Xiang Shan nodded at the fruits of his labor and solemnly said to Youji, "Disciple, remember this. This chip may be what sets you apart from ordinary people... If—if, I mean—you and I part ways someday, and someone wants to inspect your driver chip, then you'd rather format this chip than let them catch you with it. Understand?"
Youji nodded, half-understanding. "Is it that serious?"
"If they find this, they'll immediately think that you might be someone who... voluntarily gave up protection." Xiang Shan patted Youji's head. "If one day you no longer wish to travel with me, I'll help you reset the chip too. It will be entirely your choice."
Youji asked doubtfully, "Master, does this chip hold some great secret?"
"It isn't time to tell you yet." Xiang Shan shook his head. "Only when you truly set foot upon the path of knight-errantry with me will I tell you."
Otherwise, you'll have no choice but to live the rest of your life in fear.
While Youji worked on his exercises, Xiang Shan not only finished rewriting the terminal system, but also worked overtime to prioritize the construction of a firewall.
For Cyber Inner Power, a "firewall" was what a "Dantian" was to Inner Power in wuxia novels: the origin of all internal force. And a Vagrant's degree of control over computers represented the realm of his Inner Power.
Xiang Shan could not remember what realm his Inner Power had reached in the past, but he knew it had probably not been low.
The only problem was that he currently had no chip capable of unleashing such powerful Inner Power.
"Master, did the mayor tell you anything?" Perhaps bored from sitting around, Youji started a conversation.
Xiang Shan opened his eyes and nodded. "Something might happen in about half a month?"
He had to regain at least a little fighting ability before then.
"At that time... after the welfare officer arrives?" Youji quickly figured it out and grew nervous. "The mayor doesn't mean that we might really have our protection revoked, does he?"
Xiang Shan shook his head. That was truly hard to say.
The biological parts of Youji's body trembled slightly.
"What would you want to do if that happened?" Xiang Shan asked.
Youji thought for a moment. "Master, you're a Vagrant, right?"
Xiang Shan looked at Youji. "And then?"
Because there might be surveillance, he did not answer directly.
"Then we'll go into the wilderness... You can take Mom and me with you!" There was a trace of pleading in Youji's voice. "A Vagrant would definitely know how to survive in the wilderness and avoid ordinary thugs!"
Xiang Shan considered it for a moment. "Mm, that might not be a bad idea. If I can organize the relevant knowledge within these half a month, I'll copy a set for you."
"Master?" Youji was somewhat confused.
"If you find it frightening, hiding is indeed an option." Xiang Shan nodded. "That would be a very wise decision."
"Then what about you, Master...?"
"If we just leave directly..." Xiang Shan hesitated. "I don't know why. I know that 'leaving' might be the safest choice. But my instincts tell me that if I do nothing at a time like this and simply leave, then I wouldn't be myself anymore."
Xiang Shan did not remember who he had been, nor did he remember how strong he had once been. Now, he had only a brain and the shoddiest prosthetic body. Facing an enemy of unknown strength, "running away" might have been the right choice.
But...
Martial arts were created for situations like this...
This was a technique that could reverse the balance of strength in an instant, even if only one person remained... even when facing unknown power...
That was how it had been designed at its foundation. This was a technique meant to resist the tyranny of the strong.
This was a technique meant to protect the weak.
That was what his heart told him.
Before long, Xiang Shan finished reconstructing Will's prosthetic driver chip.
He placed the chip in Youji's hand and calmly said, "Youji, help me connect this chip to my Biological Brain."
Only after installing this chip could he truly become a Vagrant again.
Become his former self again.
Youji was somewhat nervous.
Very soon, a feeling that could only be described as "divine possession" appeared within Xiang Shan.
Although Xiang Shan had always said that computers were merely tools, and that nothing computers could do had ever exceeded the scope of human capability.
Humans created tools precisely because increased efficiency itself could count as a qualitative transformation.
What Xiang Shan had spoken of—from the Turing Machine, to beyond the Turing Machine, to beyond the human brain—was a leap on another level, a process that could be called the passage from man to god.
For example, an ordinary iron shovel only dug slightly more efficiently than human hands. But when that gain in efficiency acted upon civilization, it almost divided civilizations into distinct stages—the widespread adoption of "iron farming tools" had been a bold and significant stroke in every civilization.
More importantly, shifting damage that should have been borne by human palms onto metal tools that were not part of one's body was itself a liberation of humanity.
Computers were the same. They merely replaced humans calculating with pen and paper, yet humanity shifted the burden of calculation from the "human brain" to energy—from the chemical energy produced by the human body to solar energy stored by plants hundreds of millions of years ago, to the force of water driven by planetary gravity, to the power released by stellar fusion.
Calculations a computer completed in one second might take a human using pen and paper a day, a month, or even a year.
That was the power of tools.
After implanting Will's driver chip, Xiang Shan's work efficiency finally improved.
He could construct more detailed blueprints in his mind and store them directly within the chip. He could expend electricity and call upon computing resources to calculate more detailed parameters.
Over the following days, Xiang Shan explained the meaning behind his recent actions to his disciple while reconstructing his prosthetic body.
His time was tight. He had to finish his new prosthetic body before the welfare officer made his announcement.
On the third day, he instructed Youji to deliver a set of parameters to the mayor.
Then, on the fifth day, the mayor sent over some things.
Among them was an outer armor shell. Its exterior closely resembled a natural human torso. It was about an inch thick and weighed over a hundred pounds. There was also a layer of supporting framework. These supports could hold up the outer armor so it would not hinder his movements.
This kind of outer armor was not commonly used by martial artists. It greatly restricted torso movement. But Xiang Shan still had no functional spine, so his torso could not move to begin with. The power components taken from the canine prosthetic body were enough to bear the burden of such outer armor. That was why he had chosen this design.
Two brand-new alloy leg bones were delivered along with it.
What needed to be reconstructed next was the topology of the artificial muscles.
These artificial muscles naturally did not resemble muscle groups in their natural state. Naturally evolved body structures contained far too many irrationalities that amounted to "good enough." For instance, the extremely haphazard neural networks of Cambrian Period creatures were often radially symmetrical or even asymmetrical, vastly different from the obediently bilateral neural networks of modern animals, which had been brutally disciplined by natural selection.
Beginning in the early stages of biological evolution, this had severely limited the intellectual development of most species.
The ancestors of vertebrates had once, due to competition for ecological niches, degraded the nervous systems inherited from their more ancient ancestors during the Cambrian Explosion, leaving behind only one great nerve in the tail. Then, as the ecological environment changed, when those creatures with only a single main nerve sought to occupy other niches, that nerve evolved into an entirely new nervous system capable of adapting to an axially symmetrical structure.
That was the "spine."
But such stories of "breaking before rebuilding" were exceedingly rare in evolutionary history. Most of the time, biological evolution followed the trend that once something had degenerated, it would not evolve again.
Of course, a species would not lightly lose any function. If a trait did not prevent an individual from surviving until "the age of having children," it would not be eliminated—simply put, evolution could never help humanity defeat the diseases of old age, because old-age diseases did not affect reproduction. Under natural conditions, organisms could scarcely live to old age.
Thus, a great number of "evolutionary remnants" that were actually useless but harmless during youth—or rather, "historical leftovers"—accumulated within living bodies.
Perhaps when the environment changed once more, they could serve again as the "fault tolerance" of biological evolution.
This was also a relatively reasonable "strategy" under the premise of "not knowing what the future might bring."
But artificial prosthetic bodies were not designed to deal with "an unknown future." They were designed for "a specific purpose."
From the perspective of efficiency, having artificial prosthetic bodies completely imitate natural bodies burdened with countless redundancies was very foolish.
The muscles of this canine prosthetic body were easier to exert force with than natural muscles, and they were more compatible with the new variants of the Bionic Fist Technique.
But this was not the martial arts Xiang Shan knew.
He wanted to use these existing muscle fibers, connect them to discharge devices and the new leg bones, design the way the muscle fibers linked together, and create a prosthetic body suited to himself.
"Nothing difficult about it," Xiang Shan told himself. "It's just a problem in topological geometry, that's all."
All right, he had to admit it—this was actually the hardest part.
It involved the placement and routing of millions of artificial muscle fibers, discharge devices, and circuits.
And after completing the calculations, he still faced other challenges.
Lacking professional maintenance equipment, he and his disciple could only piece everything together by hand.
The one fortunate thing was that those artificial muscle fibers were replaceable in the first place. During high-intensity movement, these artificial muscle fibers might overheat, age, and snap. And artificial creations did not possess self-repair capabilities. They needed to be replaced.
All the muscle fibers came in only three standardized specifications.
As long as the ends of these muscle fibers were brought close to the discharge devices, those devices could release electromagnetic force and connect the fiber ends to the correct circuits.
It truly was an excellent design.
At the very least, Xiang Shan felt that such convenient designs had not been so common in the era he knew.
Very soon, the two legs gradually took shape.
During the process, Xiang Shan also rebuilt the framework of his body. Without a spine as a central axis, he needed to use more space to lay down control circuits. He also had to consider the body's heat dissipation.
But no matter what, he installed both the heat engine and battery taken from Will into his chest.
At the same time, Xiang Shan did not waste the remaining parts from Will's body. He gradually replaced the aged components in his prosthetic hands and further optimized them.
That said, the upper limit of these hands' precision is far too low.
These hands really were antiques. They had probably not even been new when Youji's grandmother used them.
No amount of patching and repairing could turn these things into prosthetic hands suitable for combat.
I need to find a better pair of prosthetic hands somehow.
Xiang Shan added that item to his schedule. While Xiang Shan worked day and night to build himself a new prosthetic body, Scrapheap Town was not idle either.
On the third day after the mayor spoke with Xiang Shan, Enoch returned with one wheel limping along. With nowhere to replace his blown tire, he had practically crawled back bit by bit.
Naturally, this caused a tremendous uproar.
According to Enoch, unknown thugs had approached him and questioned him about "Shan" and a "martial artist prosthetic body." During that encounter, Vili had also been killed by the thugs.
"It was that prosthetic body!" Enoch swore fervently. "It's because he didn't sell that prosthetic body... We might've been targeted!"
"What kind of nonsense is that, Enoch?" The mayor merely berated him. "If not for Shan, we might not have been able to pay even a single tax!"
"If he hadn't meddled, maybe there wouldn't have been any trouble to begin with." Someone in the crowd spoke timidly.
"Nonsense!" The mayor drew his ancestral automatic rifle and fired into the sky. "Is this the time to be talking about that?"
Most humans did not deliberately pursue high modification rates. Cyberized people with low modification rates could still be severely injured by gunfire, or even bleed to death. Even a heavy machine like Enoch could die if his Biological Brain was hit head-on.
However, many martial artists had experience confronting firearms directly—among Outer-School Martial Arts, there was also the Gunfire Way, which specifically emphasized the use of thermal weapons. Martial artists had to account for situations where they faced thermal weapons head-on.
That was why the mayor had not considered personally fighting Will Grand Dog to the death at the time. The reaction speed and survivability granted by cybernetic prosthetics could contend with conventional thermal weapons.
No, Cyber Martial Arts for countering thermal weapons came first. Only afterward came Cyber Martial Arts for using thermal weapons.
"Now is not the time for this!" the mayor shouted. "We need to find a way to save ourselves!"
Although lords were obligated to kill thugs who harmed protected people, they possessed broad discretion regarding when to kill them.
Therefore, when a lord believed that the cost of killing a thug greatly exceeded the benefit, he would stop pursuing that thug.
The same applied to bounty hunters.
And it also applied to the thugs themselves.
If a settlement that had temporarily had its protection revoked possessed strong enough defenses, the thugs might not attack it either.
Now, they had to organize a self-defense force.
"They're only after one martial artist prosthetic body. They can't be a very powerful thug organization!" the mayor declared loudly. "Large thug organizations have plenty of powerful martial artists too! One prosthetic body isn't enough to draw them here, so as long as we stand together, we have a chance to get through this!"