Rui gazed at the evolutionary corpse with deep eyes.
DRIP DRIP DRIP...
His body bled profusely from countless wounds across all of his flesh.
His arms were paralyzed, left immobile in a reddish-black state, almost unrecognizable as limbs they were.
That was the sheer power with which Anthea had struck him, that despite using one of his most powerful techniques of the Soul Phase: Soul Retcon, he was still almost half a Realm below Anthea in physical output. Despite also using the tabody System, Anti-Spiral, and Body of Water, as well as all other systems in his body, he was just barely able to survive Anthea’s raw power.
The next generation of evolutionaries would astronomically surpass their father and achieve untold levels of adaptive evolution.
And every last one of them would do everything in their power to destroy Rui.
The worst part was that because they had a small lifespan, compared to Martial Artists, it ant that they would reach their pri very quickly.
He didn’t have the leeway of centuries of preparation like he would have had been dealing with a Martial Artist or with the blood children.
No, he had decades at most.
He had decades before the evolutionary sent a new batch of elite evolutionaries that astronomically surpassed even their father.
Had it been any other Martial Sage, it would have been nothing short of a death sentence.
Not even the Transcendent Candidates, who couldn’t even survive Anthea alone, would have taken this news with anything other than horror and despair.
And yet, Rui had the audacity to smile.
A pure, raw, wild smile of excitent and anticipation erged on his face.
He could feel his Martial Path stirring.
He could feel his Martial Art brimming with eagerness.
An entire species and civilization of adaptive evolution and untold power that made killing him their highest priority.
In the face of such an unfathomable threat, Rui had the audacity to laugh.
A pure, innocent laughter of euphoria.
"Bring it on."
His voice was fierce with battle lust.
The pitch-black darkness in his eyes flared with a boundless drive.
Adaptive evolution was a reactive force.
The stronger the pressure it faced, the stronger it grew.
With the sheer amount of pressure this put on him, he was all pumped up and motivated to cultivate as much power as quickly as possible before they matured and ca for him. Considering how dominant Anthea was for much of the battle and the fact that Rui himself was battered half dead despite his victory, his current power level was likely going to be insufficient for what was about to co his way.
"I need to grow stronger."
That much was absolutely clear.
"I need to gain much more adaptive evolution than I ever did before," he realized. "I will have to get closer and closer to fulfilling Project Water."
He speculated that he was long past the halfway mark to fulfilling Project Water with the sheer amount of power that he had cultivated. However, he was still so ways away and would need to expand the horizon of his adaptive evolution.
His expression grew ugly when he thought about how easily Anthea crushed his Martial Mind with the power of chaos.
"That can’t be allowed to happen ever again."
The fact that it happened once with Ieyasu was bad enough, but that was more a one-off that would never happen to him ever again. However, with Anthea, if they had another fight, the power of chaos would still overwhelm his Martial Mind.
"I need to find a solution to that imdiately."
The VOID algorithm, the Eye of Prophecy, and the SOUL System were extrely crucial to his Martial Art, far too crucial for him to let them be sidelined so effortlessly next ti. He also needed to learn to harness the power of chaos itself, given how potent it seed to be. Perhaps chaos itself was the solution to adaptively evolving to chaos.
"I also have the Primordial Core," Rui murmured. "The more pluripotent matter I consu, the more it essentially becos its own Realm of power, in so ways."
Primordial seed had proven its power against Anthea plenty well for him to continue investing in this path of power. Without it, he would have definitely lost the battle, struggling to overco the nigh-indestructible invintium armor that Anthea had donned.
"I could also use it to increase the power of my ’Body Phase,’ as he called it," Rui mused with eyes lit up with excitent and interest.
While he was proud of his victory, he would be lying if he said he wasn’t envious of the evolutionaries.
Being born with the power of adaptive evolution.
To be able to actively change the essence of their lifeform into whatever they needed it to be.
That was an enviable ability.
While he, too, had the power to edit DNA and even go beyond to edit telores themselves, it was ti-consuming and not even remotely viable in combat.
He suspected that the primordial seed was one of the only ways that he could reach evolutionary levels of adaptive evolution. Project PluriBody, which he had started more than a year ago in the Central Highlands of the Beast Domain, was in part related to that. Although he had started the project with Sage Zentra’s ability as the benchmark to reach, he could upgrade it and set Anthea as the objective.
It was ambitious, undoubtedly, but unless he aid big and achieved it, he would not be able to withstand the next generation of evolutionaries.
RUMBLE...
Heaven and earth tremored as the Martial Sages returned to the Panama Continent after a brief, but sustained battle.
Their faces were ashen with grave severity.
They had failed to stop Anthea’s legacy from reaching Moridia, impeded by the retreating evolutionaries who understood the significance of Anthea’s final act.
"It’s fine," Rui spoke with a serious tone. "We will just have to deal with what is coming."
He was actually secretly extrely happy that they failed, lest he lose the reason for his
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