The Martial Unity

The first was the Forest of Fear, which was some distance further into the Beast Domain after the Valley of Prisms. This was a forest with flora and fauna that had a special effect on the mind that caused the target to become more neurotic and prone to experiencing negative emotions, particularly fear.

The second region was the Caves of Penance, which was some distance from the side of the Forest of Fear to its right. This was a region of cave tunnels created by a species of giant ants that could dig through hard rock like it was clay, forming an enormous number of winding cave tunnels that wove through the bedrock and the mountains of the region.

The third region was some distance to the left of the Forest of Fear; the Sea of Solitude. This was a rather peculiar esoteric water body that extended far beyond the eye could see. The strange thing about the sea was that its waters were comprised of a strange esoteric that allowed land animals to breathe its water in without suffering any problems. It allowed animals to get their oxygen the same way they would in the air.

In the first region, the recorded anomaly was that on one fine day, all the fear from the Forest of Fear disappeared. The substances that were responsible for inducing fear had all been extracted from the region, temporarily depriving it of any and all fear.

It was no longer the Forest of Fear!

It was a very bizarre occurrence that many Beast Domain ecologists and experts were unable to comprehend or explain.

In the second region, the Cave of Penance, the anomaly was that all of the giant ants had one day died seemingly simultaneously.

These ants were spread across a region that was as large as a country, and yet they had all simultaneously fallen dead.

It was utterly incomprehensible.

The third Region, the Sea of Solitude, experienced a sudden crisis. The esoteric substance that allowed for underwater breathing had been extracted, causing the animals that relied on it to breathe underwater to drown on the spot. This caused a mass extinction of life in the sea, with most life forms that had adapted to that environment dying on the spot.

Magically, the substance had been restored shortly after, but it was already too late. In the many years that had passed since then, the ecosystem had slowly repopulated from the small portion of surviving species. However, the cause of the anomaly has never been understood by anybody to this day.

"Hmmmm..." Rui narrowed his eyes as his mind furiously burst into action.

He knew the first region that the Divine Doctor had visited in the Beast Domain was the Valley of Prisms, according to the Beggar Sage; there was no doubt about that.

However, where he had gone after that was difficult.

Following the Beggar Sage's criteria of chaos, Rui could narrow the next place that the Divine Doctor had visited, one of the three aforementioned places that had each suffered a chaotic disruption, which made them viable candidates.

Rui didn't know which one had been visited by the Divine Doctor.

That wasn't the only issue.

The possible regions that the Divine Doctor had visited after that rose exponentially as each of the three regions opened a path for several potential regions that experienced disruptions where the Divine Doctor might have visited.

"Tsk," Rui tutted. "In other words, I cannot use this method to accurately derive exactly where the Divine Doctor has gone."

He could only come up with an impractical number of possibilities that didn't give him a good understanding of exactly where the Divine Doctor was.

The statistical approach itself did not have as much data as he needed to narrow down the paths that the Divine Doctor had taken. In other words, he would need an on-the-ground investigative approach to figure out where the Divine Doctor had gone from there.

"If that's the case, then I better commit all of this to memory before I enter the Beast Domain," Rui glanced at the many stacks of documents within the large box.

This way, he would not be lost when he entered the Beast Domain and found something significant. He would be able to rely on the data even when deep within the Beast Domain.

For nearly anyone else, memorizing this much data within a short amount of time was impossible, but Rui effortlessly gobbled the data up, committing it to his Mind Palace.

He noticed that the data provided by the Adventurer's Guild grew less precise and less extensive regarding information that was deeper in the Beast Domain.

This made sense; it was exponentially easier to record data regarding regions at the edge of the Beast Domain that were closer to humanity due to their proximity, due to sensing being less hampered due to its distance from the center of the Beast Domain, and due to the really low danger-level of regions and zones in the extremities of the Beast Domain.

The deeper regions and zones were much more dangerous. There was almost no information about Master-level zones or regions in the Beast Domain that tended to be deeper into the Beast Domain.

In other words, the regions and zones that were deeper into the Beast Domain were a complete black box even for the Adventurer's Guild.

Zones ranked in the Upper Realms were so dangerous that only Martial Artists of the Upper Realms were deemed qualified to survive.

With so few people qualified to enter a region where sensory prowess was hampered due to environmental regions unique to the Beast Domain, reconnaissance was an absolute nightmare.

Rui was glad that the Beggar Sage was confident that the Divine Doctor could not survive Master-level zones and regions near the core of the Beast Domain because Rui was not qualified to survive in those zones.

Master-level danger rating indicated that a zone was so dangerous that one needed to be a Martial Master to survive indefinitely, and anything lesser was bound to die soon.

-