Chapter Thirty: Returning the Favor

"I only ask you this: in this day and age, does every invitation to join forces come with the intent to kill?"

Hearing these words, Leif Selet couldn't help but sigh: "Looks like we’ve reached an impasse!"

Xiang Shan’s words were the standard line of a martial artist of the Jianghu. Since he had said them out loud, it meant there was no way he would be returning with them.

Leif kept his staff slung over his shoulder. The difference was that he now held the staff vertically against one shoulder, gripping the end with both hands, his gait casual and seemingly loose.

This was the classic opening stance of the "Great Sword Style." For a master of his caliber, a "long staff" was enough to produce the effects of a "blade." To underestimate Leif's seemingly casual posture would only lead to being split in two by the descending steel staff.

The SSC-style "Three-in-One Staff" encompassed techniques for three different types of weapons. Leif’s staff had been modified, injected with a solid metal fluid composed of nanoparticles. These fluids could shift positions based on the electromagnetic field Leif generated, simulating the different weight distributions of various weapons.

In an instant, Xiang Shan calculated every attack strategy Leif might use, along with the trajectory of each. He locked his eyes on Leif, calculating a safe distance while moving backward with both hands and feet.

In terms of prosthetic output, he was undoubtedly at a disadvantage...

—The shock-absorption equipment on this prosthetic is so poor that one hit would turn my brain into mush...

At that very moment, Leif’s eyes widened.

A faint red glow. At the level of infrared, a massive stream of data transformed into electromagnetic waves, crashing into Xiang Shan’s prosthetic eyes. The formidable internal energy (neigong) of Jing Bao-Kui was attached to these waves, waiting only for the eyes to decode them before driving straight in to destroy the enemy’s drive chip.

—Got him!

In this instant, the thought flashed through the minds of both Leif and Jing Bao-Kui.

Then, Jing Bao-Kui froze.

He felt nothing.

A martial artist's internal energy was not just code. To control it in the blink of an eye, martial artists mapped these codes to concrete sensations. Every master of internal energy could describe the flow of their power through tangible feelings.

It wasn't a feeling of "hitting something and being blocked"—that was the sensation one got when hitting a standard firewall. But this guy on the other side was completely different.

He didn't even feel the existence of a firewall... he didn't even feel anything that could be executed.

If the upload data recorded by his chip hadn't been undeniable, he would have thought he hadn't attacked at all.

But the guy on the other side clearly had prosthetic eyes... Even if he knew internal energy and had a firewall, he shouldn't be completely devoid of sensation...

—Is it possible that top-tier internal energy can truly be hidden this perfectly?

In that split second of contemplation, Jing Bao-Kui suddenly felt something. An extra bit of data had entered his body through the connection with Leif... For a brief moment, the downloaded data suddenly increased by several megabytes.

Xiang Shan, however, felt a sense of confusion, an indescribable feeling washing over him. A piece of foreign code bypassed his compilation. Without knowing how, as if by instinct, he reconstructed the code his prosthetic eyes had just downloaded, re-encapsulated it, and sent it back.

It was as if this move had been practiced until it became an instinct...

Something he refused to forget, even after forgetting his own identity.

Like mud pulled up with a radish, more memories were awakened in its wake.

—Hey, brother, how about I teach you three moves?

—Ah... wait, these three moves?

—Think they're weak? Let me tell you, Xiang Shan, if you master these three moves, unless the enemy's hacking level is half of mine, you won't suffer a loss against anyone.

—I mean, where am I supposed to find an enemy with half your skill? In my hands, these three moves can't really unleash their true power, right?

—Heh heh, you’ll never need to unleash their true power in your whole life! They are "Dragon-Slaying Techniques" after all... In that case, let's call them the "Three Dragon-Slaying Moves!"

The "Three Dragon-Slaying Moves" included "Sweeping One's Own House," a method for quickly scanning one's own software for abnormal data; "The Way of the Other," which involved not executing foreign code but instead confusing, encapsulating, and sending back suspicious data; and "Vanishing Footprints," a method for erasing one's own intrusion traces.

These three moves were neither law nor Dao. To that god-like programmer, they were merely trivial tricks. Practicing them wouldn't allow one to glimpse the essence of the Dao of programming. No matter how refined the skill, there was a limit, whereas the Dao of programming tended toward the infinite within the finite.

But within these three "skills" lay a wisdom that transcended technique and approached the Dao.

Xiang Shan had memorized the three moves through countless bouts of internal energy combat—even after dying once, he still remembered the feeling.

He didn't remember how many times he had done something similar. He only knew that after his re-encapsulation, that piece of code became invisible, untouchable, and inoperable to its author.

Unless the opponent's internal energy was even higher than his own.

Leif felt something was off. In that instant, he noticed something wrong with his field of view.

He had lost several frames of footage.

No one saw that in the moment of defense, Xiang Shan’s pupils dilated, projecting several completely different QR codes onto the surface of Leif’s prosthetic eyes in the infrared frequency band. These codes not only caused Leif to lose frames but also triggered several old backdoors that had existed for over two hundred years, hidden in the common knowledge of contemporary people.

Protections designed for ordinary "eyewitnessing" were shattered before this higher-level technique.

The malicious code originally sent by Jing Bao-Kui was shoved back after the defenses were blown wide open.

Subsequently, this internal energy circulated within Leif’s chip, transformed again, and sent itself into Jing Bao-Kui’s body.

This was the manifestation of Jing Bao-Kui’s emotional abnormality. But Leif didn't know why Jing Bao-Kui had fallen into such a state.

Leif: [Jing Bao-Kui? What the hell are you doing?]

It took several seconds for Jing Bao-Kui to reply. In reality, it was only after realizing his computing resources were being continuously drained that Jing Bao-Kui realized what the opponent had done.

Jing Bao-Kui: [The opponent is a master. End the fight as quickly as possible.]

Leif was confused: [Why? (#confused)]

Jing Bao-Kui was furious: [That's my command! He injected my command into our prosthetics, do you understand? We're going to end up like that swordsman from before! Understand! You idiot!]

Leif: [Your command? Make it stop!]

[The guy on the other side is a master! A master! I can't undo it! I can't!] Jing Bao-Kui raged: [I can only use my internal energy to protect our most critical martial arts processes and ensure computing resources aren't wasted! But even so, you only have a quarter of an hour! After fifteen minutes, the drive chip will start to degrade due to the high temperature. Three minutes later, the chip will burn out! We’ll be finished! Our only way out is to smash this bastard into pieces within this quarter-hour, then use the last bit of time to flee to a place these townspeople can't find, and wait for the boss to rescue us!]

"I thought you were the master!" Leif roared, gripping the steel staff with both hands. Shifting from the Great Sword opening to a long staff stance, he lunged with a "pounce-step staff strike," grinding his feet into the ground, his left leg fully crouched and his right leg extended to lower his center of gravity. The steel staff, carrying the crushing force of his prosthetic, slammed toward Xiang Shan.

It was like the blade of a guillotine falling.

By the time Xiang Shan broke free from his memories, his legs had already carried him past Leif’s waist.

Xiang Shan had been too focused on his memories, losing the initiative. He hadn't yet recalled his true internal energy. If he were in his prime, Leif and Jing Bao-Kui would have been implanted with various "parasites" while they were talking.

Before landing, Xiang Shan adjusted his center of gravity, pressed his palms against the ground, and kicked off the air with his left leg, twisting his body in mid-air to face Leif on all fours.

Leif rotated his upper body, his left hand twisting inward and his right hand outward, executing a "horse-turning spear" strike that followed like a shadow. His target was Xiang Shan’s head.

Even for humans of the old era, one could break a person’s ribs without a spearhead. Even without one, the kinetic energy of this strike was real. If hit, his fragile biological brain would be shattered instantly.

Xiang Shan had no sense of touch, but he could still feel the air shockwaves hitting his metal skull. He slammed his hands against the ground, pushing himself backward. Leif twisted his wrists, the steel staff spinning violently as it whistled through the air for a second assault.

Xiang Shan sprang off the ground with his legs, retreating a second time. By now, the momentum of the staff was spent. Xiang Shan reached out with both hands to grab the staff, intending to use the weapon against his enemy.

Then, the world flipped.

Leif hoisted Xiang Shan into the air with the staff, grinding his feet and exerting force through his legs. A violent surge of power erupted from the staff.

—Damn...

Xiang Shan realized he had made an error in judgment. He rarely challenged heavy prosthetics with a light one; he was more used to fighting at the same level. Heavy prosthetics had far more output than light ones, and the mass of a light prosthetic was simply too small. No matter how powerful the martial arts, the mass of the prosthetic wouldn't increase out of thin air.

For prosthetics of the same class, "stepping on the opponent’s weapon" could indeed establish control. But it was impossible for a light prosthetic against a heavy one.

In his complete state, he wouldn't have made such a mistake. But he had forgotten this.

Xiang Shan couldn't let go in mid-air. Force is reciprocal. Without a vector thruster, he couldn't generate leverage in the air. Suspended in mid-air, a martial artist struggles to control their center of gravity or construct a stance.

And for a cyber-martial artist, gravity was simply too slow. Before Xiang Shan could land, his enemy would have time to leisurely unleash a hundred-hit combo. Xiang Shan would only be unable to organize an effective defense because his stance was broken.

Leif used all his power to smash the staff, along with Xiang Shan, into the ground.

With a thunderous "boom," dust billowed into the air. Cracks expanded across the ground as if from an explosion.

There was no cliché "no damage because of smoke" theorem here. Leif had already swung the staff, using the wind pressure to clear the dust.

Xiang Shan lay on a rooftop, his body still low. He supported himself with only his left hand, his right arm tucked behind his back. During the impact, to offset the kinetic energy, Xiang Shan had repeatedly slapped the ground with his hands and feet to bounce up, then used his feet to hook the eaves, landing on the roof.

In this sequence of operations, his right arm had taken the impact and seemed to have malfunctioned.

Cyber-humans don't fear being crippled, but Xiang Shan feared his arm would suddenly fail in the heat of battle, causing him to lose his center of gravity. So, he simply gave up on using that arm.

Leif raised the staff over his head, smashing it down like a madman. The air screamed, trying to escape the path of the steel staff, but the speed of the staff had already surpassed the limit that air could reach in a fluid state. Air molecules behind collided with those in front. Layer upon layer, the resulting shockwave was nearly as sharp as a blade.

Before the staff even landed, the shockwave had already left marks on the building materials!