The Martial Unity

The next day, Rui quickly prepared himself for a long day of laborious work in finding Master Gurren in the Great Jrava Mountain Range in the southwest of the nation. This vast expanse of mountains occupied a small portion of the territory of the Kandrian Empire, covering millions of square kilometers in totality.

Rui would need to scan all that area with his senses, looking for a Martial Master who didn't enjoy interacting with the empire.

However, Rui still maintained some hope for connecting with this Martial Master. The reason for that was that he was a partner of the Martial Union, about the same as Rui. Which effectively meant that they had signed a partnership contract for commissions and remuneration.

The fact that he had that tie to the Martial Union gave Rui hope that he wasn't an absolute isolationist.

He left extremely early when the rising sun had yet to light up the morning, swiftly coursing through the skies of the Kandrian Empire heading towards South-West Kandria.

He didn't have the most sophisticated strategy prepared at hand.

He was just going to request for tutelage from the Martial Master, and see if he had anything to offer.

If that didn't work, there wasn't really anything he could do. He was dealing with a Martial Master.

Eventually, he reached the Great Jrava Mountain Range.

Mountain stretched out as far as the eye could see, snow-topped and flora-laden valleys with remarkably lush greenery with fantastical colors.

The beautiful visage greeted him warmly, welcoming him with a cool gust of wind.

"Wow," Rui whispered, taking in the sight from a great altitude.

This wasn't the first time he had seen the mountain range during his missions, it was too big to be missed, but it had been a long time since he had visited it.

"Let's get to work," He furrowed his eyebrows as he spread his senses as far and wide as he could.

He could accelerate the search for Master Gurren if used his Martial Heart, but even within the Kandrian Empire, he didn't dare leave himself in a vulnerable position where he was limited to the power of the Squire Realm.

Had he been a normal Martial Senior, it would have been less risky, though still far too daring. However, it was almost unthinkable to do so with his current status. There were many people who had their eyes on him, and not all of them had the best of intentions.

The Great Jrava Mountain Range was different from the rest of the nation. Its distance from the Great Name Ocean meant that not even a whiff of the saline humidity that characterized regions close to the ocean, relatively speaking, could be detected in its air.

The air possessed a hint of rejuvenating freshness that seemed to nourish the mind and body.

"Not a bad spot to retire," Rui remarked out loud.

He could see why someone would want to retire in such a place and just cut away from the rest of human civilization. There was a peace that came with simply living in nature that could not be found in human civilization.

To a certain extent, that vibe could be found in the Quarrier Orphanage too. Of course, that was less so now that there was a bit more of a settlement around the area with the various young and middle-aged adults forming their own little huts with their own families.

Still, it could not compare the sense of nature, fantasy, and adventure that living in this enormously wide mountain range conveyed.

He immediately got to work, dividing the area into grids with a width equal to that of his sensory radius.

He began scouring the mountains remotely, employing the Lesser Phantomind Void technique so that nobody could detect him easily.

Of course, that wouldn't be enough to hide from a Martial Master, but it helped nonetheless. The Great Jrava Mountain Range was not an entirely benign region. There were monsters and beasts, although almost all of them were limited to the Apprentice and the Squire Realm.

A great many of the Apprentice and Squire-level domestic hunting missions that the Martial Union had were actually related to the Great Jrava Mountain Range. It served as a good place for Apprentices and Squires to test their prowess and was not dangerous enough to warrant culling the dangerous fauna.

Apprentice and Squire-level beasts were just harmless enough to the Empire to allow them to freely inhabit the Great Hrava Mountain Range. Things got tricky when there were Senior-

level beasts since these creatures were a little too dangerous to be allowed to run around the Kandrian Empire, still, it could work.

Rui kept his senses alert for he had no intention of dying to a Senior-level beast that managed to get the better of him.

Nothing of remark happened in most of the process, naturally. Grid searching was a rather boring and tedious job with the least amount of excitement in this world. One merely searched and documented, and that was the job description.

Rui smoothly traveled across the Great Hrava Mountain Range at a medium pace, ensuring that he wasn't too fast. He needed to carefully scour the entire area as he passed it, there was no point being hasty and messing up the job. Slow and steady won the race.

One of the challenges was that he often ran into small human settlements in the mountains that he needed to search in order to eliminate the possibility that Master Gurren resided among them. But given that he knew that the Martial Master was solitary, he could be pretty sure that he wouldn't live among other humans.

Yet after three-quarters of the day, he came across something that seemed promising. A small hurt at the top of the peak of a mountain. The hut was small and humble, built of rock and wood, with the roof built out of stacked layers of large dried leaves cut into strips and interwoven with each other.

"What do you want, boy?" A voice from behind him called out to Rui.