The Martial Unity

The Sloth Sage shook his head. "Look at me, rambling about the distant past. Rather out of character, I must say."

He glanced at Rui. "If my fellow leaders find out, half of them will not be pleased. There is an implicit understanding that you would do Martial Art and the Martial Union more justice as Emperor than the Emperor of Harmony who focused on balancing interests as per their importance and power."

Rui didn't reply.

He simply stared at the Sloth Sage silently.

He was waiting for the Martial Sage's decision.

The man heaved a sigh.

"Alright, I'll keep it a secret. In turn, you keep my, ahem, transgressions a secret. I'll declare that you were forthright and transparent with your intentions of becoming Emperor, and I'll owe you a favor, deal?" The Sloth Sage turned to Rui lazily.

"Deal," Rui smirked. "As for the favor…I intend to have a Martial Master who is highly adept at disguise take my place while I travel in search of the Divine Doctor. She is able to fool almost all Martial Masters, but when it comes to Martial Sages…"

"I'll handle it," The Sloth Sage waved his hand lazily. "It's not particularly relevant to my field of expertise, but I can ensure that it won't get out unless something particularly unfortunate happens."

"Thanks!" Rui grinned.

He had managed to secure confidence that Master Reina wouldn't be exposed. Of course, anything was possible, but he had a reasonably high degree of confidence that the worst wouldn't unfold.

'Now I can just focus on calmly building my faction, and then head out to the Beast Domain as early as I can,' Rui narrowed his eyes.

"Good luck with that," The Sloth Sage remarked, reminding him that he could hear his active thoughts. "Finding the Divine Doctor is going to be a particularly difficult task. Among the hardest to track, he ranks particularly high on that list."

Rui turned to the Sloth Sage. "…Any advice?"

"Going in blind is stupid," the sage remarked. "I'd say, find someone who has a connection with him. They might be able to give you more clues. I don't know how you found out that he's in the Beast Domain, but it doesn't surprise me. You still need more specific information, though. I probably don't need to tell you that."

Rui nodded.

The Beast Domain was far too large for Rui to manually search it, looking for the Divine Doctor; that was a nonsensical way to go about it.

"Someone who has a connection with the Divine Doctor, hm?" Rui narrowed his eyes. "Like who?"

"The Beggar Sage of the Beggar's Sect," The Sloth Sage shrugged. "Any of the other human sages, maybe. A Martial Transcendent could potentially help you. Good luck finding one and getting them to help you."

Rui had to admit the prospects were scarce at best.

"I'll have to think hard and long about it before I depart," Rui's eyes swam around. "I want to make sure that I have a concrete plan in mind before I begin my search for him."

It wasn't going to be easy, but he would need to discreetly search for as much information on him as he could.

He didn't have too much hope that this would yield fruit, however. He knew that his father had been looking for the Divine Doctor for many years and still failed to narrow down the man's location.

He undoubtedly employed every single manner of intelligence-gathering he had at his disposal. If Rui simply tried going down that same course of action, he would probably take even longer than his father did to find the information that he was looking for.

This meant that Rui needed to employ a method that his father had not tried, whether it was because he was unable to or hadn't thought to.

He had some potentially promising ideas.

He turned to the Sloth Sage. "Regardless, I appreciate your cooperation and advice, Your Sagehood."

The Martial Sage shrugged. "Good luck. I'll inform the union that our deliberation was a success, that the Void Prince understands our basic expectations, and that his expectations of us are also within an acceptable range. Thus, the Martial Union will extensively cooperate with him even more than to have to secure his claim on the throne of the Kandrian Empire."

"Thank you," Rui bowed his head lightly.

"Alright, I'm tired. I'm taking a nap; get out of here," The man waved his hand, and suddenly, Rui found himself standing outside of the Monastery of Mysteries.

Before he could even consider that, his four bodyguards had already arrived behind him.

Before he could even consider that, his four bodyguards had already arrived behind him.

"How did it go?" Master Ceeran asked him with concern.

"It went pretty well," Rui casually remarked. "We managed to come to a solid agreement and understanding. The Martial Union will be supporting me even more."

"That is very relieving to hear," Master Zentra remarked.

"Good going!" Master Iskan slapped him on the shoulder.

"It is definitely relieving to know that the Union will be moving as a whole," Master Vericita smiled warmly.

Rui nodded. "I have a lot of work to do. So let's get back."

He wanted to finish his faction-building goals as soon as possible. He had less than five years to find the Divine Doctor and save the Emperor. The more time he wasted, the lower the probability was that he would succeed.

He also intended to commence a search for information on the Divine Doctor employing methods that his father hadn't. His father did not have the ability to harness the Martial Union's power to find the Divine Doctor.

Rui did.

14:51

His father did not have powerful techniques such as the Angel of Laplace and the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm.

Rui did.

There were many possibilities that he could find what he was looking for, but many of them needed to wait until he departed from the Kandrian Empire. This was the only realistic way forward, and even then, Rui knew that it would not be easy.