Chapter Nineteen: The Guardian's Game

"Yes..."

A smile spread across the biological face beneath Rafe’s steel mask. Thugs would never enter a city alone, lest they be hacked to pieces while enjoying services. Just moments ago, his accomplice had used internal martial arts to infiltrate the street’s surveillance network, employing a "heaven-viewing, earth-listening" technique to locate Enoch. Rafe recalled that Enoch was connected to a piece of intelligence he had gathered earlier today, which was why he had given chase.

"Mr. Rafe is only in the city to gather intelligence, you know? Everyone out in the wasteland is terrified of using the network, fearing that some 'Big Lord' up there might drop a 'Rod of God' on their base." Rafe’s tone was refined. "I am simply collecting information for our boss; this is official business. And today, I heard a very interesting rumor—that your Scrapyard Town has produced a martial artist? One who defeated a tax collector’s personal bodyguard? I hear this has damaged the tax collector’s honor, leaving him quite displeased—so much so that the gene taxes haven't even been fully collected!"

"No! That bastard 'Yorg' just got lucky! He..."

With a loud *boom*, Rafe blew out one of Enoch’s tires. The shattering metal groaned as the wheel rim deformed entirely.

"You must tell Mr. Rafe whatever he asks, my dear brother Enoch."

Enoch could not see what was happening, but his balancer emitted an alarm. He knew his tire had burst. Terrified, he hurriedly recounted the entire process.

"Oh, so that’s how it is..." Rafe nodded.

At that moment, a soul-shaking scream erupted from the ground: "It hurts! Enoch! It hurts! What am I doing now!"

Enoch’s engine roared. He suddenly remembered that Villy had been thrown out and was still lying on the ground. But just then, Rafe struck, firing a shot that shattered Villy’s brain.

Silvery-gray fluid sprayed out.

Enoch was horrified. "What are you doing!"

"Brother Enoch, I simply don’t want word of our conversation to leak out, you understand?" Rafe’s tone remained polite.

"You killed Villy! You killed Villy! You’re a murderer! You killed..."

Enoch forcibly cut off his own vocalizer, as the gun barrel was once again pointed at the section of his biological brain.

"Yo, yo, that’s better!" Rafe nodded with satisfaction.

Enoch asked fearfully, "Then how do I explain..."

"Just say a thug killed him, hahaha, it’s the truth!" Rafe laughed loudly, as if he had heard a joke.

Enoch’s clutch tightened and loosened repeatedly. He began to regret ever provoking this thug.

"Let me give you some good news, Brother Enoch," Rafe said. "Because the gene taxes you submitted were insufficient, the Lord might announce that for the next month, he will revoke your town’s civilization protection for a period of fifteen to thirty days..."

Enoch started his engine; he wanted to flee.

"Of course, we aren't monsters. We don't intend to slaughter everyone in Scrapyard Town, rest assured. We’ll just take some supplies—and that has nothing to do with you. Think about it carefully: doesn't the Mayor’s family have far more supplies than you? Why should they have such good things? Given our relationship, would our organization take anything from you? Look, has Mr. Rafe ever treated you unfairly? Has he ever taken your things?" The suction cup in Rafe’s hand attached itself to Enoch’s hood as if it were nothing. "I just want to know a few things—for example, what exactly happened to that 'Yorg,' and so on. Image data would be even better, of course!"

—Yorg...

At the mention of that name, Enoch suddenly lost his fear. He asked, "Is Yorg a target of yours too?"

"A martial artist’s cybernetics are fine things, indeed!" Rafe’s tone grew even warmer. "It seems you have a conflict with that Yorg? Isn't that just perfect?"

Enoch hesitated. "Yorg was saved from the junkyard by a little kid—oh, right, could you please not kill that child..."

A few minutes later, Rafe waved his hand, sending off Enoch as he drove away slowly and cautiously.

***

In the center of Rafe’s vision, a line of transparent green text appeared.

[Do you really consider that person a friend?]

[He's quite an interesting character. When it comes to testosterone, he’s practically a poet.] Rafe replied.

[What is so fun about that stuff?] Bursting Kui didn't quite understand. Injecting various hormones that humans had long since outgrown into the brain to trigger those primitive emotions—what could possibly be interesting about that?

Rafe: [You won’t understand until you try the hormones yourself...]

[Forget it. My internal martial arts are still at the 'Language Realm.' I’m still hoping to touch the 'Mathematics Realm' in this lifetime. I don't intend to inject anything into my brain—speaking of which, what do you think of that 'Yorg,' or the 'Mountain' mentioned in the intelligence?]

Rafe: [To defeat Will Granddog after losing all martial arts algorithms? Not bad. If he is willing to accept the organization’s memories, he might even be able to serve as a squad leader.]

[That piece of trash Will is not his father, the 'Mad Hound' Granddog. Even I, whose internal martial arts are stronger than his external school, could defeat him.]

Rafe: [Without martial arts algorithms, how would you fight? Anyway, the intelligence is basically obtained. Send a team to keep an eye on him and wait for the Lord to make the announcement. Let's head back!]

***

Three kilometers away, in a secret room, the Secretary opened his eyes and said to the young man beside him, "Young Master, it is done."

Apennine also saw the text refreshing on the flat road and nodded.

They were the backbone of civilization; in terms of internal martial arts, they were naturally stronger than most thugs who couldn't even be called "knights."

The guy with the ID "Bursting Kui" had been targeted by the Secretary the moment he searched for Enoch’s profile.

The Dyson Principle was absolute. The great Father of All Machines watched every individual equally. Even a Lord could not violate the Dyson Principle at will.

This was the reason why thugs were tolerated to a certain extent. There was no law mandating when a person should die.

But once a line was crossed, making the Lord feel that someone "ought to die," then the carefree days of these thugs would come to an end.

Humanity, after all, remained free.

The Secretary shook his head. "Young Master, I still don’t quite understand. Whether you want the loyalty of that 'Mountain' or his brain tissue, there are better ways. Why must you..."

"Whether it’s loyalty or brain tissue, both are fine, but that Xiang Shan is truly too dull; he lacks refinement." Apennine shook his head. "I did it on purpose. I want him to fight the filth of the wasteland; I want him to hone himself. If he grows, I will want his loyalty. If he falls and dies... I will judge his performance and then decide whether to take his brain."

***

The more he worked, the more puzzled Xiang Shan became.

Who on earth was he before? Why did he know how to do everything?

He began from the bare metal, rewriting all the underlying code. At first, he still needed to think about what he was doing. But as he went on, the process became more and more fluid; the code seemed to flow directly from the "inside" of his thoughts, without even needing to pass through his conscious mind.

This brain, these neural circuits, seemed to exist solely to create endless code.

It was as if he had undergone this kind of training a long time ago.

Even though he had been stripped of all his memory storage devices, he could still perform.

It was as if he had prepared for this very situation long ago.

***

—Why?

If the methods for the "Turing Halting Problem" and the visualization of halting problems were ways to break through virtual reality, and if it were necessary to memorize them with his biological brain, then why must other things also be memorized this way?

Being stripped of memory storage devices meant that his biological brain was left undefended, didn't it?

In such a situation, if the enemy did anything, he would die.

Xiang Shan only remembered losing one important battle... so, why was he still able to survive after that defeat?

He couldn't understand.

But the work at hand would not stop because of that.

After re-encoding the terminal, he carefully backed up the contents of a drive chip into the terminal, and then maintained a simple connection between the terminal, the drive chip, and the canine-type prosthesis. He continuously input commands, testing the execution of each functional module at the hardware level.

The dog's legs moved and contracted repeatedly, looking as if it were kicking.

"Amazing." Youji was mesmerized. He had fantasized about this before; it was said that powerful doctors could control the prosthetics of others. This gave many a sense of instinctive awe toward Dr. Schultz.

Now, his Master could do it too!

"Master! Could you teach me this?"

Xiang Shan put down his work and asked, "Do you really want to learn?"

Youji nodded.

Xiang Shan thought about it. Programming wasn't actually that difficult. If one only aimed to do the simplest things, high school knowledge was more than enough.

Don't let the fact that Youji and the other children didn't have much time for school fool you; they still possessed basic knowledge. According to Youji, every child received their first cranial modification around the age of three, when metal proteins covered the blood-brain barrier to form the prototype of a brain-computer interface. During this process, a chip was implanted. This chip could provide a significant boost to their mathematical and logical intelligence.

Xiang Shan didn't know the limits of this chip, but he had tested Youji on a few problems before. Judging by his grasp of "functions," he was at least at a high school level.

The basics were enough.

Mastering a common high-level language was far less difficult than mastering a foreign language. For a crash-course coder, this didn't even count as a question of "linguistics." All that remained was "writing sentences the machine could understand." Practice was enough.

However, one could not become a great programmer this way.

In this day and age, anyone who only reached this level could never master high-level internal martial arts.

For a programmer, mathematics was both useless and useful. If you only wanted to write programs that could run, a high-level language was mostly enough, as long as you practiced repeatedly. But stronger programmers could not stop there.

"Very well, Youji. But the first lesson is very dull." Xiang Shan struggled to remember.

In his memory, what had his programmer friend said...

—How can you conclude that the "art of dragon-slaying" is useless before you've even seen a "dragon"? You must be familiar with machines! Familiar with Turing machines! Familiar with mathematics!

"Actually, humans still haven't managed to create artificial intelligence; we only have artificial idiocy," Xiang Shan said, mimicking the tone in his memory as he taught his disciple. "Anything a computer can do, a human can eventually do as well, provided they spend a massive amount of time and resources. And what a computer cannot do, a human can also do..."