The Martial Unity

“Ah, I know what you mean.” Rui realized what she was referring to. “Even if your own movements are efficient, it doesn’t mean that the earth will efficiently transmit your power the way you want it to. You have to choose the right path of action and figure out exactly in what manner to deliver power to the earth in order to obtain the most efficient transmission of power.”

There was the loss of power in the form of heat and seismic radiation, which was why earth-bending could not deliver as much power as a fist directly could, although it compensated for that with other advantages.

“Correct,” she nodded. “That is the most important part of conducting the Dance of Terra. The entirety of the dance can go to waste if you don’t choose the right path of action. A bad path of action could destroy your output. It is the single most important part of all earth-bending, but especially the Dance of Terra.”

“And so?” Rui’s eyes lit up with anticipation. “How does the Dance of Terra master the path of action?”

She simply stared at him.

“It doesn’t.”

He frowned. “I don’t follow…”

“There is nothing to follow,” she replied, tilting her head with a hint of confusion. “There is nothing in the Dance of Terra that teaches you how to harness the optimal path of action. There is no heuristic, steps, or training contained in the Dance of Terra that helps you with the path of action.”

“But…” Rui frowned. “You said it was the most important part of the Dance of Terra.”

“Indeed.”

“And yet, there is nothing in the Dance of Terra to improve or train or hone it?” he frowned. “That feels…”

His eyes widened with shock, “…incomplete.”

The air tingled.

It tingled with anticipation.

He fell into thought as a thundering possibility that shook him. “Could it be…?”

Could it be what the Shield of Gaia was searching for was the secret to the path of action? If it was important.”

He turned towards her with an eager expression. “Tell me more about that. The path of action is to transmit power through earth and harness the hidden power contained within it. What do you normally do to achieve the optimal path of action?”

She simply stared at him with an odd expression. “We don’t.”

Rui frowned. “You don’t what?’

“We don’t aim to achieve the optimal path of action,” she explained. “The Dance of Terra teaches you how to manipulate earth to harness its potential. But it doesn’t teach you the most optimal path of action to doing that. In the first place, the most optimal path of action is the one channel out of infinite possibilities that maximizes earth-bending efficiency. It will yield the most powerful result if you happen to choose that path of action out of an endless ocean of possibilities. As a primitive earth-bender yourself, I’m sure that you realize that it is impossible to choose the most efficient and effective path of action.”

Her words rang true.

With domain bending, in general, it was not possible to achieve the absolutely perfect efficiency of the transmission of power against his opponent that he would achieve with his fist. However, there theoretically existed a path of action that was so optimal that it allowed for the perfect seamless transmission of power through earth.

However, it was extraordinarily difficult to find out what that path of action was.

How was he supposed to know exactly what set of movements he was supposed to make to ensure that earth channeled his power absolutely perfectly?

How was he supposed to know what was the path of action of absolute perfection?

It was such an impossible task even Sage Kyria didn’t regard the Dance of Terra as incomplete despite the fact that it missed out on what was the most important part of earth-bending and the most important part of the Dance of Terra.

The alignment of every last rock, grain of sand, and gravel and their relationship with one another. The internal structure of each rock and grain and the critical point of failure within their structures where they are most vulnerable to force.

Together, these weaved a single path.

A single path of out infinite other paths.

A single path through which earth-bending would flow as smoothly as water did. Through which power would flow unabated and unimpeded with a level of efficiency that would have been thought to be impossible in the transmission of energy through solid rock.

“It would take an endless amount of trial and error to figure out what the most optimal path of action is,” Sage Kyria explained even as Rui fell into an immersed state of thought. “That too, each time you sought to find the most optimal path of action for a particular given earth-bending maneuver. There is no practical way to find such an obscure path of action amid a sea of possible actions you can take. It would be years of repeated trial and error. Decades of repetition. Centuries of persistence before you own finally develop the sense and the intuition for how to identify the right path of action out of an endless set of choices.”

She had uttered those words to Rui to dissuade him from thinking about pursuing this direction.

And yet, it was those very answers that had enlightened him to the truth.

“What if…” A whisper escaped him. “What if centuries of persistence had already been put in?”

His eyes lit up with profound understanding.

“What if…” his whisper overflowed with realization. “What if an endless amount of trial and error had already been performed?”

His gaze, his senses, his instincts, and intuition swept across the excavated tunnels and cities of the Nest of Terra.

“What if nearly a thousand years of effort has already been completed?”

He extended his senses and awareness across the entirety of the very fundamental structure of the Nest of Terra.

It was the crystallization of nearly a millennium’s worth of a whole civilization’s worth of effort.

“I have found it…” A whisper escaped him. “I found the Scriptures of Terra.”

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