The Martial Unity

Yet little did they know that this boost came from just two months' worth of training.

"Winner: Squire Falken!"

Rui simply walked away from the arena, heading back towards his chamber. He needed to shift to his new chamber before he considered doing anything else.

"Honestly, should I just get them all out of the way?" Rui scratched his head.

He had been planning on rapidly challenging the few guardians that he had identified one after the other until he finished all of them.

He did not intend to lose.

Thus, would it not be better if he switched chambers after he beat all of them?

Otherwise, he would need to switch chambers after every fight, why do that when he could just do it after he beat everyone he planned on challenging?

('Makes sense, but I should see whether they're free first, they may have already accepted a challenge within the past ten days, in which case it is better I shift first.')

He approached guardian Herea, one of the guardians that he had identified to possess a Martial Art that was just apt for testing his Weaving Blood technique.

Unfortunately, what he feared came to pass.

"I already partook in a challenge three days ago," She replied to him with an intrigued expression.

"I guess I'll have to wait a week then." Rui sighed.

"Not unless I accept it voluntarily."

The ten-day rule only applied to being forced to accept a challenge. Guardians could accept one thousand challenges in a single day if they so pleased.

It appeared that guardian Herea was willing to take him on in a duel.

"You know, I've heard a lot about you," She said. "I look forward to battling you."

Rui was glad that not all guardians were egotistical jerks.

She accommodated his request to begin the challenge immediately too, much to his delight.

It wasn't long before the two of them were standing before each other in an arena. They had quickly handled all the paperwork to officiate it, and the sect had already sent an arbiter to oversee the fight.

"Challenger; guardian Falken."

Rui stepped forward.

"Defender; guardian Herea."

She stepped forward, as well.

"Take your stances." The arbiter instructed them.

Rui took a neutral stance at the moment. He didn't feel any need to particularly lean in any one direction.

She, on the other hand, unbandaged her arms and limbs, revealing green skin.

She was a poison user, the one that Rui identified as being able to cause rapid cell death.

She was one of the handful that Rui intended to challenge to test Weaving Blood against their lethal offense.

"Begin!"

She lashed out forward immediately, it was clear that she was a close-range fighter.

Ordinarily, Rui would be inclined to take on someone like her from range, but he decided against it even if it was a more optimal choice.

"Fuuuu…" She exhaled deeply by the time she reached Rui, exhaling a dark gas right near Rui's vicinity.

POW POW POW!

Rui blocked her attacks with a guard.

Her strikes were actually quite light, yet he knew that their danger did not come from the force she exerted.

Poison-oriented Martial Squires did not care about normal physical damage. They were one of the very few Martial Artists that didn't care about the conventional damage.

Most Martial Squires relied on the same principles of inflicted damage, collisions, and impacts that delivered enough concentrated force to cause damage to their body. This was the most fundamental means of inflicting damage on an opponent.

Martial Artists like poison-oriented Martial Artists strayed away from this paradigm greatly because they inflicted damage through many other principles. They integrated toxic and powerful substances into their body, while then applying those substances against their opponents' bodies to cause them to experience many detrimental symptoms as a result.

This method of inflicting damage and taking down their opponents bypassed all conventional defenses.

No passive defensive technique like Adamant Reforging, and certainly no active defensive technique like Flux Earther could protect Rui from poison. That was one of the greatest advantages that poison users had.

It was no different from being forced to withstand the attacks of a striking-oriented Martial Artist without any defenses whatsoever, with just the toughness of their Martial body.

Of course, poison-oriented Martial Artists were not entirely unrestrained like that. For one, poisons did not discriminate, they did not abstain from trying to wreck their host's body just because their host was a poison-oriented Martial Artist.

Even poison-oriented Martial Artists had to condition themselves hard if they wanted to be able to withstand their own poison and not succumb to it. That was a limitation that other Martial Artists didn't.

Furthermore, poison-oriented Marital Artists could not use poison defensively. Poison was fundamentally offensive and lethal, thus they needed to train their defense the normal way. However, because their Martial Path and Body did not have any affinity for normal defensive techniques, they often had difficulty in that regard. Techniques. They were not known for being tough.

BAM!!

Rui struck Squire Herea hard, pushing her back with a single attack. Outer Convergence and Reverberating Lance rattled her body quite heavily.

"Hm?" Rui frowned when he noticed that the color of his knuckles had changed.

He immediately activated Weaving Blood. He wanted the dying cells to immediately be assimilated and turned into energy, compounds, and nutrients for new cells before they underwent necrosis. This would also give his healing factor more fuel in the long run.

Rui's eyes widened as an interesting idea popped into his head.

('What if I use this poison on myself to increase the amount of fuel that my body has caused by the cell death ?') Rui wondered with an incredulous expression.

In the middle of a duel, he had gotten an epiphany from his opponent!

"I am not so weak that you can afford to daydream in the middle of our battle," She glowered.

It appeared that Rui taking his eyes off her for just a moment had offended her.