The Martial Unity

“To think that His Majesty would become afflicted by this disease…” Minister Danes heaved a shaky breath. “I can only pray that this doesn’t lead to complete catastrophe and disaster. His Majesty singlehandedly controls the fate of this continent. And since Princess Ria has managed to gain complete control over her father… it means that she has become the new most powerful person in this continent!”

The ministers grew troubled by the new set of problems that they faced with an emperor who was completely in love with his baby daughter. Rui, on the other hand, was happy that he found a way to spend time with Ria while simultaneously not neglecting his duties as Emperor.

He watched her grow day by day as he made sure to spend more time with her, showing her off to his friends and family on a routine basis. Kane and Fae would pop over more frequently with Runark and another baby on the way as Fae revealed that she was pregnant.

As Rui watched her grow up from the day she was born, he learned, or rather confirmed, what he knew about the nature of life, the Essence of Life.

It was adaptive evolution. Even the very act of growth was one of adaptive evolution. Growth occurred in the context of an environment and circumstances; different environments and different circumstances led to different kinds of growth.

On a deeper level, each experience became the fuel for a particular kind of growth. His daughter, still very much in her infancy, was a limitless beacon of potential that could manifest in any way depending on her experiences, environment, and circumstances.

Then it begged the question.

“Can we give her experiences, environments, and circumstances that would lead to her growth to become a genius of Martial Art?”

This was not a revolutionary thought by any means. It had been considered in the Martial community, but their understanding of how to tap into this principle to direct growth in a certain manner was very crude. Before the advent of the Panamic Martial Federation, people would often throw their children into extremely dangerous situations to try to stimulate growth in order to produce geniuses.

It didn’t work.

And Rui understood why such a barbaric, evil practice would not yield the kind of growth that one would want. If a baby were like a slab of molten iron that could be shaped into anything, then the hammering of a blacksmith was the pressures of life, the tribulations they faced.

If too much pressure was applied, then the iron would deform completely, leading to a broken product. That was the flaw with their thought process. “Babies are deeply sensitive and fragile beings; to subject them to such intense pressure is nothing short of heinous evil, not to mention counter-productive to the goal they seek to achieve.”

The very thought of it made Rui’s blood boil with a vengeance. He immediately passed legislation in the Kandrian Empire and in the Void Order that criminalized harsh Martial conditioning of children, as the Panamic Martial Federation once did, setting the punishment for the crime as the death penalty, before returning to the matter.

“Torturous attempts of the past aside, there must be a gentle sequence of experiences, environments, and circumstances that can lead to babies developing to be talented in a particular field.”

His ethereal eyes lit up as he watched Ria trying to scoot across the floor in his royal chambers, playing with the many toys scattered on the floor. “Gagaga…”

“The question is what is talent,” Rui remarked to himself, never once taking his eyes off his daughter. It wasn’t very difficult for him to formulate an answer based on the many enlightenments that he had accrued on life, nature, and evolution.

“Talent is in some ways similar to Paths,” Rui remarked. “It’s the overlapping affinity of different aspects of a person’s existence attuned to a particular sequence of actions.”

A human being was a collection of countless parameters. Neurological parameters, biochemical parameters, anatomical parameters, and countless more variables set to a certain value that made up each individual person. ‘Talent’ was merely an alignment of a large number of parameters being attuned to a particular set of activities.

For instance, Tokugawa’s talent of Martial mimicry was nothing more than neuroplasticity between the inferior frontal gyrus, the inferior parietal lobule (where mirror neurons were located), and the cerebellum, which was responsible for motor coordination. These parameters being set the way they were was what led to the talent of copying any Martial Art he saw.

When described scientifically, Tokugawa Ieyasu’s talent was actually quite mundane. It was the alignment of merely ten or twenty parameters aligned towards Martial Art.

Less revolutionary geniuses like Kane had even fewer parameters expressly aligned with Martial Art, and it still made him a genius.

Then it begged the question.

If just twenty parameters being aligned with Martial Art could produce a peerless genius like Tokugawa Ieyasu, then what would a person with one hundred Martial Art parameters aligned towards Martial Art look like?

What about one thousand parameters or one million?

“What if every single parameter in a person’s existence was aligned with Martial Art?”

What kind of mind-boggling and unfathomable genius of transcendent caliber would such a person be?

“It would be era-defining.”

His ethereal eyes lit up with inspiration as he gazed at his infant playing with toys. “Such a girl would easily become the most powerful Martial Artist to have ever existed in all of history.”

He had already made his decision.

“We will give our daughter that talent.”

A radiant smile emerged on his face. “That will be our gift to her as a father.”

The question was how.

“We can’t be as crude or barbaric about our approach.”

That meant no subjecting his daughter to torturous tribulations and no messing around with her genome with his quantum tweezers. Both options were evil, as far as he was concerned. He activated his Realms of power, hiding them from his daughter as the Forge of Creation blazed with power. A humane, but effective method through which he could align his daughter’s existential parameters to be attuned with Martial Art. He activated Megamind and enhanced his cognition greatly through Anthean-half as his mind surged to find the answer.

And it did.

“Vibrations.”

Vibrations were already scientifically shown to impact biochemistry, physiology, and the trajectory of one’s biology. They even impacted the DNA passed on from cell to cell with each round of cell division.

And as long as he kept the frequency of the vibration very low, his daughter would never even notice it and would live her life normally. He just needed to find a way to figure out what kind of vibrations would make his daughter a genius.

A confident smile emerged on his face as he dedicated his mind and body to the challenge. “We’ve overcome more difficult hurdles. Nothing will stop us from giving our magnificent daughter the talent she deserves.”