The Martial Unity

The sheer tenacity and perseverance that he displayed were unparalleled.

A large hole in his Body with damaged lungs, heart, and spine.

Even if he had copied some healing techniques, he was not able to heal lethal wounds fast enough before the blood loss knocked him out and then killed him. On top of that, even if it was fast enough, it didn’t have the fuel to heal his Body. Regenerating large amounts of tissue needed an equal amount of nutrients, organic matter, and other compounds.

This sort of wound was a death sentence.

Any other Master would have accepted death and simply died.

Not Ieyasu.

He saw a source of all the nutrients and compounds that he would need to regenerate and heal his wound right before him: the Harbinger herself.

The issue was that he was too weak to fight her with such a lethal wound. There was no way that she would allow him to assimilate her Body to heal his wounds.

The only other option left was catching her off-guard.

Thus, he faked his death.

He offered well-meaning advice to her with a sense of finality to truly make it seem like his death was inevitable.

The combination of hypnosis and slowing down his metabolism was the perfect solution. The latter even slowed down his rate of dying exponentially.

The moment she turned her back, immersed in thought, his opportunity had provided itself. “Arghrr!” The Harbinger gritted her teeth as the pain from her wound spread across her Body.

She could almost feel him eating her Body from within!

Yet, she was powerless to resist due to the combination of poison and an electric current.

Simultaneously, the clotted wound in his torso started closing as his eyes grew more vigorous, while his complexion only continued improving. He had combined the assimilated Martial Art of a vampire Martial Artist who consumed the flesh of other Martial Artists to empower herself in fights along with another Martial Art that allowed him to consume his target’s blood and flesh without needing to rely on conventional digestion.

He assimilated these two techniques into Weaving Blood, which then healed his body with the assimilated flesh and blood of his opponent.

This was the technique that he came up with for himself.

An Assimilative Metabody.

With each passing moment, Weaving Blood healed his wound.

With each passing moment, she could feel him reaching into the depths of her Body, taking what he needed.

THUD

Her body slowly toppled over as he extricated his arm from the depths of her flesh.

The wound in his chest was gone.

The Harbinger’s Body, on the other hand, was dying.

After having had a large chunk of her Body painfully and gruesomely consumed inside-out, her heart rate began slowing down while her breathing grew more shallow. Her complexion grew paler and paler by the second.

She felt it in her heart.

She was going to die very soon.

It appeared that her original premonition of her impending death was true after all. “It doesn’t have to be.” His tone was uncharacteristically soft.

“I avoided consuming your vitals.”

Her eyes weakly shifted over to him. “Your death would be unconducive to my objectives.”

She was too weak to express her confusion.

“However,” his tone grew stoic, “I do not save enemies that fought to kill me.”

He turned away from her, walking off.

“My words to you before were not deceitful.”

Her pupils dilated as a hint of life returned to them. My fear drove me forward. Your fear holds you back. You will obtain unfathomable power should you ever unshackle yourself.

“You have two doors before you. One leads you to death. The other leads you to the Sage Realm.” He gazed at her from the edge of his dark eyes one final time before turning away. “The choice is yours.”

Her eyes widened at his words.

His attention turned away from her as he pulled out a Sekigaharan comms artifact. “Retreat.”

Putting the device away, he leaped away as she lost consciousness due to blood loss.

Yet, when she closed her eyes, she found herself standing on a path.

A path that she had traversed her entire life. Her Path.

Before her were two doors.

One door led to… emptiness.

Nothingness.

Death.

Should she walk through the door, she would undoubtedly die.

The other door was the gate that she had been staring at for decades now, always in admiration and yearning for the unfathomable power that lay behind it.

Yet, too afraid to take the final few steps towards it.

Now she had to choose.

Had anyone else been presented with the choice to break through to the Sage Realm or die, they would have leaped for the former in a heartbeat!

Yet, even in the face of such a no-brainer multiple-choice question, the Harbinger found herself plagued with fear.

Insecurities of her obsoletion in the Sage Realm.

Fear of never being able to enjoy a fight ever again.

The paranoia of being turned into the laughingstock of the Martial Community.

These were fears that had marinated and grown stronger and stronger over the years, becoming thick, iron-clad chains that did not listen to reason. Even now, on the brink of death, she was not entirely willing to let these fears come to fruition. Even if her fears were misguided, even if her fears were entirely wrong, she still didn’t want to risk it on the off chance that they might be true.

She did not want to die.

Even now, her sense of self-preservation urged her to take the other path.

Her desperation not to die.

Her desperation to live.

Her desperation to return to the Kandrian Empire and be there to witness and experience its glorious future.

A tremendous amount of desires tugged on her to break through to the Sage Realm for the sake of living.

And despite all of that, she didn’t move.

Despite the fear of death. Despite the desire to live. Despite all of it…

On the brink of death, she discovered that her fear of obsoletion was even greater than her fear of death and desire to live.

She learned that her fear was the strongest force in her being.

She discovered that it was far stronger than she had ever imagined.

She understood that it was part of who she was as a sovereign being.

“So, this… is who I am.” A whisper escaped her. “I… would rather die than become a Martial Sage.”

And in that moment, she gained Enlightenment of Self.

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