The Martial Unity

As much as Rui would have loved to heal his shoulder in peace, his enemies had no intentions of letting him.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH

He narrowly evaded a flurry of heavy blows that aimed at debilitating him, only to find himself fighting against Master Lela once more. Determined to exploit his injury, she blasted him with a large onslaught of blows designed to force him to use his arm as much as possible.

Unfortunately for her, that wasn’t enough to push him to his limits.

WHOOSH

Her knuckle punch crashed into an empty image.

A feint.

She instantly turned around to find his jab speedily surging at her head, threatening to knock her out.

VMMM!!!

A beam of light pierced through him from the side.

WHOOSH…

Only for everybody to discover that Rui was gone.

Disappeared.

A moment of silence erupted on the battlefield as they frantically searched for him with their

senses.

They couldn’t find him.

Until, of course, he blasted one of them with a powerful blow to the head.

BOOM!

A powerful Yin-Yang Spear shook one of the offensive Master’s heads, causing him to collapse where he stood.

The others stiffened as they leaped away from the spot with shock.

They had only barely sensed Rui the moment the attack had been launched and landed.

In order to skirt evasion and avoid the long-range sniper that had fixated on him, Rui had applied Greater Void Phantomind.

The technique was no longer as powerful due to the fact that the misdirection factor of the technique was Master Uma’s and she had not been as powerful compared to the other Masters in the field.

If not for the powerful misdirection power that he possessed due to his Megamind state, he would have never been able to misdirect so many powerful Masters. However, as long as it worked one way or another, he was satisfied using it.

The downside was that while he used the technique, he couldn’t use his systems of thought due to the fact that the technique was no longer as effective as it used to be in the Senior Realm. Thus, in order to land a powerful Yin-Yang Spear, he needed to undo the technique. Yet, due to this requirement, it also left him open to counters.

Just as he surged with another Yin-Yang Spear, ready to knock another of his enemies out, he switched to his systems of thought at the last moment.

Unfortunately for him, Master Brigsby had been waiting for that.

VMMM!!!

Rui barely evaded death yet again as he somersaulted away with an irritated expression, glaring in the direction that the beams came from.

If not for his instincts and intuitions, he would have been dead already.

This was why it had been worth it to train his instincts and intuitions with experience for a few years inside the manifold.

There were some things that thought simply could never do that only experience could.

Just the tiniest shift in heaven and earth, the mildest moments before the attack was launched, was enough to tip Rui off and allow him to leap away moments before the laser was shot.

Whoever was responsible for the beams of light was extremely able and powerful and was really the only person who had come close to killing Rui.

That didn’t mean that the other Masters were incompetent, certainly not.

BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!

The moment they were able to sense him again once his Greater Phantomind Void had been stripped away by his instinctive and reflexive dodge, they surged in, ready to demolish him.

The quickest, of course, was Master Lela, who arrived at him in the blink of an eye, unloading a barrage of targeted attacks one after another.

“Temporal Disharmony.”

She froze, completely paralyzed by the overwhelming hypnosis cast by Rui’s extraordinary mind. Yet, even as he surged in to kill her as she stood, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to.

And he was right.

VMMM!!!

His expression darkened as he managed to evade his opponent’s speedy light snipe once more, and his eyes turned in the direction the beams came from.

He was unable to detect his opponent despite his extraordinary sense, which proved that his opponent was a highly effective stealth master.

However, despite that, he was gaining a better understanding of what kind of Martial Artist this person was.

This was a man who sought to aid a battle by operating effectively in critical moments. If there was a critical moment where his side was going to lose due to the death of one of his comrades, then he would intervene and prevent an undesirable outcome from happening. Or if there was a crucial moment that could give his team victory, he would intervene at that moment and ensure that it happened.

His combat style philosophy was high-impact singular interventions, as opposed to continuous attack spam, as most super-long-range offensive Martial Artists did. Just based on these inferences and the timing of his attacks Rui could further deduce exactly what kind of Martial Mind the man had.

Most likely, the man inputted various empirical parameters into a system of thought that outputted two things: A level of significance and cruciality of a given circumstance and which side the projected outcome benefited.

If the former crossed a certain threshold, then he would act.

And what his action would be was dependent on the latter.

Thus, based on his actions, Rui was able to reverse engineer his Martial Mind. And once Rui understood it, he could adaptively evolve to it.

He froze as an epiphany struck him.

“What if I create a system of thought that allows me to reverse engineer Martial Minds and adaptively evolve against them in the most effective manner possible?”

Despite being actively involved in a deadly battle against many powerful Martial Masters, his mind was consumed with an exciting idea that he wished he could have immediately jumped

into!

Alas, reality was not so kind.

BOOOM BOOOM BOOOM!