Shadow Slave

What was a battle style?

Depending on the practitioner, the answer varied.

At the lowest level, a battle style was nothing more than a comprehensive collection of movements and steps aimed at giving the practitioner sufficient competence to engage in battle. A set of practices meant to encompass all possible combat situations, and arm the warrior with tools to solve them.

There were countless battle styles, some taught to groups of people, others formed from the personal habits and quirks of talented combatants. Some styles emphasized strength and strived to overpower the opponent, some emphasized speed and precision, some emphasized solid defense and waiting for a perfect moment to counterattack.

There were solid battle styles created with deep insight, and poor battle styles that were concocted without a real understanding of the fundamental laws of combat.

But that was only the most shallow layer of a true battle art. A person could practice a battle style without truly understanding its essence, but they would never be able to master it.

At a higher lever, a battle style was not only a set of movements, but also a formative philosophy. It concerned not only the body, but also the mind. A person who truly mastered a style had to possess a certain level of insight into the governing laws of combat. Knowing why each of the elements had been created and what its purpose was, they were not beholden to a predetermined repertoire of actions. Instead, they could freely improvise an actionable response to each situation..

If all movements could be improvised, then what was the difference between the various battle styles? It was their philosophy. The school of thought and the dominant intent, a unifying principle that guided the shape and direction of these improvised moves.

Therefore, even among those practitioners who had mastered both the body and the mind, there were still those who fought with domineering strength, swift precision, patient caution, or any other type of guiding intent.

These were the true masters of combat.

of them — and one of the absolute best among them — a long time

a whole

a third layer above the body and the mind, available only to a

It was soul.

She has changed…

a ferocious dance of steel, Sunny couldn't help but feel amazed. She had always been a true

her technique. As the vanguard champion of Valor, she had gone through countless battles. She had also come into her Transcendent power, learning to wield it as naturally as

a question of raw power. Sunny had already glimpsed that chasm when he and

were already very proficient in using it to deliberately and efficiently augment their bodies in combat, but Saints were capable of

a truly transcendent battle art. And since each Transcendent warrior possessed a unique Aspect, each essence technique had to be tailor-made for a single user. The difference that mastering such a technique could make was truly striking, and therefore, that alone made Saints

that was not the end

battle art was unique and tailored to a single user, there was an additional step to be taken. And that

complete integration of body, mind, and soul into a combat

he had been concentrating on developing such a personal transcendent battle art for himself in the past four years. He had already formulated its principles, and was now tempering these principles in battles against powerful

in the process

glimpsed what the

in and of themselves, as sovereign beings. Their souls were vaster than their bodies, coming into contact with the world and the underlying laws governing it. Some parts of the world welcomed them, while others repelled them. That was why Transcendent

was shadow. For someone like Saint Tyris, it was the sky, or perhaps storm clouds. For someone like Nephis… he couldn't guess. It might have been light, or flame, or something more esoteric, like inspiring longing in the souls of other