Greenwood Memories

This was a memory of "violence."

Though these files had already been damaged, the images themselves were full of static and noise. Even the accompanying audio had deteriorated.

Yet veins and flames, mad laughter and screams, could still be accurately recognized by a biological brain.

This was a memory of "harm."

Brawls, fistfights, armed clashes, deathmatches...

Crushing victories, great victories, decisive triumphs, easy wins, narrow victories, hard-fought wins...

Bloody battles, duels, fierce struggles, bitter fights...

And defeats, setbacks, broken halberds...

And disastrous defeats, disastrous defeats, disastrous defeats, disastrous defeats...

The kind of disastrous defeat where only one life remained.

Without a doubt, all of this was quite interesting.

And there was the killing that came with it.

In a fair duel, embedding a weapon in an enemy's skull.

Using an ambush to destroy an enemy's power structure.

Destroying an enemy's sensory prosthetics in desperate straits to complete a last-ditch counterattack.

Wearing down an enemy's energy reserves in the mud, then chopping off his head with the final blow.

Ah, of course, not just enemies. There were also those "prey."

Men, women, the elderly, children, commoners, nobles...

Trample them. Trample them. Trample them.

Those weak men could be turned into construction machinery or defensive turrets. Women could be made into high-end dolls or breeding machines. The elderly's memories could be archived in databases. Children were a little less useful, but they could still supplement the organic matter.

And also, also... destroy the property that could not be carried away. Let the crystallized labor time of humanity be insulted and denied by my hands!

Good, good, good...

Eat when hungry, sleep when tired, steal whatever you want, kill when you get impatient. What did the majesty of the "Father of All Machines" have to do with us?

This was the best of times. We were all free people.

Freedom...

—Fuck you! You call this freedom?

A massive "error" covered his vision. Xiang Shan's emotional fluctuations were too intense. The driver chip read the command and terminated the memory playback.

Xiang Shan regained his vision.

This was the garbage mountain, the resource site Recycling Station Town depended on for survival. Aside from the trash dumped here in recent years, most of the garbage dated back to the so-called Sublimation War.

This was probably the wreckage of a warship. Xiang Shan did not know which part it had been, but this enormous metal plate had indeed formed a semi-enclosed space. He did not have to worry about sand and dust falling into his "skullcap."

After all, cleaning this area was quite troublesome. No matter how advanced the era's dustproof hardware technology was, it could not completely ignore dust. Besides, for some reason, Xiang Shan had rarely seen any living creatures other than humans so far. That spared him the work of pest prevention.

If bugs got into his brain, there would really be no way to work.

Xiang Shan carefully pulled the data cable out of his head, then closed his skull. Something that was not easily secured could not be left inside his cranial cavity. If Xiang Shan fought, he would inevitably undergo drastic speed changes in a short period. That acceleration would make unsecured hardware such as data cables swing around inside his skull, ultimately damaging his biological brain.

The data cable was connected to Doctor Schultz's repair terminal. The doctor really seemed to have forgotten that he had lent out such a thing. The back of the terminal was connected to a memory storage drive.

It contained Leif's memories.

Xiang Shan wanted to press his temples. But he quickly realized that there was no living skin on his head, nor any nerve clusters or blood vessels to speak of. He simply could not relieve stress that way.

In the end, Xiang Shan shook his head.

—And this was already the result of the memory storage device being damaged.

A hard drive recorded data through magnetic reversals. Simply put, a hard drive contained countless tiny magnets. These magnetic particles reversed the direction of their poles when electric current was injected into them. Without a new electromagnetic force being applied, that direction remained fixed. To a machine, the "direction" of a magnetic pole represented a "0" or a "1."

"0" and "1" were everything to a machine.

To expand a hard drive's storage capacity, one either increased its volume or reduced the size of its magnetic particles.

Shrinking magnetic particles greatly increased density, but it also came with the side effect of making the particles more susceptible to external forces.

Injecting energy could disrupt those magnetic particles. High temperatures and kinetic energy could both accomplish that.

Xiang Shan remembered that there was even a martial art which, once it identified the location of an enemy's memory storage device, could directly inject high-frequency vibrations into it and destroy the enemy's memories—this was the principle behind the Zhou Po-Chong Fist.

Because of the command to burn out the chip, storage devices close to the chip had also been affected. In addition, Xiang Shan's attack that killed Leif had damaged these hard drives as well.

Even so, this memory still dealt Xiang Shan a tremendous shock.

Leif's memories and Will's memories were disgusting in their own different ways.

That giant man's memories did not belong to him alone. They also included those of the bandit gang he belonged to, Z Organization.

The gang's immense memories of violence were shared by everyone. These scum sincerely found joy in them.

Even if they could not at first, after so many memories had been forced into them, they should be able to.

This was how they strengthened themselves. Everyone who joined accepted these collective memories. If you had not gone mad after receiving them, then you naturally became brothers with those scum. You knew the joys and suffering of those "brothers," and you shared the taste of "violence" with one another.

And when these heroes of Greenwood Road wanted to lure knights of the Martial World Way, or even nobles who served as Civilization Protection, "up the mountain," they used this method. They implanted their collective memories into the minds of the "good men" they had their eyes on.

"No wonder they dared invite me to join..." Xiang Shan felt stifled, yet had no outlet for it.

The emotions of Greenwood Road were not under one's own control. The "emotions" within these collective memories were so intense that every thought and intention of the viewer afterward would be affected by them.

Like becoming addicted to the drug called "violence."

Yes, there were still a small number of people who could remain unaffected by those "emotions," control themselves, refuse to feel affection for those... those men whose joys and sorrows they already knew, and still slaughter every bandit in an entire mountain stronghold.

But even after doing such a thing, that person had already tasted "violence." That trace of madness was the seed of an inner demon, and it would keep growing within him.

Greenwood Road continued to grow.

Xiang Shan shook his head. He felt nothing but contempt for this kind of memory.

Violence... Violence was not etiquette, literature, or art. There was not a trace of elegance in violence, not a trace of composure or refinement. It ran contrary to gentleness, kindness, courtesy, restraint, and deference. Reclaiming through personal will the natural rights entrusted to public authority by the social contract, while disregarding moral considerations—that was violence.

A knight broke the law with martial force. Xiang Shan knew that he was a user of violence.

But violence still differed from violence.

In the distant past, Xiang Shan must have witnessed... witnessed... some form of violence... beyond the imagination of those thugs. Such memories still could not shake his convictions.

But Xiang Shan felt that he might not be able to suppress his killing intent today.

"Forget it. I shouldn't casually talk to anyone today. If a conflict breaks out, it'll be a real problem."

As the saying went, "When one carries a deadly weapon, the urge to kill naturally arises; one must be exceedingly cautious." Once someone learned powerful martial arts and acquired specialized prosthetics, he would always want to "use" them. Especially since chips operated far faster than neural signals traveled. Sometimes, before a cybernetic martial artist could think rationally, his emotions had already driven his martial arts to kill.

The human brain also bore traces left behind by evolution. Its lower-level functional regions were mostly wrapped within higher-level ones. The cerebellum enclosed the brainstem, and the cerebrum enclosed the cerebellum. The brainstem's history was only slightly shorter than that of the notochord; the cerebellum and cerebrum evolved afterward in sequence. This also gave "rational thought" less priority.

But if the "sword" was not aimed at tyrants, then Knight-errantry too would be tarnished.

Xiang Shan's martial arts had long since become as natural as breathing, but after reviewing those thugs' memories, his thoughts could not help but be stirred.

With that, Xiang Shan climbed out of the area and headed toward town.

He had passed through here every day recently, partly as a "patrol," to ensure that no more thugs came to threaten this town. He also did not dare carry out certain critical work under surveillance, so he had deliberately found this place.

On the way back to town, he unexpectedly ran into his disciple.

Youji looked quite energetic. The amount of biological tissue in his body had decreased once again, so the amount of physical food he needed each day had naturally fallen as well. In contrast, his demand for solar energy had increased. But energy was practically free to begin with. All things considered, his living expenses had dropped a little.

The moment Youji saw Xiang Shan, he ran over in a flash and grabbed Xiang Shan's hand. "Master! Great, I finally found you, I..."

"We haven't seen each other for a few days." Xiang Shan nodded. "You were injured last time. How is your recovery now?"

"I'm all better!" Youji said happily. "And while I was recovering, I learned the algorithm you taught me, Master!"

"Oh? Then I'll have to test you." Youji nodded, squatted down, and used his finger to write out several math problems on the ground. He completed the calculations quickly.

Xiang Shan nodded. "Very good. It looks like even if no one guides you in the future, you'll still have a chance to complete the beginner stage of Inner Power... Very good."

"Exactly!" Youji nodded. "I told you, I was born to be a knight! And with your guidance too, Master..."