The Martial Unity

Chapter 2727: True Adaptive Evolution

The Anti-Life had dug nearly a thousand kilometers under the surface, overcoming nearly every single defense that the underground Rui had mounted until he finally reached his target.

BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!

His hand reached out into the dirt.

”Found yo—!”

His eyes widened with shock as his hand touched solid, smooth rock instead of skin and flesh.

A chilling realization dawned upon him. He had not found Rui.

No.

He had only found an earth clone of Rui hidden within the depths of the earth.

”You would be surprised how convenient the Scriptures of Terra are.”

Ruiʼs voice reached him from behind.

It reached him up.

Beyond the surface.

The Anti-Lifeʼs eyes widened with shock as he spotted Rui more than a thousand kilometers in the sky. ”You…”

”You can do all sorts of things with them,” Rui muttered as he enjoyed the blinding light of the Sun juicing him up. ”Like doing earth-bending thousands of kilometers in the sky and…”

His gaze turned to the underground Anti-Life with perilous eyes.

There were two thousand kilometers between the two of them, and yet, Ruiʼs words were loud and clear to the underground Master.

”…And creating hyperfocused supervolcanoes by altering the structure of the crust ever so slightly.”

RUMBLE!!!!!

The Anti-Lifeʼs eyes widened with shock as the subterranean world around him shook violently.

Raw chills ran across his skin as he felt the rising pressure and heat of Gaiaʼs blood rising up to the surface.

In that moment, every instinct in his body warned him the tremendous impending danger.

He surged upwards towards the surface and the sky.

Just as Rui had long predicted.

A single remark escaped Rui.

”Nova Eruption.”

He manipulated heaven to manipulate earth to displace just the right amount of mass from under the Anti-Life to trigger a volcanic eruption of ungodly proportions. BOOOOOOOOM!!!!!

So much so that the Sages intervened to ensure that it didnʼt destroy the entire nation. They created a columnar domain that extended ten thousand kilometers underground and ten thousand kilometers into the sky, isolating Rui and the Anti-Life within it. It also meant that the volcano would be hyper-concentrated within that column, focusing all its power on one and only one person.

The Anti-Life.

Just as Rui had planned.

BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!

The peak Master simply balled up as he exerted every ounce of power in his body to defend himself from the titanic amounts of pressure and heat that mounted upon him, blasting him upwards unrelentingly.

Rui simply watched with calm composure as the hapless Master swallowed whole by his devastating quasi-Sage level attack. He watched as his strategy unfolded exactly like he had envisioned when he witnessed the Anti-Life killing two peak Masters in the blink of an eye.

In that very moment, Rui had conceived of this strategy.

From the fact that the Anti-Life felt the need to close the distance between him and the Worldfolder and Mindbreaker to full-contact range, despite only being meters away, Rui could deduce that while his lethality was absurdly high, even higher than the most potent weapons, he needed physical contact to inflict death on his opponents.

In an instant, his mind had processed millions of strategic approaches to best deal with this before ultimately happening upon one that relied on subtle deception.

The best way to ensure that he didnʼt get touched to death was to keep himself away.

The best way to prevent the Anti-Life from closing the distance between them was to hide his location.

The best way to prevent the Anti-Life from finding his hidden location was to make him think that he had already found it. After all, why would anybody search for something that they had already found?

Thus, Rui deployed the Forge of Creation to create the Earth Clone technique that he had seen in the Nest of Terra while hiding it just enough to make him think it was the real Rui but not beyond his senses.

And thus, while the Anti-Life made a fool of himself hunting down Ruiʼs clone under the ground, Rui had used Greater Phantomind Void to perch himself in the sky in the Sunʼs embrace, absorbing as much of its energy as he could while manipulating heaven to manipulate earth to not only produce a sham defense but also trigger a supervolcano.

This was something that was only possible thanks to channeling his power through the optimal path of action.

The plan had unfolded perfectly.

BOOOOOM!!!!!

The balled-up Master desperately protected himself from the pressure created not just by Ruiʼs attack but also by the Sages who deployed their domain to inadvertently concentrate the power more on the Anti-Life, causing him to suffer even more damage.

”If you werenʼt so delusionally arrogant, you could have seen through my deception.”

Had he not been so utterly narcissistic, he would have noticed that Ruiʼs earth-bending was a bit weak, just enough to grow suspicious of whether he was actually reaching the real Rui. While he still would not have noticed Rui in the sky thanks to Phantomind Void, he might not have fallen for Ruiʼs strategy so cleanly and smoothly.

Yet, the arrogance that he displayed yesterday, but also in the battle where he refused to go for the logical and rational choice of ganging up on Rui, told Rui that there was a good chance he would not question these subtle clues and simply chalk to his own superiority or because Rui was a ʼfraud.ʼ

Even his character traits had been harnessed into Ruiʼs strategy.

He created the most optimal outcome by choosing a strategic solution that worked most effectively and even better than a tactical solution like the Forge of Creation.

This was what it meant to adaptively evolve.

It wasnʼt simply just using grandiose techniques like the Forge of Creation and other systems of thought blindly and spamming the same techniques over and over. It meant fully considering the environment, opponent, and situational circumstances and choosing the one path out of an endless set of possibilities that allowed him to adaptively evolve against his opponent optimally.

BOOOOOOM!!!!!!

By the time the supervolcano finally calmed down, the Anti-Life emerged from cracklingly hot lava, covered in burns and wounds.

He gazed at Rui with murderous eyes.

”I will kill you if itʼs the last thing I do.”

He surged towards Rui with an astronomical speed.

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