The Martial Unity

Rui did not stop there. He went on to challenge three more guardians in the following days.

He defeated all of them, but not a single one of them was able to defeat him.

Many of the sharper guardians that had been following his streak had managed to notice some patterns in these duels.

They noticed that he was indeed aiming for guardians with lethally offensive Martial Art, but also, he had also gained some new healing abilities that allowed him to heal from the lethal attacks that they dealt out.

Many put two and two together and realized that the reason that Rui had chosen them was merely to test something new, most likely.

That was even more surprising than if he just fought them to get to higher and higher chambers.

It showed that, unlike most guardians, Rui did not necessarily conform to the norms. He didn't make slow increments, increasing his rank bit by bit.

Rather, he seemed driven by progress in his Martial Path more than progress in aiming for higher chambers.

However, it became clear to many that Rui was holding back from the very start, it also corroborated the rumors that many had heard about him being one of the two guardians that had managed to beat Senior Xanarn in her base form.

It appeared that there was more to him than met the eye.

It was clear to everyone present that Rui would most likely become one of the top Martial Squires of the Floating Sect.

The feats that he had managed to pull off were so surprising and shocking that it really was hard to actually imagine how strong he was.

It also begged the question to many why Rui did not immediately aim for higher classes when he first arrived at the Floating Sect.

He had spent more than two months at the chamber that he had first won. Due to that, many had assumed that he simply did not have any confidence to go higher, nor the caliber.

Now, it was clear to everyone that they were wrong.

No one knew for sure how he would rise, but it was pretty clear to most people that he was at least going to end up in the first class of the sect eventually.

However, it appeared that Rui was satisfied after reaching the second class of chambers after defeating a total of five opponents very rapidly. He no longer challenged anyone and simply secluded himself in training.

Many frowned at this, it did not appear as though he had particularly struggled against any of his opponents. Instead, he had gone as far as to take them down rather decisively.

So why had he stopped?

Not only had he stopped, but he completely disappeared, seeming to have buried himself away inside his chamber.

Unbeknownst to them, Rui was exploring a new element to add to his most recent technique Weaving Blood.

Technically, the project wasn't over because he was still only testing the technique's effectiveness as a way to control his spec configuration to produce a configuration that was slanted toward healing.

This meant that he was still in the development phase after the initial testing phase. This was how he had conducted the original development of the VOID algorithm, thus he wasn't unfamiliar with the process at all.

It was rarely the case that a development project only had one testing phase. Usually, it required quite a lot of trial and error to eventually get to the end result. If anything, it was his other technique projects this time that had sailed by smoothly.

However, it appeared that Project Metabody was going to be a much more long-term project than he had expected.

While he certainly had always known that it would take quite some time to get there, he hadn't suspected that his progress would be this slow.

Weaving Blood was just one small piece of what he was trying to accomplish with Project Metabody.

However, he was quite satisfied with the progress he had made thus far. For instance, Weaving Blood was so good that he was able to beat his opponents quite soundly without even using a predictive model for several of them.

That was quite amazing to him. He was this strong without the predictive model, after all. Just how strong was he when he used Weaving Blood against the perfect opponent along with a predictive model?

The sheer quality of his adaptation would be way higher in such circumstances. Furthermore, once he finished Project Metabody, the end result would be truly beyond shocking. It would be as though Rui's very existence would adapt to his opponent's existence.

That was a profound thought to consider.

What would it look like if his very existence adapted to take down his opponent? Just the pattern recognition system alone was very powerful, he couldn't even imagine how devastating he would become if he could adapt everything about himself to defeat an opponent.

('Embodying your Martial Art…') Rui considered the idea. ('I wonder if that is one of the pre-requisites for the higher Realms.')

Rui recalled an epiphany that he had quite some time ago in the Shionel Confederation. A profound realization that his Martial Art was, in some sense, him, his life's work.

He thought about it for a few seconds before shrugging. ('Too abstract, let's get back to work.')

He had managed to procure the details of the poison that Squire Herea used, and now he was interested in seeing how he could integrate the poison into his body in some way to trigger the same kind of cell death that it did when she used it against him so that he could accelerate some cell death to give more fuel to his Weaving Blood, allowing it to grow stronger. It would mean that in a time where he truly needed Weaving Blood to save him, he would be able to empower as much as was needed, allowing him to survive what he would have otherwise not been able to.