Chapter Thirty-Three: Hysteria, Turing

When Yulia knocked Leif over, Jingbao Kui paused.

It was truly only for a moment. He had already engaged his treads, prepared to flee, but seeing Leif’s predicament, he couldn’t help but hesitate.

And that was when Xiang Shan saw a cluster of bizarre, shifting color blocks appear in the otherwise normal scenery.

Xiang Shan had not initially detected Jingbao Kui. But by now, the latter’s drive system was on the verge of failure, and he could no longer spare the processing power to maintain his optical camouflage.

Jingbao Kui was not far from Leif to begin with.

So, Xiang Shan leaped.

A kick descended from the sky.

With a loud "clank," Jingbao Kui’s outer armor emitted a dull thud.

Although Jingbao Kui was technically a martial artist, his external martial arts were abysmal, incomparable to his internal cultivation. He had always operated in tandem with Leif or another partner, rarely engaging in close-quarters combat. Consequently, aside from his optical camouflage, his armor was nowhere near as durable as Leif’s.

Xiang Shan’s heel smashed into Jingbao Kui’s back. As the optical camouflage took the impact, the colors rippled like water. A strange figure emerged in Xiang Shan’s field of vision. The enemy’s silhouette resembled a tortoise—he was lying prone on the ground. His overall shell was rounded, devoid of limbs. In the positions where limbs would typically be, there were four relatively independent treads, all completely covered by the outer optical camouflage. Furthermore, inside the treads, there appeared to be a vacuum mechanism, designed to suck away the dust kicked up by the movement, minimizing any trace of his passage.

Xiang Shan used the momentum of the strike to pivot and land. In an instant, the armor on Jingbao Kui’s right flank opened, ejecting a row of gun barrels. To remain hidden, these weapons had been stowed beneath the optical camouflage.

The moment the armor opened, Xiang Shan twisted his legs to shift his center of gravity, throwing his back against the ground. A volley of bullets grazed his skull, missing their mark. Instead of rising, Xiang Shan braced his back against the ground and kicked upward with both legs.

It was just one "kick," a single movement, yet millions of artificial muscle fibers and tens of thousands of discharge units worked in perfect synchronization. Countless electrons raced through high-conductivity materials at the speed of light, carrying energy, triggering the discharge units and the artificial muscle fibers.

The force rippled from component to component. Power surged through his cybernetic body, colliding and stacking through countless parts.

True force, fully unleashed.

The durability of the gun barrels was slightly higher than that of a standard martial artist’s armor. However, the components in contact with the barrels did not possess such strength.

Amidst a roar, Jingbao Kui’s exposed weapons were instantly demolished. There were no scattered fragments, as the force of Xiang Shan’s kick shoved all the scrap metal directly into the opening of the armor.

"Alert" and "Error" notifications flooded Jingbao Kui’s vision.

Jingbao Kui roared like a wounded beast, his gears whirring as he tried to turn his body to fight Xiang Shan with his frontal weaponry. But as he turned, Xiang Shan had already darted back to Leif’s side.

The two battlefields were only twenty or thirty meters apart. To a martial artist, this distance took less than a second to cover.

By then, Leif had just managed to scramble to his feet. Seeing Xiang Shan rushing toward him, Leif assumed his final fighting stance.

He knew he had no chance of survival. And so, he used his natural face to contort into the final expression of his life.

A savage grin.

*The boss will avenge me...*

His fists crossed in a forward strike, but they failed to intercept Xiang Shan. Xiang Shan quickly bypassed Leif’s legs, used a kick to gain leverage, leaped, and after clearing Leif’s shoulder, he struck Leif’s forehead with a heavy blow from his leg, then turned in mid-air to crush the skull with a single stomp.

Only then did Jingbao Kui realize that he should not have been "fighting to the death," but "fleeing for his life."

His treads kicked up a massive cloud of dust, but Xiang Shan had already landed on him, kicking into the gap left by the destroyed weaponry.

In the distant past, on the African savannah, a type of fissiped animal called a hyena would hunt African wild buffalo. A spotted hyena typically weighs around fifty kilograms, while a wild buffalo often weighs over half a ton. Yet, even under these conditions, hyenas could successfully hunt buffalo.

Hyenas know how to extract the prey’s internal organs through the excretory orifice.

Xiang Shan dealt with Jingbao Kui just like a hyena hunting a buffalo.

One leg drove straight into the area where the armor had failed, bypassing the impenetrable main structure to strike directly at the most vulnerable electronic components.

Jingbao Kui didn’t even make it a hundred meters before he completely lost power.

His inertia carried him into a nearby building.

It seemed that the fuel inside Jingbao Kui had leaked and caught fire. With a "pop," a meter-high flame erupted. Xiang Shan was instinctively startled at first, but immediately realized that he now possessed no sense of pain on his body’s surface, and this small fire would cause no significant damage to his mechanical frame.

Still, Xiang Shan jumped away. His cybernetic body already struggled with heat dissipation, and standing in a high-temperature environment would still affect his combat efficiency.

There was one last martial artist on the field, the one wielding the blades.

Seeing Xiang Shan rushing toward him, Lonkoni froze. He remained in a daze. His biological brain could not yet process so many events. Why was that giant so strong? Why had Paulus joined the thugs? Why had that giant suddenly demanded Paulus join the attack? Why had that invincible giant died? Why had Paulus died as well? And who was this enemy that had suddenly jumped out?

"Hahahaha... I don't understand at all!" Lonkoni shrieked. "This isn't real! It's an illusion! I must be trapped in an immersive experience... Hahahaha! This experience is too realistic! Hahahaha! This new game!"

The three remaining blades slashed toward Xiang Shan in a cross pattern, blooming like a silver flower.

"All flash, no substance."

The thought flashed through Xiang Shan’s mind as his legs unleashed a chain of strikes, continuously kicking the opponent’s head, chest, and arms.

Then, he delivered a trio of kicks with true force, slamming into Lonkoni’s chest.

The first strike loosened two screws; the second loosened two more. The third hit the center of the armor plate with massive force. The vibration transmitted through the plate, popping the screws out.

A piece of armor plate flew into the air.

*What is this? This experience is so unrealistic. No martial artist can do things like this, hahahahaha...*

Then came the strike that destroyed the internal structure.

Lonkoni’s hands hung limply, with only a single blade behind his back still struggling to resist.

The next kick knocked away the single-handed blade and collided with Lonkoni’s neck.

This was repeated several times. More screws popped out.

The mayor suddenly held his breath. He realized what Xiang Shan was about to do. The old man let out a massive scream: "No! Don't kill..."

But Xiang Shan had already kicked that unprotected head into pieces.

Fear.

A certain terror, born from the depths of the heart, overwhelmed the mayor. Not just him, but the other townspeople as well.

Xiang Shan looked at the magical scene around him in confusion, completely unaware of what had happened. He had merely killed an enemy, but for some reason, all the residents were acting as if they were suffering from a PTSD episode, trapped in a bizarre state.

"Why would you do this... You killed him! You killed him! You shouldn't have..."

The mayor rushed over, seemingly wanting to say something. But halfway there, he collapsed. His drive system’s built-in balance mechanism helped stabilize his body, and he swayed back and forth without falling to the ground.

But...

He still had no idea what had actually occurred.

Xiang Shan looked around in bewilderment, completely failing to understand why. In his conception, after a hero killed an enemy, the ordinary people around might cheer, or they might fearfully demand the hero leave quickly to avoid implicating them—both scenarios were common in novels, and he should have encountered them himself.

But this behavior, like a collective hysteria... what on earth was going on?

Jingbao Kui had reached the final moment of his life. His drive chip had been on the verge of failure due to overheating, and now, trapped in a sea of flames, there was no possibility of survival.

He could no longer control his body.

As death approached, he instead forgot his fear, leaving only peace in his heart.

That he would die here was entirely natural. After all, his mediocre internal cultivation, compared to the collective wisdom of humanity and the supernatural abilities held by masters, was worth nothing.

Internal cultivation, from bottom to top, can generally be divided into the Instruction Stage, Language Stage, Compilation Stage, Assembly Stage, Mechanical Stage, and the legendary Mathematical Stage.

But there were legends even above the legends.

True hackers know how to erase their traces on the web. Aside from what they want people to know, people know nothing about them. Therefore, the higher the level of an internal cultivation expert, the more hidden they are. Even those who know their names dare not call their codenames at will, for fear of triggering keyword monitoring.

For that small group of top-tier programmers, only myths and ghost stories circulated.

It is said that above the Mathematical Stage, there is another realm... perhaps it cannot be called a "realm"? Is it just a title?

That supreme figure, who appeared like a dragon showing its head but hiding its tail, was called "Turing."

Some say Turing is the codename of a top-tier internal cultivation master. Others believe Turing is a nickname that only a very few can possess. Others insist that it is a group.

Of course, some also believe it is a realm.

He didn’t understand at all how the enemy had countered his internal cultivation. But he could be certain that this method far exceeded the Language Stage he was in, and even the Compilation Stage could not have achieved this.

For some reason, he had a feeling.

This was wisdom pointing toward "Turing."

There was no reason; it was just intuition.

However, at the final moment of his life, he smiled.

"To have seen Turing... this disciple has no regrets in death..."