The Martial Unity

The two of them quickly left the valley, heading toward a safer space, before quickly consuming potions. Rui found it hard to talk with a hole in his throat, after all.

"Damn," Kane sat back down. "That's a shame."

"It could have gone either way Kane," Rui shook his head. "This is different from when I win because I am simply stronger. In this case, I was using my Flowing Void Style to the absolute maximum, and I still was unable to even gain an advantage. Furthermore, there were times when you were the one with the upper hand. That was what surprised me."

"Yeah, but I still lost," Kane murmured, dissatisfied. "You just feel invincible."

"I'm far from it," Rui chuckled. "The only reason I won this time was because of a clever trick. I simply applied my power a little better than you, at the end of the day. I suspect had you fought with a more open and flexible mind, you might have won."

"Flexible?"

Rui nodded. "Tell me, what was your plan to win after you saw that I was able to handle your swift jabs to my vital spots?"

"…" Kane considered the question as he understood what Rui was trying to convey. "I just kept swiftly moving around hoping to catch an opening."

"I could see that," Rui noted. "In other words, you seemed to hope for victory, rather than doing everything you could to get it."

"Hey, I wasn't holding back!" Kane protested.

In this instance, you continued going down the same old set of movements even when you knew that they weren't going to work. Do you think

"…"

weren't able to hit my vitals and tried getting rid of or bypassing one of those reasons," Rui pointed out. "For example, you know that my reaction speed is very slow compared to yours, especially when compared to

that for many

instantly lose the fight," Rui pointed out. "What would happen if you get my predictions to fail? After all, predictions are just that; predictions. They're

as he fell deep in thought. "The

it certainly is far from easy to disrupt my predictions, it is still an avenue of exploration

useless against Rui's predictive model. His model was based on

failed unless his opponent gained an

This was essentially impossible.

strategic considerations. Had Kane possessed a strategic mindset, which was different from strategic intelligence, Rui was sure that he would have had

on the power of his two grade-ten techniques side-by-side in

in Rui's opinion,

"Like, my Martial Path is evasive maneuvering, right? But if it's ineffective in a particular fight, and offensive maneuvering happens to be

was not a simple question. In fact, what Kane was asking was something every Martial Artist asked themselves. And it was a

Martial Path was sub-optimal in a given situation, should one abandon it and

wasn't abandoning one's Martial Path in a fight bad? How could one reach the higher Realms

dilemma that plagued