The Martial Unity

While the training of the close-range Death's Sympathy and the disguise technique went well, the misdirection training under Master Reina had also commenced.

"You need to master the image." Master Reina instructed. "The stronger the image, the more effectively your subconsciousness will be fooled. The more effectively your unconsciousness is fooled, the more effectively your opponent's subconsciousness will be fooled."

Rui visualized the image of a grave threat, like Master Uma, while minimizing his own. He visualized every detail that he could recall, picturing her determined self out to hunt him down so that she could indulge in her crazy delusions of grandeur when it came to Rui.

The threat was very real. His body had not forgotten the first time it experienced the sensation of the true power of a Martial Master. The deep terror that one who was, at the time, two Realms above him was not something even Rui had been able to brush off.

As the image in his mind grew increasingly detailed and realistic, he could feel a portion of that anguish returning. His subconscious mind followed suit and his body shifted, twitched, and made a number of micro-actions that would subconsciously convey to any sentient being the threat of Master Uma, causing them to look in the direction that Rui had created the mental image in, within his mind.

When the image was created, almost every cell in Rui's body recoiled as if Master Uma had manifested in real life ten meters away from him, threatening to capture him. Anybody who looked at him at that moment would undoubtedly have become convinced that there was a much graver threat that was much more important to pay attention to, causing them to divert their attention away from him.

At that moment, Rui would become insignificant in their minds while their minds subconsciously diverted their attention to the threat of Master Uma.

A non-existent threat.

Master Reina's eyes widened as she momentarily felt a mild urge to do the same. The sheer magnitude of his misdirection was something that beggared the mind.

Literally.

eyes. 'What an extraordinary mind to conjure up

heaved a

be able to conjure up that image on demand instantly. You cannot afford to waste minutes on conjuring up such an image when working on an

talking as Rui instantly replicated the misdirection, tugging on

mean like this?" Rui

him. "...How did you do that so

just recalled

detailed image enough to

just stored it in

understand, that technique is limited to memorizing a lot of

one million smaller images and stored them all in a million adjacent locations in my Mind Palace. Every time I want to recall that image, I just swoop past all of them in a line and put them together in a particular algorithm to restore the original image. That way, I don't need to create the image from scratch. It's much easier to reconstruct a simple puzzle than to

"..."

a deal." Rui shrugged. "Honestly,

simply stared at him

expression that Rui recognized. It was the same expression that he had seen on the face of every Martial Master he had ever met since becoming a

they had never seen before. Master Reina had done a good job hiding it,

progress in five minutes.

his eyebrows

her head. "Never mind. Let's continue. At this rate of mastery, you

back to what you said