The scene before him was like a fuse, igniting the man's memories and awakening knowledge he had long forgotten.
At some point in the past...
The only thing certain was that, in that era, animals had been very common.
Sometimes, agents used animal prosthetic bodies to infiltrate enemy camps and enter areas humans could not reach to gather intelligence. Such animal prosthetics required a great deal of space for camouflage and could hardly carry weapons.
But under certain circumstances, those agents had to rely on such bodies to fight their way out and deliver the intelligence back.
When that happened, the only thing they could rely on was the "Bionic Fist Technique."
A burst of static came from the man's vocalizer. Youji asked worriedly, "Yawg, what's... Ah!"
Youji let out a scream. He saw a flash of blue blood.
With a single move, the dog tore open the worker's throat. An artery ruptured, and blood sprayed out. The brain was deprived of oxygen. The worker's body spasmed grotesquely before collapsing to the ground.
When the boom rang out, the secretary stopped the countdown.
Five seconds.
And that was only because the dog had been playing with the worker. It had climbed onto the worker's shoulder. The worker wanted to pound the dog with his arm, but he was afraid of damaging his own prosthetic body, so he hesitated and did not dare strike. Meanwhile, the dog leisurely paced back and forth on his shoulder before finally tearing open his throat.
"Treat him." Ya Ningping waved a hand. Only then did the mayor dare rush over with a doctor and a first-aid kit. They plastered the wound with hemostatic gel, then inserted a breathing tube. Immediately afterward, the doctor injected a bag of milky-white artificial blood.
If he still had tear ducts, the mayor would surely have cried. The worker's condition was not too severe. Artificial tracheae and blood vessels were cheap; at most, his modification rate would rise again. The worst possibility was damage to his Biological Brain. But for manual labor, damage to the Biological Brain was not entirely unacceptable.
But a worker could only last five seconds...
Then all the workers here... together with all the townspeople, might not even last five minutes.
As for heavy machinery? Heavy machinery could not enter that circle at all. Besides, the mayor suspected that the other side might have means to deal with heavy machinery as well.
But...
The taxes had to be paid.
The mayor gritted his teeth and gave the order. "Next, Dursley! You go!"
"No... bzzz... can't... bzzz..."
The cheap vocalizer could not simulate complex emotions. Turmoil churned in the man's mind. He wanted to say something, but he had no idea how to put it into words.
They could not win.
That dog looked like a dog, but there had to be a human brain inside its abdomen—this was a martial artist. He was proficient in the Bionic Fist Technique: Beast Mimic Way—a martial art tempered through countless trials.
Or rather... it was a set of offensive and defensive strategies using prosthetics, tested through innumerable experiments.
The workers' prosthetics had great output, but they were industrial prosthetics. They did not pursue precision or speed; even changing direction was difficult for them.
They could not win...
"What are you trying to say, Yawg?" Youji was deeply worried. He had never seen Yawg like this.
The man did not know what was happening to him either. Along with the fear, an immense sorrow surged forth...
No, it drowned him.
No... this isn't right.
This isn't the Bionic Fist Technique... this isn't the Beast Mimic Way...
Five seconds later, the second worker, Dursley, also had his throat torn open by the dog's jaws.
That was right. The dog was doing it on purpose. He deliberately kept every kill within five seconds.
"Treat him." Ya Ningping waved his hand, and a genuinely pleased smile finally appeared on his face.
Even if he had lost his father's favor, he was still a "great master" who stood above tens of thousands!
The third worker stepped forward as well. This time, the dog even began showing off. He ran circles around the worker for three seconds, then leaped onto his back and crushed his cervical vertebrae with one bite.
The mayor let out a mournful cry. This worker was finished. A metal-based spine was a natural neural signal transmission device, one of the few organs that could remain in the human body after modification. It was expensive, and even replacements were costly.
Then came the fourth person.
A kind of rage burned in the man's mind.
This isn't the true Bionic Fist Technique...
The true Bionic Fist Technique is rooted in running, in striking once and leaving immediately...
The Bionic Fist Technique's strategy set never included "counterattack" or "killing the enemy." The agents' purpose was only to deliver intelligence.
This is a martial art for the weak to resist the strong.
This is a martial art for using weak prosthetic bodies to confront overwhelming armaments for the greater good!
No, no, no, no, no, no...
It was more than that!
What was martial arts?
Martial arts... martial arts were Cao Mo's bloodshed within five paces, Zhuan Zhu's single strike with the Fish-Intestine Sword, Nie Zheng's thrust that sent a white rainbow through the sun!
Martial arts were the feeble resistance cast by a weak individual against tyranny.
True martial arts were not meant to brutalize the weak.
When the fourth worker fell, the man stood up.
He was not the only one. Several other townspeople stood as well. Everyone was worried about the workers' safety.
The man took a step forward. Youji grabbed him. What little reason he had left also told him this was wrong. His prosthetic body had been assembled from junk; it had no combat capability at all... or so it should have been...
But why...
All his loneliness and fear were gradually set ablaze by anger.
Thud!
A dull impact rang out. Lacking tactile sensation, the man only realized someone had shoved him when his body lurched forward. The push had been incredibly forceful, dragging Youji down with him.
The man was thrown out of the crowd as well.
He had been standing too far forward.
"Yawg? You..." The mayor looked uncertain. He could tell that this Yawg had been pushed out by someone. He had originally intended to send Yawg back. But at the same time, he hesitated. Essentially, Yawg was an outsider. If they sent him up, perhaps he could at least use up one second...
Twenty seconds had already passed...
"Oh? There's actually another brave man? Huh? What kind of prosthetic body is this?" Ya Ningping's eyes widened, his face breaking into a smile. "Wonderful! You, then! Hahaha! This really is... the first time in my life I've seen a prosthetic body like this! It has such artistic flair. I like this prosthetic body very much."
The man knew he had been pushed out.
Someone wanted him dead.
But unexpectedly, when he truly faced the threat of death, the fear in his heart vanished, and the blazing anger vanished as well.
Only an unfamiliar yet familiar emotion remained in his consciousness, as though the flames of anger had burned away the fear and finally revealed the thought hidden beneath it.
He wanted to fight.
He wanted to fight!
Martial arts were techniques created to resist tyranny. He had once faced an even more hopeless disparity in strength...
The enemy before him was nothing.
His true enemy had been far more terrifying than this.
Just as the muscles of a natural human felt scorching hot when exerting force, certain nerves in the man's brain released blazing bioelectricity.
His brain was burning.
Fight...
Fight!
The man clenched his fists. Suddenly, he gained a trace of understanding.
For some reason, he had indeed lost all his information storage devices and most of his memories of the past. But his Biological Brain was still alive... some memories had to remain buried within it!
Time had buried his memories in his brain.
Only battle could excavate them—he was now almost certain that he must have been a thug in the past. He had spent a long life in battle.
Battle was the means that connected his present to his past.
Because no matter how much time passed, the essence of "battle" had never changed.
"I understand." A great deal of static mixed into the man's vocalizer. It was emotion that this cheap amplification device could not convey. He stepped into the circle and walked toward the stun baton lying on the ground.
Unlike the workers, whose bodies had been highly specialized for industry, his current prosthetic body was similar in size to the natural humans of the past and could use this weapon.
Three steps from the weapon.
At that moment, a smile touched Ya Ningping's lips. "Ready, begin!"
The dog instantly became a blur and lunged. He himself lacked any so-called "martial artist's honor," and even if he had possessed it, his preset algorithms would have reacted and completed the attack before he could think. The dog's jaws opened to a ninety-degree angle, ready to tear off the man's head.
Clang!
The dog bit nothing.
His jaws snapped shut beneath the man's empty ribcage. The man's current torso was basically a stick figure, with only a steel column that could barely count as a spine and no ribs. Calculating by ordinary human standards was bound to produce a slight error.
The man twisted his body, doing his best to keep the battery pack hanging from him away from the dog's claws.
The next second, the dog somersaulted through the air like a windmill, kicking hard with both hind legs at the battery pack hanging from the man's chest.
The tips of the dog's claws brushed the battery pack, but its momentum had run out. It only sent the battery pack swinging violently.
And the man knew he had already passed through the threshold of life and death.
If the battery pack fell off, the electricity generated by his biological tissue would not be enough to power the hydraulic systems in his legs.
The threat of death stimulated his brain. This feeling... this feeling...
It's exactly like before!
With a swish, the man drove his left elbow down hard. The dog had nothing to brace against in midair and was slammed to the ground.
Dust flew everywhere.
Then the man took another step toward the weapon with that slow gait.
Two steps left!
Then the dog flipped over and bit down on the man's lower leg.
Sparks flew.
Ya Ningping asked the secretary in the team channel, somewhat incredulous, "If I'm seeing this right... are his legs solid? Is there really such a crude prosthetic body?"