on her lower lip, her cheeks flushed crimson.

“Almost!”

Her “hidden strength” usually lay dormant, but now it was the critical moment.

As soon as the “gate” approached, she would gather all her hidden strength into one point and strike with a loud “smack”!

“Here it comes!”

A nasal “Hmm” escaped her involuntarily. In ancient times, the sounds “Hmm” and “Ha” were outward signs of martial arts mastery.

The next moment, both sides of her gluteus maximus suddenly contracted, forming two hollows. The key to the hard bridge and hard horse—

the waist.

It trembled for an instant, then arched with force!

A sharp splash rang out as a burst of hidden strength struck the ceiling of the room.

“Alright, time to put away the Master Ball. Squirtle is tired; Splash takes too much stamina.”

The girl panted softly, her pores opening, and in an instant, she was drenched in sweat.

Noren collapsed limply onto the bed, soaking the sheets once more. She stared at the large water stain on the ceiling with utter despair.

She grumbled.

“How did it spray so high? How am I supposed to clean that?”

…

In the days after her period ended, due to physiological reasons, estrogen levels rose, and so did her physical needs.

Hence…

Amused smile.jpg

During this time, women are also more willing to interact with men and get closer.

This was also when Noren was at her most gentle during the month.

Forest Training Ground

“No, no~ That’s not how you do the horse stance.”

The girl pinned up her golden hair with a silver hairpin and gently tapped Tolruk’s lower back with a wooden stick to make him straighten up.

“Your body needs some bounce, like riding a horse. Don’t keep it stiff and still, or all the weight will concentrate on your knees and cause injury.”

She used the stick to lift Tolruk’s thigh from below.

“Rise and fall, but I don’t mean squatting and standing. Keep the movement small… OK, again.”

Noren was teaching Tolruk the basic skill of martial arts—the horse stance—specifically to train waist strength.

Waist strength was also one of the most important indicators of a soldier’s survivability.

On the battlefield, aside from archers whose power came from the back and arms, crossbowmen and elite melee soldiers all needed sufficient waist endurance.

With a strong waist, you could choose to fight or flee.

With a weak waist, you could only lie down and rest.

This was also why there was conflict in personnel allocation between crossbowmen and elite melee soldiers.

Loading a crossbow exhausted the waist; a bow did not.

Therefore, ancient generals often carried a bow instead of a heavy crossbow.

Of course, there were many other reasons why generals favored bows over crossbows; this was just one point.

In short, with good waist strength, no matter what kind of “battlefield” or what kind of “combat technique”—like train bento, knee lift side clamp, or **—you could wield them as easily as your own arm.

Yes, as easily as your own arm.

“Noren, I still don’t get it.” Tolruk had been holding the horse stance for twenty minutes, his waist sore and swollen, his thighs trembling.

“You…” She flicked his forehead and rolled her eyes.

“I’ll demonstrate again.” The girl assumed the horse stance and called out, “Watch closely!”

She lifted her waist, tucked in her abdomen, relaxed her waist, and puffed out her abdomen, her body undulating like ripples on water.

“See that?”

Tolruk glanced at her tight, peach-like form and quickly looked away.

“I saw it.”

After the demonstration, the girl raised her hands, pressed her abdomen, and exhaled…

“Whoosh—” A long white arrow of breath shot from her red lips, dispersing into a mist a foot away.

“Since you saw it, keep practicing. There’s no harm in holding the horse stance for longer.” She walked to a tree and began stretching by pressing her leg against the trunk.

Tolruk looked at her figure, accentuated by her thin clothes, and said with concern, “Noren, don’t you want to wear more? It’s too cold.”

“I’m fine.”

Dressed in training clothes made of fine linen, she stretched her limbs without a care.

For her, as long as she ate enough, she wasn’t afraid of the cold. The residual heat from her massive basal metabolism was enough to maintain her body temperature. The reason she had gone numb with cold while hunting foxes last time was because she hadn’t eaten enough in the wild and couldn’t generate enough heat.

Norseman cold resistance + Hercules physique = extreme cold resistance.

After training peacefully with Tolruk for three days, she found an excuse to thoroughly discipline Hafdan and Witz, threatening them to stop using Henry as a punching bag.

Then she packed up and headed north to Opava.

…

…

…

Opava

Amidst the blizzard, men on both sides of the castle walls were locked in combat.

Archers grabbed arrows from the quivers on the battlements, their arms aching as they gritted their teeth and loosed.

Snow blocked their vision, and the wind diverted the arrows’ flight paths.

The accuracy of the arrows was greatly reduced, but the attacking soldiers held their shields high to defend against them, not daring to gamble with their lives.

“Ahh—” Another long-axe-wielder fell with a scream in front of the castle gate, targeted by archers from both sides of the wall.

Barbed arrows pierced the single-layer hardened cowhide armor. The axeman staggered a few steps before collapsing on top of the bodies of the previous suicide soldiers who had tried to break the gate.

Several shield-bearers broke away from the crowd around the scaling ladders on both sides of the gate and raised their shields to protect another axeman, attempting to continue the assault on the gate.

But the defenders weren’t about to let that happen!

Javelins and stones were quickly thrown!

Javelins pierced through shields to kill; stones left shield-bearers unable to raise their shields. A shield-bearer who couldn’t lift his shield had his head crushed by another stone, his neck going limp as he fell.

Crowds of soldiers gathered around the two scaling ladders on either side of the gate. Due to the terrain and the snowstorm, Jaromir’s army had only managed to bring up two ladders.

Of course, these ladders had been hastily cut and constructed from trees in the forest outside the castle.

The fighting around the ladders was straightforward.

One side tried to scale the wall; the other only needed to wait. Any soldier who showed his head was met with a barrage of spears, clubs, swords, and axes.

The lucky ones were knocked off the wall and fell into the snow, surviving.

The less fortunate died on the spot.

The clever ones knew to raise their shields and lean forward, defending against attacks while avoiding being pushed off.

The skilled ones swung their two-handed axes, clearing away the blades thrusting at them.

Just then, a skilled fighter made it up!

A knight mounted the wall, followed by a shield-bearer who vaulted over the merlon to guard his lord.

But such a skilled fighter was exactly what Tall Otto was targeting.

Tall Otto’s weapon was also a two-handed axe. He pushed through the crowded wall and advanced.

When he got close, the skilled fighter had already cleared a space in front of him. Some cowardly wretches even fell back into the castle courtyard.

Tall Otto could tell from the axeman’s stance that he was a knight. The thick chainmail and pointed helmet were not something ordinary soldiers could afford.

“Waaaaaah!” Otto slapped his chest hard and raised his axe to strike.

He had practiced this axe strike thousands of times. Those who knew him called it “Split Man.”

Split Man.

As the name suggested, it split a person in two from top to bottom, dealing massive damage to the head and torso in succession. Lightly armored targets died instantly; heavily armored ones also died instantly, the only difference being that the heavy armor might survive.

That is, “the man dies, but the armor remains.”

The knight who had just mounted the wall was still waiting for soldiers to climb up when he saw the enemy chieftain charging at him furiously.

The sheer force of that axe told the knight, even with his toes, that he absolutely could not take it head-on.

But dodge? Where was there space to dodge on the wall?

“Damn it! This is why I hate sieges! Bloody Wood!” the knight cursed inwardly.

“Raise your shield!” he roared at the shield-bearer in front of him.

The shield-bearer was a hardened veteran, a man-at-arms from the knight’s manor. Seeing Tall Otto’s axe descending with the force of a landslide, the biting wind split by the blade, its shine growing brighter in the cold…

“Clang!” The axe struck the hemispherical iron boss of the shield, leaving a deep gash.

The shield-bearer screamed in pain, his hand numb and arm dangling limply.

A cowardly wretch took the opportunity to throw a dagger. The knight raised his arm to block it, the dagger cutting through the linen cover of his chainmail before bouncing off the rings.

Tall Otto had put all his strength into that strike. After the collision, his old strength was spent and new strength not yet generated—in other words, he was in a moment of rigidity, or a “post-skill delay.”

“Now!” The knight’s eyes widened. He thrust his long axe forward, hooking Otto’s waist with the blade, and pulled hard!

This was the technique the knight had practiced most with a two-handed axe, called “Hook Axe.”

“Hook Axe” relied on surprise. It could hook an enemy’s waist from a distance, then pull to break their balance. If there was an obstacle between them, it could also cause a stun effect.

As a master of the two-handed axe, Tall Otto naturally recognized this move. He called “Hook Axe” the worst technique for two-handed axes, saying that with such effort, it was better to just land a heavy chop.

Tall Otto stumbled forward from the hook, but he took the opportunity to tuck the axe handle under his arm. With a twist of his waist, the handle snapped with a “crack.”

The knight was disarmed. The cowardly wretches on the wall immediately lit up. Before the knight could draw his sword from his belt, several of them pinned him down.

One wretch grabbed the knight’s foot and began stabbing his sole with a dagger. The sole was naturally a sensitive spot on the body.

The knight roared in agony.

Otto grabbed his axe and delivered another “Split Man” to the shield-bearer. The man’s torso split open in a wide gash. His left ear, half his chin, and collarbone were severed; his ribs were broken in a row. The huge wound ran from his left shoulder to his right flank.

His mouth slightly open, eyes slightly bulging.

The image in his mind froze on the blue sky. Then his body leaned back, his upper half falling off the wall, his lower half still on the battlement, a bloody intestine draped over the gap between the merlons.

“Defend!” Otto roared, killing another soldier climbing the ladder with his axe, then directed his men to resist the attack.

“Tie up that idiot knight who used ‘Hook Axe’ for me! He’s my spoils of war!!!” Otto’s voice rang out again.

The knight broke out in a cold sweat. He glanced at the dagger at his throat and swallowed.

The wretch holding the dagger spat, sheathed it in his belt, took a hemp rope from someone, and bound the knight tightly.

…

…

…

“Sir Wood, it’s time to retreat.” A knight watched painfully as his man-at-arms was sent up the wall as cannon fodder, begging the commander to order the retreat.

Wood’s face was ashen as he stared at the stone castle. He couldn’t understand how these rebellious peasants could take Opava Castle without effort, while he himself was repeatedly thwarted.

But how could Wood know? The reason Tall Otto and his men had succeeded in capturing Opava Castle and rebelling was twofold: first, the soldiers of Hradec had withdrawn; second, Jaromir had lost the people’s support, to the point where even the castle guards were willing to join the rebellion and open the gates.

“Where are the archers?! Return fire!” Wood saw the third assault also fizzle out and, in a fit of rage, lost his composure and shouted.

The knight beside him first showed a flicker of contempt in his eyes, then put on an awkward expression and explained to Wood, “Sir Wood, among the knights’ levies, there are no skilled archers. Only a few javelin throwers, but they can’t throw their javelins up the wall…”

“Where are the archers!”

“Sir, have you forgotten? After you ordered the execution of the duke’s archer captain assigned to you, those archers fled…”

“Those damn deserters!” Wood ground his back teeth in anger.

‘Deserters, huh? Even if the rebellion is suppressed, executing a duke’s officer without authorization will be trouble enough! Even if that officer had no noble title,’ the knight sneered inwardly. ‘That archer captain had no title, but these days, not just any commoner can become a duke’s officer… The youngest son of a noble baron… That’s going to be a problem, Wood!’

The knight knew the noble circles of Prague well, unlike Wood, who had grown up wandering with Jaromir.

However, when Wood wanted to execute the archer captain, he hadn’t interfered much, purely watching the show. Jaromir had always collected the knights’ tithes mercilessly. Moreover, a lord of the Church was different from a secular lord. A secular lord at least gave some money to maintain the bond between lord and vassal.

A lord of the Church? What?! If you dare not pay the tithe, you could be excommunicated in an instant, believe it or not?

Thus, the less devout knights didn’t hold much goodwill toward Jaromir. If not for his father, eldest brother, and second brother being dukes, they would have cut him down long ago.

(PS: His father, eldest brother, and second brother were all successive Dukes of Bohemia.)