Chapter 1395: Strengths and Weaknesses

"To truly misdirect others, you must master the art of misdirecting yourself." She explained. "You will need to push yourself to the limits of your capabilities even with your Martial Heart and Martial Body. There is a reason why this is a Martial Art technique and not a technique that non-Martial Artists can pull off ordinarily, do you know why?"

"...I suppose because the misdirection would need to be executed within a millisecond, at a bare minimum, in order for it to be effective against Martial Artists." Rui thoughtfully replied. "Martial Artists have an extremely brief reaction time and our reflexes operate at even shorter timeframes. The longer that a particular misdirection maneuver takes to be executed, the harder it is to misdirect a Martial Artist since their reaction time and reflexes is short enough for no human to possible finish a maneuver within those timeframes. That's why only Martial Artists can misdirect the awareness of Martial Artists."

"Correct," She nodded. "That's why you will need your Martial Heart if you want to misdirect the awareness and consciousness of Martial Seniors also using their Martial Heart. Otherwise, you will be far too slow in their perspective to pull off a misdirection micro-maneuver."

She paused for a moment, before continuing. "The combat effectiveness of a stealth-oriented misdirection technique depends on how mentally consuming it is. One needs to be extremely aware during combat, and misdirection can make one much more prone to delayed reactions due to the constant mental activity."

Rui nodded, that tracked with how Kane dealt with Void Step, it was only worth using if it actively granted an advantage, but like how it was the case against the Martial Artist he challenged to enter the Floating Sect, it was not always worth using in combat all the time.

It would be much more true for Rui if he mastered a full-fledged misdirection technique that relied fully on misdirection alone and not maneuvering. It would be a very mentally consuming fight to constantly abuse such a powerful misdirection technique all of the time.

This was especially true because Rui already engaged in a lot of mentally consuming activities and matters across the fight. He used the Mind Palace technique to store and process data that he collected from observing his opponent's fight, before creating a predictive model that constantly required inputs throughout the fight.

Then he also had things like the Pathfinder technique and its ODA System that also required mental energy. Having a mentally consuming misdirection technique on top of that would probably be quite stressful, even if worth the price.

This wasn't as much of a problem with Kane who relied on maneuvering more than misdirection to disappear in people's senses.

'Still, it is worth it to have such an option at hand nonetheless.' Rui glanced back at Master Reina. "What does the training entail for such techniques?"

"A lot of mental training," She explained. "Misdirecting your opponent's awareness entails knowing how to move to convey to the subconscious processing system that there are more important things to pay attention to. You need to learn to know how to act as if such a thing is true, your micro-maneuvers and micro-actions need to be spot on, and only then can you trick their minds momentarily."

Rui nodded. "That sounds fine to me. What about the disguise technique?"

"That is actually more complicated." She replied. "It's also a Squire-level technique since it does not require the Martial Heart."

"That's fine, I care more about the utility than the Realm."

"That is a good mindset to have," She nodded. "Far too many Martial Seniors scorn Squire-level techniques because they don't use the Martial Heart, however, what they don't understand is that having more Senior-level techniques makes them more dependant on the Martial Heart."

Rui nodded. "In the first place, the Martial Heart amplifies the parts of a body involved in a given technique at any given point, so Senior-level techniques are not functionally different from Squire-level ones. One needs to merely ensure that a technique is able to properly use the Martial Heart at most."

"I'm glad you aren't arrogant about being a Martial Senior." She remarked with appreciation. "The disguising technique that I showed you is not something you can master relatively soon. It is a genuinely time-consuming technique and is actually an amalgamation of many smaller disguise techniques that I have developed over my life. I can teach you a few principles to manipulate your appearance so you can get rid of that mask."

Rui nodded. "Alright, let's get started."

"Hold your horses," She paused. "There is still something you need to do before we can get started."

Rui raised an eyebrow.

"You need to convince the Beggar's Sect that you have failed in finding me," She explained. "I can't have those plebeians learning that you are my pupil and that you did find me using your little public stunt move."

"Ah...hm," Rui did recall that the Silent Shadow obscured her students so people couldn't spot patterns in regards to how to be accepted by her as her pupil. "How would you have me do that?"

"Just leaving this area is fine." She explained. "I have prepared measures just for this. Listen carefully..."

She began to explain a complex series of actions that would eventually end with Rui returning back to the Shadow Isles.

"This as an absurd amount of length to go to just to throw off the Beggar's Sect." Rui complained when she was done.

"Hah. If you don't do at least this much, those annoying peasants will see right through you." She snorted. "I've worked for and against them many times in the past, and I've come to gain a good understanding of their many capabilities and few shortcomings. This will work as long you don't mess up. Now go, get started. I'm not teaching you a damn thing until you get this done right."

Rui sighed as he got up leaving Area Crina discreetly as he immediately began executing the plan that she had provided to him.