The Martial Unity

Furthermore, there was no point in trying to kill each other now.

The battle was over. The core reasons for their bloodlust; the desire to break through, had also gone.

If anything, Rui valued him. He was probably the one man who would never be anything less than extremely difficult for Rui to defeat, no matter how many times they fought.

Rui's Martial Art was such that once he fought someone, they would never be able to defeat him ever again under ordinary circumstances. This happened with Kane, who lost to him even on a battlefield where he essentially had limitless stamina for a powerful grade-ten technique fueled by the environment around them. Not even such overwhelming situational advantages could allow Kane to defeat Rui.

The VOID algorithm when adapted was too powerful, and it never forgot.

Yet, against Ieyasu, this was not strictly true especially since the man did not have any patterns. A feat that Rui still did not entirely understand, though he did get the core reason for why it was necessary.

'A mirror that bears its own image can never truly reflect any other.'

It meant that Ieyasu needed to abandon who he was, in a sense, to pursue his Martial Path.

Yet a Martial Path was a reflection of who one was. It was a confusing paradox with only one solution.

It meant that his very psychology must have been extremely warped around others for such a Martial Path to manifest from it. Rui could not even begin to imagine what he had been through to develop such a Martial Path.

Regardless, it was a very valuable training resource. Just sparring against him would probably allow Rui to make improvements and grow stronger. A strange thought entered his mind when Rui remembered that Ieyasu also had connections to the Virodhabhasa Faith as a fellow Virodha Champion.

He scratched his head, shrugging. It didn't matter if that truly was the case. In fact, it would actually be beneficial if that truly was the case. He could present Ieyasu to Master Uma and get her off his back.

His mood immediately plummeted as he thought about Master Uma.

'I'm definitely going to make her pay. But the time for that day has not yet arrived.' His eyes narrowed.

A newborn Martial Senior had no business considering fighting and beating a Martial Master.

'One step at a time.'

Master Uma would need to get in the queue for matters that he needed to attend to. Chairman Deacon was at the front of that line, having pre-booked it ahead of her.

Rui had reached a stage where he needed to seriously consider exactly and precisely how he was going to get rid of Chairman Deacon. When he first left the Shionel Confederation, he never paid any serious mind to make a decision when it came to how he was going to resolve this threat.

At the time, he was a high-grade Martial Squire at most, furthermore, he had a full decade ahead of him. He had simply focused on becoming a Martial Senior since that was the bare minimum strength he needed to be at before he could actually think about tackling this looming problem.

And now, he had arrived. Furthermore, his deadline had been reduced by three years. He had a little under seven years left to fix the problem.

'First, I need to ascertain the difficulty of taking himdown.' Rui's mind entered a state of rational consideration, flowing smoothly, uninterrupted by the emotional irrationality that had plagued him in the past few weeks.

In order to overcome a problem, he needed to ascertain its difficulty. This was the very basics of problem-solving.

Yes, it was common sense that killing Chairman Deacon was going to be a monumentally difficult task, but how difficult? What were the various impediments that would prevent him from doing so? Even if he did succeed, he needed to consider where there were there outcomes of killing Chairman Deacon that would be so unfavorable that they would be not worth killing him.

For example, he might unleash an even bigger storm on himself and his family if he killed Chairman Deacon and was identified as the culprit. That was highly undesirable. A more unlikely one was suicidal measures to ensure that any killer of his would die along with him. Considering how vicious the man was to those who transgressed upon him, it was not impossible.

In general, there was too much he didn't know.

'I need intelligence. Detailed high-quality strategic intelligence on theman.' Rui narrowed his eyes.

Funnily enough, he had many sources.

The Martial Union. Guildmaster Bradt. The Virodhabhasa Faith.

Yet each option was problematic.

The Martial Union was ideal if not for the fact that Chairman Deacon undoubtedly was searching for any sign of Rui, and his greatest area of investigation was the Martial Union. Most likely, he had dedicated an enormous amount of investigative capital purely to finding any signs, even the tiniest hint of Rui Quarrier through the Martial Union.

That was why Commissioner Reze did not approach Rui during the first banquet when he was just another contestant.

It was too dangerous to do so at that moment in time.

It was why he had waited for Rui to perform extremely well so that an extremely good justification existed for Commissioner Reze to want to speak to Rui without drawing any suspicion. Everybody wanted to speak to the strongest Virodha Champion that had ever been seen.

'I should have used that opportunity to ask for as much investigative intelligence on Chairman Deacon as possible instead of the basics.' Rui groaned. 'Instead, my mind was fully and solely focused on breaking through and nothing else. You're stupid. Stupid. Actually stupid.'

He chastised himself mentally, shaking his head, and sighing. 'Regardless, I would be stupid to approach the Kandrian Empire in any way, let alone the Martial Union. If I was a powerful stealth-oriented Martial Artist, then it would have been a different case, but Mind Mask is not enough.'

There were too many avenues of information slip-up. Entire surveillance teams across the country trained to identify his body type. Massive spy networks covertly gathered classified intelligence from relevant organizations such as the Kandrian Border Patrol Force, the Kandrian Bureau of Investigation, and even the Martial Union.

It was too risky to be worth it. He needed to consider other options.