The Martial Unity

"Project Bounce." Rui nodded. It was as good a name as any.

While Rui had other ideas, he decided to stop at three projects. In fact, three was pushing it, but Rui wanted to gauge how difficult the process of developing his own techniques was. He could learn more about the challenges of developing his own techniques if he had a larger sample base to judge that from.

Besides, he didn't think that he would be necessarily finishing these projects soon. He didn't think it would be that easy. Martial Squires didn't normally break through to the Senior Realm in the span of a few years. Rui was prepared to persevere for as long as needed, though he wished to speed through the journey as much as possible.

('Project Severer, Project Sniper, and Project Bounce.') Rui nodded.

He got up, stretching before skywalking back to the Orphanage. The sun was setting, after all.

('Julian will have been back by now.')

He intended to inquire about the viability of his projects to Julian. While he didn't think his brother would be able to magically provide him with the solutions to his problem, there was a good chance that he would at least be able to point him in the right, or at least helpful, directions.

Once he arrived at the Orphanage, he spotted Mana and Max sparring with their Apprentice instructor. He quietly avoided their field of vision, not wanting to interrupt their training. Still, he could see that they were making an impressive amount of progress on that front.

('As for whether it will be enough to pass the entrance exam...') Rui sighed.

He couldn't say. For one, asides from the first round, the Martial entrance exam was ever-changing so that no specific targeted training could be used to allow students to pass the test even if they were otherwise undesirable.

They would have to rely purely on their own prowess if they wanted to pass the entrance exam.

Rui put the matter aside once he entered the Orphanage.

"Big brother Rui!"

"You're back!"

Several children flooded him once he returned, putting a smile on his face. Rui was a bit of a celebrity to them as the only Martial Artist in the Orphanage. He especially earned a lot of appreciation from the Orphanage ever since he generously donated substantial chunks of income to help with the maintenance and expansion of the Orphanage.

The Orphanage had welcomed some more young toddlers into the family who had also developed a strong attachment to him. Thankfully, it wasn't long before they returned back to their meals at the insistence of the caretakers who were ensuring they ate their meals.

Ever since he had been living in the Orphanage, his returning was no longer a fuss like it was when he visited the Orphanage only once in a while when he lived in the Martial Academy.

[You free? Got something to talk about.]

Rui sent Julian a message.

Julian did not like being disturbed when he was working, that was difficult for him to fulfill in a noisy home filled with boisterous children. However, he also hadn't wanted to move out of the house into his own home, leaving his family, thus he had personally funded the construction of an extra wide room with everything he needed at the south end of the Orphanage. He even went as far as to pad the room with sound insulant layers that ensured that the perennial noise in the Orphanage did not affect him when he was working at home.

[I'm not preoccupied, come in.]

Rui read the message, nodding as he headed toward the room.

"Sorry to disturb you." Rui apologized pre-emptively as he entered the room, closing the door behind them. "Hope you weren't working."

"Just finished for the day, actually." Julian smiled, taking off his spectacles.

"Good to hear, because you sure look busy," Rui noted the room filled with all kinds of files and documents stacked and arranged in shelves and cupboards, feeling nostalgic. His office used to look like that before the digital revolution in the twenty-first century.

"Well," Julian sighed. "I have been consumed with several research and development projects. It has been getting busy recently."

"Have you been working on anything interesting?" Rui inquired with a raised eyebrow.

"Everything I'm working on is quite interesting." Julian smiled. "I can't reveal some of them because they're classified military-funded projects. But I can tell you about some of the rest if you're interested. I think you will definitely find some of these as fascinating as I do."

"Oh go on." Rui nodded, intrigued. While he was a Martial Artist to his core without a doubt, he had also retained some of the curiosity he had as a scientist in his previous life.

"One of the more innocuous projects I'm working on is related to Martial Art. More specifically, it aims to discover all the factors influencing the field of the Martial Path of any given Martial Apprentice." Julian explained. "We've been analyzing the correlation between parameters such as age, sex, physicality, temperament/personality, and that of the field of the Martial Path. We've found some interesting results."

Rui's eyes lit up with intrigue. "Interesting, go on, surely you've found some worthwhile discoveries."

"The research project is still ongoing, but yes, we certainly have. We've observed that, of the aforementioned parameters, all of them have some degree of correlation with what field the Martial Path of a Martial Apprentice is, in different ways." He paused, letting Rui digest that for a moment, before continuing. "Let's begin with age. Age is observed to have a correlation with the sophistication of the Martial Path field. We observe that the older the Martial Apprentice is when they break through, the more sophisticated their Martial Path is."

Rui raised an eyebrow. Julian was right, he most certainly did find this fascinating. The older the Martial Artist was when they broke through, the more sophisticated their Martial Art was. That seemed to indicate that maturity played a great role in shaping what their Martial Path was.

"Interesting..."

"That is really interesting." Rui absorbed the information. "It certainly makes sense intuitively. How exactly are you measuring 'sophistication'? I'm interested in the measuring system you have developed to measure a concept that isn't as straightforward as physical parameters."