The Martial Unity

He had found a promising avenue of pursuit.

The predicament of the Divine Doctor, having left no physical clues, was fine. All Rui had to do was explore the minds of the denizens of the Valley of Prisms rather than the region itself.

He had confirmed that they remembered the Divine Doctor well. The question was whether he ought to extract information from them effectively. They had terrible communication intelligence. Thus, he could not particularly rely on them to convey accurate details to him even if they recalled the Divine Doctor's visit to the Valley of Prisms.

Of course, he made sure to verify this nonetheless.

He sharpened his eyes, conveying the image of the Divine Doctor to several herds of catoblepas.

Their reactions did not change.

"MOOOOOOOOOEEEEAAAAUUUU!"

They mooed in emotional distress.

BADUMP!

Rui activated his Martial Heart, exerting immense mental pressure on them. He hoped that by subjecting them to deep mental pressure, he would be able to get them to focus on him while still conveying the image of the Divine Doctor.

"MOOOOOOOOOEEEEAAAAUUUU!"

Rui did a double take, frowning. "...Just what kind of trauma did that man inflict on them?"

The fact that even his Senior-level aura was unable to break them out of their reverie of emotional distress showed that whatever the Divine Doctor did to them was extremely impactful on their psyche.

What did he do? Rui narrowed his eyes. Tell me, what did he do?

"MOOOOOOOOOEEEEAAAAUUUU!"

Alas, it was to no avail.

He let go of his grip on them, causing them to immediately run away from him.

"No luck?" Kane asked, squatting peacefully.

"It's difficult to extract information from them," Rui heaved a sigh. "The communication from my end is great; the issue is the communication from their end. It's a shame Ieyasu isn't here."

The man's ability to read minds would have allowed Rui to overcome this hurdle pretty easily.

Kane furrowed his eyebrows. "Are you saying I'm not as helpful as him?"

Rui stared at him blankly. "Would you say you're as useful as him?"

"I can fight and assassinate well."

"He can do both better," Rui huffed. "Besides, his specialty would be perfect for this situation."

Kane folded his arms. "The issue is that they're unable to communicate with you, and you're able to communicate with them, right?"

"Yeah, in addition to being a bit unwilling, but yeah."

"Then why not just solve the problem with your Martial Art?" Kane asked impassively.

"…Use my Martial Art to solve a communication problem?"

"After all, Adaptive Evolution is meant to overcome everything by evolving and adapting to things, right? So you can just overcome this problem by adaptively evolving to it," Kane shrugged. "Seems like a no-brainer to me, to be honest."

Rui stared at him wordlessly. The logic was so profound that Rui had to take a moment to wrap his mind around what the man had just uttered.

"How in the world am I supposed to use my Martial Path outside of combat to overcome communication problems?"

"Well, aren't you already doing that?" Kane asked blandly. "You used hypnosis to communicate. That's Martial Art, right?"

Rui's gaze grew measured.

Technically, Kane wasn't wrong. Rui did indeed use Martial hypnosis for benign communication. However, as much as he loved his Martial Path, it would be a stretch to say that he used Adaptive Evolution when solving a simple problem.

Even more to say that he could use it to solve the hurdles ahead of them.

"It's not like I can use my Martial Path and Martial Art to make them communicate better with me." Rui heaved an exasperated sigh.

"Why not?"

Kane's tone was sincere. He stared at Rui with simple curiosity.

"Because… such a technique is… impossible?" Rui frowned as a realization clicked in his head.

It wasn't impossible.

"Wait a minute," Rui grew more engrossed in the matter, his eyes swimming around. "If I can put them into a trance and get them to communicate their memories to me non-verbally, then…"

Rui's eyes lit up. "It just might work."

Most communication between people occurred non-verbally. However, while ordinary people were only able to convey a limited amount of information, Martial Artists like Rui could convey far more through non-verbal communication alone.

Their bandwidth was much greater. That was the reason Rui was able to convey three-dimensional high-definition videos through sheer non-verbal communication.

He turned to the catoblepas with an interested expression.

"These creatures don't have as much bandwidth as I do, but…" He muttered under his breath. "They are Apprentice-level creatures, even if barely."

That meant that they undoubtedly possessed a bandwidth that exceeded that of normal humans. Given that non-verbal communication was largely dictated by the subconscious mind, intelligence was not a particularly relevant variable this time around. Thus, he wasn't concerned that the dim-

wittedness of this grazing species would sabotage him.

Of course, it wasn't going to be easy.

He was essentially talking about using hypnosis to read the mind of his target. The mechanics of the technique were different from anything that Rui had learned about from the Hypnomaster. As far as he was aware, he had never heard about a technique that allowed one to read another mind via hypnosis.

He immediately thought of Ieyasu, narrowing his eyes. "I don't think his technique works this way, but…"

Rui wondered if he could replicate a fraction of Ieyasu's capabilities with this alternative principle. After all, the latter himself did this all the time and got away with it. Surely, Rui could succeed at copying a technique with alternative principles at least once.

If he succeeded, not only would he be able to extract precious intelligence regarding the Divine Doctor from the minds of the catoblepas, but he would have created a technique that could be useful in many other domains of his life, especially as a Martial Artist.

Putting his opponent in a mild trance such that their subconscious mind conveyed some proportion of their conscious mind through non-verbal communication sounded so tantalizingly attractive that he could not help but wonder if it was possible.

"I must look into this immediately."