The Martial Unity

When Rui woke up in his new body, he quickly returned to the manifold, falling into deep thought. The idea he had had before he transferred consciousness was to find a way to increase the efficacy of his Legislation by adaptively evolving his Verse to become Legislative in nature.

”That’s not going to be easy.”

He was not a Legislator. He was a regular Administrator in that he focused his power on the causal layer. And more importantly, he didn’t have the inclinations to make permanent changes to reality. Martial Artists wielded temporal power. Making permanent changes to reality was the mindset of an architect or a creator. He was neither.

Still, this philosophical distance was not enough for him to give up on trying to wield the power of Legislator nonetheless. It was simply too valuable for him because it potentially made his Martial Body his second strongest Realm.

”How do I adaptively evolve my Martialverse?”

That depended on the nature of the Martialverse. The Martialverse was simply his consciousness imposing itself upon the information dimension through the means of phenomenological uniformity.

”So I’ll have to alter the nature of my consciousness.”

That made him pause. It was one to mess with the nature of one’s brain. It was another to mess with one’s consciousness. His prior brain upgrades, like when he replaced half his neurons with Anthean physiology and then changed electrical impulses to light signals, were merely hardware upgrades, with the software still entirely unchanged.

This time, however, he would need to alter the software. It made even him a little unnerved to touch his consciousness. Especially since the risks associated with altering his consciousness haphazardly were considerable.

”I could lose phenomenological uniformity.”

He would cease being a Transcendent if that were to happen. He could also lose his sanity if he made a mistake. These were all real possibilities that he needed to reckon with if he wanted to adaptively evolve his Verse to become Legislative in nature temporarily.

And yet, the benefits were beyond extraordinary.

How could he possibly resist the allure of having a Martial Body with different laws? It was such a seductive idea that it took him all of his self-control to stop himself from jumping head-first down this path without any caution.

”Think.” His fingers tapped the side of his head as he tried to calm down and consider it rationally. ”How can I adaptively evolve my consciousness to become Legislatively inclined without losing my phenomenological uniformity?”

The question was: what did it mean for a consciousness to become more Legislatively inclined? That was the question that needed answering.

”Most likely, it has to do with orientation of cognition and consciousness.”

Orientation of cognition was a concept that he was quite familiar with. He had even dealt with altering it before when he applied his aptitude-enhancement therapy to Ria when she was a newborn baby. Her cognition was one of the things that he had oriented towards Martial Art.

Orientation was simply how a person’s cognition was configured in relation to certain activities. Two people could have equal cognitive capital, but have it oriented in entirely different ways, such as towards artistic pursuits or scientific or even militaristic. The neurological parameter that was most relevant was the activity that most neuroplasticity in the brain was associated with.

His neuroplasticity was overwhelmingly related to Martial Art. When his eyes perceived someone punching him, a literal flood of neurons fired in response automatically, and countless cognitive processes kicked off automatically. In comparison, if someone were to put a blank canvas in front of him and a paintbrush in his hand, almost nothing would fire since almost no neuroplasticity was associated with this activity.

This was what he would need to change to make it more compatible with altering the Legislative process.

”Thankfully, I already have a lesser form of cognitive reorientation to work with.”

Soul Retcon.

Soul Retcon didn’t reorient his consciousness, per se. But it did reorient his memories and muscle memory. Unfortunately, muscle memory was not relevant when it came to Legislating reality, so Soul Retcon could not help him.

”Still, Soul Retcon is a good foundation to build upon.”

It was one of his greatest trump cards despite how old the technique was. Unfortunately, it couldn’t be extended to the Verse, which limited its impact in battle. For instance, he couldn’t have used it to temporarily master hyperdimensional reality because it used his Verse.

There were also other phenomena he could tap into that could greatly help. The first idea that came to mind was natural, but rare phenomena where people experienced rapid reorientations in their brains and minds.

This usually happened because of traumatic brain injury. Everybody had heard of a story or two where some person underwent a traumatic brain crash and then woke up to discover that they had suddenly become a savant in a brand-new field or another. Rui recalled an example from Earth where a man began seeing mathematical patterns and geometries everywhere when he woke up, proving that this phenomenon could alter the orientation of consciousness.

Now he just needed to identify the core principle of this mechanism for him to apply it.

Of course, he wasn’t going to give himself brain damage or something stupid like that. He had his Gene Realm, his Corporeal Realm, his Martial Soul, and even his Martialverse to replicate the phenomenon without needing such a perilous and harmful trigger.

Thankfully, he knew exactly whom to call.

*****

Far away in the Esocline Federation, the Psyker sat in his lab, minding his own business. Before him was a crystalline structure containing within it the frozen body of a Divine Mother.

After the Emperor of Water had finished digging for all the low-hanging fruit in terms of intelligence, he humored the Psyker’s request to study the brain web of the Divine Mother to identify what exactly it was, neurologically speaking, that led to the creation of phenomenological uniformity.

It was his new grand project after he successfully understood the nature of consciousness. His new scientific endeavor was to understand phenomenological uniformity to its very depths.