Guardian's Game

"Yes..."

A smile appeared on Leif's biological face beneath his steel mask. Thugs would never enter a town alone, lest someone chop them up while they were enjoying the services. Just now, his accomplice had used internal arts to infiltrate the street surveillance network and employed methods of heavenly sight and hearing to locate Enoch. Leif remembered that Enoch was connected to a piece of information he had heard today, which was why he had followed him.

"Mr. Leif entered town to gather intelligence. You know that, right? Nobody out in the wasteland dares use the net, for fear that some big shot up there might toss a God's Rod into their base." Leif's tone was very refined. "I'm gathering information for our boss. It's official business. Then, today, I heard a very interesting piece of news—you people in Scrapheap Town produced a martial artist? One who defeated the tax collector's personal warrior? I heard that damaged the tax collector's honor and made him very unhappy. You didn't even collect all the Gene Tax!"

"No! That bastard Yawg was just lucky! He..."

With a boom, Leif shot out one of Enoch's tires. Shattered metal sprang up, warping the entire wheel.

"When Mr. Leif asks you something, you answer him, dear Brother Enoch."

Enoch could not see what was happening. But his balancer issued an alarm. He knew his tire had blown. Terrified, Enoch hurriedly recounted the entire incident.

"Oh ho, so that's what happened..." Leif nodded.

Then, a heaven-shaking scream suddenly rose from the ground. "It hurts so much! Enoch! It hurts so much! What am I doing right now?!"

Enoch's engine roared. Only then did he remember that Vili had just been thrown out and was still lying on the ground. But at that moment, Leif suddenly acted, firing a shot that shattered Vili's brain.

Silver-gray slurry burst outward.

Enoch was horrified. "What are you doing?!"

"Brother Enoch, I don't want news of our conversation getting out. Understand?" Leif's tone remained cultured and polite.

"You killed Vili! You killed Vili! You murdered someone! You killed—"

Enoch forcibly cut off his voice module.

Because the gun barrel had once again aimed at the part containing his biological brain.

"Ah, ah, that's more like it!" Leif nodded in satisfaction.

Enoch asked fearfully, "Then how am I supposed to explain this..."

"Just say the thugs killed him. Hahahahaha, it's the truth!" As though he had heard a joke, Leif burst into loud laughter.

Enoch's clutch kept tightening and loosening. He began to regret provoking this thug.

"Let me tell you some good news, Brother Enoch." Leif said, "Since the Gene Tax you submitted was insufficient, the lord may announce that your town's Civilization Protection will be revoked for half a month to a month over the coming year..."

Enoch started his engine. He wanted to run.

"Of course, we're not demons. We don't plan to kill everyone in Scrapheap Town, so don't worry about that. We'll only take some supplies—and that has nothing to do with you. Think carefully. Doesn't the mayor's family have far more supplies than you do? What gives them the right to use such good things? With the relationship between us, would our organization take anything from you? Look, has Mr. Leif ever lacked anything? Have I ever asked you for your things?" The suction cup in Leif's hand casually attached itself to Enoch's hood. "I just want to know a few things—for example, what exactly that Yawg has been through. Visual records would naturally be even better!"

—Yawg...

At the thought of that name, Enoch suddenly stopped being afraid. He asked, "Yawg is one of your targets too?"

"A warrior's prosthetic body is good stuff!" Leif's tone became even warmer. "Looks like you have a grudge against that Yawg? Isn't that perfect?"

Enoch hesitated. "Yawg was rescued from the junkyard by a child—ah, right, could you not kill that child..."

A few minutes later, Leif waved his hand and watched Enoch drive away cautiously and slowly.

A line of translucent green text appeared in the center of Leif's vision.

[Did you really treat that person as a friend?]

[He's quite an interesting person. When it comes to testosterone, he's practically a poet.] Leif replied.

[What's so fun about that stuff?] Jingbao Kui did not understand. Injecting all kinds of hormones humans had long ceased to need into one's brain and stirring up those primitive emotions—what was interesting about that?

Leif: [You wouldn't understand unless you tried hormones yourself...]

[No thanks. My internal arts are still in the Language Realm. I still want to reach into the Mathematical Realm in this lifetime. I don't plan to inject anything into my brain—but speaking of which, what do you think of that Yawg, or rather, the Shan mentioned in the intelligence?]

Leif: [After losing all his Martial Arts Algorithms, he could still defeat Will Grand Dog. Not bad. If he is willing to accept the organization's memories, he might be able to serve as a team leader.]

[Will is trash. He's not his old man, Grand Dog the Mad Hound. Even someone like me, whose internal arts surpass my external techniques, could defeat him with Military Martial Way.]

Leif: [How would you fight without Martial Arts Algorithms? All right, we have basically secured the intelligence. Send a team to keep watch later, and we'll wait for the lord to make his announcement. Let's head back!]

Three kilometers away, inside a secret chamber, the secretary opened his eyes and said to Apennine beside him, "Young master, it's done."

Apennine also saw the constantly refreshing text on the flat road and nodded.

They were the backbone of civilization. In terms of internal arts, they naturally surpassed most thugs who could not even be called "knights."

The fellow with the ID Jingbao Kui had been noticed by the secretary the moment he searched for Enoch's image.

The Dyson Principles were absolute. The great Father of All Machines watched every individual equally. Even a lord could not casually violate the Dyson Principles.

That was why thugs were tolerated to a certain extent. No law forcibly dictated when a person ought to die.

Once they crossed a certain line and made the lord feel that they "should be killed," those thugs' carefree days would be over.

Humanity was free in the end.

The secretary shook his head. "Young master, I still don't quite understand. Whether you want Shan's loyalty or his brain tissue, there are better methods. Why insist on..."

"Both loyalty and brain tissue would be good, but that Xiang Shan is truly too dull. He lacks refinement." Apennine shook his head. "I did it on purpose. I want him to fight the bandits of the wasteland. I want him to temper himself. If he grows, I will take his loyalty. If he loses and dies... I will watch how he performs, then decide whether I want his brain tissue."

The more Xiang Shan worked, the more confused he became.

Who had he been before? Why did he know how to do everything?

He began directly from a bare machine, rewriting all the underlying code. At first, he still needed to think about what he was doing. But as he continued, the process became smoother and smoother. Code seemed to flow directly from the "inside" of his thoughts, without even passing through his surface consciousness.

This brain, these neural circuits, seemed to exist solely to create endless code.

It was as though he had undergone this kind of training long ago.

Even after all his memory storage devices had been taken away, he could still perform like this.

It was as though he had prepared for such a day long ago.

—Why?

If the Turing Halting Problem and the method of the Visualization Halting Problem were means of cutting through virtual reality, then it was inevitable to memorize them firmly with the biological brain. But why had he also memorized everything else with his biological brain?

Having one's memory storage devices taken away meant that the biological brain itself was left undefended, didn't it?

In that situation, the enemy could do anything at all, and he would die.

Xiang Shan only remembered losing an important battle... so why had he still survived after losing?

He could not understand it.

But the work in his hands would not stop because of that.

After recoding the terminal, he carefully backed up the contents of a driver chip into it. Then he kept the terminal, driver chip, and canine prosthetic body connected in a simple link. He continuously entered commands, testing each functional module's execution at the hardware level.

The dog's legs kept moving and retracting, making it look as though it were paddling wildly.

"Amazing." Youji watched in fascination. He had fantasized about such things before. It was said that powerful doctors could control other people's prosthetics and make them act. That gave many people an instinctive awe toward Doctor Schultz.

Now, his master could do it too!

"Master! Can you teach me this?"

Xiang Shan put down his work and asked, "Do you really want to learn?"

Youji nodded.

Xiang Shan thought about it. Programming was not actually difficult. If all one wanted was to make the simplest things, middle and high school knowledge was more or less enough. One only needed to understand the meaning of every keyword and recite them repeatedly.

Although children like Youji normally had little time for school, they still possessed the basics. According to Youji himself, every child underwent their first head modification at around the age of three, when metal proteins covered the blood-brain barrier and formed the beginnings of a brain-computer barrier. During that process, they would receive an implanted chip. That chip could provide a great deal of knowledge in mathematics, physics, and chemistry.

Xiang Shan did not know the limits of that chip. But he had tested Youji with some questions before. Judging from "functions," he probably had at least a high school level.

The most basic foundation was enough.

Learning an ordinary high-level language was far easier than learning a foreign language. For programmers from crash courses, this could not even be considered a matter of "linguistics." The rest was simply "writing sentences machines could understand." Practice was enough.

But that would not make someone a great programmer.

By today's standards, someone at only that level could not cultivate superior internal arts.

For programmers, mathematics was both useless and useful. If one merely wanted to write a program that could run, then one high-level language was probably enough, as long as one practiced repeatedly. But stronger programmers could not stop there.

"Very good, Youji. But the first lesson is extremely boring." Xiang Shan tried hard to remember.

In his memories, what had that programmer friend of his said...

—How can you decide that dragon-slaying skills are useless before you have even seen a dragon? You must become familiar with machines! Familiar with Turing Machines! Familiar with mathematics!

"Actually, humans still can't create true artificial intelligence. There is only artificial stupidity." Xiang Shan imitated the tone in his memories as he explained to his disciple. "Anything a computer can do, humans can also do after expending enormous amounts of time and resources. And anything a computer cannot do, humans can do as well..."