The Martial Unity

2868 Truth

Esilʼs words reached Amare.

And yet, Amare didnʼt so much as move.

Her eyes were dark.

Devoid of hope.

Devoid of salvation.

She had been buried in darkness for centuries.

Esil continued solemnly. ”I… accepted their offer and underwent the soul transference ritual and began spreading Martial Art across the entire continent. Simultaneously, I began working my way to the Enlightenment of Self with the extra time that I got with new lives and new bodies. But…”

Her eyes grew bitter, ”…I never achieved it. No matter how hard I tried. No matter how close I got. I was simply never able to achieve Enlightenment of Self. Centuries went by as I meditated. Pushed myself to the brink of death. Explored who I was with every free moment I had. And yet…”

She shook her head.

”It was impossible.”

Amareʼs darkened eyes stirred at the Progenitorʼs voice.

”I had run into an absolute wall. An absolute barrier that prohibited me from getting any closer to understanding who I was. A prohibition that was so absolute that not even a century of the most dedicated effort got me even an inch closer to Enlightenment of Self,” she explained with a sorrowful tone. ”It was only after I had spread Martial Art across the entire continent that I finally understood what was happening.”

She gazed at her hands, closing her eyes.

”It was the soul transference ritual that was responsible for this absolute resriction. This unshakable curse,” her tone was dark. ”The same soul transference ritual that allowed me to live multiple lives with the hopes of reaching Enlightenment of Self was what prohibited me from ever reaching the Sage Realm.”

In the real world, Rui gazed at the Psycher with a stunned expression. ”The soul transference ritual prevented her from reaching Enlightenment of Self?”

The Psycher nodded solemnly. ”That is the curse. And according to my research, there are several reasons it happens. The first is simply that the mind itself is not transferred from body to body, only the memories within which a nascent mind is subjected to with heightened acceleration. The loss of continuity and the destruction of previous subconscious insights are the underlying reasons behind the curse. That is why it should be impossible for anyone having undergone the soul transference ritual to reach Enlightenment of Self.”

Rui simply gazed at him silently.

”She was furious of course,” the Psycher heaved a sigh. ”And why wouldnʼt she be? She had accepted the soul transference ritual to achieve Enlightenment of Self, and that very ritual made her goal impossible.”

His unfathomable eyes grew even more grave. ”She begged us to help her. She was willing to do whatever was needed to reach Enlightenment of Self, even if it in an entirely different form or person. And with that in mind…”

The Psycher closed his eyes, ”…I chose to help her. Not just because I regretted that we were unable to fulfill our end of the deal in spirit but also because this personally affected myself. You see, I…”

His tone trailed off momentarily, ”…I seek to understand the secrets of the soul. I seek to understand why ʼweʼ exist. Why does conscious experience exist? The Divine Doctor will tell you that conscious experience exists because those organisms that evolved were likelier to survive due to their ability to process information. However, I have always found that explanation to be unsatisfying. The materialist worldview does not explain why we have experience instead of being as lifeless as the countless machines that characterize this nation, for instance. You can process life without sentience. And yet sentience exists. Our emotions exist. Our soul exists. I seek to understand why. And for that…”

His expression grew severe. ”…I believe that I myself will need to achieve Enlightenment of Self. That has been my goal for a long time. So when I learned of the curse from Esil, I dove into finding a solution to overcoming the curse that would surely afflict me as much as it afflicted her…”

He paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. ”And so, I began researching and developing a solution. A solution to overcome this curse. A solution to overcome this impediment. I tried countless models. I tried improving the soul transference ritual with brute force. I tried to induce a state similar to Enlightenment of Self using clever biochemistry. I tried esoteric solutions. And… among the many solutions I tried was…”

His blind eyes shifted to Amare, ”…the Sealed Soul Solution. Where I transfer Esilʼs memories into a female newborn, relying on cryptographic data compression to minimize the data size so that it wouldnʼt overwhelm the brain of the newborn. The data of the memories would be ʼsealedʼ across her mind, from the subjectʼs point of view, because the data is compressed using cryptographic algorithms. The subject will need to slowly decrypt and extract data from the embedded mental file over the span of their lifetime.”

Ruiʼs stoic eyes stirred with surprise as his gaze shifted to Amare who he held with dear affection. ”So Amare is…”

The Psycherʼs unfathomable eyes bore deep into Ruiʼs. ”She is a test subject. An experiment. A baby born created from Esilʼs genes. I embedded the sum totality of all the data of Esilʼs lives, cryptographically compressed or ʼsealedʼ as you might into call it, into her subconscious mind. Then I had the Beggar sage drop the infant off in the Gen Temple to maximize the chances of a breakthrough to the Sage Realm.”

Ruiʼs dark eyes lit up with realization. ”…The Gen Temple has the highest success rate with Enlightenment of Self in the entire continent.”

He recalled learning about how the Gen Temple had a Sage breakthrough rate that was a whopping twice as much as that of other Sage-level powerhouses. He even recalled how a Senior who had achieved Enlightenment of Self, broke through to the Master Realm and the Sage Realm in one continuous breakthough.

The Psycher nodded slowly. ”That is precisely the reasoning I had when I had her kept in front of the Gen Temple. Environment plays a tremendous role in the psychological development of infants, and I wanted to ensure that the environment in which she was raised was conducive to her eventual breakthrough to the Sage Realm.”