The man felt a vibration in his lower leg. He knew the dog had clamped onto his leg. But he was not worried in the slightest.
When he had driven that heavy elbow down just now, he remembered something else—something very important.
—All Outer School Techniques followed the principles of Newtonian Mechanics.
Human technology was still far from capable of making humanoid prosthetics move at sublight speeds, let alone creating subatomic machinery, so there was no need to consider anything Einstein or Bohr had said.
An object at rest remained at rest, and an object in uniform linear motion remained in uniform linear motion, unless acted upon by a force or a net force.
When an object was acted upon by a net external force, it accelerated. The direction of acceleration was the same as that of the net force; its magnitude was directly proportional to the net force and inversely proportional to the object's inertial mass.
For every action, there was an equal and opposite reaction. The force and reaction force between two objects lay along the same line, were equal in magnitude, and opposite in direction.
In his battle with the dog, the man gradually recalled the strategy sets commonly used in the Bionic Fist Technique. He knew the dog's highest-priority move at this point would be to roll over and bite its opponent's leg, which was why he took another step forward.
He used solid metal rods for leg bones and had none of the pain nerves of a natural human. He was not afraid of being bitten, nor would pain cause his muscles to seize up and keep him from exerting force.
When he had struck the dog with his elbow, the man had already used his prosthetic eye to calculate its speed. Then, using the formula F=ma, he made a rough estimate of its mass. From the changes in its posture during that strike, he had also calculated its center of gravity.
Several possible configurations for the dog's prosthetic body even surfaced in his mind.
The dog was light as well. He outweighed it by far. Judging from its density, it could not possibly contain a power reactor fueled by heavy-element fission.
Since the dog's weight and output were limited, it was doomed to be unable to disrupt the man's balance in such a short time.
So the man let the dog take that bite.
The dog sensed something was wrong and tried to let go. But the prepared man immediately drew his legs together, and his two calves—two steel pillars—clamped down on the dog's mouth and chest. He raised his right hand and drove a punch downward.
The dog's bionic skin formed what looked like a mocking expression. Its paw pressed precisely onto the man's wrist. With a crack, the man's wrist was badly deformed.
—It had actually added extra weights to the ends of its claws to increase the lethality of its strikes?
The man was both shocked and enraged. This had already strayed from the original purpose of the Bionic Fist Technique.
Using a weak prosthetic body, even giving up arming oneself, facing powerful enemies in a frail form—the fist of a brave warrior... the fist of a brave warrior! It was not meant to be used like this!
The dog tried to use its claws to attack the hydraulic system in his legs. The man released his hold on it. The dog immediately rolled over and sprang at his chest.
—Stop! Stop!
—Using it like this... you are insulting the heroic spirits of righteous warriors!
The man felt as though his brain matter were boiling. His cheap chip was about to burn up, and so was his soul.
He could not suppress the memories surging forth.
When he came back to himself, he had already sent the dog flying with a punch.
But the dog was still completely unharmed. It even had its ill-fitting "skullcap" clenched in its mouth.
The man's empty cranial cavity was exposed.
Ya Ningping narrowed his eyes and quietly asked the secretary, [Is this man a Vagrant?]
That string of attacks and defenses from the man had already put him on alert.
[But his movements cannot be classified as any kind of fist technique. He fights like a complete amateur.] The secretary analyzed, [And there is only a single driver chip inside his skull—he cannot cultivate any internal martial arts. A Vagrant would never allow himself to fall to the point of losing his Inner Power. The moment they lose their Inner Power, they choose death.]
[But his augmentation rate is truly very high. Other than his brain, everything is prosthetic—though the prosthetics are junk.]
[Perhaps he is simply a martial artist who only trained in the Outer School and never had a path to access internal martial arts.] The secretary guessed. [Perhaps he was defeated in battle and lost all his Martial Arts Algorithms and experience convolutions. But his talent is terrifying. He seems to be making predictions purely with his Biological Brain... How does he do it?]
Ya Ningping nodded. It was understandable. The Dyson Principles forbade directly killing humans; anyone who did so was considered to have lost "protection." But conversely, as long as one did not damage the Biological Brain, anything was permissible.
That man had clearly lost his original storage units, yet his brain-computer barrier remained intact.
"A conflict between martial artists." Thinking that, Ya Ningping lost interest in digging any deeper.
So-called martial artists were all such lowly beings. They had no access to the path of internal martial arts. No matter how well they mastered Outer School Techniques, they were no more than half-puppets.
Instead, he had become more interested in the man still fighting.
Now, the battle between the man and the dog had reached its most critical moment. The dog was sent flying again. It adjusted its posture in midair, landed with all four paws spread wide, then tensed its limbs and lowered its body.
"This stance..."
A thunderclap went off in the man's mind. He recalled more information: the foundational design of the Bionic Fist Technique's Beast Mimic Way, the process by which this martial art had been developed...
Before consciousness could begin to think, the algorithm had already captured the judgment surging through his nerves.
The man fell backward as though his waist had snapped.
—Again...
The dog bared its teeth in anger. For some reason, it had felt since earlier that this man with scrap prosthetics could somehow predict its attacks and plan his movements a second in advance. This guy was clearly slower than it was, but...
Before the thought had fully formed, a black shadow was already there.
It was the man's right leg.
The man had fallen backward in advance, creating a strange mechanical balance between his body and leg.
In the blink of an eye, a structure like an industrial machine's mounting bracket sprang from the man's left calf and braced against the ground.
—All force obeyed Newtonian Mechanics... A single force could be broken down into countless component forces... Through structure, such component forces could be transferred to the earth...
The bracket provided stable support. The ball joint at the man's hip twisted, and the hydraulic transmission loaded with force released in an instant.
Boom!
For the first time, the dog experienced what it felt like to be blasted by an industrial prosthetic body.
The bracket scraped against the ground with a shrill explosive screech. Even as the man sent the dog flying with that kick, he only turned halfway around. The kick finally landed on the shock baton. He kicked it into the air and caught it in his hand.
As the man drew back his leg, the bracket snapped apart with a crack. But he did not care. It had already fulfilled its purpose.
The townspeople let out regretful sighs.
As the dust settled, the dog had landed right at the edge of the circle.
The man had been just short of victory.
And only one minute had passed.
"Heh... Hahahahaha!" An angry laugh came from inside the dog. There was not a trace of relief in it; it merely told everyone nearby that its owner was furious. The dog's mouth opened one hundred and eighty degrees... No, following the curve of its mouth, its entire skull opened.
Behind that dog's face, there was another human face hidden inside.
A wave of nausea rose in him.
If the man had still possessed a digestive tract, he would have vomited.
This was no longer merely "desecrating the heroic spirits of righteous warriors." It was trampling the dignity that made humans human into the dirt.
The man was certain that the Bionic Fist Technique agents of his era would never have done anything so disgusting. They had merely placed their brains in the abdominal cavities of animal-shaped prosthetics, using the senses naturally possessed by those prosthetic bodies.
Why keep that face? Was it to remind others that this dog had once been human, but had now abandoned its dignity, making it more valuable than an ordinary dog?
The face inside the dog's mouth glared angrily at the battered prosthetic body before it. "Country bumpkin, you've got some skill. Give me your name!"
—Name... Name...
Another spark burst through his burning nerves. Right, his name. The name he had used when fighting side by side with righteous warriors and heroes...
How could he have forgotten it? How could he wear the name of his enemy...
"Shan." The man spoke the true name he had just remembered.
The Shan of Xiang Shan.
The Xiang Shan of Xiang Shan Nan Yue.
"Shan, is it? Consider it an honor. I, Will Grand Dog, will remember the humiliation you gave me and treat you as a martial artist. My next move will destroy your battery first, then tear off your left arm, followed by your right. Then come the ball joints in your legs..."
As the dog spoke, the skin along the rear of its body slowly bulged and opened, revealing two symmetrical air intakes and exhaust ports on either side.
Its Biological Brain and power mechanism were too close together. Protein denaturation at high temperatures would be fatal to it as well. To unleash the true power of its prosthetic body, it had to shed its disguise and activate its cooling system.
As the dog described his intentions, an image of a Bionic Fist master demonstrating appeared in Xiang Shan's mind. He held a shock baton in an intact prosthetic hand and met his enemy in the stance of swordsmanship.
—The reflexes of a Biological Brain can hardly keep up with the movements of modern prosthetics. So at times like this, trust your judgment, trust the memories in your mind, trust the remaining... "martial soul" of your past self!
"Whoosh—"
The black shadow reached him in an instant. Xiang Shan raised the shock baton. But unexpectedly, he did not choose to block in front of his battery. His prosthetic body was ultimately made of scrap; it could not withstand the dedicated prosthetics of a martial artist head-on.
The claw broke through Xiang Shan's guard and struck the battery.
A small explosion.
In that instant, Xiang Shan felt the energy in his internal circuits rapidly draining... draining...
Uncontrollable memories flowed out once more. And this time, memory and reality seemed to overlap.
A hand... a gigantic hand, carrying magnetically confined plasma, tore open "his" chest and ripped out the stellarator...
Back then...
The shock baton in Xiang Shan's hand thrust straight upward.
Will's jaws bit down on the forearm of Shan's left arm.
Then the shock baton was driven in through the air intake.
In an instant, electric light engulfed them both.