Chapter 1452 Memory manipulation
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Pettiness aside, Rui truly wanted to see everything the Hypnomaster had to offer. There were nuances that could be shown and not conveyed, furthermore, with how terrible Master Zeamer's explanations were, Rui did not trust him with accurate explanations of what was really happening.
"Alright then, let's begin," Master Zeamer stated. "Take a good look."
He stared at Ieyasu in the eyes while preparing a strike, much to Rui's surprise. The two Martial Seniors stiffened as a powerful Master-level wave of pressure crashed into them.
SNAP!
Ieyasu's eyes widened as a snapping sound reverberated in his ears all of a sudden overwhelming his auditory nerves painfully, drawing his attention for a moment. That was enough. Rui watched as the Hypnomaster's body moved in a way that seemed to speak to Ieyasu.
Listen to me, it told him.
The man's alertness and sharpness declined until his eyes became vacant.
"That..." Rui recognized what had happened. "...Non-verbal communication?"
"Correct," The man nodded. "Quite sharp of you to notice on your first watch. In ordinary hypnosis, practitioners get the target to voluntarily lower their guard and convey information to the subconscious through speech. In Martial hypnosis, we either misdirect, disorient, or overwhelm the consciousness in order to prevent it from preventing external influences access to the subconsciousness. Instead of verbal communication, we rely on non-verbal communication."
Rui's eyes lit up with fascination and enthusiasm. "That's incredible. Non-verbal communication, if done right, is much faster than verbal communication."
BAM!
Ieyasu's arms flew into a guard as streaks of red glowing lines covered his entire body in just a moment as Rui's attack crashed into them.
"Did you really think you could get me that easily?" He narrowed his eyes.
"Wow," Rui murmured, impressed.
Before Ieyasu could even do anything, his body relaxed as his Martial Heart deactivated, and his eyes grew more vacant and hollow once more.
Rui furrowed his eyes as he turned back to the Hypnomaster, who had stood behind him. "Did you...?"
"Indeed, this time, I didn't need to misdirect as you had misdirected his attention away from me already," The man explained. "But as you can see, the trance does not make Martial Artists physically vulnerable. It is not as though their consciousness has been shut down, it is still active, the only difference is that we have managed to get it out of the way of subconsciousness. People in trances are fully capable of engaging in a variety of complex and delicate tasks, it is merely the state where the consciousness does not protect the subconsciousness."
Rui nodded, understanding. "So from here on out, we do the actual hypnosis."
"Correct," The man nodded. "Let us begin with memory manipulation. Now, I've already warned you that the core mechanics are... a little not well-understood, so bear with me. But memory essentially works by association. Memories are associated with sensory cues. Seeing the color red would induce a variety of thoughts and images in your mind that are associated with that color. Every memory is associated with sensory clues, generally related to the sensory information stored in the memory."
"I'm conjecturing that would need to you draw those memories around by conveying relevant sensory cues to the target. Like if you wanted to make someone forget about the sky? You would perhaps need to make them see blue?" Rui wondered.
"Indeed, you catch on fast. We resurface memories in this manner and then rely on non-verbal communication to convey to the subconsciousness that memories are invalid. Normal hypnotists do this by speech, but we Martial hypnotists, once again, use non-verbal communication."
"I see..." Rui murmured, immersed in his thoughts. "However, in order to generate relevant sensory cues, you need to be capable of manipulating light and air to a certain extent"
"Indeed," The man nodded. "That is the hard part and why memory manipulation is very difficult mid-combat."
