Chapter 60: The Game of Pursuit

With a loud bang, the little venomous insect was thrown across the room by Hsiang Shan, crashing into the martial arts practice chamber and knocking over a glass jar. The pungent odor of embalming fluid instantly filled the air.

Hsiang Shan sighed, "I'm sorry, I accidentally broke something. I'll pay for it."

—Pay? Pay for what...

The little venomous insect looked at the object he had smashed into.

He remembered that should be... a specimen of a human brain.

This was the brain he had used to practice on when he first began researching the methodologies of the Cult of Heavenly Devils. The original owner of the brain was naturally someone plucked from the roadside as a target for robbery. At that time, his craftsmanship was crude; he had only attempted to alter the layout of the temporal lobe, yet the overall structure of the brain suffered irreversible damage and completely lost its function.

To commemorate this great beginning, he had preserved this brain.

If Hsiang Shan intended to compensate him for this specimen...

"Just what do you want..." the little venomous insect hissed with hatred, "What on earth did you come here for?"

"The same as you," Hsiang Shan said matter-of-factly. "Plundering things, and venting violence."

As he spoke, he amiably and gently pulled the little venomous insect up from the ground. The little venomous insect lashed out with a vicious punch, trying to knock Hsiang Shan down. But with a mere flick of his wrist, Hsiang Shan disrupted his balance. His punch missed entirely, dragging his whole body forward. Taking advantage of the momentum, Hsiang Shan cupped his chin with one arm and forcefully snapped it upward.

With a crisp crunch, the little venomous insect's spine broke, and his prosthetic body lost control.

Hsiang Shan cupped the little venomous insect's head with both hands, forcing him to look around. "What do you see?"

"The wretched things I've done..."

Inside this practice chamber, there were several brains. Some of these brains were exposed to the air, connected to electrodes. Others were immersed in a fluid rich in artificial respiratory pigments, with various squirming organs attached to them.

Looking closely, those brains appeared to have been modified; some had their myelin sheaths decomposed and artificial electrodes implanted, while others had their neural network connection patterns altered.

Hsiang Shan could even faintly discern the traces of an "experimental group" and a "control group."

This was not all. According to Geliade's memories, over the past two years, they had successively carried out such acts numerous times. Some brains from failed experiments that did not result in death were directly repurposed into entertainment gadgets by the little venomous insect. As for those that had died, their biological resources were recycled.

"I feel terrible about breaking your belongings. Since I said I would pay you back, I will definitely compensate you with an exact replica," Hsiang Shan murmured gently beside the little venomous insect's auditory organ. "Then, let me share some good news with you in advance—the raw material is the very brain you are most familiar with. Surprised? Shocked? Happy?"

"You... you..." The little venomous insect was almost in tears. "How could you... like this..."

"Right, let me ask you another question..." Hsiang Shan twisted the little venomous insect's head a full hundred and eighty degrees so that their prosthetic eyes met directly. "Tell me, is there any chance of restoring these brains that you've ravaged?"

"Impossible... There has never been such a precedent..."

"You'd better think carefully. It doesn't matter if there's no precedent; any inspiration or ideas will do!" Hsiang Shan said. "I think you should hope you know. If you can remember some method... I'll use yours to practice on before I try to restore those brains. This is your only chance!"

The little venomous insect's body trembled.

In other words... no matter what, he would definitely experience an "eye for an eye" at Hsiang Shan's hands.

"Oh, I have a few other things to handle right now. Think carefully and seriously." With these words, Hsiang Shan released the little venomous insect, and then executed a series of heavy blows to disable his prosthetic arms and legs.

Afterward, Hsiang Shan turned and left the room without looking back.

Seeing Hsiang Shan move away, the little venomous insect dragged his body with his chin, inching painfully across the floor. Because his neck had been twisted into a mess of mangled flesh and scrap metal by Hsiang Shan, this movement was extremely difficult. Yet, he persisted.

His head dragged itself in front of an automatic maintenance terminal. This device allowed a person to replace their own prosthetic body.

"Initialize, authentication password 1587AG..." the little venomous insect cried out with difficulty.

Finally, a cluster of mechanical arms extended from above, gripped his head, and lifted him to a height of two meters. More mechanical arms reached out from within, locking onto the screws and interfaces of his prosthetic body for rapid disassembly.

Very soon, the damaged prosthetic body detached from the little venomous insect's head. A backup prosthetic body was retrieved from the sealed cabinet by the mechanical arms.

—Alright... this is the last chance...

—Before he comes back...

At that exact moment, the power to the entire room was suddenly cut off.

In the darkness, the little venomous insect, now reduced to nothing more than a head, froze.

Then, he remembered that this was a practice chamber shared by him and Geliade. Naturally, Geliade's administrative privileges took precedence over his own.

Since Hsiang Shan had killed Geliade, he naturally possessed Geliade's privileges.

That martial artist had been waiting for this exact moment. He had intentionally chosen this time to cut the power.

The little venomous insect, left with only a head, stood paralyzed. A few seconds later, the greenwood bandit turned vicious: "If that's how it is, then I'll make sure you get nothing!"

He issued an override command to the chip in his brain, attempting to overwrite the original contents with meaningless garbled code.

However...

For the first time in his life, the little venomous insect saw an "error" pop up in the field of view of his prosthetic eye.

The little venomous insect froze, then issued a "delete" command.

"Error."

He tried overwriting and deleting once more.

"Error"
"Error"
"Error"
"Error"
"Error"
"Error"

The little venomous insect understood. The moment their eyes met, Hsiang Shan had stripped him of this administrative privilege.

In the pitch-black darkness, all rebellion and dignity were crushed to dust. The martial artist, reduced to a single head, finally let fall a tear from the biological tear glands he had specially cultivated.

"Ugh... Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh! Kill me! Just kill me now! If you really are a chivalrous swordsman, kill me right now!"

…………………………………………………………………………

This event had occurred approximately fifteen minutes prior to the little venomous insect's tears. At that moment, Hsiang Shan had only just entered the parking garage.

At that time, not a single person believed that Organization Z had less than a thousand seconds left to exist.

Emiko clutched the infant, running desperately through the corridor.

She was the last one... no, should be considered the second to last.

Among the batch of people captured, she was already the final survivor. However, perhaps due to being deemed unsuitable, there was still a dying little girl remaining in the place where they had been locked up.

This little girl looked to be just over two years old, capable of uttering a few simple words, but unable to form sentences—likely because no one had ever taught her, leaving her far behind her peers in speech development, spending her days doing nothing but crying. Strangely, her entire oral cavity had been removed, leaving a small horn-like apparatus attached to her face, while a tracheostomy tube was fitted to her throat.

At first, Emiko had been utterly annoyed by this infant. Facing the constant threat of death day in and day out, how could she possibly have the heart to deal with such a thing?

Yet Emiko's older sister had felt immense pity for the infant. She would occasionally bite her own thumb, dripping her blood into the nutrient delivery tube on the little girl's throat to soothe the child.

Fortunately, they were both from the social lower strata with extremely low cyberization rates—"virtually natural humans"—otherwise, executing such an operation would have been utterly impossible.

During the long... unknown number of days of imprisonment, this little girl seemed to have become a rare source of spiritual comfort for the few people trapped in the cage. Occasionally, some of the girls would be dragged away by the low-cyberization greenwood bandits to suffer unspeakable abuses. But after enduring such humiliations, simply holding this child seemed to offer a sliver of solace to their minds.

Well, it would have been even better if this child didn't cry.

So Emiko had thought.

The more the Father of All Machines advocated that "humans have the obligation to propagate their genes," the more disgusted the martial artists in the pugilist world seemed to become. They didn't mind using each other's biological cells to create gametes and give birth to a next generation, but they deeply detested being controlled by the instinct to "continue their genes." While the greenwood bandits practiced absolute lawlessness, very few among them actually enjoyed this kind of thing.

Most of the time, the captives simply huddled inside their cages.

The people in the cage dwindled. Perhaps it was just yesterday, but Emiko's older sister had also been dragged away. Emiko had wept until she fainted. When she woke up, only this child was there, gently patting her face.

Emiko had cried once more. But this time, she noticed that the cage appeared to be unlocked.

The young girl hardened her resolve, picked up the infant, and fled.

After leaving the cage, the girl realized that the greenwood bandits' guards were shockingly lax. Along the way, the bandits were utterly absorbed in their games. She always managed to find cover. Before long, she found the way out and entered the corridor.

Emiko trembled all over with excitement. She recognized this area; she had seen this very sight when she was first dragged inside.

This long, dark corridor felt like a path leading straight to the realm of the dead. But Emiko could only run. Running was her only option in life.

After rounding a few corners, she entered a fork in the road by sheer intuition.

Yet at the very next turn, a teenage boy suddenly appeared right before her eyes.

Emiko jumped in fright, mistaking him for a greenwood bandit, and almost screamed out loud. But upon seeing Youji's face, she hesitated.

—Did he escape like me?

The girl thought to herself, then resolutely turned around.

If Youji had escaped, it meant that direction was not a viable exit. And if Youji was a greenwood bandit, her presence had already been exposed.

Switching directions... that way, either she or the boy would still have a chance of escaping...

Meanwhile, Youji pressed a hand against his chest.

To be honest, he had been scared half to death.

Had he not realized that it was impossible for a greenwood bandit to have a cyberization rate that low, he would have already started reciting the introductory jargon taught by his master.

—That woman, what on earth is she...

Youji gazed in the direction the woman had fled.

His master had only left a minute ago... this...

Right at that moment, Youji heard the sound of tires rolling.