Sparks of electricity flew.
This high-energy shock baton truly deserved to be military-grade. The electrical sparks it emitted were visible to the naked eye.
If a natural human had been wielding this shock baton, they might even have suffered backlash from the current while attacking an enemy—the weapon's range was simply too short, and even after the current broke through the air or traveled through the ground, it still retained tremendous power.
Only an electric shock like this could effectively harm a cyborg.
Will's claws had already been resting on Shan's "torso." The explosive burst of air forced the two apart. But in that brief instant, the powerful current still tore through Shan's nerves at the speed of light.
Pain.
The organ of thought trembled, neurons seeming to shudder in great waves beneath the electrical shock.
Xiang Shan fell to the ground.
—This was...
The sensation of his battery leaving his body, the feeling of teetering on the edge of life and death, and the pain now coursing through him stirred more memories.
He recalled fists and palms colliding. He recalled the pain of being wounded.
He recalled... recalled...
—"Xiang Shan Nan Yue"... that title... I...
—I once...
He seemed to remember something.
Overwhelming emotion crushed Xiang Shan's thoughts. His mind was so chaotic that his brain could not even send the right commands. He lay there on the ground, his body trembling.
But he no longer had a weapon in hand.
At the same time, the dog named Will also collapsed. The shock baton was embedded in the air intake on the left side of his body. Shan had driven it in deeply enough that when Will fell from midair, the baton did not come free from the canine prosthetic body. It continued discharging electricity, overwriting the neural signals in Will's spine.
Ya Ningping looked up at the projection.
Only one minute and five seconds had passed. In theory, Will Grand Dog still had three minutes and fifty-five seconds to defeat this country bumpkin.
But he felt there was no need for a countdown anymore. This piece of trash did not look capable of breaking free from the electric shock on his own.
[Did you see through his style?]
The secretary replied, [Even with life and death on the line, he showed no trace of any developed martial art. It does not appear to be an act. Perhaps he has a talent for External Power.]
Ya Ningping felt dopamine being synthesized in his brain on its own. That was a rare occurrence. Sometimes, Ya Ningping needed auxiliary programs to stimulate his brain into producing such chemicals. He was rather pleasantly surprised by this result.
There was no need to keep time.
Ya Ningping stepped into the circle marked out by bullets and walked toward the country bumpkin named "Shan."
"Hey, citizen..." Ya Ningping addressed "Shan." But Shan looked extremely strange. His entire body trembled, while his vocalizer synthesized some sort of white noise.
Xiang Shan's eyes opened and closed repeatedly. Something felt wrong with his eyes. It was not a bug in his prosthetic eyes. Long ago, he had grown accustomed to venting the grief in his heart by "crying." Yet now, he could not cry—he had no tear glands, and his vocalizer could not comprehend such complicated emotions or synthesize such complicated sounds.
Without tears, his eyes always felt somehow wrong.
And it was not just that. He even felt pain throughout his entire body. It was phantom pain. This body had no sensory nerves or similar sensors at all. The flesh-and-blood body that had accompanied him into adulthood was long gone.
—Why did I come back to life...
—No, did I really come back to life?
Xiang Shan could not process such emotions. Instinctively, he raised his right hand and pounded his torso again and again.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
As though only then could he feel his "heart beating."
As though only then could he feel alive again!
Even though he knew this was merely a bad habit from his days as a human of the old era...
He had to do it.
Why had he come back to life?
Why had he awakened in such a twisted world? Why, even after forgetting his own name, did he have to bear the name of his enemy and live in this hellish world?
Because...
"I lost..."
Unable to shed tears, he wanted nothing more than to smash his eyes to pieces.
Xiang Shan howled at the person before him. "I lost... I lost! I lost! I lost! I... I lost!"
He had lost.
That must have happened many years ago, right? How many years had he slept?
Before he fell unconscious, he had lost a duel—perhaps the most important "martial artist duel" in human history?
He still had not remembered every detail of the past. But all the absurdities of this world might be related to it.
—Just how many years did I sleep? What happened to the world after I lost consciousness?
—Could this inhuman hell... have something to do with me?
Confusion, fear, anger, bewilderment.
All he could do was roar, "I lost!"
"You..." Ya Ningping did not understand what Xiang Shan truly meant. He did not know that Xiang Shan was referring to another battle from who knew how many years ago. He only assumed that this country bumpkin had been frightened senseless and was hurriedly admitting defeat.
—Like this... was he really once a martial artist?
Ya Ningping shook his head, swallowing the recruitment speech he had already prepared.
Whether as a subordinate or as a temporal lobe, this guy was unqualified.
At that, more than half of his excitement faded.
The young master turned and walked toward Will Grand Dog. He pulled the shock baton from the dog's body. The dog had already gone into shock from the electric current. The chip in his brain was forcibly rebooting, while the prosthetic body tried to awaken the Biological Brain.
But in the next second, Ya Ningping stabbed down hard with the shock baton.
The baton pierced through the dog's chest. Silver-gray slurry splattered everywhere.
That was where Will's Biological Brain was located.
"Shameless dog." Ya Ningping flicked the shock baton and tossed it to the secretary. "Take eighteen infants as this Gene Tax."
"Eighteen..." The mayor wanted to argue, but Ya Ningping glared at him. "Keep talking, and I won't take these eighteen either!"
The soldiers silently walked over and checked the newborns' weight and other vital signs. One infant seemed to have gone into shock because of the earlier noise and was eliminated. They selected the eighteen strongest babies, then boarded the ground-effect vehicle again.
Dust billowed into the air.
The mayor fell into fresh worry. The Gene Tax had not been paid in full, and who knew what the great masters were thinking. But one thing was certain: the town might be facing a crisis.
Soon, something else caught the mayor's attention.
The dog's corpse.
Ya Ningping had not taken Will Grand Dog's corpse with him.
This was a professional-grade prosthetic body for martial artists!
The mayor swallowed.
At that moment, perhaps because the overheated chip had finally cooled down, Xiang Shan felt around for the battery on the ground, connected it back to his body, and stood up. He hoisted the dog's corpse onto his shoulder, turned his back on the crowd, and walked step by step toward the town. Legs powered by hydraulic transmission simply could not run. Since the beginning, he had been forced to fight Will Grand Dog through prediction.
If he had a body capable of displaying his true strength... No, even the worst martial artist-type prosthetic body could have easily killed that pet!
A loudspeaker suddenly blared. "Hey! Didn't that guy lose? Why does he get to keep all the spoils for himself?"
To most people, Xiang Shan seemed to have relied on luck, twisting his body to evade the attacks before finally breaking down in terror. Xiang Shan was not faster than the dog, and he was only weaker in strength. In truth, apart from Will himself, only martial artists with a deep understanding of External Power could see Xiang Shan's "prediction."
In the public's eyes, Xiang Shan had not won.
A faint commotion spread through the crowd. How much was a professional martial artist-type prosthetic body worth? Nobody knew the exact figure, but they could imagine it would be enough to drive people mad.
But the mayor suddenly roared, "You idiots! Stop right there! Idiots! Morons!"
Scrapheap Town quickly emerged from the tax collection disturbance and entered a festive mood.
Well... though it sounded a little strange, the town really did treat Tax Day as a holiday. A tax officer was responsible for a vast region containing many towns. On Tax Day, the route the tax officer took depended entirely on his mood. Because of that, the town's residents could not work that day and could only line up to welcome the tax officer.
There were only a few days a year when everyone got to take the entire day off work.
The town's residents had to work every day.
So every year, after the tax officer left on Tax Day, the townspeople gathered to celebrate.
They celebrated surviving another year, then ate, drank, chatted, and relaxed to their hearts' content.
The decorations used to welcome the tax officer would not be taken down until the next day, when they would be returned to the town warehouse.
Although this year's tax collection had not gone smoothly, and the result could not exactly be called satisfactory... the great master had accepted the tax, at least!
And the whole process had been so thrilling. It gave them plenty to talk about! At the very least, it was more interesting than the usual happenings.
As for the fact that one less than the allotted quota had been collected... that was the mayor's concern. No matter how much they worried, it would not help, would it?
Better to inject themselves with some ethanol and opioids!
Before long, someone began boasting that the man called "Yawg" was truly extraordinary, and that they had possessed such sharp eyes that they had recognized his ability at a glance.
Of course, some people were jealous of "Yawg" for obtaining an entire martial artist prosthetic body. In their view, "Yawg" was definitely about to become rich.
Others sourly claimed that "Yawg" had merely picked up an easy prize. The workers before him had greatly drained the dog's energy, allowing "Yawg" to succeed. The dog's prosthetic body should belong to everyone, and it ought to be sold so the money could be divided among them.
But the first group told them to stop talking nonsense and quit lying through their teeth.
Very quickly, the two groups began fighting—something that happened often enough.
As long as they did not beat each other to the point of being unable to work, even the mayor would not stop them—after all, the town's only doctor was his nephew, so this could at least bring in some extra income from selling parts.
Youji did not like this chaos at all. He avoided the crowd and headed toward where he lived.
He knocked on his door. "Yawg, you're in there, right..."
The door opened, revealing a gleaming silver face. "Kid, don't call me that anymore. I told you, that is not my name. Besides, this is your house to begin with. You can just come in."