Chapter 2014: A Significant Question

Kane frowned at Rui's words. "What does your identity issue have to do with impeding Project Water?"

"...I don't know," Rui admitted.

Kane stared at him, confused.

"I don't know what it has to do with Project Water," Rui elaborated. "But I do have strong reasons to think that it has something to do with it."

"...Like what?"

Rui's eyes turned back to Kane. "...One of the things that my grandmother's prophecy before we left Kandria foresaw was the Divine Doctor asking me, 'Who are you?'"

Kane's eyes widened with surprise. "You mean that you knew that all of this was going to happen?"

Rui shook his head impassively. "...I didn't know that this specifically would happen. All I saw and heard in the prophecy was the Divine Doctor asking me that question. I didn't have any other context. More importantly, my grandmother's reaction to it was... strange."

Kane tilted his head. "How so?"

"...She acted as though that question meant something to her." Rui narrowed his eyes. "She muttered something like 'meddling unnecessarily.'"

Kane's eyebrows furrowed with surprise. "You mean to say your grandmother may have known your true identity all this time? No, not just your true identity, but the truth about how 'you' came to this world?"

It was a possibility that Rui didn't have evidence to deny, but...

"...I would be surprised if she did know, it wouldn't make sense," Rui remarked, sharpening his gaze as his mind coursed through various memories of conversations with his grandmother. "Firstly, she's straightforward and blunt; she's my grandmother, too. Had she known, she would have just told me. She wouldn't have kept it a secret. Secondly, she found my name to be quite strange. She said it meant 'reincarnated.' If she truly knew the truth, she would not have reacted the way that she did."

"Is that what your name means in the Silas Dialect?" Kane's eyes widened with shock. "Doesn't that mean your mom...?"

"Yeah..." Rui's eyes darkened. "But my grandmother most likely doesn't know. This means that the question 'Who are you?' had some other meaning or relevance to her that was different from what the Divine Doctor actually meant when he did ask me that a few days ago."

Rui felt remarkably confident about this particular inference. He felt like he had stumbled onto something important.

"I suspect that..." His eyes narrowed. "...it has something to do with making progress in the Upper Realms."

"...Who are you..." Kane murmured to himself. "How can such a question possibly be relevant to Martial Art? If it is relevant, then man, I am not going to make it far."

A fleeting smile cracked at the edge of Rui's mouth.

He had to admit that that sentiment was something he felt too.

Regardless of whether he was Rui, John, some bizarre combination, or someone else entirely, the Divine Doctor's revelations complicated his situation undoubtedly. Before, he felt like he was John continuing his path in a new life. Now, he had lost that simplicity and comfort.

"Maybe the Divine Doctor was lying?" Kane asked with a hopeful expression. "Wouldn't it be prudent to not put so much weight in his words?"

His words made sense. Unfortunately, he was unconscious when all of it happened, and he didn't know all of the details.

"It's not that I have extraordinary faith and trust in him, no." Rui shook his head. "I have reason and evidence to believe that his explanation is highly credible. For one, he made an accurate inference based on the explanation. If a theory leads to verifiably accurate predictions, then one can have high confidence that it is more truthful than other theories that don't. It explains much and is backed by evidence more than anything else. It's also a better explanation than 'souls,' the existence of which has never been proven or demonstrated scientifically. Information, brainwashing, and hypnosis, however, are all extremely real."

Rui approached the matter through scientific inquiry. He had tentatively accepted the theory of souls as a placeholder for an explanation, but now that he had arrived at an actual mechanism that made accurate predictions for why he was the way he was, the scientist in him was willing to accept it as an extremely well-founded explanation.

He would need even more powerful evidence to displace it as the accepted theory for his 'reincarnation.'

"Does it really matter who you 'technically' are?" Kane pondered. "You have a past, present, and future, you know? You have people you care about, who care about you, things you want to do. Things you have to do. How much does it matter what the correct 'label' on you is?"

Rui stirred at that question.

It was pertinent and got to the heart of the issue.

Yet, it wasn't that simple.

The atmosphere tingled as Rui closed his eyes.

"...All my life, I thought Project Water was born of me and came along with me from one life to another," he whispered. "Now, I am confronted with powerful evidence that it was passed on to me from a being who died before Rui Quarrier was born. Nothing causally traveled from John to Rui like a soul. There was no ball of energy and information containing my whole mind and my whole identity. We are causally disconnected. That..."

Rui had no words to describe it.

The belief that Project Water was his creation. His child. His efforts. It was truly his. These beliefs were at the foundation of a lot of things.

Now, he felt as though it was yanked out from underneath all of that.

To him, it had been no different from telling a mother that the child that she had given birth to and had raised all her life had never existed, and all her memories of it were brainwashed and hypnotized into her.

How was one supposed to maintain their composure?

The sheer shock had overwhelmed him in the heat of the moment.

His Martial Path and the drive to fulfill it had been of ineffable importance to him. After all, he once attacked a Martial Sage with bloodlust when the Sage negated his Martial Drive for just a moment.

The Divine Doctor's revelations were one thousand times worse, causing him to be overwhelmed momentarily.

"...You're not going to stop pursuing your Martial Path, Project Water, right?" Kane's eyes lit up with alarm.

Then, and only then, did certainty return to Rui's eyes.

A single answer escaped him.

"No."