The Martial Unity

One moment, Master Haishi was simply standing in the sky, staring at him warily and cautiously.

The next moment, every cell in her body spontaneously died. Life transitioned to death in just a moment.

The mist that covered the skies disappeared, leaving only the hypnotic spiral rotating in the sky. She plummeted from the air, free-falling until she collapsed into the crowd. BOOM

Just like that, a Martial Master perished.

Senior Zenshin was stunned. "M-Master…?"

BANG!

…CRACK

Before he could even process his Master's death, Rui had already activated his Martial Heart, killing the man on the spot. He had almost lost the chance earlier, and he wanted to make sure that nothing went wrong this time.

"Huff…" He heaved a relieved sigh, glancing back at the figure that descended from the sky gracefully. "Master Zeamer…"

The elderly man landed before Rui wordlessly staring at Rui with an expectant expression. "Thank you for saving my life," Rui bowed his head. "I would have been dead without you."

"Hoho…Don't mention it, my young disciple. T'was but a trivial matter," He said with a smug expression. Rui glanced at the corpse of the Martial Master. "…What was that?"

"Hm?" Master Zeamer glanced at the Master Haishi's cadaver. "Ah, that was one of my trump cards, Armageddon. It's a grade-ten Master-level technique that I created."

"…How did it instantly kill her? Is that even possible with hypnosis?" Rui asked him warily.

"Generally, no. But it is possible for someone of my caliber," He remarked blandly, staring at the corpse with cold eyes. "The hypnotic technique works by convincing the subconscious mind that the person is dead. And the subconscious mind follows suit..."

Rui's eyes widened with shock.

"It is the subconscious mind that maintains and monitors the body. Convincing it is dead is no different from killing the person on the spot. It is a hypnotic technique that harnesses death itself." Master Zeamer remarked. "It takes a very powerful and trained mind to even possibly resist the hypnosis, and clearly she didn't have it in her."

Rui wasn't even sure what to say. This was such an absurdly lethal and powerful technique that killed so easily that Rui wasn't even sure if such a thing was even allowed. A death-dealing hypnotic spell that killed in a heartbeat sounded incredibly dangerous.

Rui made a mental note of never getting on Master Zeamer's bad side.

"Well then, I've finished what I came here for," Master Zeamer remarked, walking away. "Good fight. It was quite entertaining to watch."

"You were watching?"

"Of course, I always am. This is my domain. I'm glad you didn't die, though there were several close calls."

"What would you have done if I was going to die or did die?" Rui wondered.

"Nothing at all," Master Zeamer replied nonchalantly. "Losing a fight that you provoked against a fellow Martial Senior peer of yours is completely on you. I don't meddle in quarrels between children."

Rui smiled, that was about what he had come to expect from Master Zeamer. He made one last bow. "Thanks again, Master."

"Stay sharp, my entertaining disciple."

When Rui glanced back up, the man had already disappeared. It appeared that he wasn't interested in bidding Rui a second farewell. Rui was sure that he just wanted to return to his harem as soon as possible.

He heaved a sigh, putting the old Master out of his mind before returning to his situation.

"Now then, what should I do?" Rui wondered.

He glanced at the two corpses that were strewn about. "I've killed all my targets, not a single Martial Artist above Squire-level exists in the devastated Gereign base. On top of that, the Martial Master is also dead."

Rui glanced back at the human domain. "Not to mention, the Martial Embodiments have killed, broken, or damaged every single normal human in the Gereign Region. So even the surviving employees, if that's what they are, of the Carnil Mafia are severely damaged."

Essentially, the Carnil Mafia lost everything. Rui took out all their Martial Seniors.

Master Zeamer killed one of their precious Martial Masters.

The two Martial Embodiments either killed or crippled all of their people.

The infrastructure of their base had been entirely destroyed or greatly devastated by the initial clash between Zenshin and himself.

"Yeah, that Carnil Mafia can't afford or rather will choose not, to expend all the resources needed to replace all of that," Rui figured, running through variable possible scenarios based on the data that the Beggar's Sect gave them. "The probability that they'll fix this mess is just really low. SO mission accomplished, I suppose. Time to go tell the Beggar's Sect."

Rui's eyes widened as he realized the Beggar's Sect undoubtedly suffered immensely from the battle. He had known them well enough by now to know that their people had most certainly deeply infiltrated pretty much any and every organization and force. The Gereign Region undoubtedly contained many of the spies of the Beggar's Sect, and there was no doubt that they had suffered heavy losses and casualties.

"Damn…" Rui scratched his head.

There was only one thing he could do about that. "I'm going to have to blame it all on you, Master Zeamer," He was sure that the Master was listening. "It is your fault, so I'm not even wrong."

He shrugged. He wasn't avoiding responsibility since he didn't cause all this widespread damage. 'More importantly, I've finally finished my commission payment,' Rui heaved a deep expectant sigh.

It did not take a short amount of time. He had spent more than four years since he began his commission payment.

'Of course, most of that time has gone into training with Master Reina and Master Zeamer,' He heaved a sigh. 'Still, it has been long. Time to finally get the information and intelligence that I need. After that…'

His eyes narrowed. 'After that, I can finally take that asshole down.'

As he walked across the human domain of the Gereign region, he had to admit, the damage was more extensive than he expected. Everybody was seemingly hurt, thus there were very few able-bodied people. Although the two Masters caused even less physical damage than Martial Seniors, the actual losses they caused were far more devastating.