# Chapter 1492: Interference and Control
Xu Huo then learned about the young man's background.
The place where he was born had decent economic conditions. He vaguely remembered his parents often taking him to buy clothes and bread on the streets. After that, his memories were interrupted. When he tried to recall again, there was only abuse and hunger. The person who kidnapped him, seeing that he was sick and about to die, sold him at a low price to the owner of the Underground Palace. He had been living in the slums since he was six years old, always living in the Underground Palace.
The boss liked him very much and sometimes didn't avoid him when interacting with people from Bocheng, so he also knew that even though every city now had strict population management, from time to time, some clean-looking children would still be transferred through the slums.
"Do you know of any other places?" Xu Huo asked again.
"I don't know about any others..." The young man thought for a moment and then said, "But the boss has an account book hidden in the safe. I can steal it!"
"No need." Xu Huo waved his hand and asked if he still remembered his hometown. "I'll be leaving here in a few days. I can take you back along the way."
The young man first felt a surge of great hope, but soon that hope extinguished. "No city would take in someone from the slums. The people at the Underground Palace said..."
"You're almost an adult and look healthy. Even as ordinary labor, there will be cities willing to accept you," Xu Huo said.
The young man knew he would never have a second chance in this lifetime. He kowtowed heavily and said, "I'm afraid I won't have the opportunity to repay you, but from now on, I will definitely be a good person and not let you down for saving me!"
Their conversation hadn't been kept from others. When the young man opened the door, the pair of orphaned brothers were standing guard outside. Seeing the intense envy in the older brother's eyes, the young man dared not meet his gaze. Yesterday, when Xu Huo was treating his leg, he thought Xu Huo would definitely take the two brothers away, since younger children were easier to raise. But today, the one who could leave had become him. Besides relief and secret joy, he couldn't help but feel a sense of shame.
Xu Huo checked the leg and let the two children leave.
At night, he re-entered the spiritual realm. This time, he expanded the range by about fifty meters and experimented on several players lurking in the distance. After confirming that he could indiscriminately interfere with their spirits, he tried to expand further.
This training had two main purposes: first, to expand the range of the spiritual realm, and second, to improve the quantity and quality of interference.
Only a range that could equally interfere with the spiritual world of everyone within it could be called an "absolute range." In the past, to achieve a good interference effect, Xu Huo generally focused on influencing one or a few people. As the number increased, not only did the interference effect worsen, but the mental load also increased. So even if a large number of people entering the range were affected, the impact wouldn't be too deep and would be easy to shake off.
Bai Kou's absolute spiritual realm range could cover an entire castle. Xu Huo's current target was fifty meters, and he needed to find some stronger players to test it on. The people in the slums no longer met the requirements.
However, he could try another idea of his.
Moving five players from a distance, Xu Huo placed them in a building opposite the hotel and used his spiritual power to transform that place into a maze. After they entered, he quickly generated a hypnotic environment.
...
Hypnosis sounded simple, but after some preliminary study, he realized that using spiritual power for hypnosis was already touching the threshold of mind control.
When he used spiritual power daily, and when he communicated with Bai Kou and E Shu, they all referred to it as "spiritual interference," not "mind control." What they did was use spiritual power to influence others' judgment, reaching a point where the fake could be mistaken for the real.
Either causing mental confusion and self-doubt, or making people's self-perception sluggish (chídùn) so they couldn't distinguish reality from illusion. Fundamentally, the affected person's autonomous consciousness remained clear (qīngxǐng), but they were driven and forced to respond.
"Mind control" was different. It should make the affected person act according to the super evolver's thoughts—this difficulty was on a completely different level from "interference." Among the players Xu Huo had seen so far, only Dou Shengnan, the hypnotist from the Eerie Sound Knights, barely qualified, but she also relied on props (dàojù) to complete "direct control." The end goal of spiritual super evolution should be "control."
Controlling others' bodies, to controlling others' spirits.
This kind of training couldn't find ready-made tutorials, so Xu Huo could only explore on his own, first trying with hypnotic suggestions.
People have psychological defense mechanisms, which can regulate their psychology to a certain extent, protecting them from mental pressure or the adverse consequences of pressure. People are hard to enter a hypnotic state when alert and vigilant, but in the external environment of the spiritual realm, some suggestions about "danger" and "safety" could be forcibly implanted, which was also a faster method.
The five players suddenly realized their surroundings had changed. Upon encountering the gloomy and dark interior, they immediately sensed they might have been affected. The fear of death made them quickly shuttle through the room and attack the walls and doors, as if trying to open an exit.
But every time they launched an attack, Xu Huo responded with "danger" feedback, such as creating some "xenomorphs" or traps, and then removing (jiěchú) this "danger" when they normally walked through doors or windows. After several times, they learned to use the doors.
However, this was still a forced choice between two options, far from reaching the level of "control." So next, Xu Huo continued to subdivide (xìfēn) the concepts of "danger" and "safety," such as turning left or right, the color of the door, the color of the door handle, and the flickering of lights.
The more observant could see the differences. After countless door openings, the few had developed the good habit of first finding the door when entering a room.
Then Xu Huo constructed a huge room with six doors inside. The six doors were all different colors but the same style and size, except one green door had the words "Safe" written on it.
From previous experience, the green door had a lower chance of spawning "xenomorphs," and their conditioned reflex was also to choose green. But when they saw the word "Safe," they hesitated. Instinct made them suspicious because the appearance of these two words was so inexplicable that it seemed suspicious.
"Isn't this another trap?" one of them said. "Let's choose the blue door. The risk of the blue door isn't high either."
After discussing for a moment, they opened the blue door. But unexpectedly, as soon as the door opened, they were met with a huge eyeball that almost filled the entire door frame. The bloodshot eyeball turned toward them, and the person who opened the door slammed it shut without hesitation.
"Bang! Bang!" came the impact from behind the door. The terrified few comforted themselves that this was an illusion, but previous experience told them that even if what they saw might be fake, the injuries on their bodies were definitely real!
"Safe here." Four more words appeared on the green door.