The Martial Unity

Unlike a one-time battle, a war dragged on for quite some time. In this case, Rui did not expect any quick development in the war. It was simply too slow, long, and grueling. It was a contest of attrition versus the commitment of the Kaddar Region.

The war had entered into a stage of monotony to a certain extent. After all, the conditions were rather simple for the Kaddar nations and the Floating Sect. The Floating Sect simply wanted to survive and put up a stiff resistance.

The Kaddar nations were not content letting the island stick around, thus their assaults had been regular.

The Floating Sect grew accustomed to the alarms of war. After a while, it became increasingly normal for all guardians to get involved with the war due to their obligation to the Floating Sect, but aside from that, the guardians’ day-to-day life had not changed too much.

In fact, the war completely escaped Rui’s mind when he wasn’t participating in it. He had stopped caring about it after the first battle.

He was too engrossed in training with the Whirlpool Breathing and Elephant Breathing techniques.

After all, the two techniques were the most relevant matter to his Martial Art, he trained diligently to get to the level that he wanted.

And he was making progress.

The training plan for the Whirlpool technique had Rui engage in all kinds of inhumane stressing and stretching training to loosen up his diaphragm. Lack of flexibility usually means the presence of fascia, a form of connective tissue that is meant to hold down the muscle system.

He felt the training allowed him to breathe deeper than he would normally be able to do so, making every effort to maximize utility.

The Elephant Breathing technique was a good old-fashioned and straightforward training technique. It tortured his diaphragm, he got stronger.

He did not do anything other than train rigorously and endlessly, and he was fine with that. Project Metabody was so ambitious and alluring that Rui did not mind a tedious and boring time outside of his technique in regard to that.

His mind was constantly filled with possibility in regard to that. He wanted to know how he was going to realize the rest of Project Metabody.

He also spent time looking into esoteric substances that, while not necessarily optimal, could help him point in the right direction, to begin with, and thus less time would be wasted in general.

He completely detached from reality at one point as he furiously spent nearly every second of his time thinking about going about how he could get closer to fulfilling Project Metabody.

It was addicting, almost. He couldn’t help it, it was the first time that he had gotten this excited about a project since Project Water itself.

Much to Rui’s surprise, the training was progressing far quicker than he had expected. The reason for that was that he knew that having undergone conditioning of his diaphragm and lungs before made it easier for him.

He had undergone pretty rigorous training on the Might Roar Flash Blast technique and had trained his diaphragm in quite a novel manner that one would suspect that he already had.

The Mighty Roar Flash Blast technique had a very real possibility of being the most dangerous Martial Art technique that he had ever been subject to. He was literally on the verge of death many times during that bit of training on Vilun Island, all so that he could gain the technique that served as the basis of Transverse Resonance.

That gave him a much lower bar for him to cross because he had already crossed a lot of it. One of the challenges however was how different the training methodologies were, and why a lot of the gains he made on Vilun Island were not one-to-one comparisons to the training technique of the movement.

After all, human bodies were far too diverse and nuanced for there to be only one aspect of a muscle to be treated, although there wasn’t any overlap, there was still not enough of an overlap for him to rely on the training he did on Vilun Island to be enough, it definitely helped.

As time passed, his diaphragm grew stronger and stronger, and its ability to expand grew far greater than it ever used to be. He could that this not only would potentially help him realize his goal, but at the bare minimum, it would strengthen all his long-range techniques for good, his long-range offense would be even more lethal than it used to be.

He could also feel that this would definitely have improved a lot of his other breathing techniques such as Gale Force Breathing, Wind Breathing, and Final Breathing.

Thus even if this avenue of exploration did not succeed, Rui had to admit that he definitely would have made enough gains from his training such that it would have been worth it. On the other hand, the benefits that he got from the nourishing atmosphere of the Floating Sect also increased naturally, since he could inhale a greater amount of air, his body received a greater amount of it.

There were times when he simply did not leave his chamber except for when he had to be deployed, and the fights against the Martial Squires of the Kaddar Region allowed him to have a good gauge for how much stronger he had become.

Though unlike with other techniques, he did not know exactly where he ought to stop because he was mastering them often for the sake of others. Yet he wasn’t sure if it was enough to do what he wanted. Thankfully, there were ways to test whether it was ready or not.

After merely two months of training, he had completed the technique, and now it was time to check the results. Had he gained the ability to flesh cells of their excess energy and nutrients so that they could be used for accelerated healing?

He intended to find out.