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OK, I'm back. What made Yanagi different from other ancient chi masters was that he wasn't content with levitating alone in some cherry blossom grove. He wanted everyone to think he was a badass. So he would make combat challenges to give the illusion he was a lethal street fighter, then weasel out of them to give the illusion he was a lethal street fighter who was just very bad at scheduling. I've also read that none of this was true, because due to the nature of intentionally mysterious charlatans, it's hard to get a straight account of anything he's ever been involved in. But we do know that he participated in at least one actual fight, and it did not go well.

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When he was 65 years old, this crazy fuck agreed to a fist fight, probably his first one ever, then weaseled out, then somehow got talked into it again. With cameras and witnesses, he was scheduled to fight a man half his age named Iwakura Tsuyoshi. Tsuyoshi was not a professional fighter, but trained in judo and jiu-jitsu and figured these styles would match up well against Yanagi's psychic aikido and lying.

When the fight began, they cautiously felt each other out. Tsuyoshi may have been concerned about Yanagi's unlikely abilities, but that seemed to go away after Yanagi tried a wild bitch slap like you might see from a kitty cat or a grandmother playing Mario Power Tennis. It missed, and no one could see what happened to its lethal charge of qigong. Unknown to them, two buildings away, a family watched their father's face go blank and fall into his soup. The man's eulogy would be only questions -- another dot the police would never connect. The family's screams would last far longer than the fight raging two buildings away, where Yanagi's opponent answered his missed slap with an actual punch to his amateurishly unprotected face.

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The blow he took wasn't very technical or particularly hard, but it made one thing very clear: This old man had somehow made it 65 years pretending to be a martial arts master without ever being hit in the face. He looked so confused and disappointed that the guy who was there to kick his ass stopped and asked if he was OK. And here's a hot karate tip: When someone beating you starts to get genuinely worried about your health, trust their judgement.