The Martial Unity

“RARGH!” A heavyweight Master snarled as he threw a powerful blow against Rui.

WHOOSH!

Only for it to miss.

“Urgh! Just die!”

Rui grinned as he evaded several more blows, yet he braced himself when Master Lela surged towards him for yet another time, throwing a huge flurry of blows one after another to take him down.

POW POW POW!

She gritted her teeth with frustration as her blows, once again, seemed to melt away when they struck his body. The impact was absorbed and then redirected into the environment. Unfortunately, her emotions impeded her reactions.

WHOOSH!

Her eyes widened as her blow crashed into yet another feint.

VMMM!!!

Rui tutted as he expectedly dodged the beam of light that stopped him from killing his opponent once and for all. He glanced at the direction from which it had come with a pensive expression.

He had already ruled out evasion and blocking.

Now, he needed to get himself a new way to deal with the light.

“Light…” A faint murmur escaped him as he fell into thought.

He revisited the contents of his physics background as he recalled the properties and laws governing light, methodically and systematically searching for a way to deal with lasers. Thankfully, light was a well-understood concept.

Unfortunately, it was well outside his field of expertise; thus, he only possessed a foundational understanding of it.

And luckily, that was enough for him to hone in on a single possibility.

‘…Wait, what if I redirect light instead of trying to evade or withstand it?’ A promising realization dawned on him.

Redirecting light might sound difficult to a layman, but it was actually very much possible and very well-understood in the form of refraction. When light shifted from one medium to another, both its speed and its direction changed to varying degrees based on the optical density of the medium.

It was this very principle by which spectacle lenses and magnifying lenses functioned.

The relationship between optical density and its impact on light was codified in a law of physics known as Snell’s Law.

Normally, this wouldn’t be of much help, considering that he couldn’t spontaneously create a light-redirecting technique based on Snell’s Law. However, he didn’t need to since he had already created one in the past.

Rui didn’t expect that the telescopic technique that he had created for Master Guren many years ago would come to be handy in this battle, but he was glad that he had created the technique nonetheless.

All he needed to do was apply it in combat so that he could use it to negate his opponent’s light beam to the best of his abilities and finally kill his opponents unhindered.

A wild grin appeared on his face as he began preparations, solving a few simple equations in his head to gain a rough but highly certain estimate for how much he needed to alter the refractive index and optical density of the air around him for it to then redirect the beam of light surging towards him.

He breathed heavily, activating a breathing technique that manipulated heaven within a ten- meter radius, altering density, pressure, and temperature to appropriate degrees. It wasn’t easy to leverage what little experience he had with the telescopic technique that he had created for Master Guren to know exactly how to get the desired optical density.

Thankfully, he didn’t need to redirect the beams of light too much. Even a ten-percent deviation would be more than enough for them to miss his entire body without any issue.

His heart started beating faster as the excitement in his face grew increasingly palpable the closer he got to finishing his preparations.

And soon enough, the moment arrived.

Master Lela surged in for a flurry of strikes for the umpteenth time, hoping to finally get a lucky critical hit.

Alas, it was not to be.

“Temporal Disharmony.”

This was the third time that she had been hit with that technique, and she had grown to feel secure in Master Brigsby’s intervention.

WHOOSH

Rui surged forward at what was a blindingly fast speed from her point of view, well beyond her ability to react to.

And then it came.

VMMM!!!

This time Rui didn’t evade or block, he continued with the attack as intended as his Yin-Yang Spear surged towards her temple, threatening to kill her where she stood.

What ensued shook Master Brigsby to his very core.

WHOOOSH!!

His eyes widened as he watched his beam of light suddenly change directions about ten meters away from Rui, just enough to completely miss him altogether!

Simultaneously, Rui’s Yin-Yang Spear surged forward at high speeds, blasting Master Lela’s skull with tremendous force.

BOOOM!

Never before had Rui felt such satisfaction in blasting open a person’s head as he did in this instance.

CRACK!

The sheer force of the attack not only cracked her skull but busted open her flesh, causing a spurt of blood and intracranial fluid to splatter over him.

THUD

Her corpse fell where it stood.

Rui’s head slowly turned towards the remaining Masters eerily as a wave of pure bloodlust erupted from the very depths of his bloody eyes.

Chills crawled across their skin as they realized that they had lost the protective specter of Master Brigsby tactical support, which happened to be the only thing that shielded them from death at the hands of the monster they were facing.

A single remark escaped Rui.

“Struggle as hard as you can.”

The bloody darkness in his eyes rumbled.

“If you don’t push yourselves to your limits, you will never be able to push me to my limits.”

Shivers crawled down their spines as they felt themselves drowning in his Martial

Embodiment.

“And if you can’t push me to my limits…” A faint murmur escaped him. “Then what’s the

point of keeping you alive?”

They leaped away from him with terror in their eyes as the air boiled with peril.

“Come…” Rui walked towards them, consumed by his battle lust. “I will help you guys prove

your worth or have you die trying.”