The Art of Cyborg Combat

The man felt a vibration in his calf. He knew the dog had clamped onto his leg. But he was not worried in the slightest.

During that heavy elbow strike just now, he had remembered something else—something extremely important.

All external martial arts followed the principles of Newtonian Mechanics.

Human technology was still far from capable of making humanoid prosthetics move at near-light speed, let alone creating subatomic machinery, so there was no need to consider anything Einstein or Bohr had said.

An object remained at rest or moved in a straight line at constant speed unless acted upon by a force or by a net force of zero.

When an object was subjected to a net external force, it accelerated in the same direction as that force. Its acceleration was proportional to the magnitude of the net force and inversely proportional to its inertial mass.

For every action, there was an equal and opposite reaction. The action and reaction forces between two objects lay along the same line, were equal in magnitude, and opposite in direction.

As he fought the dog, the man gradually recalled the strategy sets commonly used in the Bionic Fist Technique. He knew the dog's highest-priority tactic at this moment would be to roll over and bite its opponent's leg, so he took another step forward.

He used solid metal rods as leg bones and had none of the pain nerves of a natural human. He was not afraid of being bitten, nor would pain make his muscles seize up and leave him unable to exert force.

When he had elbowed the dog earlier, the man had already used his prosthetic eye to calculate its speed. Then, using the formula F=ma, he had roughly deduced its mass. From the changes in its posture during that strike, he had also calculated its center of gravity.

Several possible internal prosthetic structures for the dog even surfaced in his mind.

The dog was very light as well. The man weighed far more than it did. Judging by density, there could not possibly be a heavy-element fission reactor inside its body providing energy.

Since the dog's weight and power output were limited, it was destined to be unable to disrupt the man's balance in a short span of time.

So the man let the dog take that bite.

The dog sensed that something was wrong and tried to let go. But the prepared man immediately drew his legs together. His two calves—two steel pillars—clamped the dog's mouth and chest. He raised his right hand and drove a punch downward.

The dog's bionic skin formed something like a mocking expression. Its paw pressed precisely against the man's wrist. With a crack, his wrist was severely deformed.

It actually added extra weights to the ends of its claws to increase the destructive power of its swipes?

The man was both shocked and enraged. This had already strayed from the original purpose of the Bionic Fist Technique.

To use weak prosthetics, even abandon armoring oneself, and face powerful enemies in a weak form—such was the fist of a brave man... the fist of a brave man! It was not meant to be used like this!

The dog tried to attack the hydraulic system in his legs with its claws. The man released his hold on it. The dog immediately rolled over and leaped toward his chest.

Stop! Stop!

You... using it this way is nothing but an insult to the spirits of the righteous!

The man felt as though his brain matter were boiling. His cheap chip was about to burn, 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 held its ill-fitting "skullcap" in its mouth.

The man's empty cranial cavity was exposed.

Ya Ningping narrowed his eyes and quietly asked his secretary, [Is that man a knight?]

The man's chain of attacks and defenses had already put him on guard.

[But his movements cannot be classified as any kind of martial art. He moves like a complete amateur.] The secretary analyzed, [And there is only one driving chip inside his skull—he cannot practice any internal martial arts. A knight would never allow himself to fall to the point of losing his inner power. The moment they lose it, they choose death.]

[But his modification rate is indeed extremely high. Other than his brain, everything is prosthetic—though those prosthetics are junk.]

[Perhaps he is simply a martial artist who only practices external arts and has no path to access internal martial arts.] The secretary guessed, [Perhaps he was defeated in battle and lost all his martial algorithms and experiential convolutions. But his talent is truly terrifying. He seems to be making predictions using only his biological brain... How does he do it?]

Ya Ningping nodded. This was understandable. The Dyson Principles forbade directly killing humans; anyone who did so was considered to have lost "protection." But conversely, as long as the biological brain was not destroyed, anything could be done.

That man had clearly lost his original storage devices, yet his brain-computer barrier remained intact.

"A conflict between martial artists." Thinking this, Ya Ningping lost interest in investigating further.

So-called martial artists were all such lowly beings. They had no access to the paths of internal martial arts. No matter how well they trained their external techniques, they were only half puppets.

Now he was more interested in the man still fighting.

The battle between the man and the dog had reached its most critical moment. The dog was thrown away by the man once again. In midair, it adjusted its posture, landed on all fours, then tensed its limbs and lowered its body.

"This stance..."

A thunderclap flashed through the man's mind. He recalled more information: the underlying design of the Bionic Fist Technique's Beast Mimic Way, the process through which this martial art had been developed...

Before his consciousness began to think, the algorithm had already caught the judgment surging through his nerves.

The man fell backward as though his waist had been severed.

Again...

The dog bared its teeth in anger. For some reason, it had felt since earlier that this man using scrap prosthetics seemed able to predict its attacks, planning his movements a second in advance. This guy was obviously slower than it was, but...

Before the thought could finish, a black shadow had already appeared.

It was the man's right leg.

The man had fallen backward in advance, causing his body and leg to form a strange mechanical balance.

In a flash, a structure resembling an industrial machine's mounting bracket sprang out from the man's left calf and braced itself against the ground.

All forces conform to Newtonian Mechanics... A force can be broken down into countless component forces... Through structure, those component forces can be transferred into 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.

The bracket scraped against the ground with an ear-piercing burst of noise. When the man sent the dog flying with that kick, he had still turned only half a circle. The kick's final landing point was the stun baton. He kicked it up and caught it in his hand.

As the man withdrew his leg, the bracket snapped apart with a crack. But he did not care. It had already fulfilled its purpose.

The villagers let out disappointed sighs.

The dust settled. The dog had actually landed at the edge of the circle.

The man had been just a little short of winning.

Only one minute had passed.

"Heh... Hahahahaha!" An irritated laugh came from inside the dog. There was not the slightest hint of relief in that laughter. It merely told everyone that its owner was angry. The dog's mouth opened to one hundred and eighty degrees... No, its entire skull split open along the curve of its mouth.

Behind that dog's face was another human face.

Nausea.

If the man still had a digestive tract, he would have vomited.

This was no longer merely "desecrating the heroic souls of the righteous."

It was trampling the dignity of humanity itself into the dirt.

The man was certain that the Bionic Fist Technique agents of his era would never do anything so disgusting. They merely placed their brains in the abdominal cavities of beast-form prosthetics, using the prosthetics' own senses.

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 before it. "Country bumpkin, you've got some skill. Give me your name!"

My name... My name...

Another spark erupted amid his burning nerves. Yes, his name. The name he had used when he fought alongside the righteous and heroes...

How could he forget 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 Is Hard to Cross."

"Shan, is it? Consider yourself honored. I, Will Grand Dog, will remember the humiliation you gave me and treat you as a martial artist. My next move will first destroy your battery, then tear off your left hand, followed by your right hand. After that, your legs' ball joints..."

As the dog spoke, the skin along the rear of its body slowly bulged and opened. Two symmetrical air intakes and exhaust ports appeared on either side of its body.

Its biological brain was too close to its power mechanism. Protein denaturation under high heat was just as lethal to it. To unleash the true power of its prosthetic body, it had to shed its disguise and activate its cooling system.

As the dog spoke, a demonstration by a Bionic Fist Technique master surfaced in Xiang Shan's mind. He gripped a stun baton with an intact prosthetic hand and faced his enemy in a swordsmanship stance.

The reflexes of a biological brain are very difficult to keep up with the movements of modern prosthetics. So at times like this, trust your judgment, trust the memories in your mind, trust the "martial soul" left behind by your past self...

"Hah—"

The black shadow reached him in an instant. Xiang Shan raised the stun baton. But unexpectedly, he did not choose to block in front of his battery. His prosthetic body was made of junk, after all; it could not withstand the frontal assault of a martial artist's specialized prosthetics.

The claws broke through Xiang Shan's stance and struck the battery.

A small explosion.

At that instant, Xiang Shan felt the energy in his internal circuits rapidly dwindling... dwindling...

Uncontrollable memories flooded out once more. This time, memory and reality seemed to overlap.

A hand... a massive hand, carrying magnetically confined plasma, tore open "his" chest and pulled out the stellarator...

Back then...

The stun baton in Xiang Shan's hand thrust straight upward.

Will's jaws clamped down on Shan's left arm.

Then the stun baton was driven through the air intake.

In an instant, electricity engulfed them both.