The Psychopath's Harem

[A/N: This chapter is going to be lengthy!

Grab a cup of coffee...

The author has a simple policy, a single chapter has at least 1500 words of normal content, and if I write any psychological stuff, I won't increase the chapter count but rather increase the length of the chapter, thus increasing the word count.

In this way, I make sure the story is progressing at a good pace, without being affected by extra stuff.

Have a good day!]

.......

Somewhere in the northern continent of the sacred sky jade realm.

A woman was calmly walking around, but her mind appeared to be in trance like state.

She felt as if dream walking.

Her appearance aroused the attention of many onlookers, who were unable to take their eyes off her body.

But due to her aura of sage realm cultivator, nobody dared to approach her.

She was Li Nan, wandering around in a small village near the red stone city.

On the way she was thinking of Xia Tian, no matter how much she tried to shake his figure off her mind, it was still there as if nailed in her mind for eternity.

She wasn't in her disguise anymore, as she did not care about it right now.

Once again she vigorously shook her head, trying to remove his figure from her mind.

But just like her earlier failed attempts, it was of no benefit.

She stopped for a moment and sighed deeply.

'Why I can't forget about him!? I don't want to do anything with him! Just get out of my mind already!'

She did not have any destination in mind, her flying ship was already gone.

All she can do is, fly to the nearest large city to contact her uncle.

After then, she will decide what to do from thereon.

Just as she was ready to move out of this village, suddenly a huge explosion took place near her.

Boom!

Her hair fluttered in the air, due to the massive shockwave generated by the blast.

"What is happening!?"

"What is going on!?"

"Help!"

Li Nan's eyes narrowed, she glanced at the direction of the explosion and took a step.

Right after that, she appeared in front of a gigantic establishment.

It was the only hub of the village, whether it was the alchemy association or beast association, all had a branch in this place.

Earlier when she passed through this place, it was bustling with people, but now the whole area was enveloped in flames.

"What happened here?"

Li Nan muttered in astonishment.

She took a step again and entered inside the sea of flames.

"Save me!"

"Help me, someone, my daughter is dying!"

"Help, please."

The inside was completely chaotic.

People were running here and there with their bodies enveloped in flames.

Some of them had their arms missing while some had skin falling off their bodies.

It was truly a disgusting sight.

A lot of crying and screaming noises can be heard.

If not for the fact, most of them were cultivators albeit weak, they would be long dead, but it can be said it was also a curse for them, as they were slowly being burned to death by the flames.

It was a special type of flame, which can't be put off by normal techniques.

Even Li Nan despite being a sage, felt suffocated, and her body started to feel warm.

To her the flame was harmless, all it can do was just warm her body and make her feel sweaty.

"This flames, it is not natural? Someone attacked this village on purpose, but why?"

Li Nan looked around herself trying to find the perpetrator.

Soon, more strong cultivators started swarming in ready to help them.

Out of them, a man with the cultivation of the sage realm was most prominent, he immediately took charge and started leading the crowd.

"You lead them to the left, I will clear the way!"

He commanded the small team of cultivators following him, who started the rescue operation.

Li Nan sighed and decided to join them.

She helped move the rubble out of the way and salvaged many people's lives.

After around thirty minutes, nearly all the people who survived the blast were successfully out.

Hundreds of them died even before the rescue team can arrive, but no one can save the dead.

The one who survived started praying.

"Thanks, you esteemed cultivator, thank you very much for saving me and my daughter's life."

A frail woman whose one hand was missing, bowed in front of Li Nan expressing her gratitude.

"Big sister, thank you for saving us."

Her small daughter also followed her mother and similarly bowed.

Her skin was burnt from numerous spots, but the small girl was still composed and strong.

Li Nan's expression turned awkward.

She saved them because she has nothing better to do.

In the end, she helplessly sighed and nodded at them, acknowledging their gratitude.

Afterward, she waved her hands sending them away with a smile.

"We have healing pills! Come here!"

Suddenly, the man from earlier shouted again.

Li Nan raised a brow and glanced at him.

"Women and children first! Come here, it is free. Our Yan family is always ready to help the citizens of the northern continent!"

She sighed. "So that was it..."

Earlier she thought, why was he so keen on helping them, but it turns out this area was controlled by his family.

It might be one of the small families, as Li Nan hasn't heard about it.

She pulled a stool from nearby and sat down.

Soon she heard the same words again and glanced in their direction.

Due to her heightened senses, she can clearly hear their conversations, the leader was called Yan Ming.

He looked pretty average, nothing sort of that interested her.

What interested her was the queue in front of his group, it consisted of all women and children.

The men were calmly waiting at a distance away for their chance.

While some rushed toward the place to get medicine for their wife and children.

It wasn't the first time she was seeing something like this, she had witnessed the same scene numerous times but all these times it was ignored by her.

Her gaze narrowed at the scene, after Xia Tian's words she was getting more conscious of her surroundings.

'Women and children first...'

She muttered in her heart and was reminded of Xia Tian's face again.

His words echo in her mind.

She can remember how she got so much attention while walking without a disguise, the man ogled at

her with their lecherous gazes, but now when we think about it, in any calamity the same women are given priority by the same men.

This forced her to contemplate and think about her life till now.

If by being a beautiful woman she received favors easily, this also worked to the downside and many wanted to conquer her.

She faced many physical attacks due to it, whether they were a success or not it was altogether a different matter.

In the end, she enjoyed the benefits and well as disadvantages of her beauty.

Before meeting Xia Tian, she was only looking at the disadvantages while completely denying the benefits side.

"He again..."

She muttered with a conflicted look, just when she was trying to forget about him, she realized that Xia Tian has left a deep impression on her mind that isn't going to fade any soon.

Right after it, her face reddened in shame, as she started recalling how she was madly moaning like an animal above him, how his large dick was entering inside of her...

One by one, the scenes got more vivid.

Before long she got lost in her world.

The same memories kept repeating in her mind in a loop, each time she was forced to think of Xia Tian's words which broader her mind.

She soon started realizing that he did not speak anything wrong at all...

Whatever he said was right...

She was the naive one here...

With a faint smile on her face, she breathed a long sigh.

"Xia Tian..."

She muttered his name, and once again a handsome face of a man with silver eyes appeared in her mind.

This time, she did not try to remove his image from her mind but rather continued to observe his picture.

The long she focused on him, the more enraptured she became.

Before long, she felt as if trapped by a beautiful illusion.

Many people stared at her weirdly passing by her, but the woman gave no response to them.

She had learned to ignore people's gazes.

[A/N:- Dao of Bullshit, start.]

The image of Xia Tian was deeply imprinted on her mind.

But if she thinks carefully, she would find that she had only spent two days with him.

Were two days really enough to have such a deep impression on her mind?

She had been with her uncle for years, but never had this deep impression of him.

She even knows wives, who had been with their husbands for hundreds of years, before they got this deep impression of their husbands...

In their case, it took hundreds of years... But why only two days in her case...?

How do we even remember people?

If we remember people by the time we by being near them, why isn't the same true for Li Nan?

She had only spent two days, yet she can clearly remember his image...

Why?

Do we not remember people based on time spent with them?

Wrong, we do.

That is one of the factors...

The longer we spend with a person, the deeper impression we will have of that person...

But there is one more factor affecting it.

That is our emotions.

So there are two things now, first time spend and second emotions, more accurately intensity of our emotions.

Emotions are something that we possess by birth...

But what role does it play in how we remember memories?

Well, let's just see an example.

Example one:-

You go on a outdoor adventurous trip and get stuck inside a narrow cave, now there was another person along with you.

You don't know that person, he just shook hands with you in the beginning and right after the introduction, you forget his name.

Soon, you start feeling hopeless in that situation, but right when you were ready to give up, you hear some noises.

The same person from earlier whose name you had forgotten comes appears out of nowhere, ready to rescue you.

An immense feeling of relief assaults your brain.

You feel eternally grateful towards him, the man you had no impression of, now have a deep impression on your mind, something that you will never forget in your life.

The name of the man who saved your life was Dave!

Example two:-

You go to school for the first time, there was a

a person named Dave, he sat next to you.

In beginning there we no conversations, but soon you start familiarising yourself in just a few days.

In a few months, he is your good friend.

In a few years, he is your best friend.

And by the time you are ready to leave your school, he is someone whose figure you can never forget for your entire life.

In both examples, there was a person named Dave, whom you can never forget in your life.

But in example one, it took only a few moments to remember him for eternity while in example two, it took years.

Why?

Due to the intensity of your emotions!

At first, you had a whirlpool of emotion when you finally saw him appearing for your rescue.

So just a moment was enough.

While in example two, you don't have many emotional fluctuations, it was very faint but it kept compounding and increasing over time.

In the same example, by the end of your school life, your emotion associated with him has compounded and increased to a particular point.

So every day the emotions kept compounding.

But you know what...

Even after all that compounding the twelve years' worth of emotions was only worth a few moments' worth of emotions of example one.

Now let's see a real example.

There is your wife, named Sophia.

One day she takes you on an outing, and that was the best day of your life, she ticks all the boxes, prepares the things you like, she made sure it was the best trip you can ever have. After the trip, you feel such gratitude towards her, that you nearly burst into tears. Right after that, she left such a deep impression on your mind that you can never imagine your life without her.

Now there was another couple, near the verge of death...

Both were old steeping closer to their death.

They had a particularly normal marriage.

No one did any particularly exciting thing, but they somehow stick with each other during their whole life.

In the beginning, the husband doesn't care much about the wife's presence, but slowly and slowly it kept increasing as time passed.

[A/N: Don't ask why they married if they don't know each other... Arrange marriage... I live in Asia...]

And now when they are near their death bed, the husband believes he can't live without his wife...

In both above cases... The wife becomes an integral part of the husband...

In one it took only a day, as the husband went through very intense emotions during that trip.

In second, it took years, as the emotions kept compounding every day.

In the end, it because a function of time spent multiplied by the intensity of emotions.

It works not only with emotions like happiness but also with emotions like anger and sadness.

Like, if a random person on your way to your home from the office, frowns on your sight on day one, you probably won't have much impression of him.

But he also frowns on seeing you on the second day...

Third day...

Fourth day...

Months passed, and the same person frowns every time he sees you...

Now you just can't get his image out of your mind, as the small intensity of emotions kept piling up over time to become too gigantic.

Now, what if the same person instead of frowning at your sight, slap you without any cause?

Will then also you need months to remember his face and have a deep impression of him?

Hell no! You will just beat him back, but putting that aside you won't probably forget his face easily until you are used to getting beaten by strangers.

Memories are a function of time spent multiplied by the intensity of emotions...

It does not only work on remembering people but also remembering particular memories...

This is why there might be a female which will pledge her life to you after you save her from a fatal accident, as she might feel intense emotions from you saving her.

But on the other hand, there might be another female who did not care even much when you save her, she thinks that even if you didn't save her, she would be able to save herself. Thus she felt only slightly grateful towards you, let alone pledging her life, she won't even remember you.

[A/N: Now relate this with novels you have read, you must have found both types of female, right? In the second case, you might very well be annoyed and said something like: The MC saved your life idiot! Why are still cold toward him!]

Now let's, see what memories a person named David can recall upon being asked.

[David is the author himself, don't ask questions that why I had only few memories of being happy or sad, I won't reply on it.]

We ask David to remember times he had been happy.

On being asked David thought for a lot, still he can only remember a single instance when in high school, his friends missed his wishing him a birthday that he didn't care about.

But once his birthday was passed his expectations were at their lowest, so when the next day, he suddenly got a surprise party by him, he was stunned.

They forget it indeed, though to make it up, they throw a surprise party the next day.

If the party was made on his birthday, David won't care, but since it was on another day when David has no expectations, he had intense emotional fluctuations and even now he can't forget that day.

We don't get sad when we encounter something, rather we get sad when our expectations are not met.

If you can manipulate someone's expectations then you can easily make him happy and sad, when you like.

[Just like how the author always tells you to lower your expectations before reading the chapter, because if you had high expectations from the beginning, they might not get fulfilled and you end up getting disappointed despite the chapter being good.]

Now, we asked David to recall memories of when he had been sad.

Even now, he can recall only three memories, both memories were short but David suffered intense emotions during both of them.

In all three memories, the time was less, but the intensity of emotions was too high.

Just like that try to remember your memories of being happy and sad and evaluate yourself.

The equation works perfectly fine, but there is one major flaw in it...

The flaw is, our childhood memories...

What about it?

Well, for childhood we have to first look at our developmental cycle in brief.

When a child is born, he goes through five stages.

Stage 1: He learns to respond, and get used to his body, like walking, etc. [Age 1-3]

Stage 2: The child learns to be conscious of what is happening around him.

Stage 3: The child learns to speak and write.

Stage 4: The child can not just speak but understand other people feeling and intentions and hold a proper conversation as per the situation.

[Till this stage the child is about 13 years of age.]

Stage 5: The child learns nearly everything from hereon and becomes a fully functioning adult... [Age 13 and onwards]

Talking about the memories of a child... Our brain archives the memories of our childhood, normally from stage one to stage four.

Only after stage five we actually start taking control of our memories.

Why archived and not erased, well, because memoirs of childhood aren't erased, they just stay in our unconscious slowly guiding our behavior from shadows.

Like, if a child at age 4 had a traumatic experience near a sea, he might develop a phobia of water as an adult.

So even though, he had lost his access to memories, the memories still lie in his unconscious and had an effect on him.

As for why the brain archives our childhood memories... That is another question for us to ponder over... Maybe a safety mechanism.

Just like how even as an adult the brain chooses to dismiss experiences and memories that are extremely traumatic and as a safety mechanism it sends us into a state of amnesia.

The brain truly knows how to protect itself... Remember, how I earlier described there live two people inside us... One is our survival instinct and one is us... We both are one and the same...

[A/N: See, how one concept is being verified by another's existence...]

In the end, we only remember our memories from adulthood, in normal cases, it comes after the age of thirteen.

This is why Li Nan can not forget him even if she wants to forget about him...

His figure is deeply imprinted in her mind...

During those two days with him, she went through an intense myriad of emotions...

Well, the emotions like fear, anger, and sadness actually have more impact as compared to the emotion of happiness and joy on memory formation...

Why?

Why do we remember failures more and not success?

Why do we remember sad memories more vividly?

Everything has a purpose...

And if it hasn't, it is because you haven't found it yet.

We are born with emotions and the rest of our life is spent exploring what invokes what emotion.

Like we know from birth what is pain and grief but we don't know what invokes them.

When a baby gets hungry, he cries ... So from birth itself, he knows to express pain and grief and all other emotions.

He knows pain but he doesn't know what causes it and spends the rest of his life exploring it.

It also further confirms the idea, of why we are born curious, to explore what causes what emotion...

So when a baby sees fire, he approaches it and right after he touches it, he got burned and started crying.

He feels pain!

Now next time, he sees that fire, he will instantly remember that memory because of pain and save himself from the fire.

In the end, it is yet another defense mechanism of the brain.

We remember memories associated with pain, and grief more vividly as compared to their counterpart thanks to our brain survival mechanism.

Think about what will happen if the baby doesn't remember that fire causes pain.

He might one day innocently jump into the fire and kill himself as he might forget the fact that fire causes pain...

Our brain is evolved in a manner that is best suited for survival.

Amazing right?

That is why we remember our mistakes vividly...

This is why memories of someone doing us bad are more vivid as compared to memories of the same person doing us good and behaving nicely with us... This is why Li Nan remembers Xia Tian so vividly, the memories associated with him were of pain, anger, sadness, guilt, pleasure, etc.

Knowing this is all good...

But the main question is how to exploit this information.

How can we utilize this new information, that memories are a function of time spent and the intensity of emotions...

We can utilize this information by reverse engineering the process...

We know that the intensity of our emotions will affect, that whether we will remember a certain person or memory.

So how about you controlling your emotions?

More like how about you control what gives birth to those emotions, that is your thoughts.

If you meet a certain person, and he is a possible business partner for you.

Now you want to make sure you make him remember you, so now what you do is try to inflict intense emotions on him.

Like, make him laugh madly at one of your jokes.

Actually, emotions like jealousy and anger are better in this case.

You can even make him feel extremely jealous of you so that he remembers you.

You can get him angry to remember you, and you can just make him up to him later and laugh it as a joke... That is a risky one but if you successfully pull it off, chances are he will definitely remember you due to the rollercoaster of emotions he suffered due to you.

Now, you can apply the same to your partner, girlfriend, wife, canary, etc.

Don't matter, you can apply it to anyone.

Even you!

For yourself, just control your thoughts, if you want to not remember someone try to just not to focus on any thought related to him.

If you want to remember her or him, just focus on an unrealistic thought like, 'She loves me definitely' focus on this thought until you are smiling madly, after this, you won't forget that girl... You can even use this in reverse or use it against the girl...

You can use it the way you want...

Once again, you have the tools...

You can build what you want with it.

Explaining individual examples is not my work...

But just as a hint, don't you think going to an amusement park and a roller coaster ride or an adventurous sport is a good idea for a date?

Like if the woman is madly scared, she would definitely remember that memory, and the more she remembers the greater she falls for you...

Hahaha...

[Imagine a narcissistic author madly laughing in a hotel room.]

..........