Legend of the Cyber Heroes

"Yes..."

A smile emerged from beneath Lev's steel mask. Thugs would never enter the city alone, lest they be chopped up while indulging in services. Just moments earlier, his accomplice had used Inner Strength to infiltrate the surveillance circuits of the street and had employed the Heavenly Vision and Earthly Hearing technique to locate Enoch. Lev remembered that Enoch had something to do with intelligence he had gathered today, which is why he had followed him.

"Mr. Lev, you came into the city to collect intelligence, right? Everyone in the Wilderness is too scared to use the net, fearing that some 'Grand Master' from above might launch 'God's Staff' and target their bases." Lev spoke elegantly, "I am just gathering information for our boss, purely official business. And today, I heard a very interesting piece of news— A Martial Artist has emerged from Recycling Station Town? Defeated the Tax Officer's personal Samurai? I heard this has damaged the Tax Officer Lord's honor, made him quite unhappy, as the Gene Tax wasn't fully collected!"

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

With a "boom", Lev shot out Enoch's tire. The exploding metal danced, warping the entire wheel.

"You need to answer whatever Mr. Lev asks, dear brother Enoch."

Enoch couldn't see this happen. However, the balance alarm went off. He knew his tire had burst. Enoch was terrified, hurriedly recounting the entire process.

"Oh ho, so that's what happened..." Lev nodded.

At that moment, a horrendous scream shook the ground: "It hurts! Enoch! It hurts so much! What am I doing now!"

Enoch's engine roared. It was only then he remembered that Willy had just been thrown out and was still lying on the ground. But at that moment, Lev suddenly acted, shooting Willy's brain to pieces.

Silver-gray fluid burst forth.

Enoch was petrified: "What are you doing!"

"Brother Enoch, I, you see, don't want our conversation to be leaked, you understand?" Lev's tone remained genteel.

"You killed Willy! You killed Willy! You murdered him! You killed..."

Enoch forcefully silenced the voice projector.

Because the gun was again pointing at the part of his biological brain.

"Yo, yo, that's more like it!" Lev nodded, satisfied.

A terrified Enoch asked, "Then how do I explain..."

"Just say the thugs killed him, haha, the honest truth!" Lev laughed out loud as if he had heard a joke.

Enoch's clutch tightened and released repeatedly. He began to regret crossing paths with this thug.

"Let me tell you some good news, brother Enoch," Lev said, "Since the Gene Tax you paid was insufficient, the Lord might declare that in the coming year, your town's civil protection could be cancelled for half to a full month..."

Enoch started the engine, looking to flee.

"Of course, we're not 'Evil Ghosts'. We don't plan to kill everyone in Recycling Station Town, so don't worry about that. We'll just take some supplies—and that has nothing to do with you. Think about it, doesn't the Town Mayor's family have more resources than you? What right do they have to use such good stuff? Given our relationship, would our organization take from you? Mr. Lev, when have I ever fallen short? Have I asked for your things?" Lev casually attached the sucker to Enoch's hood: "I just want to know a little something—like what exactly happened to that 'Yog', anything like that. If there are image records, that would be even better!"

—Yog...

Thinking of this name, Enoch suddenly wasn't afraid anymore. He asked, "Is Yog also a target of yours?"

"A Samurai's prosthetic body is a fine thing," Lev's tone became even warmer, "It seems like you have a conflict with that Yog? Isn't that perfect?"

Enoch hesitated: "Yog is a kid who was rescued from a junkyard—ah, right, could you not kill that kid..."

A few minutes later, Lev waved his hand, bidding farewell to the careful and slow-moving Enoch.

A line of transparent green characters appeared in the middle of Lev's vision.

[Did you really consider that person a friend?]

[A rather interesting fellow, he's like a poet when it comes to testosterone.] Lev responded.

[What's so fun about that stuff?] Vigorous Kui didn't understand. Injecting various hormones humans no longer needed into the brain, stirring up those primitive emotions—what's interesting about that?

Lev: [You won't understand the lure of hormones unless you try them for yourself...]

[Forget it. My Inner Strength is still in the 'Linguistic Realm'. I'm thinking of dabbling in the 'Mathematical Realm' in this lifetime. I'm not planning to inject anything into my brain—speaking of which, what do you think about that 'Yog', or the 'Mountain' from the intelligence reports?]

Lev: [To defeat Will Grand Duke without the Martial Arts Algorithm... Not bad. If he's willing to accept the organization's memories, he could maybe become a team leader.]

[Will is useless, not his father, the 'Mad Hunting Dog' Granddoug. Even I, with Inner Strength stronger than External Sect, could defeat him using military martial methods.]

Lev: [Without the Martial Arts Algorithm, how would you fight? Alright, we've practically gotten the intelligence we needed. Let's send a team to follow up, just waiting for the Lord to make the announcement. Head back!]

.................................

Three kilometers away, in a secret room, the Secretary Officer opened his eyes and said to Appennine beside him, "Young Master, it's done."

Appennine too saw the constantly refreshing text on the flat road and nodded.

They were the backbone of civilization, and in terms of Inner Strength, naturally stronger than most thugs who couldn't claim to be 'Heroes'.

```

The guy whose ID was "Vigorous Kui" got targeted by the Secretary Officer while searching for Enoch's image.

The Dyson principle is absolute. The great father of myriad machines, Yawgmoth, watches over every individual equally. Even Lords cannot casually violate the Dyson principle.

This is also why thugs are tolerated to a certain extent. There is no law that mandates when a person should die.

Once a line is crossed that makes a Lord think "they should be killed," then the good days of those thugs come to an end.

Humans are ultimately free.

The Secretary Officer shook his head, "Young Master, I still don't quite understand. Whether you want that 'mountain's' loyalty or his frontal lobe, there are better ways. Why do you insist on..."

"Whether it's loyalty or the frontal lobe, both are good. But that Xiang Shan, he's really too lackluster, lacking refinement," Appennine shook his head. "I did it on purpose. I want him to battle the bandits of the Wasteland, to refine himself. If he grows, I will want his loyalty. If he is defeated and dies... I will look at his performance and then decide whether I want his frontal lobe or not."

...................................................

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

Who was he before? Why does he know how to do everything?

He started from scratch, rewriting all the basic code. At first, he still needed to think about what he was doing. But as time went on, the process became smoother; the code seemed to flow directly from the "inside" of his thoughts, without even passing through his conscious surface.

This brain, these neural circuits, seemed to exist solely for the creation of endless code.

It was as if he had trained in this way a long time ago.

Even if all his memory storage devices were taken away, he could still perform.

As if he had been prepared for this a long time ago.

— Why?

If the "Turing halting problem" and the methods for contemplating halting problems are means to pierce through virtual reality, and remembering them with a biological brain is necessary, then why remember other things with a biological brain as well?

If your memory storage devices are taken away, that means your biological brain itself is defenseless, isn't it?

In such a situation, the enemy could do anything, and he would die.

Xiang Shan only remembers losing an important battle... so, why is he still alive after losing?

He can't understand.

But the work in his hands wouldn't stop because of that.

After recoding the terminal, he cautiously backed up the contents of a drive chip into the terminal, then maintained a simple connection between the terminal, the drive chip, and the canine prosthetic body. He kept inputting commands, testing each functional module's hardware-level execution.

The dog's legs kept moving, contracting, as if flapping.

"Amazing," Yuki was mesmerized. He had fantasized about such things before. It was said that powerful doctors could control other people's prosthetic bodies to do things. This caused many people to instinctively revere Doctor Schultz.

Now, his master could too!

"Master! Can you teach me this?"

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

Yuki nodded.

Xiang Shan thought for a moment. Programming isn't really that difficult. If one only wants to do the simplest things, knowledge from junior high and high school is almost enough. Just memorize the meaning of every keyword, over and over again.

Don't look down on kids like Yuki who don't go to school much, they still have basic knowledge. According to Yuki's own introduction, every child around the age of three, when the brain-blood barrier is covered with metal protein and the brain-machine barrier begins to take shape, undergoes their first head modification. During this process, they are implanted with a chip. This chip can provide a lot of intelligence in mathematics, physics, and chemistry.

Xiang Shan didn't know where the limits of this chip were. But he had tested Yuki with some questions before. Judging from the "function," they mostly had a high school level.

The most basic stuff was actually enough.

Mastering a common high-level language is far less difficult than mastering a foreign language. For a code-monkey in a crash course, this isn't even considered a problem in the realm of "linguistic study." What remains is "writing sentences that machines can understand." Practice makes perfect.

But that's not enough to become a great programmer.

In today's terms, just reaching this level isn't enough to practice Superior Internal Power.

For programmers, mathematics is both useless and useful. If you just want to write programs that run, then a high-level language is mostly enough, and all you need is practice. But stronger programmers can't stay at this level.

"Very good, Yuki. But the first lesson is very dull," Xiang Shan tried to recall.

He remembered something a programmer friend had said...

— How can you determine the "Dragon Slaying Technique" is useless if you haven't even encountered a "dragon"? You must become familiar with machines! Familiar with Turing machines! Familiar with mathematics!

"Actually, humanity hasn't created any artificial intelligence yet, only artificial stupidity," Xiang Shan mimicked the tone from his memory, sharing with his disciple: "Computers can do what humans do after spending massive amounts of time and resources. And what computers can't do, humans can do too..."

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