Chapter Twenty-Four: Ferocious Might

When "Bloom-Shot" Anthony’s skull deformed and his body hung askew from that staff, "Rain-Blade" Lonkoni’s mind went blank for a split second.

—What just happened?

—The sandstorm was so thick, and the sun was behind him, placing him in backlight. We couldn't even see him clearly, so how did he precisely calculate an attack path to defeat Anthony in one strike?

Cybernetic bodies are more resistant to bullet damage than natural flesh, but that does not mean cybernetically augmented individuals can ignore gunfire.

Transmission components hit by bullets will deform, twist, and eventually fail. Sensor components hit by bullets will cause the cyborg to lose their ability to perceive. If the power core is hit, the prosthetic body loses power and becomes scrap metal.

Repeatedly striking a single point on the outer armor with bullets can eventually cause metal fatigue, leading to a rupture.

A martial artist who has mastered Gun-Fu, if they can control the space between themselves and the enemy, they are invincible.

Lonkoni still remembered the results Anthony had achieved when they ambushed those thugs entering the city. Torn armor, exploding engines, spraying hydraulic fluid, scattered parts—these were results entirely different from his own martial arts.

They had killed thirty-seven thugs in total. Lonkoni felt that he, Anthony, and Paulus could harvest the thirty-eighth, thirty-ninth, or even the fortieth right here. After all, a martial artist’s prosthetic body wouldn't exactly attract thugs that were too powerful.

But... what was going on?

Aren't the prosthetic eyes of a Gun-Fu master superior to those of an ordinary martial artist?

Why was Anthony the one knocked back first?

How on earth did this giant do it?

"Fact" and "speculation" had diverged severely. In such moments, humans are inclined to trust "inferences" based on "experience." This is a self-preservation mechanism for weak creatures. The ancestors of humanity had to associate the "rustling in the grass" with a "predator lurking in the grass," or else they might die.

Of course, the rustling could be caused by the wind or insects. Perhaps your naked eye might observe the grass swaying in the wind, or the insects jumping upon it. But even then, you still need to think, "It could be a predator." After all, the individual who believes the latter is more likely to avoid the predator, and thus more likely to pass on their genes.

To describe it in terms of game theory... "risk aversion can be mathematically regarded as a gain."

Therefore, the martial artist's brain was frozen by horror in this instant.

Yet, his martial algorithms continued to execute meticulously. The driver chip read the "fight or flight" response and instantly devised a countermeasure. Lonkoni’s mantis-like dual blades unfolded from his back, and blades popped out from within his forearms. High-frequency vibrations were transmitted from Lonkoni's body to the blades. These blades were not of high quality; they were not lab-forged and fell far short of the "phonon blade" standard, but high-frequency vibration cutting was a technology humanity had utilized in industry long before the New Era.

It was precisely because of this technology that sharp weapons had the potential to cleave steel, and swords were not rendered obsolete by clubs.

As Anthony’s legs went limp and he began to slump to the ground, Lonkoni had already charged out, his four blades spread wide, like four silver snakes biting toward the giant's right wrist. This blade technique, known as "Four Saints Test the Zen Heart," was ferocious in its path, but it was a feint. His internal engine was not operating at full power, and numerous variable-speed shafts were held in reserve, ready to change tactics the moment the situation shifted. The path woven by the four blades was topologically isomorphic to one hundred and twenty-eight other blade paths, harboring hidden changes and possessing countermeasures for one thousand and twenty-four common scenarios.

The giant merely sneered: "The spirit is scattered, and the technique remains beneath the Turing machine. You have the audacity to challenge me with this level of skill?"

Even as he spoke, the giant remained in his posture of shouldering the steel staff, merely dropping his right wrist to flick the half-staff left and right, dismantling the topology and scattering the blade paths. Lonkoni felt that the opponent’s speed and strength were both inferior to his own, but for some reason, the shadow of the staff was everywhere around him. He maneuvered his four blades, struggling to resist, yet the long staff never clashed with the edges of his blades, only repeatedly poking at the spines. Lonkoni was led by this force, barely managing to borrow the enemy's strength to redirect his own momentum.

The giant kept poking, as if spinning a top.

The steel staff never even left his shoulder.

"My turn!" Paulus, the "Main Battle Tank," roared. He sprinted with all his strength, protecting his face with his right arm, and thrust a straight punch with his left hand.

This style of fist-fighting was called "Mecha Steel Fist." Legend has it that this was the first style of boxing created by the progenitors of the martial arts and the Father of All Machines when they invented cyber-martial arts; it was also the most widely spread martial art in the world. Almost any martial artist had a way to acquire the algorithms for this technique.

However, the "Mecha Steel Fist" algorithm already included all basic martial strategy sets. A master could dismantle the wisdom of martial gaming from the underlying code of this algorithm. Over the past hundred years, there had been martial artists who used the Mecha Steel Fist to enter the finals of the Paralympic Games.

The giant remained in his staff-shouldering posture, but his lower body crouched, slightly lowering the height of his shoulder, using the other end of the steel staff to parry the punch—that steel fist weighing nearly a ton!

—Got him... No!

A strange sensation. The readings from his actuators indicated that Paulus's fist should have struck the giant. Yet, the fist simply grazed the giant's armor, sliding past. A difference of mere millimeters.

"Borrowing strength to strike," "using a pound to deflect a ton"—to describe it in emotional language, it was as if he was guiding the enemy’s attack, personally pouring "oil" onto the enemy’s "fire," making the enemy lose control of their "rhythm," and ultimately causing the attack to miss.

Of course, that was all nonsense.

Any force can be broken down into arbitrary component forces, and any number of forces acting on the same object can be viewed as a resultant force. Applying a force to a moving object changes its state of motion.

As long as the magnitude and direction of this "force" are appropriate, the trajectory of the object can be changed exactly as one expects.

As long as the magnitude and direction are correct, even a force small compared to the attack can deflect the trajectory of the attack.

This process requires no mathematics beyond calculus. A computer can perform it with ease.

As long as the sensory processor is functioning correctly and the F=ma formula is utilized, any martial artist can achieve this.

Of course, combat between martial artists is not that simple; the variation of "moves," the release and retraction of "internal energy," and even the cunning of battle all involve higher-level game theory.

Paulus had already anticipated this—this was merely a sign of entering the threshold of outer-gate martial arts. The right hand that had been protecting his face, after blocking the thrust of the steel staff, unleashed twenty-seven punches of the "Seeing All Sentient Beings" style in the blink of an eye.

In the hands of a mediocre martial artist, this move had no power. But Paulus could turn the mundane into the miraculous. He had already used this "Seeing All Sentient Beings" style to leave five thugs with deformed bodies and shattered heads.

Every thug, when killed by this move, had looked on with disbelief—they could not believe they were defeated by such a common technique.

But the giant was not that kind of thug.

The giant continued to resist while shouldering the staff, still not employing any formal moves, still using the technique of borrowing force, stirring his fist momentum as if parting grass to find a snake.

Paulus's fist struck the staff, and the force was transmitted through the staff to Lonkoni. Lonkoni’s blades resisted the staff, and due to the reaction force, the staff was bounced back, striking Paulus.

"Your intent is simply too slow," the giant said. "By the time the algorithm has prepared the move, your intent has not yet caught up. After your moves fly out, your intent is still trailing behind, slow as a tortoise—in the face of higher-dimensional gaming, your brains offer no assistance at all. With this level, you have the audacity to come out and help in a fight?"

Paulus ignored his mockery, his steel arm continuing to repeat the "Seeing All Sentient Beings" move, punching without pause. The sound of steel clashing drowned out everything else.

About two seconds... or was it three?

A certain balance was suddenly broken. Paulus slammed a fist into the end of the steel staff. The giant, Leif, did not hold onto the staff; it slid along his shoulder like a battering ram, smashing toward Lonkoni. Lonkoni knelt on his right leg, using the blade on his right shoulder to withstand the blow. In just a second, the steel arm of his right scapula could not take it and shattered with a boom. But in that moment of releasing the force, Lonkoni’s right leg sprang up, using the broken metal arm to hold the staff, changing his direction while jumping, and thus stepping on the staff with both feet, using a superior movement technique to charge at the giant’s exposed head.

Paulus also raised his fists, and the "Seeing Heaven and Earth" move was already unleashed.

—This is my way of countering!

Paulus knew that his heavy-duty prosthetic body, which focused on power, and Lonkoni’s light-duty body, which focused on agility, had vast differences in output. It was one thing for the giant to hold the staff. But until now, he had only been controlling the staff with his wrists, elbows, and shoulders, and he insisted on using the technique of borrowing force. Within a few moves, the balance at both ends of the staff would be broken.

That was the chance!

Lonkoni unleashed a move called "Double-Dealing." He had long considered the situation of losing a blade and had prepared a targeted martial art for such an eventuality. Three silver rays bit toward the giant's head sensors like vipers.

—I’m going to win!

—Pay the price for your arrogance...

Then, the giant turned his head.

The final frame in Lonkoni’s consciousness was the giant’s prosthetic eye, glowing with a blood-red light.

It was as if the time in between had been deleted. Lonkoni lost several frames of vision. When he regained perception, his whole body had jumped too high, landing in the air to the giant’s left.

The giant, holding the steel staff, remained in a "swinging" posture. Paulus had already been sent flying ten meters away.

A steel weapon weighing over a ton had been sent flying by that single swing. Leif’s posture was as casual as a golf swing.

In the instant Lonkoni lost perception, just as the staff was about to slip from his hand, the giant had flicked his wrist, gripped the end of the staff, and applied a centripetal force, turning the staff’s linear motion into circular motion, precisely swatting away Paulus’s punch.

Meanwhile, Lonkoni’s prosthetic body, as if out of control, had jumped on its own, causing his lethal strike to hit nothing but air.

—Why... *zzzt*... is...

Lonkoni fell to the ground, his mind a blank slate.