Seconding that. I don't know if its translation issues that are having trouble converting concepts over to a western audience, but Houken does not make sense.
Houken is basically some asshole that was up on a mountain his whole life training to be a martial genius, went down one day, and got punked by Ouki. So he goes back up the mountain, trains some more, and shows up randomly to slaughter a bunch of peasant militia and regular soldiers. That's it. That's his entire backstory. They even rip away every duel Houken's ever had by showing how he only won because someone else wounded his opponent first.
Shin, meanwhile, is an awesome protagonist, he's nothing special, he's growing, he's going through character development, he's had weak points and vulnerabilities, and he's very clearly still human, but when he goes up against Houken all of that gets shoved up its own ass as Riboku drones on and on and ON about comparing the two. We've now had this duel going on for... what, 4 issues? 5? Just fucking end it already. Take Houken's arm off, send him running, do SOMETHING, just freaking end it. Karo-ten could have hurried her ass up and gotten to Shin was 2 issues ago to give him the boost of fRiEnDsHiP mAgIc to win and we could have gotten done with this. Instead its like the author doesn't want this duel to just. freaking. END.