The Martial Unity

Chapter 3166: Heartcrusher

BOOM!

Rui skidded away as her open palm blasted him with a vigorous power, even as she surged forth with great power, unleashing a barrage of blows against Rui.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!

Each blow grew sharper and more intense than the last.

Her raw power remained unchanged, and yet, the sheer ferocity of her attacks continued increasing as her technique evolved in real-time.

She was adapting.

He could tell that much.

And yet, it was a kind of offensive adaptation that he had never seen before.

Rui’s eyes widened. ”This... what is this?”

The steely determination in her eyes intensified.

”Entropy is the basis of evolution.”

BOOM!

A thundering blow blasted Rui’s guard as she continued her increasingly powerful attack.

Rui paid close attention to the entropy in her body.

It was a different kind of chaos from the one Anthea had used against him. Anthea had deployed a vastly more powerful kind of chaos based on quantum entanglement and Heisenberg Uncertainty. Minn was limited to thermodynamic entropy, which was a much more elementary manifestation of the concept of chaos in nature.

It was also different from the kind of chaos that Ieyasu had used against him, which was a discrete one-time manifestation of it that triggered an involuntary action outside of even his awareness of it.

In her case, she was using entropy to adaptively evolve to her opponent in a mechanism that wasn’t immediately transparent to him. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the total entropy of an isolated system cannot decrease; it can only increase or remain constant.

Rui had never considered the correlation between this concept and the concept of evolution.

In the first place, what kind of evolution was she talking about?

His intuition told him that she meant Darwinian evolution; evolution by natural selection. Only those with genes most fit for survival would survive and pass on their genes. What would it look like if he tried to frame this process in terms of the second law of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy?

’In the context of thermodynamics, all lifeforms could fundamentally be regarded as self-replicating dissipative structures.’

This meant that all lifeforms were simply complex chemical systems that converted chemical potential energy into mechanical energy and eventually heat. They dissipated ordered energy into chaotic heat.

’Life itself can be regarded as entities that emerged from the dissipation free energy from the dissipation from of free energy in complex structures, which have heritability and metabolism, and which therefore evolve through natural selection to more effectively reproduce their structure and more efficiently utilize and degrade free energy.’

If that were the case, then it meant that evolution as a whole could be completely reconceptualized from an entropic perspective. Evolution could thus be reconceptualized as the phenomenon of the emergence, change, propagation, and adaptation of networks of self-replicating dissipative structures.

With that framework in mind, his attention returned to Master Minn, who fiercely unleashed a barrage of attacks against Rui, who had zoned out in consideration of her words.

The gap between them was so large that Rui didn’t even need to pay attention to her to defend against her attacks.

Instead, his attention returned only to understand what was happening inside her body.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!

Each blow was stronger.

It did more with less.

It generated less entropy inside and outside her body.

Her application of power became increasingly tactically efficient as she wasted less power and inflicted more damage on him.

”Ah...” Rui’s eyes lit up with understanding. ”I see. I understand now.”

He had assumed that she could only adaptively evolved by increasing entropy, but that was a superficial reading of her Martial Path. By choosing a sequence of actions that minimized the net release of entropy, she could tactically adaptively evolve to him.

It was different from the mechanism that Rui generally relied on to adaptively evolved.

His systems of thought like the VOID algorithm, the SOUL System, and even his Eye of Prophecy, allowed him to foresee the future and choose a course of action that maximized a parameter that he liked to call ’antitheticality.’ He adaptively evolved to his opponent’s by maximizing his probability of victory.

This was still the best way to adaptively evolve, in his opinion, but he realized now that he was being a bit too narrow-minded.

Probability of victory was influenced by countless variables, and the relative entropy of the fight was one of them. It was a variable that he hadn’t even considered in his entire life.

Part of this was because Martial Master released almost no entropy due to their absolute efficiency. It was why, as long as no long-range attack missed, Martial Masters could fight in a busy town with absolutely no environmental damage.

But the same was not true for Martial Sages.

For Martial Sages, their raw vastly exceeded their control and precision thanks to the flood of materia prima due to relativistic efficiency that came from their Martial Soul. This represented a huge avenue of adaptive evolution measured by entropic dynamics that Rui had never even considered before for all his brilliance.

BOOOM!

A thundering blow that rattled his bones drew his attention back to the battle.

Her attacks had grown almost thrice as powerful as they were at the start of the battle.

He had never seen anything quite like this kind of adaptively evolving offensive.

She ensured that each blow minimized entropy by choosing attacks that minimized entropy. This effectively meant that a much greater portion of her attacks converted to pure damage in her opponent’s body than any other kind of energy through trial and error.

”Entropic Adaptation indeed.”

BOOM!

His fist crashed into her solar plexus before she could even react, causing her to gasp for air. She gritted her teeth, surging forth with great speed and power, unwilling to give up.

And yet, the battle was already over.

”Heartcrusher.”

BADUMP...

”...Eh?”

One moment, her Martial Heart was blazing with power.

The very next, it was shut off by force.

It was shut off against her will.