Chapter 592: Learning Hypnosis

This disguise method couldn't be maintained for long without causing severe damage to my facial muscles. Still, it was great for emergencies.

Once I had the technique down, I put away the ancient disguise manual. A bit bored, I took out the Misfortune Pocket Watch again.

Honestly, it was the most luxurious pocket watch I had ever seen. With a platinum case and sapphire crystal, the hands ticked away inside like blue flames.

"With my merit at negative one hundred thousand, targeted by the heavens and plagued by bad luck, I'm actually a pretty good match for this Misfortune Pocket Watch." When I redeemed it, the product catalog noted that aside from bringing about misfortune, the watch could also be used for hypnosis.

After the twelfth livestream ended, the product catalog updated to include the book "Principles and Applications of Modern Hypnosis". It cost three points, which I found a bit expensive, so I passed on it.

I was genuinely curious about hypnosis, though.

"Hypnosis would be a huge help for my livestreams and everyday investigations. I've heard it can even be used to detect lies and manipulate minds." I only had a half-baked understanding of the subject, gathered entirely from unreliable movies and novels. But I did know someone who actually understood it.

Since I had nothing better to do, I took out my phone and dialed Chu Men's private number.

The line rang over a dozen times before he finally picked up.

"Hello?"

"Old Chu, it's the Streamer. I have a few questions for a master hypnotist like you."

"Streamer?! I was running an experiment and had my phone on silent. Go ahead, ask away."

Chu Men didn't shoot me down. Realizing there was an opening, I got straight to the point. "I want you to teach me hypnosis. Think you can do that?"

"You want to learn hypnosis?" Chu Men fell silent for a moment. "True hypnosis isn't something you just casually share. It's incredibly difficult to learn and takes a long time just to grasp the basics. Why the sudden interest?"

This was the first I'd heard of hypnosis being treated like some authentic Daoist scripture that couldn't be shared. I smiled helplessly and gave a half-hearted excuse. "I picked up a pocket watch from a secondhand store. The owner said it increases the success rate of hypnosis, so I figured I'd ask you."

"Assisted hypnosis?" Chu Men's laughter came through the speaker. "You've bought into the public myths. Nothing in this world artificially boosts the success rate of hypnosis. That's just a gimmick to trick laymen like you."

"What do you mean?" I listened intently, hoping to coax out something useful.

"Hypnosis is like treating an illness; you have to prescribe the right medicine for the condition. We use different methods for different patients. What you're talking about—using a swinging pocket watch—is technically called the suspended-object method. The patient focuses their attention on the object, and their pupils move with it to induce hypnosis. That's only the most basic form. We also have soothing hypnosis for manic patients, suggestive hypnosis for the terminally ill, and so on." Chu Men threw a bunch of jargon at me, but I grasped the main point: hypnosis wasn't just casually dangling a watch in front of someone's eyes. It required coordinating a lot of professional techniques.

"Old Chu, skip the lecture and just teach me. I won't pass it on to anyone else, you have my word."

Chu Men considered this for a long moment before relenting. "Alright. I was just worried you'd use it during a livestream and end up getting arrested. Using hypnosis without the subject's consent violates both ethics and the law, after all."

"Got it. Don't worry," I quickly agreed. Ethics and the law were things I could only worry about if I actually survived.

"Alright then. I'll start with a general overview of the nature of hypnosis."

"I'm all ears."

"Brain activity produces electrical waves. Their voltage is extremely weak, and their frequency is very low. Doctors can diagnose and treat psychiatric patients based on the shapes of these waves. Haven't you ever wondered why waves with such weak voltage and low frequency can bridge vast distances to produce telepathic effects?"

I was already starting to lose track of what Chu Men was talking about, but not wanting to interrupt him outright, I simply played along. "Why is that?"

Chu Men seemed very satisfied with my response. His voice dropped to a profound, hoarse register. "Brainwaves transcend three-dimensional space. In other words, they are transmitted through a higher-dimensional plane. This might sound mystical, so let's look at it through physics. For an observer or receiver, the intensity of light or radio waves has a specific relationship with distance—it is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. However, experiments have proven that telepathy has no correlation with distance whatsoever. Meaning, the transmission of telepathic waves does not obey the inverse-square law."

"Wait! Do these telepathic waves have anything to do with hypnosis?" I felt the need to cut him off. I'd been expelled from the police academy before finishing my studies; my education had limits. I couldn't understand a single thing he was saying!

"Telepathic waves are the medium of telepathy, and they are also the informational medium for hypnosis. Standard hypnosis relies on tools, psychological suggestion, and set pieces to create a specific environment, but there is another type of hypnosis that relies on willpower." Chu Men chuckled as he spouted another slew of technical terms.

"Willpower?"

"Correct. A person's mental will. Powerful willpower can affect the people around you. Your brainwaves intrude upon the other person's, forcibly instilling your own will. If you know how to wield this, and the gap between your two minds is vast enough, you can achieve targeted, forceful hypnosis."

His words made me shoot up from the bed. "Willpower?"

Having survived multiple livestreams, my willpower was already far tougher than a normal person's. On the Death Train, I had endured the memory baptism of the deceased. Most importantly, I had shattered the despair in my heart within the Deep Dream Layer, and I had devoured the Flower of the Dream Realm along with hundreds of stalks of Dream-Entangling Grass! All these factors combined to forge my willpower into something as hard and indelible as diamond! Even the senior streamers of the Underworld Live Show might not surpass me in sheer willpower.

My breathing grew heavy. I suddenly felt like I was about to gain another trump card. "Old Chu, hurry up and teach me how to hypnotize someone with willpower!"

My impatience startled him. "You seriously want to learn?"

"Of course, why would I lie to you? Whether you want money or another trip into a dream, I can make it happen."

Those terms were highly tempting to him. Even so, he hemmed and hawed for a long time before finally speaking up. "Streamer, you didn't actually believe all that, did you? I've just been cooped up in the lab so long that I got bored, so I was just shooting the breeze. In theory, the possibility exists, but it's just a theory. If you could actually put it into practice, it wouldn't be hypnosis anymore—it'd be a superpower."

His admission left me speechless. Seeming to realize he'd taken the joke a bit too far, Chu Men spent the rest of our time earnestly teaching me real hypnosis techniques.

Hypnosis could be divided into three states. The first was the light hypnotic state, where the subject could barely accept suggestions and retained a degree of resistance.

The second was the deep hypnotic state, where the subject's muscle movements were restricted. They couldn't open their eyes and were highly sensitive to suggestions.

The third was the somnambulistic state. A subject in this state could be completely manipulated. Upon waking, they would have zero recollection of what had transpired under hypnosis.

...

I spent the entire day studying hypnosis. I had already studied criminal psychology and understood a fair bit about psychological suggestion. Drawing parallels between the fields, my progress was remarkably fast—even Chu Men marveled at it from time to time.

It wasn't until six o'clock that evening that I finally hung up. As I organized the information in my head and looked at the pocket watch in my hand, I was brimming with confidence.

"I really want to find some poor sap to test this out on right now. I wonder if hypnosis works on cultivators?" The late autumn sky darkened quickly. Remembering that tonight was another livestream day, I suppressed the urge to experiment, sitting in my room and patiently waiting for the hours to pass.

At around six thirty, a knock sounded on my door.

"Must be dinner. It came at this time yesterday, too." Without overthinking it, I got up and opened the door. However, I quickly discovered that the person holding the tray wasn't a waiter, but someone else entirely.

"Your name is Gao Jian, right?" Chen Jiuge looked at my face and offered a faint smile. "Have we met somewhere before?"