The Martial Unity

1690 Angel of Laplace

Deep in his Mind Palace, a replica of a portion of the Great Jrava Mountain Range was overwhelmed with information.

Information regarding vectors. This was comprised of packets of information that contained two values each: direction and magnitude. A seemingly endless storm of such packets of information converged at the center of Great Jrava Mountain Range in the Mind Palace.

Where Rui meditated.

"Rgh!" Rui gritted his teeth as he struggled to process the endless ocean of information.

It swallowed him whole.

Washed away in currents that were too strong for him.

Yet he weathered.

Drop by drop.

Pail by pail.

He gritted his teeth, painstakingly putting a puzzle together.

The puzzle of the past.

He waved a tapestry of the past, little by little.

The currents of the river were determined to impede him.

The currents of the river of time.

After all, this was the river he was wading against.

Time flowed in one direction. That was a fact of reality. Anybody who dared to peer the other way would face its wrath.

Yet he weathered.

An unfathomable amount of time passed, yet he painstakingly processed every iota of information, every vector within the edge of his senses.

Soon enough, he broke through.

Through the currents.

Through the ocean.

Through the barriers of time.

He had arrived.

His eyes widened as the Great Jrava Mountain Range in his Mind Palace began rewinding in time.

Snow began elevating from the ground, accelerating upwards. Birds began flying in the reverse direction as the motion of their flapping was also inversed. Leaves danced up from the ground, flying back to the trees around them before reattaching themselves to the tree.

The sun retraced its path ever so slowly, returning from whence it came.

He beheld the scene with amazement.

This was the past.

It was overwhelming.

"Huff…Huff…" He opened his eyes in real life as he glanced around him.

Master Gurren was still working on the magnification formula and optics equations. He had been working hard in the eighteen months to learn the mathematics and Physics needed for the telescopic domain.

It wasn't easy, even though Rui had worked hard to simplify the teachings needed. The Master was so illiterate that there was tons of ground to cover.

He glanced at the sky, noting the setting Sun.

It had been a little after dawn when he had begun the execution of the technique, yet it was already dusk.

"What…?" A shocked whisper escaped his mouth. "Just how many hours did I spend executing this technique?"

His body was drenched in sweat.

He felt mentally exhausted like never before.

Even though he hadn't moved, he felt like his body was aching all over.

His head, however, was the worst. A skull-splitting migraine had overtaken him, making it difficult for him to even think properly.

Just a single standard execution of this technique had left him in this state after taking hours to successfully complete.

It was painful, tiring, long, and tedious, but…

"I…succeeded," He laughed weakly. "I can't believe it."

His euphoria was quickly overwhelmed by his heavy headache, leaving him grimacing.

The technique was technically successfully executed, but one thing became exceedingly clear to him.

"I'm out of my league."

If he had to go through so much suffering over extended periods of time just to execute a single technique, then he was not that technique's equal. At least, not yet.

He needed to reach a stage where he could viably employ this technique for combat, which was not possible at his current stage, seeing how difficult, consuming, and long it took.

What opponent would patiently wait for him to finish executing the technique and then continue the battle after he got what he needed?

Yet he couldn't call the technique a failure, either. The technique was a success. It did what it was supposed to do.

He just wasn't good enough. This was a system of thought that exceeded even his ascended mental prowess.

Yet he wasn't entirely dismayed by this outcome.

'I may not possess the brainpower for Project Reverse Prophet today…but in the future…' Rui narrowed his eyes as he had quickly happened upon a way in which he could one day employ Project Reverse Prophet viably in combat.

The Master Realm.

An exponential boost in cognition with astronomically more new neural pathways unlocked that could be programmed with Project Reverse Prophet.

In the first place, one of the necessities in the journey to the Master Realm was employing thought beyond the limits of one's cognition in the pursuit of greater power. Only then could he begin truly tapping and developing his Martial Mind. The first generation of Martial Seniors had done exactly that as they tried improving themselves strategically, inadvertently forming the Martial Mind.

Today, having completely been outclassed, he had made the most significant progress to the Master Realm. Project Reverse Prophet was an upgrade to the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm that exceeded his practical cognitive limits.

That made him feel better, though he wished his mind had been powerful enough to handle it. Yet not even the full might of his ascended mind and his extraordinary Mind Palace had been enough to overcome Reverse Prophet.

"Speaking of which, I should give it another name. Reverse Prophet is not worthy of such an incredible technique," Rui stroked his scruffy beard. "Hmm…scientific determinism into the past…that reminds me of Laplace's Demon."

This was a thought experiment where a demon, who knew everything's position and motion at any one point, could then predict the future of the universe for eternity by endlessly extrapolating it from that data.

He was doing the reverse of that, the very opposite, where he was peering into the past rather than the future. Though he also peered into the future using the predictive model, that wasn't based on the same principles as Laplace's Demon.

He made up his mind. "Since it is the opposite of Laplace's Demon…I shall call it the Angel of Laplace."

On that day, Project Reverse Prophet was no more.

It had become the Angel of Laplace.