The Martial Unity

Rui felt a profound depth of apprehension as they traveled across the Gu.

His expression was crumpled with disgust.

Each step he took was upon a dead body.

The few instances his feet hit actual land was when he set foot on marshy mud dyed black with rotten mud. They had very quickly decided to hover over the land with sky-walking, a solution they had avoided prior to ensure that they didn’t draw attention in the air.

Black skies.

Black land.

Darkness in all directions.

Every hundred meters, they would run into an enormous group of people drowned in absolute bloodshed and violence. Somehow, despite all the chaos, the only constant was an even distribution of violence in groups of precisely ten people.

They were separated not by physical walls but by the sheer nature of the opaque atmosphere that prevented them from heading deeper. The air grew denser along certain lines and extremely opaque, giving the impression that it was a wall and that they couldn’t go beyond it.

“It utilizes people’s fear of the unknown to shackle them,” Rui realized. “If people can’t see beyond a hundred meters, then in a survival state of mind, they would not branch out and explore.”

It served as a way to psychologically compartmentalize people. As long as large populations of people were thrown in across the Gu, they were likely to compartmentalize within Gu rituals that were created not by actual physical barriers, but by psychological barriers born from fear and self-preservation.

The darkness of the Gu that served as a psychological barrier was unnatural. The way that both the sky and land were black, the way that the very air seemed to be pitch black, even if transparent, was profoundly engineered. It bore heavily on the psyche, drawing primordial fears within people that would be used to shackle them.

There was no physical restriction to leaving the Gu.

Even at that very precise moment, all the people in the Gu could collectively stop fighting and simply run in the opposite direction that they were incentivized to go. They could leave the Gu at that very moment.

And yet, they didn’t. In a state of heightened fear of the darkness that seemed to have swallowed the world around them, they would much rather have inflicted horrific pain and suffering on others to secure their survival than muster the courage to walk past the darkness.

“RRRAAGAAGHHRR!!!”

“DIE! DIE!!!!!”

“HAHAHAHA!!!!”

Rui and Amare paused as they arrived upon yet another group of people ravaging each other in violent madness.

They bore witness to violence incarnate.

“Stop…” A horrified whisper escaped Amare. “Please stop!”

And yet, for once. The brightness of her soul that drew those of weary hearts was entirely ineffective against the crazed madness of the people within the gu center.

“PLEASE STOP!”

They froze as her loud plea drew their attention.

They slowly turned towards her.

Their eyes glinted with madness.

Their eyes grew bloodshot.

Whether it was by intuition or instinct, they realized they were outsiders. The backpacks that Rui and Amare carried drew their attention as their eyes flared with hunger and bloodlust.

“…F-Food.”

“Hah… haha… HAHAHAHAAAAA!!!”

“RRAAAGRAGHRHGHR!!!”

They rampaged in the direction of the two Martial Masters, uncaring for their Martial auras. “We surely have enough food for all of yo—” her pained voice tried to reason with them.

Rui, on the other hand, was not so naive.

He didn’t hesitate to do what needed to be done. SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!!!

With one wave of his hand, he effortlessly beheaded all of them.

“No…” Her eyes widened with horror. “Why… why did you do that?”

Her tone was dark.

A faint tension hung in the air.

One that tingled at the nerves.

Rui’s grave expression hardened as his eyes closed. “You need to face reality, Amare.”

Her hurt gaze shifted to him. “Some people are just beyond saving,” Rui heaved a relenting sigh. “Those people were not going to listen to you. They were going to attack you. You know this.”

She looked deeply hurt by this revelation. “But…”

“Frankly, I don’t think even I can help these people.” Rui gritted his teeth. “They’re completely unhinged. This is not a nation. This is simply a gu jar of suffering and pain, meant to produce the most powerful of warriors.”

His gaze shifted to the little structure in the center of this ‘compartment.’

Of course, without people, there was no compartment. Rui had to admit that using people’s psychological fears to trap them the same way they would have had they been in a real cage was equally ingenious and ghastly as a means of shackling them. All the benefits of a barrier without any of the logistics or costs.

“And at the very center of the Gu ritual is this…” he arrived before a small hut like structure. “Survival. The survivor of the gu will get to live another day before being thrust into a new gu ritual.”

Survive over and over.

And over and over.

The survivors would be driven deeper and deeper by a simple incentive structure of necessities.

“This place…” a pained whisper escaped Amare. “Are you really going to help it?”

The air grew heavy.

Heavier than it already was.

Rui’s gaze grew grave and severe.

He had conceived of a few plans, but frankly, after having actually stepped into the Gu, he realized how utterly impossible they were. The Gu was very different from any other Sage-level powerhouse he had run into. Strategies that would work with others and had worked with others were simply irrelevant.

He was going to threatened maddened warriors with a war from the Kandrian Empire? The threat would simply not strike the way it had with other nations. They didn’t know he was the ‘Dawnbringer’, and they didn’t care.

“I don’t know what can possibly work, but I know that it won’t work if he doesn’t get the approval of the Demon of Asmodeous.”

This was perhaps the one and only plan for success.

“We need to cross this sea of madness and go deeper and deeper.”

Amare’s expression grew pained as they faced the depths of the Gu.

–