The Martial Unity

RUMBLE...

Kane felt the very structure of the world shifting in the region of space and time his body occupied. He could distinctly feel that Rui was doing something with his Martialverse. Of course, he was familiar with what the Martialverse was capable of. The two of them had sparred in the past thirteen years; Rui occasionally would demonstrate the power of his Verse.

But this time was different. The Martialverse didn’t bear upon reality in an overwhelming manner as it normally did, dyeing the world in the color of Water. But instead, it was a much deeper level of manipulation that went beyond surface-level changes to the world.

It felt more like the universe itself was changing in its very nature. He could feel the reality of not just his body, but also his mind and his corporeal consciousness shifting as if the rules governing them were different.

Then, he felt the world unfold.

This was a familiar feeling.

He had experienced the unfolding sensation of the manifold many times in the past, including when Rui, the Divine Doctor, and he had unfolded the Mellow Manifold. He felt a similar sensation unfold at an unfathomably microscopic scope. He felt layers of reality open up. Layers that were unlike anything he had ever imagined before.

The laws of Physics governing his body shifted rapidly as he gained access to the higher dimensions of universe. Kane gasped as his view of the world shifted. Even though he was plainly gazing at reality itself, he found himself being aware of the countless invisible layers of reality overlapped the base dimensions.

His view of the world was overlapped by X-ray layers, thermal vision layers, UV light layers, layers where darkness itself had a shape and form despite the absence of light. Even mundane objects had unfathomable depths that stretched out into the higher dimensions, albeit dimensionally detached from their own extensions in a manner that Kane didn’t understand.

These higher dimensions weren’t exactly a mirror image of reality. Kane sensed many existences that belonged exclusively to the higher dimensions that had no corresponding extension into material reality.

He sensed that his body, the information of his body, had become some sort of portal between the base dimensions and the higher dimensions while his own existence began to change rapidly.

He felt the borders around his existence expand. He considered himself a three-dimensional being with a height, width, and breadth. But once Rui Legislatively altered the laws of his Martial Body, it united with the extensions that it possessed along each direction.

He became a hyperdimensional entity.

What stunned him was that Rui truly hadn’t been exaggerating. In fact, he had understated just how revolutionary this entire phenomenon was.

It wasn’t just ’invisible directions’ that Kane could tap into. There were invisible layers of reality that could allow him to move through them without having to traverse the base three dimensions. In fact, Kane’s instincts told him that these dimensions were actually a shorter path to reach whatever destination he wanted to reach.

To an evasive specialist like himself, this was nothing short of a revolution. The moment Rui was done, he immediately dove into the higher dimensions, his presence in the three material dimensions of reality rapidly thinning.

STEP

With a single step through the higher dimensions, he covered as much distance as he would have with three steps in the baser dimensions. He could feel an infinite latitude for evasion across these layers of reality.

How could anything ever touch him again? Not only could he move faster than light, but he could also now do so by tunneling through the depths of the universe!

It was as if...

”...as if this universe was made for evasion,” he whispered.

Why else would there be so many dimensions of motion? If there was a creator of the universe, then he or she undoubtedly designed the universe to ensure that those who could move the fastest and the best would be the ultimate lifeforms.

”That is the nature of the fabric of space and time. To facilitate motion. To facilitate... evasion.”

In that moment, his phenomenology crystallized. Countless insights, much serendipity, and strings of enlightenment wove together an incomplete phenomenology that was not quite uniform yet, but was more uniform than non-uniform.

In that moment, he became a Transcendent Candidate.

Rui, who watched Kane acclimatize to the higher dimensions, widened at his eyes at the change that he sensed in Kane’s mind. He sensed the crystallization of phenomenology in his friend’s mind, realizing that he had taken a massive stride towards Transcendence.

”You...” Rui stared at the Martial Corporeal with amazement.

He knew that Kane didn’t want anything to do with Transcendence. He had seen the madness that his father was afflicted with and the madness that Rui was afflicted with and intuited that madness was a necessary precondition for Transcendence.

And he was right.

Phenomenological uniformity was a kind of madness. But it was generally a stable madness that didn’t impede the functions of the mind and also allowed for the accessing of the information dimension. But in truth, it could easily be diagnosed as an extreme mental disorder.

Kane had always avoided training in that direction because of his wariness of this state of mind. He had a family that he loved. He didn’t want to become crazy.

But alas, as both of them learned.

Transcendence was not voluntary.

No matter how desperately one desired it, they may never attain it.

Conversely, no matter how one avoided it, they may reach it nonetheless. Out of all the Realms of power, the Realm of Transcendence was undoubtedly the most fickle.

When Kane opened his eyes, there was a spark of deep power. His expression grew mixed, for he understood what had happened. And he wasn’t sure about how he felt. On the one hand, serendipity was indeed extremely euphoric. But on the other hand, he still retained some of his aversion to the kind of afflictions Transcendents suffered from.

Yet, as he realized, simple unwillingness was not enough to avoid progress towards Transcendence.