Cyber ​​Ghost Record

Chapter 14: The Gu Diao

The bar Su Ge went to was called "Huawai," located on the south side of Quanjin Road in Fuxue District, only half a kilometer away from Luyingting.

After confirming the transaction intentions, the middleman took him into the elevator at the back of the bar, climbed many floors, and then transferred to the vacuum rail transit line.

The city's skybridges and neon signs outside the observation wall rise, fall, and recede. After 12 minutes and 5 transfers, Suger stepped out of the elevator again, now at the Ashihara Building, 20 kilometers away.

Before me was a bright space of about 900 square meters, with matte gray walls on all four sides and almost no furnishings. It was similar to the apartment where Suger lived, also an accessible space, the only difference being its size.

From the outside, a ring of stands was set up around the perimeter, with a few spectators sitting in them.

In the center of the arena were two circular rings, both covered by metal mesh. People were training inside, but their faces were obscured by the mesh.

The middleman walked towards the southeast corner of this space.

The man standing there appeared to be an instructor, wearing black jeans, shirtless, and covered in ukiyo-e style tattoos of waves and dragons. His bronze skin was shiny, while his cheeks and neck were slightly sagging, and his drooping eye bags suggested he was at least seventy years old. His white hair was neatly cut into a buzz cut.

After the middleman walked away, she said to Su Ge, "Just keep quiet in the future. The price has been agreed upon, but if they can tell you don't know anything, they'll have plenty of ways to rip you off."

"Ah."

Suger smelled a pear scent and looked at the cigarette in her hand. She had already smoked three cigarettes since leaving the bar.

"This cigarette has a rather unique flavor."

"This isn't made from tobacco leaves."

"That is?"

"Dopamine receptor blocker, inhaled."

She answered casually, glancing at the middleman and instructors she was talking to from a distance.

A swarm of drones flew past outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, and a security agency aircraft hovered a few hundred meters above the sky plaza. This place, unlike the dimly lit underground bar from before, looked much safer.

Suger realized he didn't even know her name.

He wasn't this naive before, but after wandering around this city for half a month, everyone gave him a sense of unreality, like NPCs in a game. Their names had no meaning to him; they didn't represent a person or correspond to a life.

“My name is Su Ge, and yours is Su Ge?” he asked.

"Shen Ke".

She took the cigarette out of her mouth and glanced at Su Ge.

Then she gestured with her chin towards the middleman and the instructor from a distance.

"This middleman is Juan Martinez. He has a good reputation and has a lot of resources on exoskeletons and prosthetics. The person you're talking to is Qiu Lianglongzhi, a veteran who retired 83 years ago. The 'Gu Diao' you want to buy is from him."

"Veterans from the last century, the Self-Defense Forces?" Suger asked.

“Peacekeeping forces,” Shen Ke said.

Su Ge looked at Qiu Lianglongzhi from afar and could not tell that this person had lived for a century.

Suddenly, his attention was drawn to a loud bang from inside the metal cage. One of the people sparring on the platform was sent flying and crashed hard into the cage wall.

What kind of competition is this?

Suger looked around and saw only a few scattered spectators in the stands.

"It's just training," Shen Ke said.

"Training? That's pretty heavy-handed."

"Once they're on stage, they'll only go even harder. Whoever fights well gets companies to endorse their cybernetic devices. Akira Ryuji has made a lot of money from this; he's willing to spend money on cybernetic devices and also carries high-end products from the companies he endorses." "Compared to them, who's stronger, Akira Ryuji?"

Su Ge glanced at the two people training in the ring, barely able to see their movements. He thought of the bandits from the Six Desires Heaven, but couldn't tell who was stronger or weaker. His only conclusion was that no matter who he encountered, he wouldn't even have a chance to escape.

"Guess why he's the coach?" She glanced at Suger with a knowing look in her eyes.

At this moment, Juan Martinez and Qiu Lianglongzhi seemed to have finished their conversation and walked over. Shen Ke gave Su Ge a look, and the two of them went to meet them.

"So you're the one who wants to buy the Gu Diao?" Qiu Lianglongzhi looked Su Ge up and down. "Why don't you have a prosthetic body? Do you have an immune disease, or..."

Akira Ryuji was speaking English, but Suger's monocular vision transmitted simultaneous translation to him through the mastoid bone of his right ear. As a result, Suger heard Akira Ryuji speaking two languages ​​at the same time, which was a very strange experience.

Before Su Ge could speak, Shen Ke answered for him: "He doesn't like it."

Qiu Lianglongzhi's two thick, stiff white eyebrows were almost twisted together.

Shen Ke's words gave him a clue as to the masked man's identity; he was most likely a physical fundamentalist. These people reject and exclude all forms of prosthetic implants and biological modifications, believing that only a natural body can contain a soul.

“I used to be just as clueless and didn’t understand.” Qiu Lianglongzhi scrutinized Su Ge and said in the tone of someone who had been there before, “But you’ll know later that cybernetic bodies are better. Then you’ll throw the Gu Diao into the storage room to collect dust. See those people training over there? I can sell you a whole set of cybernetic bodies with the designs and materials they use. It’s not much more expensive than the Gu Diao.”

Su Ge didn't expect Qiu Lianglongzhi to take the initiative to persuade the customer to back out; the old man seemed reluctant to sell that retired military exoskeleton.

But his skepticism made him think that this might be an act, and that the old man wanted him to buy a more expensive prosthetic body.

"Let's take a look at the things first," he said.

Akira Ryuji stared at Suger, seemingly to confirm whether his intention to buy was firm enough. After a few seconds, he nodded.

"bring it on."

Inside the iron gate on the east side of the training room is a 60-square-meter warehouse.

Su Ge followed Qiu Lianglongzhi inside. Under the white light, there were twelve rows of shelves. At the bottom of the second row of shelves, Qiu Lianglongzhi pulled out a black metal box that was 1.2 meters long and wide and 60 centimeters high.

"The Gu Diao used to be a military exoskeleton, but it's retired now, so you can only activate the normal mode. Even so, it's still much stronger than your body. Your nerve reaction speed can't exceed 100 milliseconds at its fastest, while its response speed in normal mode is ten times faster than your nerve reaction."

"What about the combat mode?" Sog asked.

“6.2 times faster.” Qiu Lianglongzhi replied with some emotion, “If we can activate the combat mode, it won’t be outdated even now, after all, military technology is now subject to much stricter regulations than before.”

Why are the controls so strict now?

Suger thought he might be able to get some real history from this veteran.

Akira Ryuji was not surprised by the young man's ignorance. Brain-computer interfaces can make ordinary people knowledgeable and perform complex calculations without thinking, but after turning off the brain-computer interface, some people cannot even calculate their own age.

As Qiu Lianglongzhi opened the metal box, he said, "What else could it be? People have long realized how terrifying the destructive power of technology is, but it wasn't until the Archipelago War broke out and almost destroyed the world that all countries were able to unite and destroy those weapons that could destroy the world. That was more than eighty years ago."

Suger was particularly sensitive to the word "war," and he pressed for an answer: "How did this war start?"

Qiu Lianglongzhi glanced at Su Ge with surprise, and felt a little favorably toward the young man. In this era, few people were interested in history.

"It wasn't just one war; it involved many countries and companies and lasted for over a decade. Before that, brain-computer interfaces and prosthetics could only be used in medicine and scientific research, and were prohibited from being used in the military and production. How could that be prohibited? Now they are universally available. Back then, I was like you, without a single part in my body. But I actually thought I could win. At that time, the Gu Diao wasn't the most powerful exoskeleton, but it was the most flexible. In combat mode, as long as it was connected to the supercomputing platform, you could see the trajectory prediction of the enemy's guns before they were pointed at you. Even if there was a Gatling gun in front of you, it wouldn't be able to hit you."

"Before I could even put it on, the war ended the next day."

As Qiu Lianglongzhi spoke, he took out an exoskeleton from the metal box. It had not yet completed its first fitting and shaping. After being in the box for more than eighty years, it was still brand new and matte black.

"Have you heard of the Gu Diao, young man?" Qiu Lianglongzhi asked himself and answered, "It was originally a monster in the Classic of Mountains and Seas. It is the fastest creature in legend. When it runs, even its own shadow can't catch up with it."

(End of this chapter)