"Hey!" Kane snapped his finger in front of Rui, drawing his attention. "Are you even listening?"
"Ah." Rui jerked back lightly. "My bad, I zoned out a little. You were saying?"
"I was saying that I was considering leaving the Empire someday." Kane sighed.
Rui's eyes widened. "But why?"
"To get away from all of this," Kane replied with a tired tone. "My family, the politics, all of it."
"I thought you had more or less resolved the matter regarding your family?" Rui raised an eyebrow. "By joining the Lightning Sect."
"I thought so too, but I realized that the Wind and Lightning Sects were just as suffocating as my family." He sighed. "They protect me from my family, but that gives them lots of leverage over me. Put that on top of the fact that they naturally have very high expectations from the start due to my potential and talent, it makes it hard to live the way I want."
"Damn..." Rui's eyes narrowed slightly.
Now, this was an issue that Rui could completely understand and sympathize with. Rui absolutely valued his autonomy, without a doubt, he would not tolerate being beheld by another group with interests that weren't entirely in line with his.
Kane had worked really hard to obtain power that he could use to leverage to obtain the freedom he sought. But he realized that merely breaking through to the Squire Realm was not enough. While was true that the breakthrough to the Squire Realm was an important milestone in his Martial Path and journey, it was not enough to grant him the freedom he sought.
Perhaps if he was alive half a millennium ago, this would have been enough. After all, the birth of Martial Squires a millennium ago was what allowed Martial Artists to break free of the power of the state and the power of many. Furthermore, there were no refined Squire-level techniques considering Squires hadn't been around for a very long time. Furthermore, the evolution process probably would have been much weaker and far more incomplete than it is today.
Kane, even with his current prowess, would have undoubtedly been the most powerful human in that era and could have easily earned the freedom he sought.
But in the modern world, where Martial Squires were just on the second rung of a ladder that had six steps, there was a limit to how much he could accomplish with his own individual power.
He had realized that he either needed to get much, much stronger and obtain the power needed to take the freedom he wanted, or he simply needed to leave the wide ecosystem in which his interests were threatened.
It was no wonder that he considered leaving the Empire. That was probably much easier and far more straightforward than becoming strong enough to defy his family without the help of the Lightning Sect.
"It's not going to be as easy as you might be thinking." Rui sighed.
"How not? I just leave and that's that." Kane folded his arms.
"Leaving only means that you're forfeiting your protection from the Lightning Sect. But it doesn't really mean much because your family is powerful and has influence within the Martial Union. You shouldn't underestimate the intelligence-gathering capability of the Martial Union particularly in regards to matters that are directly tied to its own interests, such as one of the most promising Martial Squires of our generation leaving the Union." Rui explained.
"But, I have the Void Step technique." Kane reminded him. "They cannot trace me that easily using regular tracking means."
"That is true," Rui admitted. "While the Martial Union does have sensory Martial Artists that are capable of detecting you, it's questionable whether they'll be deployed to catch you. Most of them will probably be of the higher Realms. The only Martial Squire I know that that can sense you is..."
He turned towards Kane. "Me."
Kane's expression grew more severe. He understood the underlying message, there was a chance Rui would be deployed to track Kane if there ever came a day when the martial Union wanted to track him.
"You'll either have to run extremely far away or use the Void Step technique a lot of the time if you're just going to hide in one of the small satellite states of the Kandrian Empire. You can also forget about revealing your Martial Artist status wherever you choose to reside."
"Why's that?" Kane asked curiously.
"Because it will instantly draw attention to you," Rui replied. "Martial Squires are fundamentally different from Martial Apprentices, Kane. I don't mean just physically. Martial Apprentices can and do appear out of the population somewhat naturally. But no Martial Squire has ever appeared naturally, we are all man-made products. Every Martial Squire was born out of some state or entity that possesses the means to break through to the Squire Realm. That combined with the fact that Martial Squires are far scarcer than Martial Apprentices and draw more attention to themselves than Martial Apprentices means that they are far easier to track and keep track of."
"How does that work in a practical sense?" Kane asked him, absorbed.
"I would not be surprised in the least if it were the case that the Martial Union had a grasp of the general location and identities of almost all Martial Squires in the surrounding states within a large range. It is very likely that this is the case," Rui recalled what he had learned when he brought back the corpse of his Martial Squire opponent and the martial Union identified him in a jiffy. "What do you think the Martial Union would conclude that a brand-new unknown Martial Squire has appeared in a somewhat distant state who possesses remarkable agility and speed, right after you left the country?"
Kane's face paled a little as he finally understood what Rui was getting at.
"That Martial Artist would be pegged as a suspect and would be investigated. The only way you can avoid the situation I just described is if you never ever use your Martial Art, and distance yourself from all civilization."
