The Martial Unity

RUMBLE!!!

The world shook as the beast wave clashed with the Martial Artists of the Gu while Rui and Amare evacuated from the battle zone as quickly as they could. Rui narrowed his eyes as he studied the Martial Artists of the Gu with a curious expression. They wore jet-black Martial attires that blended in with the eerie darkness of the Gu.

And yet, their power was impossible to miss.

BOOOOOOOM BOOOOOOOOM BOOOOOOOOM!!!!!

The moment they touched the beast tides, they swiftly overwhelmed it. The beasts and monsters roared with agony and pain as the Martial Artists of the Gu routed them with a tremendously overwhelming power.

And yet, what drew his attention was the primal aggression in every inch of their body.

“HAHAHA!” “DIE! DIE! DIE!!!”

“RRRRAAAAARRGHARHRAG!!!!”

Their eyes flared with madness.

Their snarls were ferocious and bestial.

It was hard to tell which side was the animals. Their power was overwhelming. They bludgeoned dragons to death, tore phoenixes apart with their bear hands, and crumpled basilisk with their power. Aside from the Kandrian Empire, Rui had not seen any Sage-level powerhouse dispatch the beasts and monsters as quickly as they did.

Yet, it was not what they did to the beasts that truly shocked him. No, it was what they did together.

“DIEEE!!!!” one Martial Artist snarled as he attacked his fellow Martial Artist in the middle of battle.

They simply attacked what was in front of them.

A Martial Artist front that was momentarily united scrambled as they began fighting any and everything that was in front of them, whether it was beasts or humans. The chaos that erupted from this madness was so intense that even beasts and monsters grew agitated enough to lose what little cohesion they had and begin fighting amidst each other.

“ROOOAAARRR!!!”

“KRRRIIIEEEKKK!!!”

“RAAAWWWRRR!!!”

And thus, a battle between the beast and man became a free-for-all where only the fittest would survive.

“Is this the consequence of the gu ritual?” Rui’s eyes sharpened. “The fittest survive but are permanently warped with aggression?”

From what he could see, that hypothesis was true. The Martial Artists of the Gu were everything that the Martial Artists of the Sekigahara Confederate tried to convince the world they were. Maniacally erratic. Insane. Primally aggressive monsters in human form.

This was what happened when one in ten, one in a hundred, or perhaps even one in a thousand human beings survived a gruesome survival challenge through violence. People snapped.

Their brains would adjust to cause them to enjoy this process, lest the pain and suffering cause them to have mental breakdowns.

“Rui…” Amare’s whispers reached him. “This place… nggh…”

Her hand pressed against her forehead. “I feel like I remember something. But, it’s painful…”

Having gotten far away from the battle, he took a closer look at her. “You don’t seem too well.”

His tone was of concern.

She had gotten back a piece of her memories with every location that they had visited. She even got them back as they journeyed through the Panama Continent. Yet, she had never been this incapacitated by her memories.

“These memories are painful…” she murmured. “I don’t know why…”

His eyes softened with care and concern. “…Are you sure you want to continue?” She nodded, squeezing out a smile for him. His expression grew conflicted.

He didn’t want her to get hurt.

The Gu was vastly more dangerous and risky then he had imagined. Even calling this place a powerhouse was a misnomer. It was simply chaotic madness.

She brushed his face with her hands, smiling at him with appreciation and affection. “I will be fine, really. I can handle it. This is my burden to handle.”

Rui gazed at her deeply, before nodding.

She was strong. One of the things he appreciated the most about her was her Martial and mental power.

“Let’s go then,” he held her hand as they traversed the gu.

It was unlike any other place they had ever visited, it was as thought hell itself had emerged from the depths of the underworld and set up shop in human civilization.

For one, sky was simply gone. In its place was an ominous cloud of darkness. It was nothing short of the worst nightmare of the Solaris Kingdom. If they had the courage, they would have undoubtedly sought to destroy the Gu. The lands were bathed in darkness, death, blood, and rot.

A layer of corpses covered them, stretching as far as the eye could see. Countless people died, and it appeared that the Gu had not instituted a sanitation system to clean out all the corpses.

And yet, despite all the sheer number of people that died, there were plenty still alive. A death toll that no nation could possibly tolerate or survive was mitigated by one simple factor.

“…Stealing more people from outside to replenish their population.” Rui’s expression grew fierce.

It was one thing to subject one’s own people to this horrific nightmare. It was another to forcefully steal the people of the world to do the same. The Gu used the distractions of the Beast Incursion and the esoterification of human civilization to ensure that they weren’t caught.

After all, the Era of Darkness was an era of death. People died left and right.

Humanity’s death toll had long since entered the hundreds of billions. Nobody would notice if ten million people here or there disappeared. They would simply assume that their defenses had fallen and that they had simply been wiped out. Another reason that they had gotten away with it was that the world was simply scared.

Scared of the Gu.

It had reduced the number of powerhouses from fifteen to fourteen, after all. Messing with the Gu meant an absolute existential war with them and potential destruction right down to the very last brick and person.

That was a reason that people had completely forgotten about Mt. Hua Sect. The powerhouse had been so thoroughly erased by the Gu that they may as well have never existed in the timeline.

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