"Well, when do you want to leave?" Master Ceeran raised an eyebrow. "In three days," Rui calmly replied. "You haven't prepared…" Master Ceeran stared at him with a strange expression. "Don't you, you know, need to prepare and gain authorizatio—"
He paused as he rembered who he was talking to.
Perhaps an ordinary Master couldn't arbitrarily take over a diplomatic mission and do as they pleased, but Rui was different. He had enough clout within the Martial Union to get away with that.
"Alright." Master Ceeran heaved a sigh. "I didn't expect you to be so decisive in your decision to co."
Rui shrugged. "It's a whim."
"You've never struck as the whimsical type."
Rui couldn't deny that. "I've been trying to pay attention to my… emotions. I normally would have charted what I would consider the most optimal ti spent for the Kandrian Empire's probability of victory. However…"
Master Ceeran understood his motivations. "You're trying to speed up the discovery of your Martial Soul, aren't you?"
Rui nodded, heaving a sigh.
He would be lying if he said that he wasn't desperate.
"I don't think such thods will be of help," Master Ceeran remarked with a wistful tone. "Your rationality is a part of you. Trying to put it away is not getting closer to your inner self."
Rui stirred at his words, falling into thought. "Maybe not. I don't know; I feel like going the regular route is going to take too long. My journey to the Sage Realm is arduous and long as it is. I'm not content spending decades or centuries in the Master Realm until I finally break through to the Sage Realm."
As a Martial Artist who had progressed through his Martial Path at an absurdly high rate, he was far too impatient to wait out the long periods of ti that were rely average for breaking through to the Sage Realm.
He refused to spend more ti in the Master Realm than his entire career as a Martial Artist put together. His refusal was to the extent that he was willing to try all kinds of solutions that could potentially accelerate his progress.
He especially did not want to burn away his entire youthful vitality in his climb to the Sage Realm. "You're impatient," Master Ceeran noted. "Patience is a fundantal necessity for all those who yearn to travel their Martial Paths. It takes a long ti to make progress. Do you see other Masters fretting in a hurried manner about their progress to a Higher Realm? No, because we have lived a long ti, and we know that progress will take even longer. In your case…"
His eyes fixed themselves on Rui. "You haven't lived very long and certainly haven't been a Martial Artist for very long. This may very well be the first true wall you've ever hit in your entire life. And to think it would be the Sage Realm. If I didn't know otherwise, I would scoff and say that it's impossible."
Rui knew that he was impatient because his progress to a Higher Realm had been unimpeded until the Divine Doctor identified the nature of his 'reincarnation' and left him in an identity crisis that constantly lood deep beneath the surface.
That was precisely why he was being impatient.
He did not want to live that anymore.
He had tried the dream technique that he had gotten in the Panamic Martial Federation. But aside from that, he didn't have any other way to make progress to a Higher Realm, barring the standard of cultivating more power and individuality.
Master Ceeran sighed, sensing his unwillingness. "Well, there is one way you could try. Though it is a way that most Martial Masters do not dare try."
Rui raised an eyebrow. "Which is…?"
"Death."
Rui's eyes widened with surprise.
"Or dying, I suppose," Master Ceeran mused. "Dying teaches you more about yourself than almost any other experience."
Rui frowned. "I haven't heard of that, not from others nor from the Panamic Martial Federation."
"That's because they do not encourage it. Or rather, they outright discourage it," Master Ceeran inford Rui. "And for good reasons, too. Masters die too frequently and in vain when trying out this thod. After all, the process of dying naturally leads to death. What does the progress to the Sage Realm matter if you're too dead for it to matter?"
Rui understood why it was discouraged. He also understood why those Martial Masters who sought to eventually reach the Sage Realm did not go for this thod.
There was too much stake.
These distinguished Masters had spent centuries of ti and effort reaching the Master Realm and their current station in life. They were not inclined to risk it all for a highly dangerous and unlikely ans of learning more about one's self.
"Dying…" he whispered.
He knew what that felt like.
Or, at the very least, he had inherited the mories of a man who had died.
"Death is peace."
At the very least, that was how he thought about it. It was the only state of existence where one did not need to suffer the pain of life outside of sleep.
"Are you sure that dying can help reach the Sage Realm?" Rui asked with a strange light in his eyes.
"It can, but you need to undertake great personal risk and suffer harm that you might not fully recover from. It is said that this was how the Martial Primordial first broke through to the Sage Realm a long ti ago. He was ambushed by a powerful beast while imrsed in himself, ditating. Caught off-guard, he was wounded critically, and it was said that at the very cusp of death, he attained the enlightennt of self and managed to ward away death," Master Ceeran told Rui. "The Panamic Martial Federation and other organizations decided not to promote dying as a thod because that would weaken Martial Art too much. I, too, heard of this from my sect leader. A first-generation Master."
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