The Martial Unity

A combination of Acute Edge, Elastic Shift, and Flux Earther allowed him to cleanly negate the man’s attack. The former two sabotaged the angle of his attack by tilting his body in a way that reduced the effective amount of force that Rui experienced, while Elastic Shift prolonged the impact duration, making it more bouncy and less harmful.

Flux Earther cleanly dispersed the rest of the energy of the impact.

The former two were techniques that he had mastered when he was an Apprentice. Although they were extremely simple techniques, their impact and potency were heavily dependent on how Rui used them. WHOOSH!

In the blink of an eye, the Worldfolder arrived before Rui as a thundering kick swerved towards him at astronomically high speeds, threatening to knock his head off.

WHOOSH!

Rui simply stepped back and evaded him, leaping away as he put some distance between himself and his opponent, falling into thought.

“I see. The alternative propulsion method negated the predictive model of the Angel of Laplace.”

“What the hell are you muttering in the middle of a battle, hm?” the Worldflolder growled, arriving before Rui with a tremendous blow.

WHOOSH!

It crashed into an empty image.

A feint.

VMMM!!!

A thundering Yin-Yang Release surged towards his opponent, threatening to knock him out.

And that was when it hit him. Pure pain and suffering.

“I hope you didn’t forget me.”

A feminine voice reached his ear even as he felt his body engulfed in all manners of unspeakable horrors.

It only lasted moments before his powerful mind shook off the potent hypnosis.

And yet, moments were enough.

BOOOOOOM!!!

The Worldfolder’s fist blasted into his hasty guard with an astronomical force, flinging him away.

Even as the impact launched him away, he was mildly impressed by the Mindbreaker.

“She must have realized that she wouldn’t be able to crack my mental defenses under ordinary occasions.”

If there was one thing that Rui was renowned for, it was his mind. And his Martial Embodiment had undoubtedly reinforced Rui’s tremendous mind and mental defenses in her strategic considerations.

Only a fool would attack him where he was strongest without some kind of opening of some sort. She had waited for the moment when he was most consumed by his own attack, and his conscious attention was most concentrated and unaware.

And at that moment, where his subconscious mind was naturally vulnerable, she inflicted a powerful hypnosis of unadulterated suffering of a kind unlike anything he had ever experienced. The kind that would physically overheat his brain due to how much current was flowing through his neurons.

“I’m surprised you are still conscious.”

Her tone was one of displeasure.

A small smirk cracked at the edge of his mouth.

“I’ve been through my fair share of mental torture.”

The pain and suffering he put himself through with Elder Tree had almost broken him but had also improved his mental fortitude far, far beyond that of any other Martial Master when it came to brute-force overwhelming stimulation of pain and suffering.

He probably would not have faired well against her hypnosis if not for that experience.

And yet, even if she had failed in breaking him, she had discovered that she could sabotage him. ‘She knows she can’t defeat me by herself, so she’s implicitly teaming up with this moron and using him to try and defeat me.’

It was a sober, rational decision that put aside her pride and acknowledged the horrendous compatibility she had against him. And yet, it only earned his respect.

He had expected her to be drowned in arrogance, taking him on directly with her hypnosis, trying to overcome him in a battle of mind where he was confident he could take on even Sages.

And yet, she didn’t. As irrational and crazy as she seemed, she was a tactically adaptive fighter.

She would use the Worldfolder to distract Rui’s conscious mind just enough to sneak her hypnotic illusions into his subconscious mind and leave him frozen in extremely vital moments, giving the Worldfolder the opportunity to knock him out then and there.

Then the very moment Rui was knocked out, she would eliminate the Worldfolder who she had great compatibility against.

It was a really good plan that Rui could appreciate as a strategic fighter himself.

“Unfortunately, you have underestimated me.”

STEP

With a single foot, he shattered the flow of power from heaven and earth that guided the Worldfolder forward, depriving him of his power.

All it took was a little bit of a displacement of the matter that accelerated the man’s body forward.

It required precision and accuracy with nanoseconds and nanometers of the right moment and a level of efficiency thermodynamically impossible.

An impossible feat under normal circumstances.

And yet—

“The Scriptures of Terra send their regards.”

BOOOOOM!!!

A ferocious Yin-Yang Spear crashed into the Worldfolder, who barely managed to defend himself from the attack.

CRACK CRACK!

Its powerful and well-timed blow cracked the bones in his arm, flinging him away with an astronomical amount of momentum. The Master shot away like a bolt of lightning flying kilometers away across the enormous city of a battlefield prepared for them while Rui pursued fiercely, unwilling to let up on his powerful opponent.

The Worldfolder gritted his teeth as he surged to get into a defensive guard in time.

He was too late.

“No!” The Mindbreaker clenched her fist as she tried to sabotage Rui at the moment of hypnotic vulnerability.

And yet, chills crawled down her skin as she found him staring at her with blood-red glowing eyes.

“Void of Water.”

“Arrgghh!” she gritted her teeth as she felt a tremendous influx of information grinding away at her mind. She struggled to process everything Rui threw at her, exerting her full conscious attention and simply trying to stay awake without letting her conscious mind drown under the weight of the information he thrust upon him. The Worldfolder refused to let the opening go, manipulating heaven and earth to dispel the equilibrium that existed between them, instead channeling the imbalance of vectors through his body, unleashing a catastrophic attack against Rui.

And yet, not even that was enough to reach Rui.

A single whisper reached the Worldfolder’s ear before a tremendous attack blasted him unlike anything before.

“I can see your SOUL.”

BOOOOOM!!!

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