The Martial Unity

The battlefield was huge. Martial Artists from both sides congregated over a large area. You could not squeeze two hundred Martial Squires fighting in a stadium, or even a small town.

Especially when they were all high-grade Martial Squires. Nothing short of a city-wide area was large enough to accommodate all these Martial Squires going all out.

Rui's Riemannian Echo was finally functional now that he was off Ajanta Island, he was able to sense everything that was happening within the entire area. It felt good to stretch his senses this far after quite some time.

Ajanta Island was his nemesis, and he was unable to have the kind of unperturbed range there as he did in the Shionel Dungeon.

Of course, his Tempestuous Feel was also a good sensory technique. Furthermore, it was a technique that experienced a boost on Ajanta Island.

Because the island's atmosphere was so dense, it became easier to sense through it compared to normal air.

Still, because it was a normal sense, it couldn't bypass anti-espionage technology the way that Riemannian Echo did.

Regardless, he was able to use the Riemannian Echo just fine outside of the island, and he did put it to good use.

He quickly scanned all the guardians briefly one-by-one categorizing their Martial Art based on the little information that he glimpsed in a hurry.

He did not want to miss out on anything by taking his time potentially missing a lot of action if fights ended before he got to them.

Thus he briefly made sure to get to know their Martial Art on a basic level so that he could have an easier time later verifying whether they could give him what he wanted in a duel.

With that out of the way, he began scanning through all of them in a more detailed manner. Specifically, the offense-oriented guardians.

Not that what he was looking for couldn't possibly be granted through any other kind of Martial Squire. But what he was looking for was an offense that inflicted wounds on him despite his defense and maneuvering.

It was possible for Martial Artists of different fields to be able to inflict damage by pursuing both their defense and maneuvering. But most Martial Artists that were capable of that would probably belong in the offense category.

That was why Rui began scanning the offensive ones to maximize the probability of running into one.

He was quite fascinated by the offense-oriented guardians of the Floating Sect, none of them were standard.

('Then again, you can't be a standard Martial Squire if you want to enter the sect,') Rui mused.

Even the most normal ones that were centered around more common kinds of striking-oriented Martial Art had very abnormal and non-standard elements to them that made them quite deviant.

Rui came across a grappling-oriented Martial Squire that relied on friction to increase her lethality.

('Oof,') Rui winced. ('I do not want to be on the receiving end of that,')

Much to his dismay, she was a good candidate to test out his Weaving Blood technique. Her strategy relied on inflicting as much damage by shearing off his flesh.

Yet he already knew that the experience was going to be excruciatingly painful.

('Well, to be fair, if I'm looking for a guardian that's going to inflict so many wounds on me that I'm going to have to rely on Weaving Blood to make it out, then it's going to be excruciatingly painful no matter what.') He sighed.

He had good pain tolerance, of course, every Martial Squire ended up getting superhuman pain tolerance after experiencing the horrendous nightmare that was the Squire evolution breakthrough.

Still, that did not mean that pain was fun or desirable. It still hurt as bad as ever.

Regardless, he added her to the list.

He continued scanning, hoping to find more Martial Squires that had an overabundant focus on lethality at the cost of everything else.

Thankfully, he was not too disappointed. Martial Artists that focused on lethality to such a great degree were not too uncommon.

Offense was one of the fundamental aspects of combat, and there were many who pursued it at the cost of everything else, obtaining a level of lethality that was simply overwhelming and could not be stopped barring the most defensive of Martial Artists.

He was able to add several more to the list.

A poison-oriented Martial Artist who caused cell death with a kind of poison that he transmitted both through airborne and contact means.

Rui was able to identify the poison because he recalled seeing something similar in one of his earliest projects where he tried creating a technique that employed poison.

Rui almost felt a little evil for choosing this man as a target. Weaving Blood was such an incredibly hard counter to this poison of his that it wasn't even funny.

After all, Weaving Blood employed Whirlpool Breathing and Elephant Breathing to flush out the assimilated energy, nutrients, and compounds out of cells and tissue and into the bloodstream where they would be absorbed by the cells near the wound that needed the supply.

Thus an attack that wounded tissue by killing cells only gave him the supply that he needed to recycle and heal the wound that had been inflicted with cell death.

It meant that against this particular guardian, Rui may as well have had limitless healing and regeneration. It was the most perfect counter that was so brutally perfect to taking down that poison, that it wasn't even funny.

While healing would work terribly for most kinds of poison, in this case, it was actually quite perfect. He most certainly could heal from the wound, and he could gain more energy thanks to his opponent's attack.

That was why Rui looked forward to this fight. He hadn't even created a predictive model to keep it fair, but even without that, he felt quite confident about taking these guardians on in a challenge and taking their chamber as a result to get a better place to train.