The Dragon Emperor rapidly healed his body with the biotechnology it was composed of, charging towards Rui with a barreling momentum and aggression. And yet, Rui's eyes remained focused on the ocean even as the Dragon Emperor came chasing after him.

A single whisper escaped him.

'"Feel the Weight of Water."

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!

RUMBLE!!!!

For the second time, the sum totality of all the forces that existed within the depths of the ocean, with molecules of water bumping into each other, converged on the Dragon Emperor.

CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK!!!!!

The Dragon Emperor snarled with pain, and yet, his eyes remained focused on Rui.

"Feel the Weight of Water."

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!

RUMBLE!!!!!

He snarled once more as the destruction began mounting on him with tremendous intensity. Even his invincible body couldn't withstand the force converging on him from all directions.

Rui's voice remained as calm and composed as ever.

"Feel the Weight of Water."

His arms swayed in a gentle motion as he unleashed a singularly powerful pulse of an electromagnetic field that interacted with atoms and molecules of the ocean in exactly the right manner that caused them to bounce off each other in a way that would lead them to the Dragon Emperor.

This was the solution that Rui had come up with.

"Feel the Weight of Water."

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!

RUMBLE!!!!!

He played a game of pool with the water molecules of the ocean, exerting exactly the precise causality needed to converge their pressures upon the Dragon Emperor.

To say that this was a difficult feat was an understatement.

Theoretically, on a pure mathematical level, it was possible that all the molecules of the ocean that bounced against each other at high speed would also, at some point, bounce in the same direction and converge upon a single point.

It was astronomically and exponentially unlikely.

But it was possible.

Thus, Rui had reasoned, it was possible for him to compute the exact solution that he would need to enact for him to get the molecules of the ocean to act in that way, where they converged upon a target of his desire.

This was the Weight of Water.

"Feel the Weight of Water."

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!

RUMBLE!!!!!

Countless conditions had to be fulfilled for this technique to even be possible.

For one, he needed to be in Gigabrain.

The sheer amount of information that he would need to compute was astronomically titanic. Without Gigabrain, it wasn't even remotely possible. However, Gigabrain wasn't enough in and of itself. Both the Eye of Prophecy and the Angel of Laplace played an important role, allowing Rui to skip what would otherwise be hours of computation work that he didn't have, allowing him to jump to the solution right away.

The result?

A technique that leveraged the weight of the entire ocean.

"Feel the Weight of Water."

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!

RUMBLE!!!!!

Rui chanted it like it was a mantra.

Like he was in a trance.

A trance beyond the trance of Gigabrain.

His voice was profound.

His movements were gentle and graceful.

Each motion he made was soulful.

As if he were dancing.

"Feel the Weight of Water."

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!

RUMBLE!!!!!

Each time he activated Weight of Water, his understanding of the ocean grew deeper and deeper. Each time he activated the Weight of Water, his knowledge of oceanography rose.

He understood how the ocean moved.

What variables affected it.

What factors drove its behavior.

How it interacted with heaven and earth.

How it interacted with Gaia.

His understanding deepened beyond that.

He began to understand water.

Not just as a compound.

Not just as a chemical.

But as an entity.

As an environment.

As a medium.

And… as a Martial Art.

His interaction with the water around him began to change. He no longer felt the drag that held back his motions, affecting him, understanding how to exist in harmony with water.

His Water Breathing ceased to become a technique and instead simply became breathing. He no longer needed to direct either his mind or his soul to try to actively breathe underwater; he could simply breathe as he did on the surface and remain perfectly fine.

The pressure at the bottom of the ocean, under all the water crushing down on him, disappeared.

He could no longer feel it.

He felt like he was floating across outer space.

Weightless.

Unanchored by anything.

Even the distinction between himself and the ocean began to fade.

He realized that the boundaries between himself and it were not as absolute he might have thought. The human body was seventy percent water, indistinguishable and fungible with that of the water of the ocean.

The realization that he could be a part of the ocean was a freeing one, and it gave rise to an even greater understanding.

An even greater enlightenment.

"Water is adaptive evolution."

It changed in accordance with its environment.

It changed in accordance with the forces that acted on it.

It changed to reach a state of equilibrium and stability everywhere and everywhen.

It was the ultimate form of adaptive evolution.

"Ah…" A gentle murmur escaped Rui as a sense of enlightenment dawned on him.

"water is Water."

On the surface, it was a nonsensical statement.

And yet, within the depths of Rui's mind, it was perhaps the most profound realization he had ever had in his life.

There was a reason that Bruce Lee, his idol, had chosen water to personify adaptive evolution when conveying it to others.

On a surface level, Rui even understood exactly why.

However, nearly eighty years after he was born in this world, he understood just how many more dimensions of truth there were to this statement. Dimensions of truth that he couldn't even fathom earlier.

His entire life, he had thought that the physical element that was being used to personify Water was unimportant, that the underlying concept was the only thing that mattered.

And yet, he was wrong.

He was a fool to ignore the physicality of the metaphor of Water.

That single realization was enough.

That single enlightenment was enough.

In that moment, Rui became a Transcendent Candidate.

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