The Martial Unity

And thus, she narrated her tale to the gathered Kandrian Sages.

They listened.

With each passing moment, their eyes widened with shock.

Their expressions crumpled with grave severity.

They shook where they stood.

She told them everything.

How she felt her granddaughter’s death even as she surged to the Gu from the Gen Temple at the speed of light. She told them how she had resolved to kill the Demon of Asmodeous in her grief.

She told them how Rui broke through to the Sage Realm and overcame Gu.

She told them how he had accomplished the impossible.

How he had resurrected the dead.

How he had reversed time itself.

She told them how, with his power neutralizing the Demon’s, she slayed him.

“…And now, he must pay the price for the extraordinary power he has obtained,” Bodhisattva Maitreyi heaved a shaky sigh.

Even as she told them the story, she herself found it difficult to bring herself to believe it. It was a fantastical tale.

And yet… it was real.

The Martial Sages of the Kandrian Empire were beyond stunned.

They were beyond shaken.

“He…” A stunned whisper escaped Kane. “He… did what?”

His green eyes were widened with shock.

Of all of them, he was the most accustomed to Rui’s extraordinariness.

And yet, not even he could bring himself to easily digest the sheer magnitude of what Bodhisattva Maitreyi had told all of them.

Resurrecting the dead?

That was impossible.

It was rumored that only the legendary Divine Doctor had overcome death, but having met the madman in person, they could tell that, however he prolonged his life for so long, he was not exactly undoing his death and returning back to the realm of life.

Overcoming death directly should have been impossible.

Beyond impossible.

“He did it,” Bodhisattva Maitreyi reaffirmed her earlier words. “There is no mistake. By the time I had arrived, my granddaughter was a corpse on the ground with a gaping hole where her heart should have been. And yet, with some extraordinary techniques and power unlike anything I have ever seen, he restored life within her.”

She heaved a shaky sigh.

“A new frontier of power.”

Her gaze shifted back to Rui.

“That… is what he represents.”

The air grew heavy with the sheer gravity of her words.

The sheer gravity of her tale.

It bore on them as they remained frozen with shock. Only one of them was able to accept their bewildering reality easily.

“He is the Antithesis.”

Matriarch Nephi’s tone was calm and composed.

Her gaze was confident.

Certain.

“Death is all but naught before the might of Lord Virodhabhasa.”

Bodhisattva Maitreyi’s eyes sharpened profoundly as a heavy gaze converged upon the Matriarch Nephi.

“Celestial Seer…” her tone was heavy. “Did you foresee this? Did you foresee that your grandson would break through? Did you foresee that my granddaughter… would die?”

Martriach Nephi’s powerful gaze shifted to meet Bodhisattva Maitreyi’s eyes.

The air tingled.

The atmosphere grew electric.

“No.”

Matriarch Nephi’s tone was firm.

“The Gu was far too shrouded in darkness,” she informed the Abbot of the Gen Temple. “Not even my prophetic power is able to pierce it. I did not foresee any of this.”

“…Amitabha,” the Boundless Light’s tone relented. “What is to happen will happen. We are all but agents of the universe, bound in our place in the flow of causality.”

Matriarch Nephi scowled at the words of the Boundless Light.

She disagreed with her words vehemently.

The prophetant philosophy of the Virodhabhasa Faith clashed with Genism in many ways, including its perspectives on the future, destiny, and fate.

But alas, now was not the time or the place to have a theological debate.

There were many who were still reeling from the consequences of what had happened.

“Resurrected the dead…?” Sage Sera whispered with a stunned tone. “That should be impossible, even for the Martial Soul…”

The event weighed on them heavily.

They knew.

They knew that it would change the world.

Death had a special place in everybody’s heart.

A place of fear.

It was one of the most powerful parts of the human experience, even though one only experienced it once and only at the end of one’s life.

It had been overcome.

And that would forever change people’s perspective on the absolution of death.

On top of that, once the world found out what had happened, there would be many people across many segments of human civilization who would desperately clamor for this power.

The power to overcome death.

Whether it was to restore people they loved.

Or to undo their own eventual death. The sheer craze and demand that would emerge from it would be far beyond even the demand for his breakthroughs.

They reeled under the impact and significance of this one act that defied the natural order.

Death was no longer special.

It was just another ordinary event.

No more mundane than skipping rocks across the surface of a lake.

A flicker of greed appeared in their eyes as they began to wonder if Rui could replicate this godly feat for them. Everybody had lost somebody.

It was part and parcel for Martial Sages that lived a very long time.

And now, upon learning that it could be undone, it gave birth to a greed that simply never existed before.

The greed for life.

“We mustn’t burden His Highness with any more than he has already been burdened.”

Sage Zentra’s calm and composed voice was one of reason in the electric atmosphere that had begun building up. “His Highness is already the pillar—no, the very foundation of hope and salvation in this Era of Darkness. Just how much more are we going to leech from him?”

His words stirred the Martial Sages.

They knew because they had Enlightenment of Self.

They knew that they were being greedy for more.

But unfortunately, such was their nature.

“I for one…” he continued with an interested expression, “am more amazed by the integration of the Gu poison into his physiology. That is truly an amazing level of physiological alteration.”

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