The Martial Unity

Sage Kyria gazed at him with a serious demeanor as she continued. “And so, she studied you. She studied you for the past two years, which have passed since the Human Summit. She studied your behavioral and psychological tendencies. The things that move you. The things that draw your interest. Your personality and temperament. Your goals and ambitions.”

“…That’s not creepy at all,” he sarcastically remarked. “Should you be telling me this? You’re divulging your intel advantage, thereby negating it.”

“We have also learned that you appreciate honest sincerity.” Sage Kyria smiled. “Regardless, your intelligence and cognition are without a doubt unrivaled within the Martial World. From having learned to speak, read, and write at an extraordinarily young age, to your sky-high record-shattering intelligence index tests in the Kandrian Martial academies, to the countless tremendous feats of strategic and tactical genius that you have displayed time and time again since then in your career. She, as well as all of us, have grown convinced that if there is anyone who can help us find the Scriptures of Terra to achieve our ultimate goal, it is you.”

His eyes widened as she bowed to him, lowering her head.

“Please, Your Highness, help us find the Scriptures of Terra, and we will be eternally ingratiated to you.”

He heaved a sigh. “Raise your head, Your Sagehood.”

Her gaze returned to him as it rose.

“…I accept your request, but I will be the first to read these so-called Scriptures if they exist,” he replied straightforwardly. “And I will give up whenever I deem the effort and time exceeding the worth of this legend of a treasure.”

She nodded. “Of course.”

“Then… we have an agreement, I suppose,” he replied. “I think I will start by studying all the efforts that your faction has made in the past hundred years and make my decision after that.”

Rui already had plenty of thoughts on the so-called Scriptures of Terra.

For one, he wasn’t sure if it even existed.

A century of effort did not so much as yield even a clue of its existence.

The only evidence it existed was the words of the Martial Transcendent of the Nest of Terra.

The fact that there was only a single testimony in favor of its existence was something that didn’t sit right with Rui. As far as he was concerned, there was a fifty percent chance that it didn’t exist.

It was hard to conceive that something physical of this degree of significance known to be inside the Nest of Terra could somehow have not yet been discovered by a century of searching.

Had it been a set of ancient sheets bound together, they would have undoubtedly found it after searching for it for a century. This was especially the case if a single peak Sage had happened upon it during his time inside the Nest of Terra.

“What was the Shield of Gaia doing before he broke into the Transcendent Realm?” Rui wondered aloud. Sage Kyria regarded him with an appreciative glance. “It was said that he traveled the length and breadth of the Nest of Terra.”

“I suppose that lends more credence to the fact that it is real,” he remarked. “No wonder you guys haven’t given up yet.”

“We have no doubt that it is real because the Shield of Gaia is a deeply principled Martial Artist. He would never deceive and harm his own people and faction with such dark lies,” Sage Kyria replied with a steely tone. “…Interesting.” He grew more engrossed. “Well, let’s assume it’s real for the moment. If it is real, then, most likely, it is not man-made.”

Sage Kyria’s interest in his words grew deeper. “…And why do you say that?”

“Well, for one. Have you wondered who could possibly create the Scriptures of Terra?” Rui asked her. “Godly knowledge was presumably inscribed in them by a particular individual, who could possibly inscribe such extraordinary knowledge in them a hundred years ago, such that it facilitated a peak Sage to reach Transcendence?”

She frowned as she considered the question. “…I don’t know, I’ve never thought about the origin of the Scriptures of Terra as deeply. We thought it might be an esoteric treasure of some kind and simply left it that, thinking its origins were not worth pondering too deeply since we have no evidence of anything in that regard.”

Rui shook his head. “Esoteric matter can do much, but it cannot teach knowledge to humans. Knowledge as a phenomenon is within our minds and is a psychological phenomenon. It is categorically outside of the physical effects that esoteric substances are capable of. On top of that, any information gained about the nature of a particular esoteric substance is not relevant or applicable to anything else. That’s how exclusive esoteric matter is to be. In other words, there is no way that the Shield of Gaia could have made progress down his Martial Path unless his Martial Art relied on said esoteric substances when he was a Sage. Was that the case?”

“…No, he used esoteric substances in his Martial Art whatsoever,” she admitted with a troubled tone. “Then you can safely rule out the possibility of it being some kind of esoteric treasure that delivered information into the mind; there have been no esoteric substances that have ever displayed epistemological effects,” Rui remarked. “If it’s knowledge, it’s almost impossible to conceive that this was an entirely natural phenomenon that just so happened to display the information that helped the Shield of Gaia.”

Rui tried imagining if a set of rocks just so happened to fall into such a pattern that just so happened to form letters and words of the native language of the Nest of Terra and just so happened to convey divine knowledge that just so happened to allow the Shield of Gaia to break through to the Transcendent Realm.

That was too absurd of a possibility, assuming that the Shield of Gaia was operating in good faith.

“It’s not man-made since nobody at the time could possibly write something that could help a peak Sage reach Transcendence,” he remarked. “I don’t know what the condition to the Transcendent Realm is. But I do know that the further one goes down one’s Martial Path, the more individualized and unique it gets.”

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