The Martial Unity

The Dragon Emperor charged towards Rui with tremendous momentum as the scales on his body began shining more intensely. He snarled, unleashing a tremendously powerful physical attack that unleashed a powerful wave of radiation that threatened to kill Rui then and there with the injuries and radiation poisoning that he had already sustained.

And yet, Rui didn’t so much as move.

A single remark escaped him.

“Wall of Water.”

A brand-new domain spontaneously emerged around him, spanning just two meters in radius. The water around him shifted as he manipulated it with his Water Breathing to have a gradient of density and pressure. The layers of water closer to him had greater density, while the layers further away from him had lower density.

This density gradient, in turn, created a gradient of resistance where the closer an attack got to him, the more resistance it would generate. It created an almost bouncy effect where Rui was surrounded by a powerful elastic wall that dulled all impacts on him.

When combined with the Body of Water, it made for a truly formidable defense.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!

The Dragon Emperor’s attack crashed straight into Rui’s defense. The prolonged duration of the attack dulled the actual force by more than an order of magnitude, whittling down what would have been an instant-death attack into something that Rui could defend against.

The impact was spread not just across a greater time period, making it more gentle, but it was also spread across Rui’s entire body, thanks to the gradient of water. It accelerated Rui instead of hurting him, something that he promptly allowed to be bled by the ocean, putting more distance between him and his opponent, allowing him to avoid the worst of the radiation.

The Dragon Emperor’s eyes widened as he gazed at an unharmed Rui. Despite having lost an arm, he somehow managed to withstand a full-fledged charged attack head-on. “Impossible!”

And yet, the truth was right before his very eyes. Rui gracefully landed upon the cracking ocean floor, gazing right at Lord Shenlong with a calm and composed expression. This was the first blow that he had faced head-on in the entire battle, which hadn’t so much as even put a scratch on him. The very sight of it infuriated the Dragon Emperor as his reptilian yellow eyes grew bloodshot with rage.

And yet, Rui was just getting started.

With a flick of his finger, he pulled his severed arm back right in front of the Dragon Emperor, reattaching it to his body as if it were a detachable component of an action figure.

The very next moment, he had restored his arm, regaining complete functionality as he used stem cells to restore the broken connections perfectly while using Resurrection to revive the cells that had died in the blink of an eye.

Then, the very next moment after that, he used a combination of the Martial Soul and his quantum gravitational tweezers to heal the damage that the gamma radiation had done to his body.

Just like that, he had returned to his ideal state.

He gazed at the Dragon Emperor with a relaxed, nonchalant gaze despite the blinding brightness of the blood-red suns in his eyes.

It was a provocation.

The simplest of them.

And yet it was more than enough.

The dragon snarled, flapping his wings at Rui as he unleashed a destructive wave of gamma radiation, hoping to push Rui over the edge with radiation poisoning.

RUMBLE!

Rui activated Hydro Lens, just as the Dragon Emperor hoped, to refract the radiation away, leaving him immobilized in one location. The dragon then surged with a devastating charge, unleashing immense destruction on the ocean floor.

He arrived before Rui in the blink of an eye, threatening to crush him with a destructive attack while he was immobilized.

“Wall of Water,” Rui declared with a calm tone.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!

Rui switched his Hydro-Lens to Wall of Water in the blink of an eye.

They were both domains of water, allowing him to switch back and forth between them at a rapid pace. The Dragon Emperor snarled as he unleashed an astronomically destructive onslaught of physical and radiation attacks, threatening to crush Rui where he stood.

VMMM!

Rui switched back to Hydro-Lens, refracting a radiation laser even as the Dragon Emperor threw a powerful claw swipe at Rui, threatening to chop Rui into pieces.

It was well within Rui’s predictions.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!

Rui gently summersaulted away, negating the impact with Wall of Water. The Dragon Emperor snarled as he unleashed both radiation and a tail swipe at the very exact moment, making it impossible for Rui to survive with either technique alone.

Time slowed down in Rui’s eyes to a crawl as he spontaneously created a new technique to solve what should have been an impossible problem.

“Domain fusion.”

He created a domain with alternating layers of Hydro-Lens and Wall of Water, making it twice as big while allowing him to retain the benefits of both.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!

The Dragon Emperor’s reptilian eyes widened with shock as Rui effortlessly negated his strongest attacks, before his shock turned into a frenzied rage.

Never once before had Lord Shenlong been made to feel so small in a long time. The loss of the sense of dominance that he had been accustomed to for a long, long time was one that ignited a feral aggression unlike anything he had displayed before.

He became rabid, unleashing a destructive onslaught of both radiation and physicality upon Rui, blending them together to create a viciously destructive onslaught.

“Soul Retcon.”

Rui’s voice remained as calm and impassive as ever.

Yet the blood-red suns in his eyes shone with blinding brightness.

Within their depths was a profound excitement.

A profound excitement to fight the Dragon Emperor.

To fight and win.

RUMBLE!!!

The world shook as Rui wove his two domains together with elegant grace, weaving together a perfect defense. A perfect defense that walked a thin line with a microscopic margin of error and his very life on the line.