Defeat That Lasted a Century

Sparks flew.

This high-energy stun baton truly deserved to be military-grade. The electrical sparks it discharged were visible to the naked eye.

If a natural human had been wielding this stun baton, they might even have risked being hit by the current themselves while attacking an enemy—the baton's range was simply too short, while the current still retained tremendous power after breaking through the air or traveling across the ground.

Only an electric shock of this magnitude could inflict effective damage on a cyborg.

Will's claws had already landed on Xiang Shan's "torso." The exploding air forced them apart. But in that brief instant, the powerful current still tore through Xiang Shan's nerves at the speed of light.

Pain.

The organ of thought trembled, neurons seeming to convulse in great swaths beneath the electric shock.

Xiang Shan collapsed onto the ground.

—This was...

The sensation of the battery separating from his body, the feeling of life hanging by a thread, and his present pain stirred even more memories within him.

He recalled the sight of 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 issue the right commands. He, a man, simply lay on the ground, his body trembling.

But he no longer held a weapon.

At the same time, the dog named Will also lay on the ground. The stun baton was embedded in the air intake on the left side of his body. Xiang Shan had driven it in deeply enough. When Will fell from midair, the baton had not come free from that 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 to keep counting down. This piece of trash did not look capable of breaking free from the electric shock on his own.

[Did you figure out his style?]

The secretary replied, [Even at the brink of life and death, he showed no sign of any formed martial arts technique. It doesn't seem to be an act. His external martial arts talent may simply be quite good.]

Ya Ningping felt dopamine being synthesized in his brain on its own. This was a rare occurrence. Sometimes, Ya Ningping had to use auxiliary programs to stimulate his brain into producing such chemicals. He was somewhat pleasantly surprised by this result.

There was no need to keep time.

Ya Ningping walked into the circle traced by bullets and headed toward the country bumpkin named "Xiang Shan."

"Hey, citizen..." Ya Ningping addressed "Xiang Shan." But Xiang Shan looked extremely strange. His entire body trembled, his vocalizer generating a kind of white noise.

Xiang Shan's eyes kept opening and closing. Something felt very wrong with his eyes. It was not a bug in his prosthetic eyes. Long ago, he had become accustomed to venting the sorrow in his heart through "crying." But now, he could not cry—he had no tear glands, and his vocalizer could not comprehend such complex emotion or synthesize such complex speech.

Without tears, his eyes always felt somehow wrong.

And that was not all. He even felt pain throughout his entire body. It was phantom pain. This body had no tactile 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 if only then could he feel his "heart" beating.

As if only then could he feel that he was alive again!

Though he understood that this was merely a bad habit from his days as an old-era human, 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 wished he could smash his own eyes to pieces.

Xiang Shan roared 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 duel" in human history?

He still could not recall every detail of the past. But all the absurdities of this world might be connected to it.

How many years did I sleep? How did the world develop after I lost consciousness?

Does 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 know what Xiang Shan truly meant. He did not know Xiang Shan was referring to another battle from who knew how many years ago. He only thought this country bumpkin had been scared stupid, hurriedly surrendering in terror.

Looking like this... was he really once a martial artist?

Ya Ningping shook his head and swallowed the words of recruitment he had already prepared.

Whether as a subordinate or as a temporal lobe, this guy was unqualified.

At that moment, more than half of his excitement faded.

The young master turned and walked toward Will Grand Dog. He pulled the stun baton from the dog's body. The dog had already gone into shock from the electric shock. The chip in his brain was forcibly rebooting, while the prosthetic body attempted to awaken the biological brain.

But in the next second, Ya Ningping thrust the stun baton down with all his strength.

The baton pierced through the dog's chest. Silver-gray fluid splattered everywhere.

That was where Will's biological brain was located.

"Shameless dog." Ya Ningping shook off the stun baton, then tossed it to the secretary. "Take eighteen infants as this round's genetic tax."

"Eighteen..." The mayor still wanted to argue. But Ya Ningping glared at him. "Keep talking, and I won't even take these eighteen!"

The soldiers silently stepped forward and checked the newborns' weights 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 infants, then boarded the ground-effect aircraft again.

Dust billowed into the air.

The mayor fell into fresh worry. The genetic tax had not been paid in full, and who knew what the lords were thinking. But one thing was certain: the town might be facing a crisis.

Before long, something else caught the mayor's attention.

The dog's corpse.

Ya Ningping had not taken Will Grand Dog's corpse with him.

That was a professional-grade prosthetic body for a martial artist!

The mayor swallowed.

At that moment, perhaps because his overheated chip had finally cooled, Xiang Shan fumbled for the battery on the ground, connected it back into his body, and stood up. He hoisted the dog's corpse onto his shoulder and, with his back to everyone, walked step by step into town. His hydraulically driven legs could not run at all. Since the beginning, he had been forced to fight Will Grand Dog through prediction.

If he had a body capable of bringing out his full 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 the spoils all to himself?"

To most people, Xiang Shan seemed to have relied on luck, twisting his body to evade attacks before finally breaking down in fear. Xiang Shan had not been faster than the dog, and he was only weaker in strength. In truth, apart from Will himself, only martial artists deeply familiar with external martial arts could see Xiang Shan's "prediction."

In the public's eyes, Xiang Shan had not won.

A slight commotion rose from the crowd. How valuable was a professional martial artist-type prosthetic body? They did not know the exact amount, but they could imagine it would drive people mad.

But the mayor suddenly roared, "You idiots! Stop right there! Idiots! Morons!"

Scrapheap Town quickly emerged from the tax collection turmoil and entered a festive mood.

Well... it was a little strange to put it that way, but the town truly treated tax day as a holiday. One tax officer was responsible for a vast region containing many towns. On tax day, the officer's route depended entirely on his own mood. For that very reason, the town's residents could not work on tax day and could only line up to welcome the tax officer.

After all, there were not many days in a year when everyone got a full 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 heart's 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 storehouse.

Although this year's tax collection had not gone smoothly, and the result could not exactly be called satisfactory... the lord had accepted the tax, at least!

And the process had been so thrilling. It gave them plenty to talk about! At the very least, it was far more interesting than the usual happenings.

As for the fact that they had collected one less than the assigned quota... that was the mayor's problem. No matter how much they worried about it, it would not help, would it?

They might as well inject themselves with some ethanol and opioids!

Before long, someone began bragging that the man named "Yawg" was truly extraordinary, and that he himself had possessed the discerning eye to recognize the man's ability at a glance.

Naturally, some people were jealous of "Yawg" for obtaining an entire martial artist prosthetic body. In their eyes, "Yawg" was surely about to become rich.

Others sourly claimed that "Yawg" had merely picked up an advantage. The workers before him had greatly drained the dog's energy, allowing "Yawg" to succeed. The dog's prosthetic body belonged to everyone and should be sold so the money could be divided among them.

But the first group said they were talking bullshit, spouting lies with their eyes wide open.

Before long, the two groups started fighting—something that happened often enough.

As long as no one was beaten to the point where they could not work, even the mayor would not stop them—after all, the town's only doctor was his nephew, and this could at least increase the income from selling parts.

Youji did not like this chaos at all. He avoided the crowd and headed toward his home.

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's not my name. Besides, this is your house. You can come in directly."