The Martial Unity

Months passed as Rui began working on the domain technique. He took his time studying the esoteric flora of the Valley of Prisms, breaking down the manner in which the optical density of light was altered and how the changes in optical density affected the passage of light.

Simultaneously, he began trying to replicate those effects with heaven-bending. It wasn't easy. However, the foundation that he had gotten from Master Gurren was quite solid. On top of that, he also had experience with manipulating the optical density of the air in other ways when he created the telescopic technique for Master Gurren.

Unfortunately, the heaven-bending needed to magnify light was extremely different from the heaven-bending needed to halt light in its path. It was challenging, but he worked hard in trying to figure out the most efficient and effective way to make light opaque.

Even turning the air into a solid through heavy compression was not enough. In many cases, this simply yielded a translucent and even transparent medium through which light had no trouble passing through.

While he worked on the opaqueness of the domain, he also fleshed out its other aspects that were to aid hypnosis. Those, though, were much easier to handle.

One thing that became extremely evident was that this technique did not necessitate tremendous exertion of power. Since the purpose of the technique was to block sensory information, it was not a physical combat technique like many of the other domain techniques of the Yggdrasil System.

That was great because it made it easier to employ while fighting. At the current moment, he had only begun to endeavor passive mastery of domains so that he would be able to seamlessly use them in combat without letting them hamper him.

Thankfully, this technique would come with passive mastery pre-loaded into it due to how little of a burden it would be to execute.

Kane lamented ever springing the idea in Rui's head inadvertently as Rui made him sit in the center of the domain to report how well the it impeded sensory input and how much it had improved since the previous prototype. He essentially became a glorified senso to allow Rui to record observations.

"Alright," Rui remarked. "Commencing trial number S38-174. The aim of this trial is to measure the impact of a one-point-eight-percent increase in the density of air through spiral compression on sensory input, as measured by our test subject, Kane."

Kane raised his hand in response, heaving a tired sigh.

In the past few months, Rui had been conducting relentless trials in various heaven-bending approaches in his endeavor to create a domain. He applied an approach similar to most rigorous R&D projects, taking trial after trial to systematically measure the outcomes of several experiments in their objectives of creating the best product as a result.

It was at that moment that Kane felt a pang of regret in joining Rui to find the Divine Doctor in the Beast Domain.

BADUMP!

Rui's Martial Heart blazed into life as a surge of power emerged from deep within his body.

"Here we go," he murmured, activating a powerful breathing technique, bending the vectors generated by his breathing to manipulate the entire atmosphere, causing air to spirally converge in the region around Kane.

Suddenly, Kane's sense of vision dimmed significantly as he carefully paid attention to what he saw.

"That's definitely a little darker than before," Kane announced.

"How much darker?"

"I dunno, like ten percent maybe? Around that much."

"Hmmm…noted," Rui added a new record in his mental journal as he began altering the domain technique to include the new improvement he had made.

"Hey, how long is this going to take?" Kane arched an eyebrow. "Because we can't spend forever in the Valley of Prisms, you know? It's already been two months since we came here."

"I don't think this will end anytime soon," Rui replied, immersed in his own thoughts.

"You're not going to find the Divine Doctor at this rate, you know?" Kane yawned.

Rui paused, turning to him. "I have no intention of giving up on that. Besides, this project will cut the rest of our journey quite short. We probably won't have to spend tons of time per region from here on out. With this new technique, we can scan their memories the moment we get there and leave ASAP."

Kane shrugged. "Your choice."

He didn't mind whatever decision Rui made; he was just there to stick with him for the journey.

While Rui relaxed from an intense R&D session to develop the domain, he began working on the other aspects of the Project Telepath.

Namely, the most important part of the technique project was the system of thought decoding his target's language of non-

verbal communication. It was a shame that he wasn't a linguist or a behavioral psychologist.

Of course, being either wasn't strictly necessary in the pursuit of understanding non-verbal languages, and he had to admit that he had the knowledge needed to create a system of thought. It was just going to be rather difficult.

In his previous life, creating the VOID algorithm had been a project spanning more than twenty years. In his current life, his mind was vastly more powerful due to having undergone a second route of astronomical growth from infancy to adulthood. He could complete similarly enormous projects in just a fraction of the time within the confines of his massive Mind Palace.

'A system of thought to decode the language of non-

verbal communication,' Rui mused. 'Such a system will need to satisfy several criteria. Firstly, I will need to be able to to identify the various elements and layers of non-verbal communication and categorize them appropriately when I record them.'

Non-verbal communication was far more multi-dimensional than verbal communication. The latter only conveyed information through sound. Non-verbal communication, however, was communicated through various other senses, sometimes even all five and more. Those weren't the only manners in which one could categorize them.