The Martial Unity

A flood of information flushed through Rui's mind. Unfortunately, it became evidently clear that the catoblepas had already begun subconsciously erasing their memories entirely. Maybe they still remained untouched in a deeper part of the consciousness, but Rui had no idea how to access them.

After all, he was not a dedicated neurologist. His partial expertise in this field was limited to the foundation, which he needed to conduct more sophisticated research before he could apply

it to combat science.

A litany of broken memories in the form of shattered visions flashed through his mind as he collectively read through the minds of the catoblepas.

He came across even more interesting memories.

The Divine Doctor stood before a lush tree, studying it with an intrigued gaze. His eyes were fixed on the light distortion caused by the vegetation, leading to broken and mixed fragmented visions of the physical world around them.

A whisper escaped him as his eyes lit up with curiosity

"Interesting."

The memory cracked as Rui immediately jumped to another memory

FSSSSS!

The Divine Doctor flushed the catoblepas with another gas from one of his canisters, one that was different from the fear-hallucinogen that he had previously used. The catoblepas didn't physically move or react to it, yet they undoubtedly went through profound mental changes.

Changes that Rui recognized.

'That's a trance!' Rui exclaimed inwardly. 'It's a chemical-induced trance.'

It was definitely different from Martial hypnosis or even ordinary hypnosis. The Divine Doctor had no qualms with drugging the brain with some substance that could diminish the conscious mind or increase the prominence of the subconscious mind to put the animals in a trance-like state.

Rui watched, from the perspective of one particular catoblepa, how the Divine Doctor used trance-like states and Pavlovian reinforcement to train them to do his bidding. He watched with fascination as the Divine Doctor not only used them as test subjects for his fear-hallucinogen but also made good use of their manual labor, commanding them to fetch him vegetation.

This was where things got confusing. Rui frowned as he watched the man gather tons and tons of small plants, alive, extracted from the ground, experimenting around with them with his countless tools.

Of which Rui had to admit he was impressed by.

The man was even more prepared than Rui was!

Of course, as Martial Artists, Rui and Kane were much less needy. The Divine Doctor, however, appeared to be physiologically human. Rui knew that this wasn't his original body since the form of immortality that three keepers of immortality used was a soul-transferral from one body to another.

Maybe his body was enhanced in some ways?

"Maybe his body is that of a Martial Artist?" Rui narrowed his eyes.

He didn't think so.

From the perspective of the catoblepas, the Divine Doctor didn't trigger any peril when not using his gas weapons. Of course, Rui was very well aware that a significant proportion of Martial Artists could hide their aura, but he didn't see any logical reason for the Divine Doctor to do so in this particular case because he clearly was not hiding or even attempting to hide.

It also begged the question as to whether it was possible to transfer the so-called 'soul' of a normal person into a Martial Artist.

Frankly, the very concept of soul transference did not please Rui. Back on Earth, the concept of the soul was regarded as highly unscientific, as not a single shred of evidence pointed to the existence of such a dimension of life. John was one of many people in the domain of science who disregarded any talks of it as religious mysticism.

He would have regarded the Beggar Sage with much harsher skepticism if not for the fact that he had an extraordinary piece of evidence: his reincarnation from one world to another.

He had to admit that it was enough to rock his worldview into taking claims about 'souls' seriously as he would any other scientific phenomenon.

"Huff… focus," he murmured to himself, shaking his head as he returned to scouring memories of the catoblepas.

In the broken memories, visions, and sounds that soon followed, the Divine Doctor began playing around with the vegetation of the Valley of Prisms. The images were so broken that it was not easy to make sense of them.

On top of that, it was difficult to catch what he spoke to himself. Rui was actually surprised that the original memory of his arrival was so well-preserved. It truly must have left a soul-wrenching brand on the catoblepas' minds for them to retain such a high quality of the memory while their later memories were being slowly suppressed and erased subconsciously.

He caught snippets of the man's words throughout the many memories that he scoured.

"This worl-"

"-issing stars-"

"-ble to locate the see-"

Unfortunately, he wasn't able to extract anything meaningful from those snippets of words. They were cut off or distorted beyond comprehension, reducing them to pure noise. The more time passed in their memories of the presence of the Divine Doctor in the region, the more it all began to become increasingly indistinguishable.

This was especially the case considering that their minds had been deeply afflicted with the psychological effects of being subjected to the many mind-impacting drugs that the Divine Doctor had been feeding them.

If not for the fact that their bodies and physiologies were innately within the Apprentice Realm, making them quite tough and able to withstand things that would kill the average man, physically or mentally, there would be no catoblepas for Rui to experiment on

"Woah…" Rui's eyes widened as the details of the memories began shifting to reveal a new garb underneath the Divine Doctor's coat.

The garb was made out of the leaves of the vegetation native to the Valley of Prisms.

What surprised him was that the plants were not stripped and dried to be used as fiber for the cloth.

No.

They were still alive!

Somehow, the Divine Doctor kept them alive despite having plucked them from their trees and stems.

Yet that wasn't the most surprising thing of all.

He sprayed a strange gas on the cloth made of living vegetation, causing him to become completely invisible!

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