The Martial Unity

"Exposure..." Rui murmured.

"Yes," she remarked, shaking her head with an exasperated sigh. "You know, the way that normal people tend to come to love someone. The more you grow alongside her, the more you can grow to love her."

"The more I grow alongside her...?" Rui murmured.

"Yes," she remarked. "We are social creatures. When we grow, we grow closer to each other. You said you already love half of her. That means you’re already halfway there, to put it in terms that you will understand. You just need to grow."

"I see..." Rui’s tone was immersed in thought. "I just need to grow."

"Thankfully, you’re not particularly short in that regard," Sage Sera remarked. "You have somehow managed to retain your youth, which means your propensity to change is very high. Your propensity to ’adaptively evolve’ yourself for love."

Sage Sera inwardly cringed at the conceptualization of love that Rui had, shaking her head with a resigned sigh.

"You are as much of a madman as Damian was. No, you are even more insane in some regards," she huffed lightly. "It must be a necessity to continue traversing the Martial Path above a certain level."

"Well... Martial Artists continue sacrificing pieces of our sanity and normality anyway," Rui replied. "Look at the tilt towards psychopathy in Martial Masters. Isn’t that sacrificing our sanity for power? Although we keep it in check with love, companionship, and bonds with people, it is ultimately still a pull that keeps tugging on us."

Rui knew that it was an even stronger pull for him.

Because he could read everybody’s soul, they were all infantilized in his mind, where he couldn’t help but psychologically come to view them as lesser.