The Martial Unity

The four projects that he was working on went well as he worked on them. Project Skyfall involved him refining his heaven-bending along a single dimension. It took intricate precision to reach a level where he could redirect the vectors of force along a single direction. The amount of force he needed was actually little, this was a technique that tested his precision and accuracy. It was truly difficult.

Project Speed Prison was a little easier. Manipulating the drag coefficient to, be a variable that increased with speed was definitely not easy. He needed to alter the fabric of the atmosphere as a medium. This project required the most amount of constant trial and error. He constantly needed to test his prototype domains to ensure that he was in the right direction.

Project Malevolent Kitchen was definitely the smoothest of the four. He was very familiar with generating sound; thus, he was not out of his comfort zone in this domain. He employed heaven-bending to create a heavenly domain that would bombard his target with sound in all directions. He created an earth domain that bombarded his target with seismic radiation at the point of contact. The result was that sound was increasingly concentrated within a single person. Since sound was being bombarded onto a single point from all directions, it was not difficult to cancel all the vectors, turning it into directionless vibration: heat.

However, the most difficult of the four was most certainly Project Reverse Prophet. Rui realized that his optimism had been naive. He had been so seduced by the potential power of such a technique and how much it would improve his pattern recognition system that his greed for it was quite strong.

But progress in this technique was so hard that even he was starting to have doubts. Peering into the past was not a feat that was easy to accomplish. Time flowed in one direction. Defying that was a feat that mortals did not seem to be capable of. Regardless, he pushed on, focusing on the four technique projects.

However, that was not the only thing that required his attention. 'I also need to create easy thought-based techniques for explorers and Martial Apprentices,' Rui had not forgotten his commitment in regard to the future Water Sect. He had not forgotten that he needed to create highly diluted versions of adaptive evolution for the major fields so that he could spread elements of his technique that could potentially be planted into seeds later on while also increasing the affinity of Martial Artists to the Master Realm. As long as he could do this, then he would be fine.

However, it was difficult because he couldn't expect everybody to operate at the same level of mental acuity as he did. He needed to account for the diminished mental capacity of the average Martial Artist relative to his own. For the explorers, those who hadn't discovered their Martial Art and were still exploring different fields to see what they had an affinity for, he needed extremely simple techniques that were highly effective but also had low mental burden. He needed to ensure that the explorer techniques reflected his Martial Path without burdening them with extreme mental requirements of the VOID algorithm.

"Oh boy…" Rui murmured as he scratched his head. 'This is back to problems I had back on Earth.'

Ensuring that his system of thought was viable for the average UFC fighter was easily his biggest hurdle back on Earth, and now that he was here, he was going to be facing the problem once more.

'Though it's not nearly as bad as it used to be.'

For one, he didn't need to make everybody master the VOID algorithm. He needed to create…voidlets, diluted elements of the VOID algorithm, and have them master it.

This was much easier. He had used the VOID algorithm even before he became a Martial Artist, he was just limited to the low-level systems within the VOID algorithm. The pattern recognition system was something that pretty much nobody aside from himself could possibly master.

'Still, I can create simplified systems of thought that, when mastered, can allow them to fight more wisely and use less effort to overcome the same opponents,' Rui realized.

A lot of this was just taking several low-end systems of the VOID algorithm and making separate thought techniques for each of them. This was not the interesting part, as far as he was concerned.

There were plenty of low-end systems that he could choose from, for example, he had a system of thought that was centered around learning as much information about your opponent as possible at the start of the fight, especially their stance.

Different stances catered to different styles of combat. Centered legs were a sign of maneuvering; divided leg stances, on the other hand, were antithetical to maneuvering. Divided legs signified stability to form.

Similarly, arm positioning also distinguished between offense and defense, as well as what form of offense. A striker would employ arms very differently from wrestlers, and those were quite evident in their stances.

In addition, distance from the opponent was a good predictor of their moves. An attacking gesture made from beyond arm's distance was a good sign that they were going to kick, which had a much greater range than the punches.

Kicks, in turn, could also be further predicted by the center of gravity and leg positioning. Center of gravity in and of itself was another simple to decipher variable that could be used to predict the opponent.

These methods allowed one to predict their opponent's very next move. They still paled in comparison to the pattern recognition system, which was far deeper and precise in its prediction, essentially allowing Rui to see the future itself, but they were certainly good enough to stand as a useful technique by themselves.

'That should be good enough for the explorer techniques,' Rui mused as he heaved a sigh. 'As for the Apprentice-level techniques…I can make things a little more interesting.'