The Martial Unity

If Martial Sages had too many senses that were too powerful for a paltry optical illusion to work, then the solution was simple.

Rui just needed to get rid of all those senses.

That was where his extraordinary hypnosis, further exponentially enhanced by the Gigabrain technique, came in. Ordinarily, the hypnosis of a Master would bounce off a Martial Sage like a beach ball would off of a steel wall.

However, in his current state with the Gigabrain technique, Rui might as well have been in an entirely higher Realm compared to the average Master.

The goal was simple.

Misdirect all her attention and consciousness to focus exclusively on visual sensory data, discarding all other forms of sensory input and awareness.

Ordinarily, it would have been impossible to execute this hypnosis without her noticing. A Martial Sage was a being for whom the barrier between conscious and subconscious had ceased to exist, allowing for perfect harmony between the conscious and subconscious mind. Misdirecting the conscious mind away from the guard of the subconscious mind was so astronomically difficult that only a fellow Martial Sage could possibly accomplish this.

That was where her state of mind and emotional turmoil came in.

Fear of killing him.

A deep desperation, impatience, and haste to knock him out.

The fear of humiliation from her colleagues as a new Sage who couldn’t even defeat a Martial Master quickly.

The shock and surprise that also brewed within her.

They all worked against her.

The sum totality of her conscious mind was focused entirely on Rui and he used this against her by misdirecting her conscious mind away from her subconscious mind to focus on him, leaving her subconscious mind more vulnerable to his hypnotic suggestions.

Hypnotic suggestions instructing it to discard all her other senses.

And it had just barely succeeded in time to allow him to just barely evade the first blow she had thrown.

This was the Soul Blinding technique.

It was nothing short of one of the most extraordinary hypnotic techniques ever created in the history of Martial Art.

And thus, with a countless myriad of factors supporting him and enabling him to evade her, the Dawnbringer accomplished the impossible.

He defended himself against a Martial Sage.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!!!

Sage Himari gritted her teeth as her emotional turmoil only continued increasing. Her desperate impatience and haste kept reaching even greater and greater heights as she struggled to so much as touch him.

Had she simply halted, taken a few steps back to collect herself, she would have very quickly noticed what was happening. It was almost impossible for a Sage not to do so with the Enlightenment of Self.

And yet, she didn’t.

She only pushed harder and harder as she held back less and less of her power. The speed and momentum of her strikes had long entered the realm of lethal.

And yet-

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!!!

The entranced Dawnbringer continued evading each and every one of her attacks by a hair’s breadth.

And yet, they never so much as even grazed him.

It wasn’t easy for Sage Himari to overcome her natural inhibition against a Martial Master. It was like asking an adult to fight a toddler with all their strength. Almost all adults would hold back tremendously in fear of hurting a toddler if they even acquiesced to such a thing.

And yet, what if the toddler was superhuman?

What if the toddler possessed power far beyond anything thought possible for a human toddler?

In that situation, the adult would need to overcome their instinctive inhibitions and use their full power.

That was the realization and transition that Sage Himari was undergoing. As Rui continued cleanly evading her strikes even as she threw faster and faster attacks, she realized that she might have to use her Martial Art in order to defeat the Dawnbringer.

Things were not going her way.

Even though she was slowly unshackling her self to begin using the true power of a mighty Martial Sage, she realized that he too was growing stronger and stronger with each passing

moment.

His predictive model grew increasingly refined as it consumed more and more data. His movements only grew increasingly more efficient and minimalistic as he fully grew accustomed to moving just enough to evade the endless onslaught of attacks that she had unleashed upon him. He adaptively evolved to her at a rate that was similar to the rate at which she stopped holding back with her immense and tremendous power.

RUMBLE!!!!!

The world shook violently under the maelstrom of power that a Martial Sage unleashed onto heaven and earth.

The barrier that the Martial Sages erected outside was not just to snuff out Rui’s astronomically powerful Martial Embodiment.

It was also to allow Sage Himari to utilize her power as a Sage to suppress the Dawnbringer. For, as much as they would never admit it, they all knew that they would never be able to defeat the Dawnbringer with just their Martial Heart and Martial Mind. His final battle against the Chosen One had truly shocked each and every single one of them.

The Martial Soul and everything that came with the Sage Realm was what would allow them

to overcome him.

Or, so they thought.

And yet, they were wrong.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!!!!!

The sheer intensity of the blood-red suns that shone in the depths of his eyes only grew with

each passing second. Her astronomically fast strikes had reached a point that even his exponentially enhanced perception of time was failing to keep up with them.

And yet, he dodged everything that she threw at him. The sum totality of his astronomical mind grew increasingly focused and honed for one and only one purpose.

Surviving.

He was under no illusion that he was in any position to fight for a win at the moment.

It took him everything and more just to ensure that he didn’t lose then and there.

RUMBLE!!!!!!!

The sheer onslaught of energy that emerged from her would have been enough to end any

Martial Master in existence.

And yet, Rui simply adaptively evolved.

He adaptively evolved to all of it.