Ye Mo stood in the center of the ruins, his palms crackling with electric arcs. He leaned against a half-collapsed support pillar, and in front of him stood rows of mechanical soldiers, their cores flashing synchronously with blue light, like a group of runners waiting for the starting gun.
He caught his breath; the Steel Bone in his right leg was still stuck, and the old injury in his left shoulder was tingling. The thunderstorm explosion had taken a toll on him; his ears were ringing, as if someone had drilled a shallow hole in his skull.
"Come on," he whispered, flicking his finger and sending a bolt of lightning three inches into the air. "Let's see if you can repair it faster, or I can strike it faster."
As soon as he finished speaking, he suddenly felt a tightness in his temples—not pain, not dizziness, but a sensation of being scanned from the inside by something, like the "Obtaining IP address" message that pops up when a phone connects to an unfamiliar Wi-Fi network.
The next second, high-frequency sound waves arrived.
It didn't come from the front, nor from above, but from the ground. An invisible Shockwave shot up through the crack in the floor tiles, hitting precisely the joint of the Steel Bone in his left arm. The metal protective layer cracked open with a "crack," flashing blue light wildly, before the system alarm could even pop up.
Immediately afterwards, a dark shadow streaked across the sky.
He barely caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye before his shoulder exploded in flames.
A miniature armor-piercing bullet pierced the air, striking him squarely in the right shoulder socket, sending him flying. His back slammed into half a concrete pillar, the steel bars piercing his hoodie, and blood spurted out. He rolled twice upon landing, coughing up a mouthful of bloody foam, his ribs feeling as if they had been sawed repeatedly.
"Damn..." He wiped his face, his palms covered in ash and blood, "A sneak attack with a combo attack? Has your AI watched any Chinese spy dramas?"
He tried to stand up, but his right arm wouldn't obey him; the electric arc flickered twice in his palm and then went out. His vision began to darken at the edges, and his ears were filled with static, like the crackling sound of an old television with no signal.
Just as my consciousness was about to fade, a voice suddenly rang in my mind:
[Critical damage detected; emergency repair protocol recommended]
"Huh?" He was taken aback. "You didn't used to speak like a human before?"
The voice didn't respond, but a surge of heat rushed up from the base of his spine, as if someone had poured a scalding Red Bull into the cracks of his bones. His muscles began to twitch, and his blood vessels twisted wildly under his skin, like countless tiny snakes rearranging their routes.
He gritted his teeth, veins bulging on his forehead, feeling as if his flesh was being torn apart, reassembled, and stitched back together. One by one, the broken ribs returned to their places, and the shattered muscle fibers Regeneration like vines. The bowl-sized hole in his right shoulder was visibly healing and scabbing over.
Eight seconds.
A full eight seconds.
He suddenly looked up, exhaling two puffs of white breath from his nostrils, looking like a muscular man who had just crawled out of a sauna.
"Holy crap..." He was startled himself, "How could this person survive?"
Even more startling was Ultron.
In the surveillance footage, the human who should have been lying on the ground not only stood up, but also dusted himself off, moved his neck, and made a crisp "crack" sound.
The data stream became instantly disordered.
[Target vital signs abnormally recovered... exceeding the preset model]
[ Regeneration rate: 0.8 seconds/cm², tissue remodeling integrity: 97.3%]
[WARNING: Unknown biological mechanism involved]
For the first time, Ultron's core program paused for 0.5 seconds—just enough time for Ye Mo to react.
"What are you looking at?" Ye Mo grinned, revealing a set of white teeth. "Stunned? Let me tell you, I have a 'leek constitution'—you can cut one crop and it grows back, a cure for all kinds of stubbornness."
After he finished speaking, he suddenly exerted force with his legs, and his whole body shot out like a cannonball. The ground was cracked in a series of places, and the remaining Steel Bone gleamed with a dark golden luster under the new tissue. His joints moved as smoothly as if they had just had a full set of engine oil changed.
Ultron immediately deployed three melee mechs to intercept, charging their shoulder cannons and launching their electromagnetic nets.
Ye Mo neither dodged nor avoided, but charged straight at the net. An electric arc exploded on his body, creating a Mars -shaped shield. The electric net turned into sparks the moment it touched him. He used the momentum to leap up, kicking over the first net, then grabbed the mechanical arm of the second net and swung it like a hammer to smash the third net. With two loud thuds, all three nets were brought to a standstill.
"Your IQs are even lower than the neighborhood security guards." He shook his hand and clapped his hands. "Don't try to hide from me with remote control; I know where you are."
He turned towards a half-collapsed office building deep within the ruins, where an abandoned signal tower stood, topped with a rusty billboard that read, " Stark Industries: The Future is Defined by You."
"Let's hide there?" He squinted. "You think I won't recognize your heartbeat just because you've changed your shell?"
Ultron didn't reply, but the surrounding mechanical soldiers all turned around, their guns pointed at him.
Ye Mo smiled.
He raised his left hand, and the arc of electricity in his palm condensed again. This time, it was no longer scattered and jumping, but compressed into a rotating ball of lightning, illuminating the entire ruins like a small sun.
"Come on," he growled, "Keep hitting me. If you can't kill me, I'll keep hitting you."
Before he could finish speaking, he suddenly dodged to the side, avoiding a beam of energy descending from the sky. It was a floating turret remotely controlled by Ultron, hidden in the clouds; that attack had nearly shaved off half of his head.
"Oh, so you've got some underhanded tricks up your sleeve?" he sneered. "Then guess if I'm afraid of pain right now?"
Instead of defending, he charged into the barrage of fire. With his arc-shaped shield and high-speed movement, he tore a path through the barrage of bullets. A mech attempted a side attack, but he punched it in the chest armor, the lightning burning along the circuit board and sending the mech tumbling into a mechanical version of a driving test.
The three mechs surrounding him froze for a moment upon seeing this—just for a moment.
Seizing the opportunity, Ye Mo leaped up and slammed his fists down, striking the head joint of one of the machines. Metal fragments flew everywhere. Before the other two could react, he had already twisted off an arm from one of them and used it as a weapon, sweeping it across and knocking the other machine to the ground. Then, he stomped on its core and shattered it.
"One, two, three," he counted, "Clearance complete."
He stood on a high platform, the remains of what used to be the elevator shaft of the building, now held up by only a few twisted steel bars. He stood there, looking down at the enemy group that had regrouped below. His hoodie was torn in several places, and bloodstains dried on his cuffs, but his eyes shone with a frightening light.
"Have you ever calculated it?" he shouted into the air, "How many times can a person die before they truly die?"
No one answered.
But he knew Ultron was listening.
He raised his right hand, his five fingers spread, and arcs of electricity danced at his fingertips, as if he were testing a newly bought wireless mouse.
"I'm telling you," his voice wasn't loud, but it pierced through the smoke, "As long as I'm standing here, you won't set foot on this ground."
In the distance, the billboard atop the signal tower swayed in the wind; two of the six characters "The Future is Defined by You" had lost two strokes of paint, leaving the remaining four hanging crookedly.
Ye Mo stared at it, slowly clenching his fist.
An electric arc exploded, casting flickering light and shadow on half of his face.