The Martial Unity

The ripples of Rui’s feat of dominance spread beyond just East Panama.

It spread to all corners of human civilization.

In some sense, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

This, along with the revelation of his ability to trigger mass breakthroughs, raised his profile to a level that had perhaps never been reached by any Martial Master in history. In fact, there were even Sages that had yet to breach the level of fame and notoriety that Rui had reached.

Countless parties, nations, organizations, and individuals were deeply interested in the young Master’s Martial Art that allowed for miracles.

They wanted it.

They wanted it at all costs.

The sheer amount of power across human civilization shifted in order to obtain the miracles that the Void Prince had displayed, which was far beyond what any Master in the world could resist.

If not for the powerful and formidable protection of the Kandrian Empire, Rui would have undoubtedly been kidnapped by now. However, the protection of twenty-four Sages, two hundred Martial Masters, and hundreds of apocalypse-class was undoubtedly very powerful. No matter how greedy the world was for Rui’s power, nobody wanted to face the vengeance of the Kandrian Empire as it was now. “It is only a matter of time before Edward weaponizes this,” Emperor Rael narrowed his eyes.

The most effective way to do this was promising to capture Rui alive, extracting the secret of triggering mass breakthroughs, the secret of crippling many powerful Masters all at once, the secret of defeating a hundred Masters, the secret of the Hungry Pain upgrade to the Martial Body and whatever other secret that the Void Prince was hiding.

Over the years, many reasons for lusting for Dawnbringer’s martial art had accumulated.

If Prime Minister Edward was able to harness these and turn them into Martial capital support, then things could become even tougher for the Kandrian Empire.

However, it was unlikely because everybody knew without a doubt that the Prime Minister wasn’t interested in capturing the Void Prince.

He wanted to kill him.

“His greatest flaw has always been setting the most difficult and complete victories and successes as his objective.”

When he sought to destroy the Kandrian Empire, he truly meant it. He wasn’t satisfied with crippling it or even dominating it; he wanted to wipe out the polity as an entity from existence.

It didn’t help that he was unable to maintain the most rational outlook on it due to his history with Emperor Rael.

He wanted a complete and absolute victory.

“Then it begs the question, how will he try to kill my son?”

It was a question that Emperor Rael found himself asking a lot ever since the secret of the origin of the breakthrough ability was disclosed to the world.

Ever since that day, there had been a target on Rui’s back, which the prime minister was most certainly very eager to successfully get a shot on. One thing that the Emperor of Harmony had been doing was looking for Rui’s safety ever since then, especially since he seemed unwilling to look out for his own safety.

Ever since that day, there had been a target on Rui’s back, which the prime minister was most certainly very eager to successfully get a shot on. One thing that the Emperor of Harmony had been doing was looking for Rui’s safety ever since then, especially since he seemed unwilling to look out for his own safety.

However, as far as he could tell, there weren’t too many ways that the Prime Minister could hurt his son.

For one, he could go for the good old brute force route where he simply upped the bounty on his Rui’s head by an even greater margin, a bounty that was absolutely unprecedented for any Martial Master.

This way, he could draw out Master-level and perhaps even some truly legendary Sage-level assassins and hope that one of them could succeed.

The sheer amount of money needed to get one of them to make an eternal enemy of the Kandrian Empire just by accepting the commission was going to be extremely expensive for even the East Panamic Treaty Alliance. But as long as they were willing to pay the price, they could make it work, even if it would most certainly take more time than it would otherwise.

“There are other ways as well,” Emperor Rael skimmed through some reports that detailed the rising demand for Rui’s gifts in many powerful circles around the Panama Continent. “If Edward was willing to make heavy concessions, he might be able to gather immense support for his war effort against the Kandrian Empire and against Rui in exchange for capturing him alive and then extracting his secrets.”

This was another possibility that Emperor Rael needed to guard against.

“The most crude method would be trying to kill Rui with his own Sages, but Edward is too smart not to know that such a strategy is bound to fail against in general, but also against me in general.”

Not only did the Kandrian Empire devote an immense amount of resources to tracking the general locations and preoccupations of all their Martial Sages ahead of time, but he also had the Silas Clan.

“In other words, he needs something that doesn’t consume too much time and resources, time, and isn’t too unlikely to ever pan out.”

All the aforementioned methods were lacking one or the other. “…The only alternative is to find a Master with the power to kill my son, but that is the least likely.” Emperor Rael was keeping track of all active Martial Masters that Prime Minister Edward could possibly find through any and all channels that he could think about. There certainly were plenty of grade-thirty Masters outside East Panama. However, it was very unlikely that they would come all the way to East Panama to accept a commission against Rui in combat.

Grade-thirty Masters had the highest likelihood of breaking through to the Sage Realm. If they died at the hands of an extraordinarily powerful Master, more than just a Master died. A Sage candidate died with them.

This was especially the case when the news about Rui’s absurdly powerful forbidden technique that was undoubtedly powerful enough to kill any Master if he did to activate it on the verge of death to take his opponent down with him. No known peak Master would ever take the risk.

Thus, the question remained.

“Who could possibly defeat Rui?”

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