He knew that the Martial Seniors he had fought thus far were not on par with high-grade Martial Seniors. Unless there were truly special circumstances, the average Martial Senior was vastly below a Martial Senior who had lived for centuries. The sheer amount of time and experience to train their body, and develop powerful techniques with immense individuality that possess great affinity with their Martial Body and Martial Art.
Furthermore, Rui was sure that pretty much all Martial Seniors had made some degree of progress with their Martial Mind, even if they hadn't reached the critical threshold.
They were immensely superior to the Martial Seniors that Rui had fought in every single parameter, he wasn't too confident if he would be able to overcome a huge gap in the power of their Martial Hearts, Bodies, and sheer quantity of techniques, experience with just his Martial Art.
That would remain to be seen. The best part of this mission was that he didn't have to duel them, he just needed to kill them.
The intelligence gathered by the Beggar's Sect was detailed and vast. Not only did it go into the identities of the various Martial Seniors who had been deployed to safeguard the precious narcotics ring that the Carnil Mafia had meticulously built from the ground up.
Each of them had been a student of the Martial Academy at some point and had even been a legal Martial Artist for a long time. However, they'd been tempted by the great wealth one could make by catering to the black market. Because it was illegal, the price of services offered was higher than that of the Martial Union.
Thus, a small proportion of Martial Artists were roped into the underworld every year.
The Martial Seniors that were assigned to the narcotics ring were notorious too. At the Senior Realm, Martial Seniors gained a very individualistic reputation from the public compared to Martial Squires who were generally unknown individually.
Martial Seniors possessed too much individual strength to be ignored. As long as one wasn't incompetent, they would come to cultivate their own recognition and sometimes even their own monikers.
[Veritable Tiger]
The leader of the security detail assigned to the narcotic ring. The division was considerable and consisted of far more than just the ten Martial Seniors deployed, however, the rest were irrelevant to Rui. The hundred Squires and nearly a thousand Apprentices deployed by the mafia were irrelevant to Rui, they could not impact the outcome of the battle as long as Rui didn't make an incompetent blunder.
Senior Zenshin, also known as the Veritable Tiger, was a powerful Martial Senior who wielded some authority in the Carnil Mafia. The man had been part of the Underworld even before he became a Martial Artist and was one of the most trusted leaders amongst the Lower Realms by the upper echelons of the Underworld.
That was one of the reasons that he was entrusted to protect the Carnil narcotics operations in the Gereign Region.
Rui didn't care that much about his history, however. What he did care about was the man's Martial power. The man's epithet had actually been straightforwardly taken from his Veritable Tiger Fist, a rather uninventive moniker.
What Rui found interesting was that this was a Martial Art that was based on the predatory hunting of big cat beasts and monsters. It was said to mimic the powerful jaws and claws of big cats that could be used to slash and tear apart the prey.
According to the intelligence, Senior Zenshin had worked as a part of a wildlife sanctuary before he had gotten involved in the Underworld, it was said that he developed an immense fascination for the wild cats that he had been serving as an assistant in caretaking.
Apparently, his admiration for the predators was great enough to affect his
This wasn't the first time Rui had come across Martial Art centered around an animal's fighting style, but this was the first he had seen in the Senior Realm. He always found it fascinating that Martial Paths could be centered around mimicking or replicating the principles of creatures of entirely different species.
Of course, there were plenty of such martial arts back on Earth. China had countless such martial arts, starting with the most famous Ng Ying martial arts featuring styles centered around tiger, crane, snake, leopard, and dragon.
He had been surprised to see them become the foundation of Martial Art in this world, though. Martial Paths were the manifestation of the essence of who one was, what kind of inclination toward beasts did one have to possess for them to serve as the foundation of their Martial Path?
However, he could also understand why they could serve as viable Martial Paths. Human physiology was not maximized for predation on an individual basis. If not for the fortunate evolution of human intelligence, humans would be much further down the food chain than they currently were.
Humans lacked claws sharp enough teeth, as well as the speed and strength to even take down other creatures of the same mass.
The two things that humans had going for them were stamina, which was used in long-term hunts, and their intelligence which allowed them to develop powerful tools that could allow them to actually kill other prey.
On an individual basis, however, humans were much inferior to other apex predators pound-for-pound in their ability to hunt and kill using only their physicality, thus a Martial Path that sought to mimic the manners in which they leveraged their physicality to hunt prey could do well.
Evolution was not perfect, but it was pretty good at its job, there was no need to waste time finding the best way to leverage power to hunt when nature had already done that and proven its results.
Martial Artists who sought to make use of the tried and proven principles of nature to enhance their combat prowess were naturally formidable for the most part, and Rui was looking forward to see how one who had done that for centuries would fight.
