The Martial Unity

Chapter 1957 Void

Ever since he began inheriting the Elder Tree's understanding and knowledge of the biosphere of the Panama Continent, Rui's daily life had become brutally simple.

He woke up and immediately began subjecting himself to torture.

This period of his daily life was characterized by screams and maniacal laughs that merged together in the greatest audition for a horror film that Gaia had ever seen.

Once that was done, he fell asleep instantly.

It was a beautifully simple life.

It was also a brutally simple life.

Ecstasy and pain became his reality during the influx of sessions. Pain from the inheritance of knowledge and ecstasy from finding the patterns of life that would go on to become the fabric of his Tree of Life predictive model.

Yet, the moment the sessions ended, he felt empty.

He felt like there was a hole in his heart.

A void.

He felt incapable of ecstasy or pain outside of the times when he was pursuing his Martial Path by accepting the Elder Tree's database on the biosphere of Gaia. It was as though the extremely heightened pain and ecstasy he felt during the inheritance sessions came at the cost of feeling pain or ecstasy at any other moment.

In a way, the mind sort of adhered to a law of conservation of emotion.

One could only feel so much of a certain emotion or feeling.

That included pain and ecstasy.

The more one experienced it, the more the mind would adjust its sense of normality to make it the new normal.

It appeared that his mind had worked overtime in that regard.

It made the inheritance sessions more palatable, yet any time he was conscious outside of that…it was dark.

Each morning Rui woke up, he felt dead.

Detached.

Cold.

sessions squeezed out everything he could experience, and what was left

Martial drive still drove him

only grew stronger, yet it no longer evoked emotion from him outside of the inheritance

was difficult

He didn't understand.

mornings, Rui would stare at his own hands

thought would often

so easy to kill myself

would not feel more empty than he

closed his eyes.

wished to speak

Rui's eyes were vacant.

Hollow.

"Begin."

…Understood.

ecstasy began. His vacant eyes, devoid

of

he

Yet, at what cost?

He didn't know.

didn't want to

weeks, and

Palace. Species by species

of the

domain, perhaps only the very greatest of scholars or someone like the Ecologer was above him, but there was no doubt that he had access to truly groundbreaking intelligence that could greatly

hypotheses and scientific theories that could go

probably propose a holistic taxonomical framework that integrated every single species, esoteric or non-esoteric, in a single track. In fact, he could probably create an

he didn't care for all of

No.

this information could do or

reason he weathered on without

the promise of the

The end came abruptly.

WHOOSH

him. He was drenched in sweat and grime. His body was restrained by the powerful roots of the

draining out of him, growing listless

His eyes grew cold.