The Martial Unity

His time with Julian and the rest of the orphanage had jolted him back to reality.

It had altered his perspective of time.

He was forty years old, although only thirty-eight years had passed since his birth in the real world.

However, he felt and looked twenty-six years old physically.

The combination of having broken through to the Senior Realm and having consumed a particularly potent life-prolonging potion at the biological age of twenty-six meant that his aging had slowed down significantly. For every year that passed, his body aged a few months at the very most. It had warped his perception of time significantly. So much so that three years was nothing to him. It was what a season might be to a normal human. He felt as though someone had put the Quarrier Orphanage in the Mellow Manifold in the time that he had been away. However, he knew that he had to simply accept reality and be glad that the people he had grown up with were living rich and satisfactory lives.

His sole consolation was that Julian, someone he was particularly close to, also sought a life-prolonging potion because he wasn’t satisfied with what he could accomplish with the time he had remaining.

Rui found himself spending a few days at the orphanage, taking in life as it was. He trained several Martial Apprentices, as well as Max and Mana, helping them refine their Martial Art.

It was a peaceful life.

Perhaps he would have even sought it had he not been consumed by Project Water. But alas, he was. He would not rest until he had fulfilled his greatest ambition. He knew that he wasn’t even remotely close to doing so, even if he made remarkable progress. Being able to adaptively evolve to any and everything required him to be exposed to any and everything.

It meant that he could never remain at one place for too long.

Either he went to the world, or the world needed to come at him.

“I suppose the latter might not be too unrealistic in the near-ish future,” he remarked to himself, sitting on a tree overlooking the Quarrier Village.

With his father’s ambition to elevate Kandria above all others, he would undoubtedly get a good taste of what the world had to offer as far as Martial Masters went. He would be facing the high-grade Martial Masters of all three Sage-level powerhouses, perhaps even more, depending on how much the war got to escalate.

There was no better avenue than gaining all the vital experience and exposure that he needed to adaptively evolve to everything. It would also be optimal for making him stronger, bringing him closer to answering the ultimate question that all Martial Masters needed to answer to reach a higher Realm of power.

“That’s about it for what I’ve been working on these days,” Rui remarked nonchalantly, shifting his gaze. “What about you, Kane?”

The two of them were meeting for the first time in three years, although it didn’t feel like any time at all as Martial Artists.

“Building up my systems of thought,” Kane muttered, dissatisfied. “It’s so hard to think up sophisticated systems of thought. I can’t believe you’ve been doing this since you were an Apprentice. That’s just insane.”

Rui smiled. “You should master the Mind Palace technique if you’re having difficulty juggling lots of information. It is one of the reasons that I was able to use the more information-intensive systems of thought at all. It might help you through it.”

“I already have, but even that technique is so difficult to use for anything other than basic facts. In the first place, it’s crazy that you were able to use it to memorize the entire Shionel Dungeon. Or the entire Garden of Salvation.”

Kane assumed that he would be able to rapidly memorize information and organize it efficiently in ways that allowed for swift retrieval and processing.

However, after purchasing the technique, he realized that not only was it not supposed to allow for such things, it was insanely difficult.

It stressed imagination to the very limit just to conjure up a detailed room in his mind to actually store information.

Rui made it look easy.

“Sigh, I don’t know if I can create a Martial Mind. It seems way too hard,” Kane grumbled.

“Hm, if you’re having difficulty, then maybe you should try the speed-oriented voidlet techniques that I created precisely to increase the rate of breakthroughs to the Master Realm,” Rui calmly informed him.

Kane frowned. “I thought those were for aspirants and Apprentices.”

“They are…” Rui admitted. “However, I’ve been informed that the Martial Artists across the entirety of the lower Realms have purchased and learned them. Apparently, a new Martial Master credits her breakthrough to them. They are a collection of relatively simple rules of thumb and heuristics organized into a single system of thought. It is meant to be extremely broad, flexible, and open to lots of customization and expansion. You might find what you’re looking for there.”

Kane’s eyes lit up with interest. “That sounds like a pretty good option, to be honest. Maybe I’ll give it a shot. Better than banging my head against a wall.”

“In general, building a Martial Mind takes a long, long time,” Rui remarked. “My circumstances are not normal. In fact, they are more extraordinary than most people can even begin to dream of.”

Kane nodded knowingly.

Knowing the truth had made him feel much less pressed about the gap between them. He knew that Rui had been blessed with some incredible circumstances that had aided him to his heights.

“Although those same circumstances are coming to bite me in the ass when it comes to breaking through to Sage Realm,” Rui murmured with dissatisfaction. “…What do you plan on doing now?” Kane wondered. “Another training phase?”

“Definitely not.” Rui shook his head. “What I need is…”

His eyes narrowed. “…experience. For the foreseeable future. I’m going to accrue as much experience as possible.”

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