The Martial Unity

"You've correctly identified one of the problems that plagued us the most." Julian nodded, evidently impressed. "Sophistication of Martial Path is indeed a bit of a nebulous concept that is hard to measure. However, we have developed a measurement system centered around several parameters such as how narrow and specific their field is, the complexity of the Martial Path, and frequency of the Martial Path in the Martial Artist population among other things."

"Interesting." Rui nodded. "That isn't necessarily in line with the conventional definition of 'sophistication' though, is it?"

"Perhaps not," Julian admitted. "The conventional definition is a very broad ambiguous term that encompasses a lot of meanings in different contexts. When we use the term, we're referring to how the word is used in the context of Martial Art."

Rui nodded. Although he could argue that even in the context of Martial Art it wasn't a very rigorously defined word, at that point, it was just pointless semantics. What mattered was what the data revealed.

"Anyways, to continue with what I was saying earlier. The studies we conducted revealed that the older the Martial Artist was when they discovered their Martial Path, the more sophisticated their Martial Path was. The prevailing hypothesis is that with age, comes experience, perspective, and maturity, allowing for the maturity of the Martial Path into something beyond a simplistic broad field." Julian told Rui. "We haven't verified this hypothesis yet, unfortunately."

"Interesting." Rui thought deeply. "The most straightforward way to verify this hypothesis would be to create a measurement system for maturity and measure it in a sample base of Martial Artists while controlling for all other factors except for the sophistication of Martial Path. This way you could isolate the correlation between maturity and sophistication."

"Correct." Julian smiled, impressed at Rui's deep understanding of how empirical research functioned. "We're having trouble verifying this hypothesis. After all, it isn't particularly simple to measure the maturity of a Martial Artist. It's hard to even define maturity objectively, and it's even harder to measure it empirically."

Rui nodded. Research in the field of psychology had developed extremely rigorous means of measuring temperament after decades of refining. He didn't think the researchers of the Kandrian Empire were quite there yet, from what he could see.

the same as that of normal humans." Rui

other reasons, further

matter. Tell me more about what your research

female Martial Artists on average are likelier to have Martial Path revolving around more than one field, while male Martial Artists' Martial Path

of my female Martial Artist friends have fixated on a

certainly examples of this. Rui was an example of

are plenty of

quite familiar with this

a higher trend towards

sensitivity towards stimuli. Men had greater physicality while

our results were intuitively satisfying and predictable, though they are a bit more mundane," Julian added. "One of our more fascinating findings is actually the correlation between exposure to a field throughout the years of development and the probability that their Martial Path will

eyebrow at that,

Forest south of the Kandrian Empire." Julian smiled. "This is a Martial Artist tribe that lives a very primitive lifestyle that characterized our species eons ago, barring the Martial Art part. What is most fascinating is that a huge proportion of the

be genuinely surprised at this revelation. "How much,

half." Julian chuckled, enjoying Rui's reaction. "Around half had Martial Paths