The Martial Unity

Rui’s eyes flashed with power as his Martial Mind surged, activating the Angel of Laplace.

Ordinarily, applying the deeply data-intensive system of thought to more than a dozen Martial Masters at once was too much.

However, with the power of his Mind-Metabody, it was already over.

In the blink of an eye, he created predictive models for all of them. His gaze shifted to the Master charging at him with an incoming blow.

He shifted ever so slightly at precisely the right moment.

WHOOSH

The fist missed him a hair’s length.

Yet, four more attacks converged on him from four different Masters.

All it took was the slightest shifts across his entire body-

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH

Much to the shock of the four Masters, he slipped past all of their attacks with buttery smoothness.

He made it look easy.

His heightened cognition allowed him to do a much better job with picking the right moment and degree of evasion to minimize energy consumption. Without the cognition thanks to the fusion of Martial Mind and the Mind-Metabody, he wouldn’t have been able to exercise such an incredible level of precision and accuracy. He was in an extremely energy-intensive state at the moment; he couldn’t afford to consume too much energy.

Techniques like the Yin-Yang Spear were out of the question.

He simply sought to accustom himself to his current circumstances as best as possible so that the discovery period of fighting with the Mind-Metabody was completed in training rather than in real combat.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!

The onlookers grew stunned as Rui began evading attacks better and better with each passing second. He realized that the additional cognition helped him in more ways than just one. It didn’t just increase his capacity; it allowed him to do more with less.

This had always been the case, when he thought about it.

It was why Apprentices were able to perform superhuman feats despite having human bodies. Their cognition enabled them to maximize efficiency to superhuman levels, allowing them to produce an output that greatly surpassed the limits of human power.

While the boost in cognition from the lesser version of the Mind-Metabody was most certainly not comparable to the proportional boost that the Apprentice Realm provided, it was still immensely powerful, allowing him to unearth even greater potential in his power that had remained untapped before this.

Yet, that wasn’t all it was able to do.

WHOOSH

Rui evaded a powerful and swift blow as he surged forward with a balled fist.

“I can see your SOUL.”

His power had indeed reduced, yet what had increased was how well he used it.

The right attack at the right point in space and time.

It was a quintessential cornerstone of Adaptive Evolution.

BOOOM!!!

The knuckle on Rui’s fist found itself buried in his opponent’s solar plexus, inflicting immense damage on the man’s gut, knocking him down, and leaving him gasping for air.

The other Masters stared at Rui in shock as he effortlessly downed a high-grade Martial Master with ease.

He didn’t even use any powerful, flashy striking technique either.

No, he had simply exploited the narrowest of gaps in space and timing to produce incredibly significant outcomes that could only otherwise happen if one got lucky.

“If you don’t go all out, you’ll lose.”

Rui’s words struck them hard.

His gaze swept across all of them.

“I am not weak enough that I can be defeated by anything less than your absolute best.”

There was just one problem.

One Master scratched his head.

“But we aren’t holding back.”

Rui heaved a sigh. “Then, so be it.”

WHOOSH!

He rushed at them with the limited speed that he was constrained to, employing Parallel Walk, Gale Force Breathing, and Outer Convergence.

BAM BAM BAM!!!

Rui pummeled one Master blow after blow, exploiting the weaknesses in his guard to blast him with attack after attack while evading every other counter that was sent his way. Yet, the other Masters were hardly willing to sit still and watch him bully their teammate where he

stood.

On top of that, they realized that his perfect evasion wouldn’t matter if they used a wider attack that swept across the entire battlefield. A strategy that would negate the benefits of his greatly enhanced maneuvering.

Additionally, they had also taken to establishing a kind of formation amongst themselves where defensive Martial Masters served as active shields while maneuvering Masters buzzed around him with the intention of merely skirmishing with him around the edges. The close- range Masters worked with the defensive Martial Artists with the goal of trying to land as many blows while he was engaged with the former two.

Meanwhile, long-range Martial Masters reserved themselves to remain at a distance where they launched wide-scale attacks to negate his evasion and cut away at his stamina and condition. While the attacks were certainly weaker, they were good enough to hurt him due to his lowered durability caused by the redirection of the Martial Heart to the brain. For the same reason, friendly fire was not a big deal either. It didn’t matter whether or not it hit teammates because it would require far more effort from Rui’s end to defend against the attack, which served as a great advantage.

It was a level of spontaneous strategic and tactical coordination that Martial Artist of the Lower Realms would be absolutely incapable of doing at all. Yet, Martial Masters were different beasts that were fully capable of engaging and executing strategic thought.

A small smile cracked at the edge of Rui’s mouth as he was blown away by yet another wide-

scale attack. “Impressive. But…”

His eyes flared with peril.

“…Temporal Disharmony.”

The two Masters surging in for a strike stiffened as time sped up so much that they couldn’t even keep up with the world around them!

The Mind-Metabody didn’t just amplify thought and efficiency, it also very directly magnified the potency of Rui’s hypnosis, which was already extremely powerful.

BAM BAM!

Two swift blows to the jaw knocked them out.

A smile emerged on Rui’s face as his red eyes glowed with deep power.

“You’ll have to do better than that if you want to beat me.”