Ichi Guo didn't give the Principal enough time to recover from her surprise. Her speed was fairly impressive as she made to guard his strike, and for her to actually catch Zangetsu with that short dagger showed that she had some skill. That said, she was completely out of her league when it came to combat experience and technique.
Two high slashes, the first to get her guard, the second to make her cement her footing. Ichi Guo pulled back for a third attack, making it look as though he was continuing the strike pattern when he released his left hand and delivered a solid punch to the woman's stomach, knocking the air out of her lungs before slapping her again with his heavy sword.
Ping Qang staggered back, gasping for breath, and Ichi Guo continued to play with her. Moving about her and striking at her every time she tried to regain her footing. Slashes, kicks, punches. His style was too difficult to read for even an experienced fighter. The grade school combat teacher was batted around like a squeaky toy being played with by an energetic cat.
Finally, after a little bit, Ichi Guo let up on his attacks, giving the woman a chance to retreat. She moved away to a safe distance as fast as she could and stared at the boy, as if she didn't want to blink, in case she missed something.
Ichi Guo had pushed his sword up onto his shoulder and was looking at Ping Qang with a bored expression. "I thought we were going to be fighting. Are you going to try to win this or not?" He taunted.
"How is it possible for someone so young to be a Spirit Ancestor?" Wang Sheng said as he watched his principal being pushed back like a beginner.
"Yes, it would be surprising to find someone who had managed to become a Spirit Ancestor at such a young age." Yu Xiao Gang said, nodding, though he didn't share his student's slack jawed astonishment. "However, something tells me that isn't what is going on. Not unless he is holding back."
"What are you talking about, Master? He's stomping all over Ping Qang." Wang Sheng said.
"He was, by taking advantage of her surprise and maintaining enough of an offense to keep her off balance. However, he wasn't overpowering her with his strength. Given that his Spirit Essense appears to be a power type, if he was a Spirit Ancestor, he would easily overpower her in a single blow without too much difficulty." Yu Xiao Gang said calmly. "Something else is going on here. Though I'm not entirely sure what."
"Were the rings an illusion?" Tang San suggested.
"No, my Ichi-nii doesn't use stupid illusions." Rukia exclaimed, offended at the suggestion. "He's the real deal."
"Falling Star Blade: First Spirit Skill: Star Shot!" Ping Qang said as she threw her knife at Ichi Guo. The boy lazily leaned out of the way of the attack, his expression still bored.
"You really think that's going to work?" He said. Ping Qang had to control her expression as the knife changed direction mid-flight, coming back around to attack the boy from his blind side. However, he batted it away with his sword without even looking at it. "Not fast enough, and not complex enough. You're being too easy to read."
"I see, well then how about this. Falling Star Blade: Third Spirit Skill: Splitting Rainbow!" Ping Qang shouted. Her dagger began to glow before splitting into seven copies of itself mid-flight, each one a different color and all still locked onto Ichi Guo.
The reincarnated reaper still wasn't impressed. How many times had he had to fight against Senbonzakura's hundreds of thousands of blades. A mere seven was child's play. Not to mention the difference in skill of the users.
Ichi Guo moved forward at high speeds, narrowly dodging the multi-colored knives out of a lack of concern about their existence. Ping Qang could only stand there with a slacked jaw as he moved straight up in front of her. She had put all her concentration into controlling the flying blades, leaving her completely unprepared for the frontal assault. She barely managed to get out of the way before Ichi Guo's attack would have made for a strike number two. Though her managing to evade had more to do with the boy holding back his swing to make sure he didn't accidently chop her in half than her being prepared.
Ping Qang used her speed to build up distance as she tried to control her knives to attack Ichi Guo in a formation that would stop him from easily dodging it. The seven blades arranged themselves in a hexagon with the seventh blade in the middle. Each of the outside weapons meant to stop the boy from simply stepping to the side.
Ichi Guo brought up Zangetsu, holding one hand on the hilt and the other half way up the flat side of the sword. "Zangetsu: Second Spirit Skill: Lunar Guard!" Half transparent black hexagonal plates formed in the air in front of him, shaping together into a large barrier between Ichi Guo himself and the knives.
As each of the blades shattered from coming into contact with the unmoving barrier Ping Qang staggered in shock from her spirit essence's form breaking. The opening cost her as Ichi Guo moved in and kicked her in the head, sending her down to the ground where she was met once again with a blade pressed up next to her neck.
"Strike two." Ichi Guo said in a cocky tone. "Want to continue, or save yourself the embarrassment and quit now?"
"I... give up." Ping Qang said, dropping her head in defeat. Ichi Guo's expression changed to something resembling disappointment.
However, that didn't last long as he felt an oncoming attack. Pulling up his sword and spinning around to guard against the strike, he found himself facing a seven year old girl who was wearing boots will blades on them. Sparks flew as he stopped the double drop kick she had been aiming for him and repelled her. The girl flipped through the air like an expert and landed on her feet with ease.
"If our greedy principal doesn't feel like fighting anymore, then Xiao Wu wants to have a crack at it!" The girl said with a wide smile, flipping back her long braided hair that was tied up with something that appeared to be bunny ears.
Ichi Guo glanced down at his own feet. There was a small bit of dirt pushed up from how the girl had forced his stance back. Even if it was a surprise attack, it was more than anything her principal had managed. "If you insist, I don't see why you can't have the final bout."
"So you do want to dance then! Well, let's dance!" Xiao Wu said before moving in on Ichi Guo. The way she flipped and spun in the air, along with the way she mixed in feints with her heavy strikes made her style of fighting a bit harder to read than the teacher's.
"Jujitsu. You use jujitsu, don't you?" Ichi Guo said as he warded off an attempt to grab at his shoulders with her legs. "Not bad. Have to say you're the first person with a beast spirit I've seen to use an actual fighting style instead of just swinging their fists and feet everywhere." But then as she tried for another drop kick on him, he stepped inwards, letting go of Zangetsu and grabbing her leg, using her own momentum to throw her. She landed easily on her feet a few meters away.
Ichi Guo was going to move in, when some spiritual energy leaked from the ground beneath him and he Shunpoed out of the way as hundreds of blades of blue silver grass grew out of the soil underneath his feet.
"Sorry, but since you're older than us, I hope you don't mind we have this be a two-on-one battle." Tang San said as he took up a position next to Xiao Wu. He was standing straight with his hands folded behind his back and a smile on his face.
Ichi Guo sized the boy up. "Feel free. I might have a good fight for a change."
"We'll give it our best." Tang San said with a chuckle, as if he knew something that Ichi Guo didn't. The boy's strange adrift personality was reminding Ichi Guo vaguely of Urahara. All he needed was a bucket hat and a fan. "I'm Tang San, rank fifteen, Blue Silver Grass."
"I'm Xiao Wu, rank fifteen, Soft Boned Rabbit Demon." The girl said with a playful wink.
"Ichi Guo, rank twenty four, Soul Kill Sword." Ichi Guo replied with a shrug. It was only polite. They had introduced themselves first after all.
"Wah? Only twenty four, how boring." Xiao Wu said, putting her arms behind her head and kicking at a loose rock with her steel boots. Tang San didn't change his facial expression, but his mind mulled over what he had been told. So this mystery boy was really only rank twenty four. Still ridiculously high for an eight year old, but not as unbelievable as rank forty plus. It would explain why he didn't see any spirit expert markings on the spirit rings earlier. He hadn't really reached a high enough rank for that.
But there was still the fact that he had four spirit rings that was left unexplained and the fact that they were all of a quality beyond what his soul should allow him to absorb.
"Well, we will try to give you a good fight, 'Senpai'." Tang San said, surprising Ichi Guo by the use of the Japanese honorific. That didn't mean that he wasn't prepared when the attack came. "Blue Silver Grass: First Spirit Skill: Binding."
Tang San swiped his hidden hands outwards. His right hand was covered in a glove made of his spirit essence, the real guard form of his spirit. Strands of grass flew from the glove as swift as arrows.
Ichi Guo was not taken off guard, simply slashing the grass to ribbons before it could reach him. The rabbit girl rushed towards him, her movement suggesting a frontal attack, but when she jumped she went over Ichi Guo, outside of his sword reach. Turning around, he easily blocked the kick aimed for his side with his sword, and when she spun to try to kick at his head, he dipped out of the way of that.
Tang San moved in quick while Ichi Guo's attention was grabbed, using his shadow track skill to move at high speeds. With his spirit essence established as a control type, his opponent shouldn't have been able to see the sudden burst of speed coming. So he was shocked when his punch was casually brushed aside by an open palm before said palm hit him in the forehead, knocking him backwards. Ichi Guo had detected the sneak attack without even looking, and countered it even as he repulsed Xiao Wu's heavy attacks.
Struggling to regain his balance, Tang San tried a change of tactics. Pulling back an armband on his left arm which covered a set of hidden steel arrows on a bracelet mount. Aiming carefully at the older boy's leg, so as to not cause accidental damage, he let the bolt fly.
Ichi Guo was actually surprised when he felt the steel dart entering his leg. It had been completely lacking in any spiritual pressure that he would be able to sense it with, yet its shape and speed allowed it to move through his spirit guard. It was only through old stubbornness that he didn't even react to the sting of pain; shifting his attention to the boy with the darts. Two more of the small arrows flew, but this time Ichi Guo was ready, positioning his over-sized sword in the way of the attack before moving in on the boy.
Tang San wasn't expecting his arrows to be so ineffective. Ichi Guo moved in on him as if the bolt wasn't even there. He tried to move out of the way with his shadow track technique, but the older boy used his own speed technique to keep up. It was only Xiao Wu interfering with another drop kick that stopped Tang San from being introduced to the heavy sword's flat side.
Ichi Guo's legs still didn't buckle underneath the rabbit girl's attack, even with the small injury to his leg. He still managed to out leverage her and send her up into the air. He had expected the move to push her a good distance away and give him some time before she could come back. He hadn't expected for strands of Blue Silver Grass to wrap around her wrists and pull her back into a drill kick, moving straight towards him. His sword was out of position because of his riposte, but not so far out of position that he couldn't move to block.
"Controller of the Crane and Dragon." Tang San said, as he moved his hand in a strange way. Ichi Guo felt the spiritual energy locking his arm in place, stopping him from moving to block. His mind immediately thought it was a Bakudō holding him still.
"We win!" Xiao Wu said cheerfully as her foot was coming down towards Ichi Guo's head.
"No." Ichi Guo growled, a smile spreading over his face. His left hand moved over his eyes and a black flame spread across his face and the left hand. Xiao Wu gave a gasp of surprise as a white bone-like claw wrapped around her ankle. Ichi Guo's spiritual pressure increased and he shrugged off Tang San's bind.
As he spun around, throwing Xiao Wu at Tang San, knocking them both onto the ground, Tang San got a good look at him. The top half of his face was covered by a white plaster like mask with red marks on it, and his left hand was covered in the same type of material, giving his hand the appearance of a claw, with a kind of red fluff around the wrist.
"Getsuga Tenshou!" The black wave of energy passed right next to the two downed kids, leaving a twelve meter long trail, just under half a meter thick, sunken into the ground. "Strike three." Ichi Guo's slightly echoing voice said as the mask and claw faded away.