The Martial Unity

The very prospects of entering the Master Realm had grown more attractive with his earlier considerations. Rui had an inherently high quality of thought. Once his conscious mind grew large and gained the quantity of thought of the Martial Mind, he would probably reach levels that he could not even begin to imagine.

For that, he needed to develop his Martial Mind and system of thought beyond his limits so that when the time came, his consciousness could expand beyond its current limits, encompassing a larger part of his brain. It would serve as an operating system for the newly annexed parts of the brain, while the Martial Mind would serve as combat software.

He shook his head. "I have no idea how close or far I am."

The creation of a latent Martial Mind was something that normally took decades, sometimes even centuries. Furthermore, Rui had long been informed that his path to the Master Realm was much harder than that of his peers. Thus, it was difficult to be optimistic that he was close.

If that was it, then he could be certain that he was still far from reaching the finish line; however, the fact that he retained the VOID algorithm in his memories after reincarnating made it difficult to understand how near he was to his goal because of the immense headstart he had gotten.

The VOID algorithm had taken him decades to create and refine in his previous life. Thus, in a sense, he had already fulfilled a solid part of the journey to the Master Realm in his previous life!

"Whatever," he muttered. "I will break through when I break through."

Agonizing about it was not going to help. If he had time for that, he would rather work on his Martial Mind and actually put in effort into getting closer to his goal.

His attention immediately returned to the matter at hand.

"I need to give this project a new name," Rui contemplated. "Hmmm…how about Project Telepath?"

It was good enough as far as he was concerned.

He quickly began working on the first half of Project Telepath. The domain-hypnosis hybrid technique that would allow him to successfully put his opponent in a mild trance mid-combat was the first hurdle that he needed to overcome.

It was essentially a technique inside a technique.

"Actually, it would be cleaner to think of it as entirely separate from the system of thought needed to read individualized non-verbal communication," Rui realized.

In that case, Project Telepath could be thought of as the creation of two separate techniques that were co-dependent.

"The outcome doesn't really change, so I suppose it doesn't matter," Rui murmured. "Ultimately, a domain-hypnosis hybrid technique needs to be formed."

He immediately began considering the broader skeletal structure of the technique. For one, the domain and the hypnosis not only needed to occur simultaneously, it was best if he completely integrated them together into a single technique.

In other words, using a domain not only kills all sensory stimuli but also aids in hypnosis.

"I don't think I can completely fuse them. A domain cannot misdirect because domains don't have non-verbal communication."

Or maybe they could? It was another avenue of research he put down for later, but for now, he would need to take care of the misdirection aspect of hypnosis.

There were two parts to hypnosis. To hypnotize was to a) misdirect the consciousness's awareness away from him so that it no longer impeded him from b) impacting the subconscious mind with a hypnotic suggestion. He would take care of the first part while letting the domain partially handle the second part, as well as dimming sensory stimuli.

Those two went hand in hand.

Light played an enormous role in the activity of the conscious mind.

In fact, Rui knew that there was substantial research showing that the artificial lighting of human civilization was one of the greatest reasons for modern insomnia.

While conducting research into the importance of sleep for UFC fighters in his previous life, Rui came across a paper on an experiment conducted where a group of city dwellers who reported extreme insomnia were taken away from any artificial lighting to a camp in nature. Each participant slept for a healthy seven to eight hours on the very first night.

The underlying principle of sensory input influencing levels of conscious activity was also relevant to hypnosis. The moment he got the domain to largely cut off all sensory input, the propensity of a person's conscious mind to reduce in awareness and activity to enter a trance was much higher.

"Naturally, it's impossible to cut off all sensory input," Rui admitted. "Otherwise, I could just ambush them in the darkness. However, I can get rid of a substantial amount."

He immediately began dissecting the sensory input-blocking mechanisms of the domain technique. It was possible for him to manipulate the air such that it became opaque. He could even significantly hamper sound and scent to a great degree. However, at the Senior Realm, that was not enough to hamper his opponents in combat at all.

That was just enough to allow him to misdirect them using Phantomind Void and his three-dimensional image of Master Uma and then convey a simple suggestion to the subconscious mind.

Sleep.

Of course, he didn't expect them to sleep. But a mild trance was definitely achievable and the desired objective.

"Alright, now I just need to get down the heaven-bending and earth-bending to nail the domain blackout," Rui uttered, activating a breathing technique as he began manipulating heaven and earth with breath-bending.

He had some ideas of how to go about the blackout.

The sound, odor, and touch parts were well within his ability to sabotage.

However, cutting off light with air alone would require not just physical density but also optical density. The latter was new. He would need to spend a lot of time developing mastery over the manipulation of optical density to cut off light entirely.

Thankfully, he had the perfect teacher for manipulating optical density.

He glanced around at the Valley of Prisms with a smile.