The Martial Unity

They gave up on that, sensing his unyielding attitude. “Then… we have one final request of you.”

“I will not entertain any requests to harm her. If you want to kill her, then train hard and break through to the Master Realm.” This was the way of Martial Artists, after all.

“Our final request does not require you to hurt her,” N’Kulu stared at him. “If anything, we hope you will do the opposite.”

Rui frowned. “Opposite?”

The air grew heavy as N’Kulu gritted his teeth. “We request you to… mate with her.”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

Seconds passed as Rui stared at them, using the SOUL System to see if this was their native sense of humor.

“…Excuse me?” Rui narrowed his eyes. This time, his son, K’Ahru, made the same request.

“Please, if you have any desire to help us, then mate with my sister and let her bear your child!”

Rui grew disgusted as father and son pleaded for him to impregnate Master K’Mala. “You… do you intend to kill her when she’s pregnant?”

Female Martial Artists couldn’t use their Martial Hearts when they were pregnant, which also meant that they couldn’t use their Martial Minds when they were pregnant. In other words, during this phase, their combat power was limited to that of the Squire Realm unless they were willing to sacrifice the fetus, of course.

His eyes blazed with power as he peered into their minds, sensing their emotions with his Martial Mind and sensing their intentions with the SOUL System.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t entirely guilty.

“Attacking a woman warrior when she carries a child is one of the worst sins that a member of our tribe can commit. This was a line that none of the other now-deceased tribes ever dared to cross, for it is a sin against life itself,” he gritted his teeth. “We hope that motherhood will rekindle the warmth in her eyes, yet if it doesn’t…”

He opened his eyes. “Then I will sin my soul to damnation if that is what it takes to free my tribe from her oppression.”

Rui stared at him.

Their rationale wasn’t as abominable as he thought it was. The G’ak’arkan Tribe was big on family, so the fact that they harbored such hostility for her as she was now probably speaking more about her than it did them.

“What’s going on?” Rui narrowed his eyes. “Just what has happened in your tribe? Tell me everything.”

Of course, Rui had reports from the long-range surveillance division of the intelligence department of the Martial Union. However, that didn’t compare to the reports of someone who lived on a day-to-day basis.

The two men gritted their teeth, recalling the past ten years in the G’ak’arkan Tribe.

Everything had changed.

“It all started ten years ago.” Former chieftain N’Kulu began with a morose tone. “My daughter broke through to the mythical fourth rank that we only had heard about but never seen. That was the day everything changed.”

His brother nodded gravely. “She had been cultivating for the ten years prior to that, ever since you traded that technique with her.”

The two glared at Rui briefly as though he had been the one responsible for their current predicament.

“She became obsessed with the power of thought,” his father continued with a dark tone. “So much so that she began isolating herself from the rest of the tribe for days, weeks, months on end.”

“…She was trying to develop more systems of thought,” Rui realized. “That was what she called it,” her brother nodded with a depressed expression. “She tried her very best to teach it to all of us enthusiastically, but…”

“You ridiculed her, probably scoffed at her thought techniques and systems of thought as a bunch of nonsense,” Rui snorted, seeing right through them. “She must’ve given up on trying to teach all of you about systems of thought.”

To their credit, none of them tried denying it. They lowered their heads with shame at Rui’s words as he hit the nail on the head.

“Had I known that it was the key to breaking through to the next rank, I would have celebrated her achievement—”

“I don’t care for that,” Rui snorted. “It doesn’t matter what you would have done. What matters is what you did. Now, continue.”

His brother heaved a regretting sigh. “The incident caused a bit of a rift between her and the rest of her tribe. Even before, she had never been extremely intimate with the tribe’s culture. Yet, once she started cultivating thought, and after she was ridiculed for doing so, she grew even more distant to the clan.”

Rui could easily see where this was going. “Then, she broke through to the Master Realm.”

The former chieftain nodded with a dark expression. “And once she did, the last embers of warmth in her eyes faded away. It was as though she no longer saw us as humans anymore. She looked at us, her own blood, as livestock.”

“…I knew it,” he muttered. “Tilt to psychopathy caused by the Master Realm.”

He suspected it the moment he saw the reports from the Martial Union, yet hearing their testimony on the matter sealed the matter.

“So, this is what the Reign of the Master Realm must have been like.” Master Ceeran remarked. “I suppose it truly isn’t an exaggeration.”

Just like Rui, Master Ceeran had never been around to see the Reign of the Master Realm; they were too young to have been alive during that era.

It was why there was a pronounced difference in the way that older Martial Artists talked about it. A majority of Martial Artists who were alive during the Reign of the Master Realm were not Masters back then. In other words, they had all experienced the oppression of the Reign of the Master Realm.

While younger Masters like Rui and Ceeran didn’t treat it as a joke by any stretch, they certainly took it nearly as seriously as the older ones did.

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