Don't worry, it's just a minor surgery.

"Wu Chen?" The Major seemed forever hurtling along the road.

"I'm here." Wu Chen smiled, raising his wrist to capture the holographic avatar.

"The rejection period has passed. Can we begin?" The Major's voice was soft.

"Alright, see you in a moment." One day had passed in the City of Ruins, which equated to sixty days of story fragments. After Wu Chen had been back for half a day, a full month had passed for the Major. The newly implanted organs were now a perfect match with her full-body prosthesis. It was time to collect and store the reproductive cells of humanity's only true cybernetic body.

This was clearly the primary plotline that had branched out following Wu Chen's intervention. Without a moment to delay, Wu Chen immediately boarded the Viper Air Hunter with the four female warriors and entered the fragment.

The Major's location signal soon appeared.

Today was the most ordinary of rainy days in New Port City. The ruins of the skyscrapers still stubbornly pierced the skyline. The cybernetic eyes that usually wandered everywhere under the sunlight were all dormant today within the eye sockets of prosthetic remains, rolling idly left and right beneath half-closed eyelids. Had it not been for the occasional faint glow leaking through the slits of their eyes, no one would have noticed their presence among the dense piles of prosthetic corpses.

Tracking the coordinates, the Viper Air Hunter descended vertically into the stadium embraced by the cluster of skyscrapers where he had first encountered the Major.

When the female warriors escorted Wu Chen to the underground prosthetic black clinic, the Major had been waiting for some time.

"How are you holding up?" Wu Chen asked first.

"Same as always. And you?" The Major rose from the operating table.

"I'm doing well too." Wu Chen wore a smile.

The Major used action to mask her nervousness: "Then... let's begin."

"What do I need to do?" Wu Chen looked at the operating table behind the Major, used for prosthetic implantation. Randomly piled instruments and disorderly cables filled the room with a distinctly cyberpunk atmosphere, perfectly fitting the definition of an underground black clinic.

The cerebral intelligence had informed Wu Chen that, to prevent piracy and unauthorized use, all Hankyu prosthetic organs were networked in real-time, displaying the user's registration information. Once disconnected, they would automatically shut down. Therefore, whether it was routine maintenance or prosthetic replacement, it had to be done at a clinic authorized by Hankyu Machinery. The purpose was singular: to prevent the abuse of prosthetics. However, no matter how advanced anti-piracy technology for genuine software was, cracked versions ran rampant. Many civilians who could not afford the exorbitant subsequent maintenance fees would choose to go to underground clinics to replace their parts with unauthorized, cracked prosthetic organs. Much like the violently jailbroken Viper Air Hunter, these prosthetic organs flowing into the second-hand market had all been reflashed and artificially cracked. Thus, the prosthetic doctors in underground black clinics were invariably highly skilled hackers.

"Get on the table." The Major secretly steadied her composure.

"Alright." Wu Chen walked over and sat beside the Major on the edge of the bed. As the cerebral intelligence had said, collecting reproductive cells was merely a minor, minimally invasive procedure. Wu Chen had nothing to worry about.

Before lying down on the operating table, Wu Chen raised his camera: "May I take a picture?"

"As long as you like." The Major stood up and removed her outer clothing, revealing her full cybernetic prosthesis.

A flash of white light, and the second frame was captured: the full-body prosthesis.

The Major appeared entirely unaffected. This further confirmed the cerebral intelligence's earlier assessment that brief memory loss during capture was closely related to the story character's resistance or acceptance. The Major felt no aversion whatsoever to Wu Chen's photography, resulting in virtually no stress reaction.

Wu Chen lay down flat with a sense of satisfaction, awaiting the procedure.

The Major quietly activated her optical camouflage, making her figure vanish.

With shifts in light and shadow on the dim and flickering operating table, Wu Chen's figure vanished along with her.

The cerebral intelligence informed the four armored female warriors that everything was normal. Wu Chen was merely concealed by the Major's optical camouflage; he was still lying on the operating table and had not disappeared. However, Vetrix, deeply anxious to protect her master, independently switched to infrared thermal imaging view. Just as she captured a fleeting glimpse of the scene, Aie, the cerebral intelligence, used administrator privileges to cut off the female warriors' visual prying.

Rest assured, this was merely a minor procedure.

The arc of consciousness whirled through the chaotic cables, activating instruments one by one, driving the clawing mechanical arms. Then, it surged back along the circuits into the mind, merging into the starry cosmos. Piercing through all the new nodes, the arc rose upward to its absolute limit, ejecting a swirling nebula before bursting apart with a bang. A dazzling white light swept away all external objects. The entire operating table glowed brilliantly.

The erupting brainwave pulse even affected the optical camouflage, flashing glimpses of the Major's flawless full-body prosthesis.

The LCD screens flickered wildly, and the mechanical arms trembled frantically.

Buzz, buzz, buzz—

The sound of overloading current rose and fell, accompanying the flickering optical camouflage as it gradually faded away.

After a massive cerebral discharge, Wu Chen was mentally exhausted and fell into a deep sleep on the operating table.

Aie, the cerebral intelligence that had recorded the entire process, confirmed at the first moment: "The master is unharmed."

Only then did the four female warriors feel at ease.

When Wu Chen woke up, the Major had already departed.

"Master, you are awake." The wristwatch lit up.

"Mhm." Removing the neural leads adhered to his forehead one by one, Wu Chen sat up from the operating table.

There was no need to ask. The cerebral intelligence was intimately familiar with every single metric of Wu Chen's body: "Congratulations, Master. Two frames captured. Three more frames, and you will obtain the Major's exclusive card."

"Alright." Wu Chen pushed himself up with his arms and walked out of the clinic.

Emerging above ground, he saw a brand-new, gigantic complex body crouching in the center high platform of the circular stadium, in deep slumber.

"A mutant tumor body," the cerebral intelligence stated, introducing a new term: "It is a 'chaotic convergence' of prosthetic mutations."

"So, no matter how many times we capture it, it will regenerate," Wu Chen voiced his understanding.

"Yes, Master. To completely eradicate this malignant tumor, we must destroy the mutant progenitor and clear the core heterogeneous code." The cerebral intelligence projected the full holographic map of New Port City onto his wristwatch: "Preliminary judgment places the core right here."

A strangely shaped venue and building: the Public Security Section 9 Headquarters.

"No need to rush." Having weathered the brief post-procedure fatigue, Wu Chen felt refreshed and invigorated: "Let's follow the main plotline."

"Understood." The cerebral intelligence reminded Wu Chen: "Master, you may read the card once more."

"Good." Returning to the base via the Viper Air Hunter, Wu Chen entered the telephone booth alone, removed the Major's card from the Mc-2 camera, and inserted it into the card reader.

As the card was re-registered, the black sugar cube embedded in the different-dimensional spacetime gate transformed into a translucent crystal out of thin air. This signified an enhancement of the story fragment's rules, and also foretold that Wu Chen's exclusive branch plotline had more deeply intervened in the main plot of Ghost in the Shell.

After the Mutation Day, prosthetics mutated, and New Port City sank into a living hell and a silent dead zone. Naturally, how the story fragments would revive and how the characters within the drama would save themselves were spontaneously derived main plotlines. Especially since Wu Chen had always chosen to stand on the opposite side of the players.

Watching the Viper Air Hunter soar upward and plunge into the clouds, a shift of light and shadow occurred in the corner of the circular stadium as the NM4 transformational armored shell slowly manifested. Carrying the Major, it silently passed through the curtain of rain and drove into the underground tunnel.

"Major."

"Doctor."

"Did you collect it?"

"Mhm."

"How many active cells are there?"

"276,932,585."

"Very well. Preserve them carefully."

"Understood."

The rain fell, and the motorcycle kicked up ripples. The NM4 shot forward like an arrow released from a bow, disappearing into the rainy night filled with corpses everywhere.

Returning to the base via the Viper Air Hunter, Wu Chen fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

The mental stress had been entirely released during the brainwave link with the Major. In the latter half of the procedure, Wu Chen's personal cosmos fed back into the Major's cerebral domain, achieving a near-perfect mental resonance wave. Coupled with the rule overlay of the Major having already been captured up to two-fifths of her sanctuary card, the mental force field originating from the Major condensed into a vortex-shaped nebula within Wu Chen's personal cosmos. This was the yet-to-solidify core of a meditation chamber.

Just as the mutant prosthetic nerve bundles could open the different-dimensional spacetime gate, the powerful personal cosmos that Wu Chen projected externally in the form of omega brainwaves belonged to a higher spiritual dimension. Weaving all the story characters intertwining with the 0326 branch plotline into the veil of the screen via resonance waves was also Wu Chen's exclusive high-dimensional ability.

Upon materialization in the City of Ruins, all exclusive card characters would form meditation chambers within Wu Chen's cerebral domain, resonating with one another and transforming into stars. When the stars of adjacent nodes grew sufficiently powerful, they would gestate constellations, merge into a pantheon of gods, and give birth to a divine race. For instance, the chimeric divine race and the electronic divine race had once been the most powerful world guardians within Wu Chen's personal cosmos.

Following the shattering of the sanctuary, Wu Chen's personal cosmos had also grown dim and lightless. Those powerful divine races that had once guarded the 0326 exclusive main world had fallen alongside it. Until arriving at the City of Ruins and incorporating the 22 female warriors and two-fifths of the Major, Wu Chen's personal cosmos began to regain its light once more.

Whether he could reclaim past glories and rescue his former companions would still require Wu Chen's continued efforts.