The Martial Unity

The two of them immediately departed from the Forest of Fear, having completed all their business.

Rui had expected to spend days, if not weeks, hunting for Senior-level creatures and scanning them for memories, but surprisingly enough, they had completed their business in the Forest of Fear in a matter of hours.

Of course, Rui would never complain about getting the job done sooner than later.

"What does the Divine Doctor even want from the Garden of Salvation?" Kane asked while they moved through the Beast Domain. "Honestly, what the hell is he even going through all of this for, anyway?"

It was a good question.

Unfortunately, Rui didn't have a good answer.

"He's here to diagnose his patient," Rui replied, shrugging. "That's all I was told by the Beggar Sage."

"That doesn't even make any sense."

"I don't really care about why he's here," Rui replied calmly. "As long as he heals my father, he can do whatever the hell he wants. However, knowing why he's here exactly may help us find him. So that is the only reason why I care about his reason for venturing into the Beast Domain on his lonesome."

Rui had many thoughts about the Divine Doctor's escapades. However, he would be lying if he said he wasn't curious about what the latter wanted with the Garden of Salvation.

It sounded far-fetched to assume that he had information outside of the information that Rui had not obtained with all his political resources. If that was the case, based on everything that they both knew, Rui was unable to understand exactly what he sought from the Garden of Salvation.

Perhaps, as a doctor, he was curious about the mechanics at play that allowed for the environment to alter fundamentally to perfectly cater to each and every single individual species.

It was plausible, but it was slightly disconnected from what the Beggar Sage had told him about the man. It was even possible that the Divine Doctor was looking for his patient in the Garden of Salvation. A patient with a condition so dire that it interested a man who had cured death would certainly be in need of a haven of safety.

However, the Beggar Sage had told him that the man was in the Beast Domain to diagnose an illness. He had allegedly not gone there to meet a patient. Thus, a hypothesis that seemed quite likely was not true.

"Huff…" Rui shook his head, putting the matter aside. He didn't know what mischief these madmen were up to, and it wasn't important.

The only question was whether the Divine Doctor had actually succeeded in his plan and how Rui and Kane would successfully find and enter the Garden of Salvation.

Unfortunately, Rui had no definitive plan this time.

He kept revisiting every detail of the Garden of Salvation that he had stored in his Mind Palace ever since then. The claims that it was in the northern part of the Beast Domain came from Martial Masters, who did not require manual transportation to safety, allegedly. Yet once they were let just outside of the Garden of Salvation, they never saw it again.

Rui found this extremely puzzling because it violated… well, everything known knew about distance and space. It was almost as if the Garden of Salvation was its own world.

Or, not real.

That was the worst-case scenario.

If it wasn't real, then Rui had absolutely nothing to go off of anymore. They would be completely in the dark.

The only intelligence that Rui had was that he would have met the Divine Doctor on a beach. But that simply was nowhere near enough information for a blind search.

Rui began growing increasingly anxious and fearful about of the prospects of finding the Divine Doctor. Everything had been going just fine.when Rui had been narrowing down the possibilities of paths forward to regions that had disruptions and then relying on memories to figure out which path the Divine Doctor had taken.

Now, however, Rui had absolutely no idea which path the Divine Doctor had gone down. While he could try to track down different disruptions and try to stick to the advice of 'follow the unique chaos' that he had gotten from the Beggar Sage, the issue was that there was too much ground to cover. There were many chaotic disruptions in the Beast Domain, and Rui couldn't explore all of them without something limiting all the various possibilities.

"So how are we going to find the Garden Salvation?" Kane asked as they headed towards the northern part of the Beast Domain.

"Our goal is not to find it," Rui replied. "It's to enter it."

Kane understood the subtext of what he conveyed. "So we're going to try to get in without actually finding it?"

"Exactly," Rui replied calmly. "I don't think we can find the Garden of Salvation, certainly not just by searching for it physically. If Martial Artists of higher Realms have tried and failed, then I don't think I can succeed."

"Well, then what's the point of going to the northern part of the Beast Domain to where the Garden of Salvation is supposed to be if we're not going to search for it?"

"Statistics," Rui answered. "An overwhelming proportion of people who entered the Garden of Salvation did so from the northern hemisphere of the Beast Domain, which lends some credence to the claim that it is in the north. It also increases the probability that we'll get into the Garden of Salvation."

"Makes sense," Kane admitted. "But surely there's more, right? Just going to the north of the Beast Domain is not going to do much."

"Correct," Rui replied with an uncertain tone. "I have some plans. Some of them are a bit, well, questionable."

Kane threw a dubious glance at Rui. "Just how questionable are we talking about?"

"So questionable that we will cede the right to talk smack about the Divine Doctor's questionable plans," Rui smiled wryly.

"See, you two are birds of a feather."

"Is that a compliment or an insult?"

Kane remained silent, refusing to answer.

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