Chapter 3628: Fear?

It was the size of a small frigate, an exploratory research frigate meant to gather data on a specific target, judging by how coordinated and focused all of its sensors and telescopes were.

They were all pointed at Gaia.

Rui frowned as he studied the ship moving away from Gaia.

He didn’t understand.

If the Divine Doctor wanted to study Gaia, then why didn’t he just look at satellite data? The man was highly intelligent; there was no way that he hadn’t thought of that.

Then again, Rui wasn’t sure what the man was thinking about. The Divine Doctor was perhaps one of the very few people he had never been able to get a real read on.

Rui activated his Worm Step technique before teleporting from outside to within the ship.

WHOOSH

He appeared inside a corridor within the ship, gracefully stepping on the floor of the vessel.

STEP

He glanced around with a curious expression as he studied the plain hallway he was in, before walking towards the command room of the frigate with a knowing expression.

The frigate was eerily empty and silent, save for the silent hum of the engine reverberating through the craft.

STEP

He soon arrived at the door to what appeared to be the command room. His senses had long peered through the barrier into the other side.

WHOOSH

He teleported into the room with a single step, finding himself facing a small room armed with screens across the entirety of one half of the room. Screens that featured data collected from Gaia from afar.

Facing those screens was a table equipped with computer terminals, with several chairs parked at the desk.

Only one of those chairs was occupied.

“It’s been a long time, Doctor.”

Rui’s voice was calm.

He didn’t receive a response.

He drew closer, walking by the side of the man as he raised an eyebrow.

“…something beyond… an invisible source… beyond the horizon…” The man muttered incoherently, self-absorbed in his own little world.

Rui’s eyes widened as he realized that this was the same vessel he had been on when Rui saw him more than twelve years ago, shortly after Rui first broke through to the Sage Realm.

This was despite the fact that he had spent those twelve years inside the manifold, which meant that he had spent one hundred and sixty-eight years in the same vessel. Rui knew for a fact that he hadn’t been given any healing potions because he was thought to be immortal anyway.

“You…” Rui realized with a stunned expression. “You cracked it. You cracked the secret to actual immortality.”

Rui had achieved immortality by brute forcing it with his power as a Martial Sage and his understanding of the human body. The Divine Doctor had never had the former, making it impossible for him to achieve immortality despite having much more of the latter than Rui could ever hope to learn.

And yet, he had achieved it nonetheless.

“…everything…” The Divine Doctor’s immersed murmurs drew Rui’s attention once more. “Everything is sick.”

His eyes, normally clinical and void of emotion, widened with a profound shock. “My… my vision was too small. Everything is… is ill.”

Rui stared at him with a confused expression. “…What?”

The man had always been crazy, but had always at least been cogent and collected. Rui had never seen him like this before, which made it all the more scary.

“I knew nothing the entire time,” the man murmured.

Rui frowned. “You, the most knowledgeable man on the Panama Continent, know nothing? What does that make the rest of us?”

The Divine Doctor’s eyes shifted towards Rui sharply.

“You are all fools living in an illusion.”

Rui stared at him with a confused expression. “You really have lost it, huh?”

A forlorn smile emerged on the Divine Doctor’s face.

One that was different from anything that Rui had ever seen before.

“You cannot lose what you never had, marked one.”

Rui frowned at those words. “What?”

The Divine Doctor directed a knowing glance at his black hair and eyes before returning his vision to Gaia.

“All this time, I thought I knew who my patient was.”

His tone was profoundly immersive, very unlike the Divine Doctor that Rui had known.

“And yet, I was just a blind fool.”

“…I don’t follow.” Rui frowned. “Isn’t your patient Gaia, whom you allege is ill?”

The Divine Doctor chuckled at those words, much to the shock of Rui. “My patient… is the entire universe.”

Rui shook his head.

The man had clearly lost it. He was a doctor who specialized in human physiology and also had great prowess in biology and biotechnology. When he told Rui that Gaia was alive and that she was ill, he was naturally very skeptical, but chalked it down to perhaps not impossible.

But the universe?

He didn’t know what happened to the Divine Doctor, but he was starting to wonder if something had broken the old immortal sage. He wasn’t even sure if this man was even capable of helping him anymore.

“Why are you even here?” Rui asked him with a curious expression. “I thought you would explore the true world and try to diagnose Gaia, right?”

“I did,” the Divine Doctor replied, regaining a measure of his composure. “Eventually, I… decided to leave Gaia to get a good look at her from afar. To try to diagnose her as a whole with my own two eyes from afar. But… leaving Gaia led me to an epiphany that… broke my will.”

He turned to Rui with a chilling emptiness in his eyes.

“It’s not just the Gaia that is ill… No, this illness has spread far, far beyond her. It comes from far, far beyond her. She is just a victim and… eventually… it will consume everything. It will consume the universe itself… and that will be the end of us all.”

His expression grew broken.

“An illness beyond even me. Beyond all of us.”

His eyes darkened.

“If only you could feel the fear that I feel.”

Rui’s eyes widened with shock.

“…Fear?”