The Martial Unity

Chapter 3853: Means of the Future

Amare enjoyed the tour through the city, even if she found it a little tiring. The young minister’s endless energy and passion made the journey more tedious, but she could still appreciate all the many features, abilities, and amenities that the empty city offered to its future residents. It truly could be described as a smart city and was the picture of what a high-tech utopia of a civilization would look like.

By the time their little tour ended, they found themselves at the very top of the largest tower in the city, the capital citadel, at a table for two.

“Huff…” she gently sat opposite Rui, enjoying the wide-scale view of Metropolita as she gently placed her hand on her large belly, stroking it affectionately.

WHOOSH

Strong winds brushed her long, brown hair to flutter and dance. Rui’s ethereal eyes remained fixed on her with a strange mix of intensity and softness.

She turned to him with a knowing expression. “You don’t have to do that, you know.”

“Do what?” Rui raised an eyebrow.

“Spam the Eye of Prophecy out of fear of a teleportation ambush on me,” she huffed lightly. “We came here for a date to relax.”

Rui simply smiled softly. “…Yes, we did. But dates tend to be unenjoyable when you’re ambushed off-guard.”

Amare’s expression hardened a little. “…I feel very scared sometimes thinking about the safety of our daughter once she is born. Right now, I feel strangely safe about it because it feels like I’m protecting her with my body.”

“You are.” Rui momentarily interjected. “You protect and nurture her every moment of every day.”

She smiled sweetly. “Yes, but once she is born, she will be… vulnerable.”

“I’ve already spent nearly a trillion ruels on research and development of new anti-teleportation technology, and we have promising projects,” Rui remarked with a serious tone of voice. “For instance, we have the known solutions of the manifold and the Elder Tree’s space-time domain. We also have some esoteric solutions and other general solutions that can be implemented sooner or later.”

Her expression grew relieved. “I’m happy to hear that.”

“I’m also working hard on Project Autocorpus,” Rui informed her. “Once I succeed at it and combine it with the Eye of Prophecy. I dare say…”

A grin cracked at the edge of his face. “…I’ll be invincible and so will our daughter.”

She raised an eyebrow at those words. Rui wasn’t in the habit of vain boasting, so she knew that he had strong reason to praise his Project Autocorpus to such an extent. When he had told her that he was trying to tap into the information dimension to achieve more power, her first reaction was fear.

She was afraid that he would disappear like the Transcendents. But he assured her that he wouldn’t, even if she didn’t understand where his confidence came from.

But when she looked at his expression, she couldn’t help but simply smile endearingly. He did well to hide it, but whenever he spoke of Autocorpus, he was like a child in a candy store, just energetically excited without a care for the world.

However, she had fallen in love even with this immature side of his. Even after living for nearly a century, his love for his Martial Art and adaptive evolution had never once waned. It contrasted sharply with the more responsible and burdened man he had become ever since he ascended the throne.

“How long is it going to take for you to achieve Project Autocorpus?” She raised an eyebrow with curiosity. “You’ve been spending a lot of time in the manifold. I know that you haven’t slept in the past five months. You go to the manifold after I fall asleep and spend eight or nine hours in the real world in there. And you’ve been doing that for the past five months. Which means you’ve already spent a few years in there, have you not?”

Rui heaved a sigh. “Even more time when you consider the mental time that has passed. The information dimension, or at least my mind’s interpretation of it, is unfathomable. It makes me feel unworthy of being there because it’s clear that I can’t access it the way that a Transcendent can. I’m struggling to just sense the information defining my own body, let alone the information of the world.”

Transcendents seemed to be able to freely rewrite the information of the world, thereby altering reality itself in a way that violated the law of causality. In comparison, Rui couldn’t even make a scratch on the information.

This, when coupled with the fact that Transcendents themselves were merely Martial Sages who had set one foot, no one toe into the mysterious higher Realm, it truly made Rui feel insignificant despite all the power that he had acquired since his metamorphosis.

But the challenge made him feel excited.

It was the only thing that could, after his metamorphosis. His ability to learn and grow had reached unparalleled heights since his metamorphosis. He could learn anything, so much so that he realized that even Ieyasu’s mirror neurons didn’t improve his already high ability to learn virtually any existing technique or field of Martial Art.

The information dimension was the final, yet limitless frontier of Martial Art for him to conquer.

“What unnerves me, however, is that it might be possible for technology to intervene in the information dimension,” Rui remarked with a serious expression. “In fact, I don’t think it’s even strictly prohibited by the laws of reality, which means that it’s within the realm of possibility.”

Amare’s eyes widened at those words. “What? That should be impossible. Are you saying it’s possible for a civilization to develop a technology that is Transcendent?”

Rui nodded with a serious expression. “Most likely. If that’s the case, then even Martial Transcendents might not be absolutely inviolable in the future. Regardless…”

A smile emerged on his expression. “Maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. I need competition to fuel my growth. I’ve already made the entire Martial World my opponent with my soon-to-be-implemented regime. But if technology reaches that level, then I won’t have to suffer from boredom.”

Rui did look forward to that day, not just for his own entertainment, but also for the strength of their civilization for the day that they confronted the illness plaguing Gaia and the Fear. If the Fear was so intense that even Martial Transcendents were powerless before it, then perhaps only in a world where their technology was Transcendent would they be able to confront such an unfathomable threat. It was why he had flushed their little Fear/Illness task force with resources to accelerate it.

It wouldn’t be too long before Rui himself would find and confront the alien threat to their civilization.