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.

'Incredible.' She narrowed her eyes. 'What an extraordinary mind to conjure up such a powerful image so easily and early on.'

"Fuuu..." Rui heaved a sigh, opening his eyes.

"It's impressive that you managed to create such a powerful image in your head without any extended practice." She stated. "Now all you need to do is 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 assassination. However, this will take a long time. You will need to do this over and over until the image is burned in your mind since you obviously cannot store that image in your mind otherwi-!"

Her eyes widened as she abruptly stopped talking as Rui instantly replicated the misdirection, tugging on her attention.

"You mean like this?" Rui asked.

She stared at him. "...How did you do that so quickly? You took five minutes to reach that level before."

"I just recalled it from memory."

"...You memorized a detailed image enough to replicate it perfectly?"

"Yeah, I just stored it in my Mind Palace," Rui replied. 

"Mind palace? Ah, that technique. I don't understand, that technique is limited to memorizing a lot of words and numbers. It is entirely unable to store detailed images." She frowned.

"Images are information," Rui replied. "I broke down the detailed image I conjured for the misdirection technique into 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 paint a painting."

"..."

"It's really not that big a deal." Rui shrugged. "Honestly, I thought Martial Masters could do that too."

She simply stared at him with sharp eyes. 

It was an 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 Martial Squire.

As if they somehow saw something that they had never seen before. Master Reina had done a good job hiding it, but apparently, Rui had crossed a line.

She heaved a sigh. "Talent really is an eyesore. To think that you would accomplish months of progress in five minutes. Absurd. But ironically enough, that only makes your path to the Master Realm much more difficult."

Rui furrowed his eyebrows narrowly. "What?"

She shook her head. "Never mind. Let's continue. At this rate of mastery, you will have an incredibly powerful misdirection technique ready by the time we're done."

"I want to go back to what you said before."

"Don't read too deep into it. You have enough on your plate already. If you're too distracted by other matters, your progress with the misdirection technique will slow down drastically." She remarked. "Let's continue, I'm actually quite excited to see what kind of stealth you will achieve."

Rui stared at her.

"I said don't read too much into it. You'll be fine, just fine. Now get started." She remarked. 

"...Fine. But when we're done with training, I'm going to have you explain."

She considered his words, before nodding, much to Rui's surprise. 

"You promise? No going back on your words."

"What do you want? A blood oath? I said I'd do it. Just get started already!"

Rui put aside thoughts as he continued his misdirection training. His powerful imagination refined the three-dimensional image of Master Uma that he had conjured up, increasing the quality of the image, and making it easier for him to grow immersed in the image and fool his subconsciousness into thinking it was real, which would in turn fool others and misdirect them as a result.

He meditated quietly with a sagely appeal, having become a artist who was embellishing his work, when an idea popped into his head.

"What if I create a video instead of an image? Wouldn't that lead to a much more technique?"