Memory Severance (Thanks to "What Time Is It, H Still Isn't Sleeping" for the donation)

Cold, eternally unchanging white light replaced the sunlight, enveloping the familiar world of the Laboratory.

Minamoto Takuya stood alone within it, surrounded by the faint hum of precision instruments.

He did not immediately begin erasing the specific memories. Instead, he sank into deeper thought.

The Memory Seal, a technique he had mastered, was undoubtedly powerful. It could lock away a portion of the past deep within one's consciousness like shackles.

It did indeed touch upon the fringes of the realm of memory, but Minamoto Takuya knew its limitations well. It was like a heavy curtain: it could only conceal what lay beneath, not truly reach its essence and destroy it completely.

To erase those memory fragments that existed like malignant tumors without leaving a trace was something sealing alone could never accomplish.

It required a more delicate, more profound operation.

In the end, his thoughts inevitably settled on the Spirit Transformation Technique.

This was not the first time the idea had occurred to him. More than once, Minamoto Takuya had speculated that the Spirit Transformation Technique might be the ultimate form pursued by the ever-changing Secret Techniques of the Yamanaka Clan.

Their fundamental effects were strikingly similar. Both were supreme methods that directly acted upon the soul and mind.

Both possessed the power to delve into the heart and manipulate consciousness.

Though this conjecture had never been proven, proving it was not his purpose at this moment.

He only needed to confirm one indisputable fact: like the Yamanaka Clan's Secret Techniques, the Spirit Transformation Technique possessed the tremendous power to precisely reach and manipulate mental memories. That was enough.

That brought Inoichi Yamanaka, the head of the Yamanaka Clan, to mind.

This master was an elite expert at using his Secret Technique to enter others' minds and search the vast