The Martial Unity

Chapter 3132: An Act of Selflessness

Rui’s arms squeezed the life out of Anthea with every ounce of power he had, holding him down and refusing to allow him to easily to adaptively evolve to the Gu poison. Because of the fact that Rui himself had adaptively evolved to the Gu poison by triggering a form of evolution with the help of the Transcendent healing fruit, his greatest fear was that Anthea would adaptively evolve and integrate the Gu into his body just as Rui had.

However, for once, he had overestimated Anthea.

”Rgh!!!” Anthea gritted his teeth as death itself coursed through his veins, darkening his invisible body until it was perfectly clear to everybody.

The fear in his eyes was palpable.

It was the fear of death.

Despite his extraordinary genetic adaptive evolution, his body struggled to do with the Gu what Rui had.

Even as his body shifted, it began aging at a shocking rate.

Anthea’s skin began softening and growing wrinkled at an almost visible rate.

His body began weakening at a visible rate as the Gu poison ravaged his very life force, consuming all of it very dearly.

Each attempt to slow down the powerful poison seemed to take its toll on him.

He had attempted to do the same thing that Rui accomplished, but his body only degenerated closer and closer towards death with each attempt. This surprised Rui even as he did his very best to crush Anthea’s neck.

After all, he was much weaker when he first broke through to the Sage Realm than he was now. And even if he did indeed have the power of the healing fruit back then, he had been significantly inferior to someone of Anthea’s caliber.

Why was he having so much trouble adaptively evolving to the Gu poison?

It was only when he saw how quickly the Gu poison made him age that he finally understood what was happening.

”You...” Rui’s eyes widened. ”Your lifespan is very short...! That is the only reason you would be aging so fast from the Gu!”

Rui hadn’t had the opportunity to be enlightened on all the intelligence that they had received from the dark elves before he was dispatched to this battlefield, thus he hadn’t been made aware of this crucial piece of intelligence.

It was only when he gazed upon Anthea’s rapidly aging body that he understood what was happening.

Adaptively evolving to the Gu consumed one’s lifespan.

It had happened even to Rui after he adaptively evolved to the Gu. Though in his case, he also discovered the secret to immortality, allowing himself to negate the loss of lifespan.

However, what if someone had a very low lifespan to begin with?

What if someone was never destined to live more than a century?

If such a person was infected with the Gu, then it stood to reason that they would experience a very visible aging process.

This would undoubtedly be damning for them even if they were able to successfully adaptively evolving.

Thus, even as Anthea was successfully adaptively evolving to the Gu, it consumed so much of his lifespan that it drained his remaining little lifespan.

As for why the evolutionaries had such a small lifespan, there was only one reason for that.

”Your genetic transformation ability...” Rui realized. ”It must consume your lifespan each time you use that ability!”

That made more sense, given that the true world did not possess any natural esoteric substances that could allow them to ameliorate the effects of transforming their DNA. There was no way that such an ability could be used with impunity without any drawbacks.

Each time the evolutionaries adaptively evolved with their DNA, they were consuming their very lifespan to do so.

If that was the case, then the Gu was the literal antithesis of the evolutionaries; it was their greatest kryptonite, for the shorter the lifespan, the less they could last in the face of its voracious, life-consuming fury.

The only way they could possibly deal with it was to avoid being infected with it in the first place, which was mighty impossible.

The very moment that Rui realized this truth, he intensified his efforts.

He converted all his remaining primordial seed into the Gu as he injected every last ounce of it into Anthea’s body.

”ARRGGGHHH!!!” Anthea roared with agony, even his ephemeral eyes grew pitch black with the surge of Gu flushing into his bloodstream once more. ”Damn you...!”

”Your Excellency!” The other evolutionaries cried as they surged in, trying to intervene to protect their supreme commander with horrified expressions.

In all their short lives, they had never witnessed the supreme commander be this overcome by an opponent.

BADUMP!!!

RUMBLE!!!

The Martial Sages awakened their Realms of power once more, surging forth to intercept and prevent the evolutionaries from intervening in the battle that Rui had successfully gained control over.

The desperate evolutionaries grew maddened with haste as they struggled to push through the barricade of Martial Sages to reach their supreme commander.

”Enough.”

Anthea’s powerful, if dying, voice caused them to freeze where they were.

Even as Rui choked the life out of him, even as the Gu poison consumed his very life, he understood what he needed to do.

”Retreat.”

His command to the evolutionaries shook them where they stood.

”But Your Excellency...!”

”How can we abandon you?!”

”What of our grand ambition?!”

Anthea’s dying eyes grew more intense.

”Retreat.”

They flinched at his forceful command, quivering with frustration.

And yet, they heeded.

They slowly backed off from the Martial Sages.

From the battlefield.

From the continent.

And yet, where there should have been defeat and resignation in Anthea’s eyes, there was only ominous reckoning.

”You...” Anthea squeezed out even as Rui’s grip around his neck tightened. ”You will regret this. My descendants will hunt you alive with the fruits of my labor and the legacy of my evolution for eternity.”

He halted all resistance against the Gu and against Rui as he redirected all his energy to one final act.

An act of selflessness.

His phallus grew turgid as it ejaculated a special fluid.

A white, sticky, gooey fluid.