The Martial Unity

RUMBLE!!!!!

The world shook as a profound change seem to occur within the depths of the Gatekeeper as his eyes widened with understanding.

With enlightenment.

Time slowed down.

Time slowed down to a crawl as the Gatekeeper entered an extraordinary state of mind.

An extraordinary state of introspection even as the malevolent mechanical eyes gazed into his, looking for the terror that all the other Martial Masters harbored within the depths of their heart.

And yet, it only found a profound level of awareness.

“I see…” a whisper escaped him even as he came closer and closer to death. “…My body. This temple that I have created, that I have cultivated is also the source of my heart.”

Of his emotions.

After five hundred years of isolated Physical Evolution, Sir Armstrong had lost his bond with people and the world.

Anybody he may have loved and cared for had died a long, long time ago.

He has spent so much time single-mindedly cultivating his body that he had forgotten their names and their faces.

Even as the world changed.

Even as the eras changed.

Even as the Emperor of Kandria changed, he cultivated his body.

After he broke through to the Master Realm, many expected him to break through to the Sage Realm in the blink of an eye, considering that he had been alive for five hundred years.

Not a single strand of hair remained atop his head, while his beard was a pure white.

His skin was wrinkled even as his body grew larger and denser with all the esoteric substances that he had slowly cultivated into his body in a painstaking and tedious process that was just barely accelerated to acceptable timeframes thanks to his Martial Mind and systems of thought.

He was old and thus people projected great wisdom upon him, assuming he had unlocked the secrets of life, meaning, and purpose in his centuries of isolated training.

And yet, in truth, while his attention was indeed focused on himself wholeheartedly. It was focused on exclusively on his body and not his mind or identity.

He didn’t look back on his life and introspect.

He didn’t look into himself.

He found solace in progressing his physical evolution.

A simple joy.

And the only one he had left.

The euphoric warmth of training hard and pushing his body to the very limit and than the delightful satisfaction of knowing that his body had grown stronger.

Those were enough to keep him going.

He never understood why people pitied him for being stuck in the Senior Realm, he never understood why he ought to have felt ashamed for being stuck in the Senior Realm.

It was a choice that he had made for himself.

It was only after he met the Divine Doctor, created a Martial Mind and broke through to the Master Realm that he was forced to look into himself if he wanted to achieve greater heights of physical cultivation.

The power of the Sage Realm was made for him and he had great compatibility with it.

With the Martial Soul’s control over the body, he could achieve much more precise and quicker physical evolution.

He could chisel his own body right to the final cell and molecule.

He desired this power.

And yet, the conditions were harsh.

Looking into himself as a person for the first time in five hundred years wasn’t easy.

It was slow.

Grueling.

It took years of introspection within the manifold to take a single step towards the Sage Realm.

And yet, he had never managed to quite reach the Sage Realm.

He had never managed to quite understand the very essence of his heart and emotions.

Until today.

Until that very moment when the inhuman humanoid monster sought to consume his body.

It sought to consume everything he had cultivated for five hundred years.

It sought to consume the very legacy of his life.

Because he had dedicated everything to his body, in some ways his body was the only proof that the Gatekeeper had ever existed.

That was what the humanoid monster sought to consume.

It inspired unfettered rage within the depths of the Gatekeeper’s heart as the wrath showed him the truth.

“My body is my soul.”

At that moment, he gained Enlightenment of Self.

RUMBLE!!!!!

The world shook.

Heaven and earth shook as the ephemeral divide between mind and soul vanished as an astronomical amount of neuroconductivity and exponentially greater cognitive flux surged through all parts of the brain as well as all parts of the conscious and subconscious mind.

The Martial Soul was born.

The Martial Soul was born even as the humanoid entity opened its mouth to consume his body.

“I think not.”

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!

A tremendous attack of extraordinary power emerged from within his shining body as his fist unleashed an intense impact on the inhuman entity, flinging it away, depriving it of its delicate balance atop the warped fabric of space and time.

The Gatekeeper’s body glowed like a supernova as he gained absolute and full control of his raw body.

A myriad of exotic colors danced across the surface of his body and across his eyes as the exotic substance of great power embedded and assimlated into his body began growing excited, brimming with power.

They were a very fundamental part of who he was now, unable to be separated from the very depths of who he was. And it was only until someone threatened to consume his body with overwhelming force that he finally understood to what extent his body was central to his very identity.

RUMBLE!!!!!

The world shook as the Gatekeeper’s unfathomable power within the Sage Realm seemed to greatly exceed the power that the average Martial Sage possessed upon breakthrough to the Sage Realm.

His extraordinary control over his body allowed him to harness the esoteric substances with a degree of mastery and efficiency that resembled the great machines of the Esoterist.

RUMBLE!!!

The humanoid entity returned slowly.

It was unharmed despite being caught off guard.

Its smile was malevolent.

“Come.” The Gatekeeper’s eyes flared with wrath. “This battle has just begun.”

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