Bionic Fist Technique

Bionic Fist Technique.

The sight before him was like a fuse, detonating the man's memories and stirring 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, making them difficult to equip with weapons.

But under certain circumstances, these 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 voice box. Youji sounded worried. "Yawg, what's... Ah!"

Youji let out a scream. He saw blue blood spray into the air.

With just one move, the dog tore open the worker's throat. The artery ruptured, and blood gushed out. The brain lost its oxygen supply. The worker's body spasmed grotesquely before collapsing to the ground.

When the rumbling sound rang out, the secretary stopped the countdown.

Five seconds.

And that was only because the dog had been toying with the worker. It ran 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. He hesitated, unable to bring himself to strike, while the dog calmly 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 smeared hemostatic gel over the wound, inserted a breathing tube, and then the doctor injected a vial of milky-white artificial blood.

If he still had tear glands, the mayor would surely have cried. The worker's condition was not too severe. Artificial windpipes and blood vessels were cheap; at most, his modification rate would increase again. The worst possibility was damage to his biological brain. But for manual labor, even brain damage was not unacceptable.

But a worker could only last five seconds...

Then all the workers here... along with every townsman, 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 methods for dealing with heavy machinery as well.

But...

The taxes had to be paid.

The mayor gritted his teeth and gave the order. "Next one, Dursley! You go!"

"No... bzzz... can't... bzzz..."

The cheap voice box could not simulate complex emotions. Thoughts churned inside the man's brain. 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 abdominal cavity—this was a martial artist. It 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 prosthetic bodies, tested through innumerable experiments.

The workers' prosthetic bodies were powerful, but they were industrial prosthetics. They did not pursue precision or speed, and 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 himself did not know what was happening to him. Along with 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. It deliberately kept every kill within five seconds.

"Treat him." Ya Ningping waved his hand, and at last, a genuinely delighted smile appeared on his face.

Even if he had lost his father's favor, he was still a grand lord who stood above tens of thousands!

The third worker stepped forward. This time, the dog even began showing off. It circled 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 inside the human body after modification. It was expensive, and even replacements cost a fortune.

Then came the fourth person.

Some kind of rage burned within the man's mind.

This is not the true Bionic Fist Technique...

The true Bionic Fist Technique is founded on running, on 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 martial arts for the weak to fight the strong.

This is martial arts that lets weak prosthetic bodies face overwhelming armaments for a greater cause!

No, no, no, no, no...

There was more than that!

What was martial arts?

Martial arts... martial arts were Cao Mo's blood spilled in five steps, Zhuan Zhu's Fish-Intestine Sword strike, Nie Zheng's thrust that pierced the sun with a white rainbow!

Martial arts were the faint resistance of weak individuals cast 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 for the workers' safety.

The man took a step forward. Youji grabbed him. What little reason he had left was telling him this was wrong. His prosthetic body had been pieced together from scrap. It did not possess any combat ability... or so it should have been...

But why...

All his loneliness and fear were gradually kindled by rage.

Thud!

A dull impact rang out. Lacking a sense of touch, the man only realized someone had shoved him when his body lurched forward. The push had been incredibly strong, dragging Youji down with him.

And the man was thrown out of the crowd.

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 wanted to send Yawg back. But at the same time, he hesitated. At heart, Yawg was an outsider. If he went up, perhaps he could buy them another second...

Twenty seconds had already passed...

"Oh? There's actually another brave soul? Huh? What kind of prosthetic body is this?" Ya Ningping's eyes widened, his face breaking into a grin. "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 body very much."

The man knew he had been shoved.

Someone wanted him dead.

But unexpectedly, when he truly faced the threat of death, the fear in his heart vanished, as did the blazing rage.

Only one strange yet familiar emotion remained in his consciousness, as though rage had burned away fear and finally revealed the thoughts fear had concealed.

He wanted to fight.

He wanted to fight!

Martial arts were techniques created to resist autocracy. He had once faced enemies with an even more overwhelming disparity in strength...

The enemy before him was nothing.

His true enemy had been far more terrifying than this.

Just as a natural human's exerting muscles would feel scorching hot during movement, certain nerves in the man's brain released blazing bioelectricity.

His brain was burning.

Fight...

Fight!

The man clenched his fists. Suddenly, he reached a sliver of understanding.

For some reason, he had indeed lost all his information storage devices, along with 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 dig those memories out—he was now almost certain that he had been a thug in the past. He had spent a long life fighting.

Battle was the means connecting his present to his past.

Because no matter how much time had passed, the essence of "battle" had never changed.

"I understand." A great deal of static mixed into the man's voice box. They were emotions that this cheap amplification device could not convey. He walked into the circle, then headed toward the stun baton lying on the ground.

Unlike the workers' highly industrial-specialized bodies, his current prosthetic body was similar in size to the natural humans of the past. He could use that weapon.

Three steps from the weapon.

At that moment, Ya Ningping smiled. "Ready, begin!"

The dog instantly became a blur and pounced. It lacked any so-called "martial artist's dignity," and even if it had possessed such a thing, its preset algorithms would have reacted before it could think, completing the attack. The dog opened its jaws to a ninety-degree angle, about to tear off the man's head.

Clang!

The dog bit empty air.

Its 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 be called a spine and no ribs. Judging him by an ordinary person's proportions inevitably led to some errors.

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 flipped through the air like a windmill, its hind legs kicking hard at the battery pack hanging from the man's chest.

The tips of the dog's claws barely brushed the battery pack, but its strength was spent. It only made the battery sway violently.

And the man knew that he had just passed between life and death.

If the battery pack fell off, the electricity generated by his biological tissue would not be enough to power the hydraulic mechanisms in his legs.

The threat of death stimulated his brain. This feeling... this feeling...

It's exactly the same as before!

With a sharp swish, the man drove his left elbow downward. With no leverage in midair, the dog was smashed to the ground by the blow.

Dust flew everywhere.

Then, with that same sluggish gait, the man took another step toward the weapon.

Two steps left!

Then the dog rolled over and bit down on the man's lower leg.

Sparks flew.

Ya Ningping asked the secretary over the team channel in disbelief, "If I'm seeing this right... are his legs solid? Is there really such a crude prosthetic body?"