"I'm terribly sorry," Doctor Schultz said apologetically as he helped Xiang Shan replace his arm with a brand-new prosthetic. "I'm truly sorry. My uncle, at the time... he didn't mean it that way. Naturally, we're all deeply grateful to you, Vagrant, but..."
"I understand." Xiang Shan gestured with his newly installed right hand, signaling Doctor Schultz not to continue. This hand had originally belonged to Blademan Longconi. Its specifications vastly surpassed the junk prosthetic Xiang Shan had used before. Its palm also contained an electromagnetic system that could interact with a sword hilt forged from magnetic materials, allowing for sword techniques a flesh-and-blood hand could never perform.
Only after receiving an explanation did he understand what had happened to those townspeople.
They could not bear to witness the sight of a Biological Brain being directly destroyed. To them, merely seeing such a crime was enough to trigger a stress response.
Directly destroying a Biological Brain violated the Dyson Principles. Anyone who broke that taboo would lose Civilization Protection and every human right available in this era. In a sense, it was indeed a punishment more terrifying than the death penalty. Even death-row prisoners retained basic human rights, ensuring that they would not suffer punishments beyond the death penalty itself, such as abuse.
But an individual who had lost Civilization Protection could be subjected to anything.
At the same time, everyone in this era believed that the Father of All Machines watched every individual equally.
Put in nonreligious terms, it meant that "there was a supreme dictator capable of monitoring everyone through any person's visual prosthetics or surveillance systems."
Longkoni had already been attacking Xiang Shan when Xiang Shan destroyed his Biological Brain. Xiang Shan might have acted within the boundaries of "not breaking the taboo."
But most townspeople lacked the ability to distinguish that in the heat of the moment. Even if they could understand it afterward through reflection and others' explanations, they had still felt intense fear at the time of the incident.
Indeed, whether this counted as "breaking the taboo" depended entirely on the mood of the local adjudicator.
Incidents that fell into this territory between "taboo-breaking" and "not taboo-breaking" could provoke intense fear in everyone. They were terribly afraid of being watched and punished by the Father of All Machines.
It did not merely "look like mass hysteria." It was this era's unique form of mass hysteria—Fear of Authority.
"No specific statutes, no case law to cite or supplement them. Rules that appeared utterly free actually indulged the rights and power of tyrants..." Xiang Shan lowered his head in thought. "What the hell are the Dyson Principles?"
He had already learned of the so-called Dyson Principles from Will Grand Dog's memories.
It could be said that the Dyson Principles were this era's only laws, even its only morality. There were only six clauses. One of them was even a "Clause Zero" that stipulated no substantive content, and each clause had only a handful of annotations. In this era, any act that did not violate the Dyson Principles was regarded as "permitted."
Clause Zero: All individuals who have not explicitly refused to abide by the Dyson Principles, and who have not explicitly committed acts violating the Principles, are presumed to abide by the Dyson Principles and accept Civilization Protection. The Dyson Principles are the sole universal principles of human civilization. Any act that does not violate the Dyson Principles shall be permitted.
Clause One: All humans are obligated to maintain human genetic diversity. Refusal to fulfill this obligation will automatically result in the loss of Civilization Protection.
Clause Two: Harming another person's Biological Brain is prohibited.
Clause Three: Manufacturing, using, or selling addictive drugs is prohibited.
Clause Four: Private property exists and is protected.
Clause Five: Organizations may be formed only in the form of one individual declaring allegiance to another individual.
Those were the only six clauses.
"It sounds like something extreme liberals and anarchists would love. Especially that last clause... Is it meant to prevent a 'collective' with its own will, such as a government, from emerging? People with those political leanings..."
An image abruptly surfaced in Xiang Shan's mind... barbarians with faces like savages. Such people might not necessarily believe in doomsday rumors like "2012." But for some inexplicable reason, they worried about every kind of catastrophe. Rather than living good lives, they voluntarily abandoned the conveniences brought by modern civilization and insisted on building survival shelters. They generally distrusted others, preferred forming small groups, and were obsessed with talking about "survival."
To them, that was the expression of "free will."
At that thought, Xiang Shan felt as though a piece of his memories was missing. He seemed to remember... a time of wilderness survival... a green rainforest... and...
His memories truly were far too incomplete. Even when he found a clue, he could not recall everything.
So-called "lords" were likewise forbidden from possessing armies. Those who appeared to have highly uniform prosthetic bodies were, nominally, free groups willing to follow the lord as an individual and employed by the lord as an individual. The officials under a lord were not a systematic civil service either, but merely the lord's personal assistants. Nominally, a lord did not even have the authority to issue orders to the populace. He merely provided "Civilization Protection," and was someone who morally "ought to eliminate bandits"—though whether the bandits should be eliminated at all was also entirely the lord's own freedom.
—An order that existed in name only.
That was Xiang Shan's view of this era.
Apart from the personnel related to the Human Gene Bank, which had arisen from Clause One of the Dyson Principles, there was nothing in this era that could truly be called "order." Everything had regressed to...
The feudal age? The age of slavery?
No, it was different. The imprint of modern technology had already been left upon human civilization and profoundly shaped this era. The tyrants of this age possessed technologies ancient despots never had. Thus, even this chaotic, "free" tyranny could bind every person.
The strong had the freedom to trample the weak at will. The weak, in theory, also had the freedom to resist, but physical limitations prevented them from exercising that right.
This era appeared free, but some people were undoubtedly freer than others.
"Perhaps that is precisely why the light of Vagrants has not been extinguished from this earth..." Xiang Shan thought.
Unfortunately, Will's memories of the Vagrants ended there.
It was strange, really. Ordinarily, a person who had lost all their memories would almost certainly have their personality affected by rashly absorbing someone else's memories. Yet Xiang Shan now found that Will's memories had had almost no influence on his personality. His way of thinking differed in no way from the records. It seemed that the memories Xiang Shan had forgotten were far more vast than he had imagined, so vast that...
He had no idea just how vast.
He must have been a man with quite a story.
That only made Xiang Shan more interested in memory storage devices. He now had several more of them in his possession. Some came from the giant named Leif, while others came from Paulus and Longkoni. Anthony's memory storage device had vanished. Someone had probably picked it up.
The townspeople recognized Xiang Shan's spoils as "Xiang Shan's private property." They did not dare touch them, so they collected everything and delivered it to him. But Anthony had been beaten to death by Leif, so someone had gotten greedy.
Xiang Shan could not be bothered to pursue the matter. Apparently, Paulus, Longkoni, and Anthony had been close and visited each other often. A large portion of their understanding of the world probably overlapped. None of those three had been particularly skilled in martial arts, and Anthony had been a Gunfire Way martial artist. Xiang Shan felt that he probably knew Gunfire Way martial arts as well, but he did not know how to handle firearms, so he had little interest in Anthony's Martial Arts Algorithm.
The only thing Xiang Shan found regrettable was that the memory storage device of the mysterious enemy who had appeared at the end had been completely burned, making recovery impossible.
He was undoubtedly one of Leif's people, but Xiang Shan had no idea what he had come for.
Additionally, those people's prosthetic bodies now belonged to Xiang Shan as well.
...I need to absorb those memories sometime too... At the very least, I need to find out what the hell Greenwood Road is...
"...Vagrant? Vagrant?" Doctor Schultz's call interrupted Xiang Shan's thoughts.
"What is it?" Xiang Shan asked.
"Your left hand has been installed," Doctor Schultz said carefully.
Xiang Shan jumped down from the operating table and examined his arms. They had originally belonged to that blademan. Their sleek silver casings resembled works of art, completely at odds with the crudely made external armor on his body. But there was no denying that they were a fine pair of hands. The organic combination of classical power transmission and artificial muscle fibers made them incomparably nimble.
Xiang Shan experimentally swung them in a few circles. An explosive roar rolled across Doctor Schultz's auditory system.
Doctor Schultz trembled as he looked at Xiang Shan. Xiang Shan was a full foot shorter than when he had visited Schultz's home half a month ago. His legs had been replaced with artificial muscle structures and reverse joints. In this state, Xiang Shan's legs were constantly "storing force," allowing him to exert power at any time and instantly accelerate into supersonic speeds. Furthermore, after shifting his center of gravity this way, Xiang Shan could more easily pitch himself forward and fight while lying prone on the ground.
His external armor was still the one forged in the village. It was covered in scars and probably would not withstand another battle of equal intensity.
His head, torso, arms, and legs all seemed to come from different eras and different price ranges.
Xiang Shan muttered to himself, "If I'd had these hands this morning, I wouldn't have needed to sacrifice a prosthetic arm to borrow leverage..."
"Oh, right, Vagrant, there's one more thing..." Schultz said cautiously. "Enoch, who betrayed us, has escaped, but his drinking buddies did not have time to flee. We captured them all. And there is something else my uncle believes you need to know..."