Chapter 53 The Outer Sect Auxiliary Track

Yuki actually retained very little of his original organic body. He had originally used the hands and feet of a child-sized prosthetic body, and had already replaced a portion of his internal organs. Following the incident with Raif, he replaced most of his remaining internal organs as well. Just a moment ago, even his lungs and viscera had been swapped out.

To make movement easier for him, Hsiang Shan had also given him Andy’s prosthetic hands and feet.

For Yuki, the majority of the muscles on his body were now useless.

A small number of hematopoiesis organs, an artificial heart pump, and a prosthetic lung were basically enough to sustain the energy supply for his brain. In addition, he retained less than a tenth of a natural human's digestion and absorption system.

After Hsiang Shan replaced the battery, Yuki basically recovered his mobility. The strength in his hands and feet had nothing to his injuries.

This was one of the major advantages of prosthetic bodies. If a natural human suffered internal injuries and the energy supply to their limbs became insufficient, their hands and feet would naturally grow weak and make movement difficult. However, a prosthetic body's strength depended entirely on its structural integrity and battery power. No matter how severely injured a cyborg was, as long as the prosthetic body remained intact, they could move.

The most extreme examples were probably Griad, or the brothers Ali and Andy. Even after being defeated, Griad’s prosthetic body could still receive external commands to move or even hurl "Iron Flowers." As for the two brothers, even after their brains were destroyed, their bodies could still execute their original programmed movements.

Despite his severe injuries not yet being fully healed, Yuki had indeed recovered his basic mobility.

The boy hesitated slightly: "Master, the person who killed my mother should already have been..."

"Yes, that bandit has already paid the price." Hsiang Shan looked into the distance and nodded. "However, the one who killed your mother wasn't just that single person."

"Who else?"

"The bandits, and this entire era," Hsiang Shan said. "Now that you understand this kind of grief, you must not let it befall anyone else; you must eradicate those elements—this is the 'vengeance' of us martial artists."

"And the first step is to destroy Griad's stronghold."

The boy nodded.

"I absorbed Raif... that is, the big guy who used the staff earlier," Hsiang Shan said. "Over the past few days, I've also gradually absorbed parts of Griad's memories. I already know where their stronghold is and how to get inside."

Yuki looked somewhat timid: "But, the stronghold... there are a lot of people there, right?"

"Many people... Hmph, just a mob of rabble," Hsiang Shan said calmly. "Numbers do indeed create momentum. However, martial arts can dismantle that very 'momentum'."

Only then did Yuki nod, a look of rising excitement hard to conceal in his eyes.

Hsiang Shan squatted down and said to Yuki, "Kid, since you have chosen to walk this path, there are a few rules I must make clear to you first. You must abide by these rules before you truly step through the door. If you disagree, I can send you to a safe town."

Yuki nodded: "Go ahead and tell me, Master."

"First, until you finish your apprenticeship and graduate, you will do whatever I say," Hsiang Shan said sternly. "What we do is always a matter of life and death. The slightest mistake or omission could cost both of our lives. Therefore, you must obey orders."

Yuki nodded: "I understand."

"Second, although I spoke of revenge, from today until four years from now, I will not let you kill anyone with your own hands, even if that person is absolute scum—unless I am not by your side and you are actively attacked and need to defend yourself. Do you understand?"

Yuki froze for a moment, lowered his head, and gritted his teeth as he asked: "Why! Why can they... those thugs come and kill me, yet I cannot..."

"Stop." Hsiang Shan pressed his hand on Yuki's head. "Yuki, the first thing I want to tell you is that no human can place themselves above another human, and no human can judge another. Only the 'Law' can judge people."

"But Master, didn't you say before that the 'Law' is a force that oppresses people..."

"I said the 'Law can become a force that oppresses people.' Don't only listen to half of what is said," Hsiang Shan interrupted his disciple's retort. "For one human to strip away another's life is never a good thing under any circumstances. It's just that, right now, without the 'Law,' our power is insufficient to protect people, and letting those evil men exist will only cause even greater disasters. We have no other choice, which is why we draw our swords. But that does not mean this act is 'absolutely righteous.' It is merely less terrible compared to 'letting evil men run wild.'"

"If you do not grasp the proper boundaries in this, how would you be any different from those bandits? You don't need to fully understand this logic right now; just keep it in your heart and ponder it slowly over time. I am merely telling you now. Do you understand?"

Though his neck remained stiff in rebellion, Yuki still nodded.

"Very good." Hsiang Shan stood up, and a hidden compartment on his external armor popped open. He took out three microchips and said, "There is a reserved interface on your brain-computer barrier, right? Put these chips in."

Yuki nodded, opened his cranial hatch, and did as he was told.

These three chips—two came from Andy, and one from Ali.

Hsiang Shan nodded: "Normally, these techniques would wait until we settled down before I taught them to you. However, we are going to go wipe out a stronghold very soon. Your current skill level is still a long way from 'stealth' and 'assassination.' I will need to leave you outside the stronghold alone for a while, so I must pass on a few self-preservation methods to you."

Yuki's eyes lit up: "Martial arts? Will it let me defeat the bandits?"

"Keep dreaming," Hsiang Shan sneered. "At most, it will let you last a few more minutes in front of the foot soldiers, just enough time for me to rush over."

With that, Hsiang Shan shifted his focus and used a signal transmitter to directly issue commands to the chip inside Yuki’s brain.

[Initiating "Distance Auxiliary Line Program"]

Suddenly, Yuki found that the world before his eyes looked entirely wrong. For some reason, countless colorful blocks of color seemed to have multiplied across his field of vision.

Yuki cried out in alarm: "Master! Something seems wrong with my eyes!"

"Relax, it's not a bug," Hsiang Shan shook his head. "This is pretty much what the world looks like to a martial artist. Of course, you won't be able to process this much information all at once... we'll take it step by step."

As he spoke, all the other colored blocks in Yuki's vision vanished.

Only two white clusters remained.

Both white clusters were hemispheres, centered on Hsiang Shan's shoulders and expanding outward to his sides.

"This white area—do you see it? This is the region that my 'hands' can touch," Hsiang Shan said. "Now, try hitting me at random."

"Oh," Yuki nodded, raising his fist to strike at Hsiang Shan.

Just as Yuki's fist was about to cut into the boundary of the white spherical region, Hsiang Shan's hand suddenly flicked, lightly tapping Yuki's wrist.

Yuki threw another punch, but the result was identical.

Every time Yuki's fist entered the white zone, it was met with a counterattack.

Hsiang Shan posed a question: "Do you know how to avoid being attacked?"

Yuki thought for a moment and pointed behind Hsiang Shan: "That gap?"

Hsiang Shan shook his head, stepped his right foot half a step back, turned it outward by forty-five degrees, lowered his body, dropped his center of gravity, and assumed a basic Jeet Kune Do guard stance: "How about now?"

The overlapping parts of the two hemispheres separated, nearly forming a single sphere that enveloped Hsiang Shan's upper body.

"And now?"

Yuki scratched his head: "Attack the legs?"

Hsiang Shan sighed: "Why don't you try?"

Yuki crouched down, attempting to throw a punch. But right at that moment, a red area suddenly flashed near Hsiang Shan's legs.

Hsiang Shan executed a low sweep kick, his toe stopping right beside Yuki's cheek.

"This is the zone that my leg kicks can reach," Hsiang Shan said. "I just turned off the other 'auxiliary lines' and left only the 'air-control circles' of my hands. That doesn't mean there aren't auxiliary lines elsewhere. Take another look at this pistol at my waist."

In an instant, the "auxiliary lines" on Hsiang Shan's hands and feet vanished, and the short pistol seized from Andy began to glow.

A straight line extended outward from the muzzle, its color transitioning from dark to light. Beyond this solid line, several dashed lines also appeared.

Additionally, a line connected the pistol grip to Hsiang Shan's wrist.

Hsiang Shan picked up Ali's steel staff from the ground, causing the auxiliary lines on the pistol to disappear while the zone covered by the long staff materialized. It was a ring-shaped area surrounding Hsiang Shan.

As it turned out, due to the principle of leverage, the middle section of a long staff was difficult to use for inflicting damage, meaning a "safe zone" would actually exist at extremely close range.

This was the essence of the saying: "An inch longer is an inch stronger; an inch shorter is an inch riskier."

"Now, you must ensure that you never get injured. Therefore, the best approach is not to overlap with any 'auxiliary lines,'" Hsiang Shan stated.

Yuki asked, "Master, do you need to look at all of this stuff?"

"This thing is just an aid. It's only meant to give you an intuitive understanding of 'distance,'" Hsiang Shan shook his head. "When you have burned this system into your mind, this kind of visual aid will no longer be necessary."

The "Distance Auxiliary Line Program" was to "external martial arts" much like "training wheels" were to "riding a bicycle"—simply a supplementary tool to help you find the feeling, not an absolute necessity. At times, overly cluttered visual information would only cause a biological brain to miss crucial cues.

A truly well-trained martial artist could run a "background process" in their subconscious to handle these judgments.

In other words, it was much like how a natural-human student of the old era would use "auxiliary lines" to break down a difficult geometry problem into several simpler ones to organize their thoughts.

It was just like how natural-human martial artists of the past could rely on "experience" to judge distances and adjust the rhythm of attack and defense.

Naturally, measurement tools like prosthetic eyes, combined with algorithms containing advanced geometry, would only be far more reliable than a natural human's naked eyes and experience.

Hsiang Shan cleared away the vast majority of the auxiliary lines, leaving only those targeting "footwork," "arms," and "firearms": "This stuff is completely meaningless when there is an overwhelming performance gap between prosthetic bodies. Since you haven't even maxed out your modification rate, you'll at best be able to stall for time against foot soldiers. I'll give you a bit of time to get used to it further. An hour from now, we're leaving this place and heading for that Organization Z stronghold."