The Martial Unity

Amare grew concerned about the words that Rui espoused. The fact that she was stalling was not something that was lost to her at all. She was aware of the fact that, compared to Rui, her progress to the Transcendent Realm was much more stalled. This much was undeniable: the fact that she had achieved her Candidacy before he did.

There was also the fact that while Rui had managed to become a Martial Transcendent before she did, he had also somehow managed to gain a better understanding of the Transcendent Realm before any other Transcendent ever had in the past. His understanding of the Transcendent Realm, of the information dimension, and of the criteria needed for Martial Sages to become transcendent candidates was much greater than that of his predecessors.

The predecessors of the Transcendent Realm had left many cryptic messages in the past regarding what it took to break through to the Transcendent Realm. They spewed many a riddle wrapped in verse and in rhyming, flowery language that made it possible to evaluate exactly how one broke through to the Transcendent Realm.

The only thing that became clear from all of that was the fact that each of their answers was colored by their own individuality. This was the reality that gave everybody a hint that it had something to do with deep individuality, and, all this time, this was the only hint that they had managed to pry and had worked with.

However, after Rui broke through, he provided them with a complete theoretical framework for the Transcendent Realm and what it took to get there. He helped them understand the mechanism of the Transcendent Realm and helped them understand the concrete steps they could take to get there.

This wasn’t even a particularly new thing. After all, for each Realm, after a Martial Artist broke through, there was a period of great unknown where the Martial Artist tried to figure out what was even going on with the new Realm that offered them to take a very systematic approach to try and figure out the fundamental conditions.

Usually, it took at least double-digit Martial Artists of a new Realm before there was any understanding of what the Realm was like and what the fundamental conditions of a higher Realm were. In this case, there were fourteen Martial transcendents before Rui, and none of them had managed to crack out a universal framework that could work with all Martial Artists regardless of their Martial Path. On top of that, there was the fact that their powers were so individualistic at that point that it was very difficult for them to identify a commonality that they could convey to Martial Sages as the universal trait between all Martial Transcendents that could serve as a clue.

Only after Rui came did the world understand what Transcendence was and how one could reach it.

That also meant that she could expect more and more Martial Sages to become Candidates and to become Martial Transcendents eventually. This put a lot of pressure on her because she had stalled a little after discovering her body-consciousness, inspired by Rui’s Autocorpus. She knew that his warnings about her fundamental problem were entirely accurate.

The reality was that while there were things that they could do, he was not doing everything in his power to get around the fundamental setback that she had run into. What she didn’t expect, however, was for Rui to so cleanly identify the problems that she had and lay them out in front of her.

“You’re right,” Amare heaved a deep breath. “There are a lot of things that I must do before I achieve phenomenological uniformity. There are many things that I must sort out, such as my worldview and the strongest influences that Genism has had on me. There are things about the way that I view all of reality that are a little contradictory between my Martial Path and its essence and the tenets of Genism.”

It was good that she was realizing her mistakes, as far as Rui was concerned; however, he knew that this was just the start. She had a long way to go if she wanted to make her way to a higher Realm of power.

These things weren’t so easy to resolve, after all, they had several cases around them of how long it takes a Martial Sage to reach Transcendence.

“Your grandmother is also faced with many problems,” Rui remarked. “The reality is that that one decade where she lost you had made her see more darkness than light in the world. You were very important to her, and your death has likely impeded her path to the Transcendent Realm permanently. She unfortunately doesn’t have the drive to push through to a higher Realm of power anymore.”

This was also a grim truth that Rui decided to point out while they were on the topic. It was a very sensitive matter, of course. Amare pursed her lips at his words, feeling guilt at dying at the hands of the Demon of Asmodeous. If she hadn’t died, her grandmother could very well have become a Martial Transcendent.

“It’s true that she isn’t likely to become a Transcendent; however, I don’t think she wants to either,” she heaved a deep breath. “Your breakthrough has taken a burden off her shoulders. And especially your sustained existence in our reality is of great relief for her. It means that you have become an anchor that can take over the burdens that she had been facing with the expectations to become a Martial Transcendent.”

“I’m happy that she has found peace, but I can’t say I’m happy that she has completely given up on trying to achieve Transcendence,” Rui remarked with a mixed tone of voice. “the reality is that even if the explosion in the number of Martial Sages means that there will be many Martial Transcendents in the future, it still means that they will need a lot oftime to cahieve the level of phenomenological uniformity that one would need to in order to become a Martial Transcendent.