The Martial Unity

He was quite satisfied with the progress that the had made in a week. It was very rare that he would flush through so much of the process of creating a technique from the very get-go. The beginning was usually the slowest and the hardest, fleshing out the technique from a simple idea.

He returned back home after a week, before heading straight to Julian's room.

"So you've come back," Julian gave him an amused smile. "Right on time too, that's why I assured everybody you would be back within the week. I know you wouldn't want to delay getting your hands on this even by a single minute."

Rui smiled wryly, not addressing that. "Thanks, brother. Much appreciated."

He took the documents that Julian handed to him.

They were quite thick, all in all. Rui would need to spend quite some time reading them. It seemed as though Julian had not held back on the amount of information that he had extracted.

Of course, this was no doubt that Julian was quite confident that Rui would have no problem absorbing all the information. Despite being a Martial Artist, Rui possessed the most powerful mind that he had ever come across.

Rui bade him goodbye before isolating himself in his room and taking a good look at the documents present before him.

It was quite likely that the information present in these documents would decide the outcome of Project Eyespy. He highly doubted that there was any recourse beyond the idea that led him to get Julian to compile data about esoteric substances and compounds that were highly reactive to gravity in some way or the other.

Rui opened up the document at the top.

"Oh…?" He raised an eyebrow. ('He's given me a run down on esoteric material science as a field of science before actually diving into the information that I requested. That's actually quite useful.')

The document spoke about the basics of esoteric material science. The field of science was essentially dedicated to substances, materials, and compounds whose properties and fundamental nature were a complete mystery.

Thus, the only thing that all substances and materials that were deemed as 'esoteric' had in common were that they were strange in nature and largely a mystery.

('That probably means that radioactive isotopes would also be considered an esoteric substance,') Rui mused with intrigue.

The world had many strange compounds and substances that had all kinds of strange and bizarre properties. Until they were understood, they would be considered esoteric substances.

"Interesting…"

The document then went on to lay out the ways in which esoteric substances were classified. It turned out the field was even more sophisticated than he had ever given it credit. They had truly approached it with the scientific method; the principle of scientific induction.

Rui briefly familiarized himself with the basics before jumping into the empirical data surrounding the many esoteric substances, the information around which Julian had given Rui.

[Freren Ore]

Freren ore was an ore that was abundant across the continent. It was tough while still sufficiently ductile and malleable to have widespread applications in esoteric engineering. It was classified as an esoteric substance because its state become increasingly less solid and tended towards becoming a liquid, the higher it was above sea level for reasons that were not understood.

It even turned into a gas at extreme altitudes.

Rui's eyes rose in interest. According to the document, one of the prevailing hypotheses was that its state of matter was, for some unknown reason, tied to gravitational force. This would principally explain why its state of matter changed with altitude.

It was previously suspected that air pressure was the reason for a change in its state of matter, yet when subjected to vacuum through Martial Art techniques, its state of matter remained unchanged. Since then, the hypothesis has been considered to be disproved.

"Interesting…" Rui skimmed through the document. There had been many many such experiments that had been conducted for freren to disprove or provide evidence for many hypotheses and theories, at the end of the day, it seemed that gravity was the most likely explanation based on all the data and evidence there was at hand.

"It's interesting… but, probably not usable," Rui sighed.

Of course, this was not too disappointing. It would be awfully convenient if the very first esoteric compound he ran into was the solution to all of his problems. He was a realist in that regard.

There were dozens of such documents for dozens of esoteric substances.

He intended to go through all of them very carefully and ensure that he had not left a single stone unturned. He did not want to read this more than once, after having already inputted all the information into his Mind Palace.

[Grainer Pollen]

It was an organic compound that was repelled by gravity, rather than being attracted towards it. This hypothesis was arrived at after many continuous experiments, the same as with Freren.

It moved away from gravity regardless of temperature and pressure, this applied to both the gravity of Gaia and the Sun, but also other objects with their own minute gravitational fields. The second existing hypothesis was that it was repelled by radiation rather than gravity, but this was contradicted by the fact that it was repelled away from the Earth than it was from the sun. This strongly implied that electromagnetic radiation was not what caused it to have motion in the direction furthest away from the source of electromagnetic radiation.

('This one… might be a little useful,') Rui's eyes lit up in interest. Although he didn't think that this alone would be able to give him what he wanted, it was a good sign that he found something that was at least partially useful on the second try, it made his search more optimistic. As long as he could just find something that would give him the edge that he needed, he would be able to perhaps formulate a sensory technique based on one of these compounds.