The Martial Unity

Amare sprinted across the ocean surface, heading towards the Panama Continent at a high speed, sharpening her amber eyes. The bright light of the afternoon sun shone upon her even as powerful ocean breezes brushed past her, causing her clothes and her hair to sway. She had pushed herself to the very limit in the Battle of Beasts, as they had come to call it, in the Continent of Kiriket during the brief civil war that had been sparked off by Rui’s ambush upon the Dragon Emperor, causing her to sleep for nearly three days after.

On the fourth day, she had woken up to find that the world had changed completely for a second time. She learned of all the destruction that the Dragon Emperor had unleashed upon the ocean floor, and the negatron matter that had emerged from within the depths of the core, creating solidified negatron mines on the ocean floor and a gush of negatron-laden lava that emerged from deep within the planet.

The entire world had gotten into a race of greed to consume as much negatron matter as they possibly could, while she simply returned from the Continent of Kiriket, eager to reach the Panama Continent as fast as she could.

WHOOSH

Her eyes lit up with delight as Rui suddenly appeared before her, gazing at her with an amused smile.

“Rui!” She leaped at him, slamming into him with all her momentum. “Finally!”

BOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!

Rui grimaced as he felt his ribs breaking with the sheer amount of force that Amare inflicted on him. “Relax, Amare, you’re going to kill me.”

She ignored his words as she looked up at him, her eyes bearing deep into his as a shocking realization dawned upon her.

“You’re a Transcendent Candidate!”

Rui grinned. “Damn right I am. Turns out I just needed to play in the water for me to realize that water is Water, and that was the key. The physical manifestation of my Martial Path.”

“Water is water?” she gazed at him with a dubious expression. “Isn’t that just common sense? Things are themselves, you know?”

Rui smirked. “Yeah, well. It’s more complicated than that. But I should have done it long before.”

He shook his head. “I could have become a Transcendent Candidate a year ago if I had focused on my Martial Path and things directly related to my Martial Path, rather than trying to cram and ram other paths into my Martial Path haphazardly. It was not a good use of my time, but I have learned my lesson.”

Her eyes widened. “Does that mean you’re abandoning the six paths?”

Rui shook his head. “No, just that I’m no longer dogmatic about them. And I’m not prioritizing things that might be useful to my Martial Art over things that are definitely going to be not just useful, but also revolutionary.”

For instance, the dwarven Path of Creation was a path that was non-combat, let alone compatible with Adaptive Evolution. Still, Rui was confident that he could harness it, directly or indirectly, with his Martial Path if he was extremely creative.

But that was like looking for water in a desert.

It was much easier to get water in an evergreen forest. It was not rational to choose the former before the latter if one was looking for water. The dwarven path was like the former when it came to Adaptive Evolution, while his Project PluriBody was much more like the latter.

“In fact, I’m not even abandoning the six paths by choosing the latter,” Rui realized. “After all, Project Pluribody is part of the six paths. It is a project to harness the Evolutionary Path. It just makes more sense to focus on things that are easier and will yield more results than to focus on things that are more difficult and will yield fewer results.”

She nodded. “…Still, I think I will master the Beast Path.”

He turned to her with a nod. “You might actually, strangely, be compatible with it despite being female.”

“Are you saying that my sex means I’m less capable of it?” Her eyebrows scrunched.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Rui gazed at her with an amused expression. “Don’t be difficult. You know you will experience as much as I did with the Nature Path. Most likely, you will not have a prodigiously smooth journey with the Beast Path. In fact, Amare is entirely unsuited for the Beast Path, but Esil, on the other hand…”

He nodded with an optimistic expression. “She has a good chance of making this work. Do you have any idea what animal you want to go with?”

“I’m thinking squirrel.”

“No, don’t do squirrel. Anything but squirrel.”

“Hamster?”

“That might be worse, actually.”

“Cat?

“…”

Rui simply stared at her.

She stared back, eager for his approval.

Rui heaved a sigh. “I would suggest making it a big cat and a powerful apex predator.”

“Yes!” Amare smiled with delight. “Let’s go back to Kiriket and get started immediately.”

“I’m not partaking, remember?” he reminded her. “I am going to be spending at least half my time in the Great Void Ocean, the other half, I’m going to be spending on training for one of the many important projects that I’ve put off chasing after the six paths. I also have some personal matters in the Kandrian Empire to get to right away. You can join me, actually. Then I can drop you off at the Kiriket Continent immediately after.”

“Your teleportation is so convenient,” Amare muttered. “You need to embed that high principle into me as well when we have some free time. I’m so glad that we don’t have to spend a month at sea, traveling so slowly because of being afraid of being detected by the Dragon Emperor.”

“It is convenient. Not to mention, it is going to be the future,” Rui remarked. “My father might completely scrap the economic corridor plan now that we are going to get a flood of negatron matter.”

After all, the economic corridors were to ensure that Martial Artists could speedily be transported from any point to any other point at extremely high speeds and in a short timeframe.