The Martial Unity

“Die!”

“Take this!”

“I’ll blast you to pieces!”

Three blows converged on Rui from three directions.

And yet, they didn’t so much as touch him.

WHOOSH

His evasion was loose and casual, resembling an evening walk through a garden of flowers rather than that of a Martial battle. And yet, with those gentle shifts and soft steps, he smoothly evaded everything they threw at him.

“Hyarh!” one Martial Sage snarled as she threw a thundering straight kick to his neck, hoping to knock him out then and there.

WHOOSH

With a movement that could be mistaken as him swaying to the wind, Rui cleanly evaded the blow, as several fists and palms converged on him, aiming to wound him where he stood.

STEP

A simple step, as if he were enjoying a walk on a beach, was enough to evade their attack by just a hair’s breadth. BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!

A series of wind blasts converged on him with immense pressure.

WHOOSH…

They merely caused his clothes and hair to flutter, as if they were meagre gusts of wind. Every single attack that converged on him was evaded or rendered obsolete in a manner that exceeded their collective fathoming.

They didn’t understand.

They didn’t understand how he was able to make a fool of their offense with such absurd, casual ease. Three hundred Martial Sages converged on him from virtually all directions.

And yet—

WHOOSH

He smoothly evaded and negated all of their attacks as if they didn’t even exist. It made them wish they didn’t exist.

Even as the hundreds of Sages desperately tried to bring about even the slightest harm to the man known as Rui Quarrier, Sage Marhan remained silent and stationary as his alert, sharp gaze remained fixed on him from a distance.

His Martial Mind and systems of thought specialized in studying and analyzing nonverbal communication to try to ascertain intent. It was a less comprehensive version of Rui’s SOUL System, and yet even that was enough to make him one of the strongest Martial Sages below the Transcendent Candidates.

But his systems of thought and his vast experience were why he was able to glean just an iota of the truth.

The truth of the nature of Rui’s very existence.

‘Those movements… do not emerge from his mind.’

It was a shocking discovery, but it was one that he was confident. After five hundred years of combat, he knew what the connection between the brain and body, the connection between mind and movement, looked like.

He knew that he was looking at something entirely different.

Something that exceeded his wildest fathoming.

Yet, there was one that he did understand.

‘The inception of his movements does not come from his mind.”

His eyes sharpened.

‘They don’t seem to come from the material world either. No, this… these movements come from a higher plane of existence.’

It was why they struggled to perceive them.

Their brains were used to processing human movement in the context of the brain-body control system. Where the nervous system carried sensory stimuli to the brain, the brain processed them and sent signals to muscle that told them how to move.

All Martial reaction and counter-reaction, entire paradigms of techniques, and the trajectory of Martial Art were decided by this fundamental model.

And yet, Rui had transcended this primitive material model of existence.

His body seemed to have a mind of its own.

As if there were multiple consciousnesses across his existence.

They struggled to perceive his movements.

They struggled to react.

They struggled to defend.

They struggled to so much as touch him.

Several, dozens, and hundreds of attacks converged on Rui.

It created a net of destruction that could not be evaded.

And yet—

WHOOSH

A euphoric expression emerged on Rui’s face as he breezed past them like he was gently dancing on ice. His mind was free, unburdened by material woes of evasion and defense as his body moved on its own, casually evading everything that the Martial Sages threw at him.

It made him feel at ease.

It made him feel relaxed.

At peace.

He simply watched as the body consciousness of Rui Quarrier casually evaded each and every single attack they threw at him with the gentlest of steps and a manner of movement that transcended their fathoming. The body-consciousness also astronomically improved Rui Quarrier’s mastery of materia prima. If before it was a torrential river that could barely be controlled, now it was a gentle stream that flowed in the direction they together willed.

The combination of the body-consciousness and the Martial Soul granted a level of mastery and control that was otherworldly, unparalleled in the entire Martial World. He moved in and out of their awareness with the gentlest of ease, allowing him to escape the causality of their destruction.

It was one of the best feelings in the entire world.

He was invincible.

“We are invincible.”

Those words sent chills across all of them as Rui’s brain-consciousness finally decided to partake in the battle himself. He activated his systems of thought as the VOID algorithm, the SOUL System, the Angel of Laplace, the Scriptures of Terra, and the Eye of Prophecy.

In the blink of an eye, his mind surged with cognition and power as the multiple consciousnesses within Rui Quarrier harmonized and resonated with each other. What followed was the most dominant display of power within a Realm that had ever occurred in the history of Martial Art. Rui became a demon of violence.

Of adaptive evolution.

Ten Martial Sages charged towards him, threatening to blast him where he stood.

And yet, their fates were sealed.

WHOOSH

He breezed past them in the blink of an eye.

THUD THUD THUD…

Pure horror emerged in the eyes of the hapless Martial Sages as they watched the lifeless bodies of their comrades strike the ground like puppets whose strings were cut. Their skins were a sharp combination of pitch black and paper white as the Poison of Yin and Yang coursed through their veins. Black gu and Anthean white blood cells flooded their bodies, spreading cell death across their entire bodies in the blink of an eye.

All it took was a simple touch piercing the surface of their skin.

Instantly, he effortlessly killed ten Martial Sages.

As if they were insects.

It was then that the full reality of the power disparity settled upon them.

And all the despair that came with it.