Chapter 45: The Brave Prevail

A vast, blinding light burst forth ahead. Hsiang Shan even felt a burning pain in his optic nerves.

However, it did not matter. Humans went blind under harsh light because the crystalline lens focused the light and could burn the retina. But he was using prosthetic eyes; he had no crystalline lenses, nor did he have retinas.

—Yet what was to follow...

Hsiang Shan dug up a similar experience from his memory.

Two shockwaves would strike simultaneously from the left and right.

And he would plunge into a desperate impasse.

Admittedly, compared to natural humans, cyborgs possessed a higher resistance to kinetic weapons. They had no need to fear high-temperature burns or shrapnel whose velocity was about to dissipate, needing only to watch out for direct hits while ignoring stray bullets. Even so, this still could not spare Hsiang Shan from the fate of being upended.

There existed no martial art in the wuxia novels called "Weight of a Thousand Catties" that could magically increase mass or amplify gravity out of thin air. The former was akin to "creating something from the void," or at the very least instantaneously converting massive amounts of energy into mass, while the latter was equivalent to warping space itself. If humanity possessed such technology, they would have long since conquered the sea of stars.

The "Weight of a Thousand Catties" in reality was nothing more than lowering one's center of gravity to make oneself harder to knock over.

Compared to heavy prosthetics, light prosthetics possessed less mass and lower inertia, allowing them to accelerate and change direction with greater ease. Conversely, light prosthetics carried fewer weapons, packed weaker offensive power, and were more easily blown away.

The rules of physics dictated this.

The moment the explosive glare subsided, two shockwaves formed on either side. They expanded outward with the blast epicenter as their center, quickly tracing a curved trajectory resembling the curved line of a Taiji fish symbol.

Judging from Hsiang Shan's speed and his relative position to the tank-like martial artist, he had to cross this blast zone.

Yet once caught in the shockwaves, he would be flipped over or even blown away, reducing him to a sitting duck.

Gillard laughed maniacally as he raised his right-hand machine gun. In an instant, sixteen bullets spewed from the chamber, streaking toward the path Hsiang Shan was bound to take, forming a fatal trap.

At the same time, the massive martial artist maintained his trajectory.

Constrained by inertia, his heavy prosthetic could not match a light prosthetic in acceleration or directional shifts. Yet heavy prosthetics had their own advantages. He could directly "take a shortcut" in this manner, without needing to fear that the blast wind could flip a low-slung chassis, nor worrying about secondary damage harming the prosthetic body.

Those sixteen bullets served as his parting gift to the enemy!

Hsiang Shan stared at the charging Gillard.

—If I take a solid hit here, I will certainly die...

To be strafing-swept by bullets meant death.

To have a shell detonate at close range meant death.

To collide head-on with someone clad in that kind of external armor meant death.

As his right foot struck the ground for the final time, Hsiang Shan did not immediately kick off with his left leg. His legs folded at a height of three centimeters above the ground.

Voltage maxed out; atomized ethanol and pure oxygen were injected into the pistons.

For the duration of three frames, facing the earth, he inevitably lost his field of vision.

—Do not fear. Because Gillard's prosthetic head would obstruct the rotation of the gun barrels and cannon tubes, his weapons on both sides could only complete the operation of "simultaneously locking onto the same target" from a certain distance away...

Taking into consideration the recoil of the cannon barrels... at this range, after completing his shots, he would still require a matter of milliseconds to readjust the gun barrels before making precision fire...

As the shockwave rolled over his body, the man released his accumulated kinetic energy.

Electric sparks unleashed all the solar energy stored within the ethanol in one go!

He charged toward the enemy.

Gillard plastered a string of frantic laughter across the public channel.

A surefire barrage rushed straight at him! Under these circumstances, he was long past achieving the precision of extreme sniping. Even so, he could still win through sheer volume.

A sense of dread.

Those bullets could genuinely kill him. And the distance between them was far too close. A biological brain lacked the time to react; mere algorithms lacked the capability for planning and adaptation...

—Do not panic...

Hsiang Shan drew up his legs. His beast-like limbs were almost folded together, running with a lowered posture to minimize his horizontal cross-section on both sides.

—At this rate, nearly half of the bullets will miss...

His hands lifted flatly outward. This was a movement a natural martial artist could never execute, and even if forced, could generate no power.

Both fists lashed out sideways toward the bullets.

—The seven that are inevitably aimed at vital spots...

If fist speed falls short, prioritize dealing with those that would pierce the power source... As for the rest, pray that the armor holds...

This was an interval too brief for sound to travel. Hsiang Shan unleashed a flurry of one-inch punches, deflecting one bullet aimed at his legs, one at his central nervous system, and two aimed at the power mechanism in his chest...

The counterforce generated by the impact of his fists against the bullets forced his body to awkwardly twist.

Then came a rapid succession of hammer blows landing on his body. Hsiang Shan's body bounced upward by five centimeters. Those were the missed bullets.

Only the entry angle of a single bullet was too wide for the armor to intercept, causing it to pierce the plating and drive deep into his abdominal cavity.

Even a body devoid of the sense of touch registered the violent tremor.

It mattered not. The exterior armor crafted in the village was of mediocre quality; the bullet was bound to punch through both layers of outer plating, sparing him the concern of ricocheting fragments damaging internal components.

As long as the power transmission lines remained intact, there was no obstruction...

And then the final one...

Sailing straight toward Hsiang Shan's glabella.

It had to be said, Gillard's grasp of "timing" and "deployment" far surpassed Leif's. The positions and timing of the seven bullets dictated that Hsiang Shan had to block the others first. Furthermore, the lethality of the other six rounds was no lower than this one.

Hsiang Shan's fist speed was insufficient; he could not use one-inch punches to deflect every bullet. At this exact instant, he was bound to be in a state where both feet left the ground.

And the upper three bullets were aimed at his chest. After blocking those upper three, the angle of his arms might not suffice to support the release of another one-inch punch.

Had Hsiang Shan succumbed to panic and rushed to block this single bullet first, the other attacks would have reduced his prosthetic to scrap—and in the hierarchy of a prosthetic body, the human brain's "commands" held absolute priority!

—Trust... trust the algorithm!

—Trust the product of human wisdom!

—Human "wisdom" was never meant to operate weaponry... It is the operating system of the flesh, and the path by which we advance toward "truth" in the spiritual realm.

—Therefore, entrust that split second to the algorithm, and let the will translate into the annotation of "martial arts."

Hsiang Shan's fingers spread wide, intercepting the final bullet.

At this split second, Gillard felt certain he had won. The fingers of that prosthetic originally belonged to "Torrent Blade" Ronconi; Gillard had checked the relevant parameters in local sports leagues, and their structural integrity lacked the capacity to withstand this bullet.

Yet the next instant, Gillard's eyes widened.

—Impossible!

The moment the bullet contacted the fingers, a portion of the bullet's tip deformed, softened, and scattered away like liquid. Its trajectory shifted drastically, brushing past Hsiang Shan's face. Meanwhile, that very finger was violently ripped upward by the immense kinetic energy, slamming against Hsiang Shan's glabella.

Yet that was all. After all, this was merely a finger carrying a fraction of the bullet's kinetic energy, not the bullet itself.

Gillard had never anticipated such an outcome.

In truth, Hsiang Shan had already factored in this usage the moment he "caught" the bullet. The instant his fingers pinched the projectile, he vibrated it through mechanical waves of varying frequencies, probing for the harmonic band capable of breaking down the bullet's alloy composition.

The high-frequency mechanical waves emitted by the prosthetic fingers of "Torrent Blade" Ronconi were precisely designed to be channeled through specially crafted blades to shatter an enemy's metallic armor.

Hsiang Shan was far more familiar with this application.

The biological brain had long since utilized "creativity" to construct a nonexistent "future" before it even began. The algorithm born of wisdom executed it meticulously.

His surefire strike missed, inevitably causing a momentary lag in Gillard's consciousness. His muzzle spat forth bullets once more.

By then, however, Hsiang Shan had already closed in within two meters—the optimal range for a close-combat martial artist.

"Evasion speed exceeding muzzle transit speed" had now become a reality.

A bullet grazed Hsiang Shan's back like an iron hammer.

It merely grazed his back.

To Hsiang Shan, the ground felt as slick as if coated in oil—the friction his feet could provide at this velocity was woefully inadequate. The moment he lost his balance, he pressed his hands against the earth and twisted his body.

Bionic boxing attained top-tier mastery only when it came to "commanding one's center of gravity."

He had already sliced into Gillard's defensive perimeter. Those two pairs of arms, resembling blades and shields, became Hsiang Shan's cover. Leveraging the final momentum of the shockwave, Hsiang Shan closed the gap against Gillard.

His intact prosthetic hand slammed squarely into Gillard's front armor for the first time.

The jarring tremor of the impact felt as though it struck Gillard's very soul.

—Finished...

The shockwave's wavefront had barely swept past when Gillard abruptly accelerated.

Military martial arts focused heavily on specialized large-scale prosthetic combat and multi-unit control. Powerhouses with a profound understanding of tanks and warplanes could even rely on instantaneous acceleration and deceleration to deliver one-inch punches using heavy prosthetics.

However, the movements of a large prosthetic also generated massive tremors. The vibration of the engine within Gillard's frame was impossible to mask. In a single instant, Hsiang Shan utilized the pressure-sensing array across his five fingers to pinpoint the origin of the vibrations, thereby deducing the exact location of the opponent's internal propulsion system.

Then, he smoothly withdrew.

—Ah...

Gillard desperately adjusted his posture, attempting to bring his gun barrels to bear on Hsiang Shan's movements while his armored arms, thick as blades and shields, rotated in an effort to slash at him. Yet Hsiang Shan had already slipped past.

Simultaneously, Hsiang Shan's prosthetic eyes locked onto Gillard. Sensing this, Gillard instantly adjusted the precision of his own prosthetic optics, restricting himself to receiving only mosaic-resolution imagery across a narrow spectrum.

Instead, Hsiang Shan merely used his own prosthetic vision to calculate the curvature of Gillard's prosthetic lenses, thereby reverse-engineering the enemy's field of view.

A frantic Gillard flailed his two pairs of arms wildly. Hsiang Shan charged straight at him.

The massive shield blocked Gillard's line of sight. As the arms swept past, Hsiang Shan's figure vanished as if by magic.

—Where is he...

Gillard let out a roar of anguish.

Behind him, for the very first time, Hsiang Shan's feet left the ground, tumbling through the air like the Monkey King himself.

To be frank, choosing to employ artillery shells to restrict his movements in that final moment bordered on seeking quick success at the expense of long-term advantage. Given that this massive prosthetic possessed an inherently restricted field of view, utilizing drones to supplement it was standard procedure. Yet the shockwave of the artillery shell had cleared away every drone in the immediate vicinity.

At this fleeting moment, the zone Gillard could neither observe nor interfere with was none other than "within five steps, close enough to touch."

An iron plate kicked up by the explosion crossed paths mid-air with Hsiang Shan's body.

Hsiang Shan released kinetic energy from his legs. He kicked off the flying iron plate, propelling himself like a cannonball straight toward Gillard's spine.