The Martial Unity

2862 Demanding Answers

The very moment he opened his eyes, he knew.

He knew exactly where he was.

Exactly what was happening.

Who he was. BOOM!

He blasted out of the cylindrical glass container with effortless force, dispelling with all the medical instruments across his body, monitoring his condition. The forceful emergence sent a wave of shock across the team of doctors and nurses that monitored his rest as the water he was submerged in gushed out, spilling across the medical control room.

RUMBLE…

The world seemed to warp under the weight of his existence.

Heaven and earth strained to bear his heavy being in its grasp.

His pitch-black eyes seemed darker than they ever had been while his skin had gained a tint of deathly luster.

An unfathomable amount of power emerged from the very depths of his existence.

An apocalypse in human form.

The team of medical experts gazed at him with awe and fear. On one hand, his breakthrough represented their safety and their salvation. Now that he had broken through, the Kandrian Empire was surely stronger than it had ever been in the past.

On the other hand, standing in his presence sent chills across the skin of all these ordinary human beings.

Gone was the ember of warmth within him.

His eyes and expression had grown darker than ever before.

They couldnʼt help but feel shivers crawling down their spine.

And yet, he wasnʼt even looking at them. No.

His gaze remained fixed on her, suspended in the fluid of her own medical container.

Even at that very moment, he could feel her despair and horror.

”Amare…” A faint whisper escaped Rui as he placed his hands on the container. His voice was filled with the longing of love.

He didnʼt realize how precious what he had with her was until he could no longer have it. ”…Iʼm sorry.” His tone was strangely tranquil.

In the past, he would have been riddled with guilt and self-hatred. For having been too weak to protect the woman he loved. For having been too weak to bring her back perfectly. For having been too weak to break her out of her soul prison.

Yet, he had achieved the Enlightenment of Self.

He had profound insight into the nature of who he was. The enlightenment had given him a profound inner peace, allowing him to understand that he himself was an inevitable consequence as opposed to an agent who could have done things differently.

And yet, his eyes were melancholic.

His expression was sorrowful.

”Must you break the container from inside each time we put you in there?” the clinical tone of the Divine Doctor drew his attention, devoid of any empathy. ”Medical facilities do not take well to being blasted each time.”

Ruiʼs gaze shifted to the arriving form of the Divine Doctor at the edge of his eyes. ”…”

”Then again…” the Divine Doctorʼs smile was frozen as ever, ”I would not have kept you in there in the first place.”

Rui simply stared at the Divine Doctor with an impassive gaze.

”Rui…!”

A familiar voice emerged from one of the people who has trailed behind the Divine Doctor. A familiar voice that he hadnʼt heard in a long time.

”Julian…” a moved whisper escaped Rui as he turned towards his brother. Julian gazed at Rui with a stunned expression.

Nothing about him had physically changed aside from the dark tint of death.

And yet, he was almost unrecognizable to Julian.

The volatility that Julian felt in him before was gone.

It was as though his existence had solidified.

Rui regarded him with a friendly nod as a hint of the brotherly affection he had for Julian appeared in his softened expression, before shifting his gaze to the Divine Doctor.

”What is your diagnosis of her?”

His tone was urgent.

”Can she be restored?”

It reflected the fierce desire he had for Amare.

”Can you free her?”

And yet, the frozen smile on the Divine Doctorʼs face was as chilling as ever. ”You have many questions. But unfortunately, I shanʼt answer them.”

Ruiʼs gaze sharpened. ”…What?”

”I will not answer your questions, not until you answer mine,” the Divine Doctorʼs tone was clinical as ever. ”Do you think I am a fool? Did you think I would fail to notice that your missions to bolster humanity have received all your attention and energy, while you have directed but the sparsest of thought to my commission?”

Ruiʼs stoic pitch-black eyes fixed themselves on the inhumanly clinical eyes of the Divine Doctor.

The air grew tense.

The atmosphere tingled with peril.

Rui heaved a soft sigh. ”Everybody leave.”

The doctors and nurses, paralyzed by the suffocating weight of Ruiʼs extraordinary being, jolted out of their frozen positions before scurrying out of the facility in a hurry. Julian and Rui exchanged a deep, meaningful look and a small nod before he, too, slowly walked out of the facility.

Rui gazed at the Divine Doctor with an impassive gaze, slowly descending from the air and down before him, studying the Immortal Sage.

After all these years, he still couldnʼt get used to this man.

A monster wearing the costume of a human being.

It was chilling.

”I may not have actively worked on your commission, but I have traveled much of the continent and have not noticed any location especially deviant that could serve as a clue to the symptom of… ʼGaiaʼs sickness.ʼ”

Ruiʼs tone trailed off with a hint of skepticism.

He had yet to be convinced of the hypothesis that the planet was alive or sick. But he humored the doctor to get the information that the man sought.

”However,” Rui continued. ”There are some other things I have learned that might be of some interest to you. For example, the Demon of Asmodeous told me that those with black hair are… ʼmarkedʼ with the potential to change the world. I do not know whether this information is accurate, but the Demon told me that those of our ilk that he ran into in the past have always been marked with the potential to change the entire world singlehandedly.”

-