The Martial Unity

2938  Non-Hadronic Pluripotent Matter

The gathered Martial Sages accepted his rationales, before immediately immersing himself in the battle strategies that Rui imparted to all of them, formulating a system of thought that he would first explain in detail before eventually implanting it directly in their minds with hypnotic embedding.

Then, over the next year, they would participate in hypnotic simulations that would help them get accustomed to fighting one powerful target with hundreds of Martial Sages on their side. By burning it into their intuitions and instincts, Rui was confident that they could raise the coordination and teamwork factor to a great extent. At the very least, he was confident that he could prevent major fiascos from happening, like friendly fire and getting in each other’s way, canceling each other out as assets, only to serve themselves up as prey for the Beast That Roared.

As long as they could stack up their power even remotely additively, they should approach breaching the Transcendent Realm in terms of raw power, led by the four most powerful Martial Sages who would be doing much of the heavy lifting and the most difficult parts of the battle.

While the other Martial Sages immediately began training on large scale cohort coordination, the four strongest Martial Sages of humanity began focusing on their personal power.

“Is it possible for the three of you to get stronger in the next year?”

Rui found himself secluded in one of the many dozens of jets, face to face with the three Transcendent candidates, seated around him.

None of them responded immediately.

Not even Damian.

Bodhisattva Maitreyi heaved a weary sigh. “It’s not that easy for us, my dear child. While growth is not impossible, at our altar of power, it’s truly difficult to make progress without extraordinary measures that are almost impossible by themselves. We have reached a stage in our Martial Path where simply training will not help us anymore, or has such insignificant growth that it’s not worth the time and effort spent on it.”

15:51

Bodhisattva Maitreyi heaved a weary sigh. “It’s not that easy for us, my dear child. While growth is not impossible, at our altar of power, it’s truly difficult to make progress without extraordinary measures that are almost impossible by themselves. We have reached a stage in our Martial Path where simply training will not help us anymore, or has such insignificant growth that it’s not worth the time and effort spent on it.”

The Reverend of Reckoning was too proud and arrogant to ever actually admit that, but the glint of weary frustration in his eyes reflected the same truth.

Damian gruffly snorted in grudging agreement. Watching them reminded Rui of the Demon of Asmodeous.

The man had resolved to plunge the entire world into an abyss of darkness, which was the Gu. He wanted to genocide life itself in order to reach the Transcendent Realm.

Was the reason that he sought to go for such an absurdly extreme path to the Transcendent Realm because he, too, had found himself at an insurmountable bottleneck?

Would these three Martial Sages also need to go through something that extreme to drive them to the Transcendent Realm.

If so, he could understand their pessimistic outlook.

“You are still relatively young,” the Reverend of Reckoning found it in him to put aside his arrogant demeanor and speak candidly to Rui. “And I can sense the Order within you and that you have somehow gotten biologically younger. You have only spent ten years in the Sage Realm, and it is you, not us, who has the potential to grow stronger in the next year.”

This was a sentiment that all three of them shared.

Despite entering the Sage Realm, he still seemed to be brimming with untapped potential, something none of them had ever seen in their entire lives.

By the time Martial Sages, even the most prodigious of geniuses, reached the Sage Realm, they were usually close to the end of their natural potential and would need to slog and grind like madmen for just a single percentage point of growth.

They had seldom seen a Martial Sage who entered the Sage Realm while still brimming with the potential of a Martial Apprentice.

It was truly unfathomable.

Rui heaved a deep breath as he felt the weight of their expectations mount on them. They were heavy indeed.

They had just told him that he was the only one among them who could make any meaningful growth in the next year.

And they were right.

“I will make the absolute best of the next year,” Rui promised with a calm, but steely voice laced with determination. And that was exactly what he had resolved to do when he departed from the jet with a willful gait, secluding himself in an isolated compartment of the Kandrian Jet, before pulling out the samples of the primordial seed that they had collected from the corpse of the abyss feeder as he gazed at it with intense eyes.

He had been spent time studying the substance since the battle had ended and had gained more insights into what the hell this substance was. By rigorously deploying his senses to study and probe the very fundamental nature of the primordial seed, he had finally identified just what manner of substance it was. “Non-hadronic Pluripotent matter.”

This was a hypothesized form of matter thought to be comprised of the Higgs Field, the quantum field responsible for physicality and mass, overlapping and coalescing into a single macroscopic quantum field that behaved like the Einstein-Bose condensate, thought to be able to give rise to all forms of matter.

It was an entirely different kind of matter from the regular kind that surrounded them. He found it hard to believe himself, but all of his research and insights into the substance an as a powerful Martial Sage who could behold the very fabric of reality told him that he was right. “…Just where did such an exotic form of matter even come from?” Rui narrowed his gaze. The same was true for the other esoteric substances of Gaia.

Just where did all of them come from?

No one knew, unfortunately. Regardless, he shifted his focus on how he would use the primordial seed to enhance his combat power and effectiveness.

“My eventual goal should be some kind of deep integration and even replacement of ordinary matter with this non-hadronic pluripotent matter,” Rui remarked with a knowing tone. “To whatever extent is physically possible anyway.”

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