Cyber ​​Ghost Record

Chapter 16: Living
"Neural reaction speed is 18 milliseconds, punch speed is 16.3 meters per second, and peak acceleration time is 0.09 seconds."

Lu Ze withdrew his foot and made a cold assessment.

"This outfit is good enough for parkour."

Observers were not surprised that Sog was defeated in just one move. After all, exoskeletons are not as good as prosthetics, and this exoskeleton was not connected to the spinal cord and cerebellum, so it could only exert less than half of its effectiveness.

Only Juan Martinez was not satisfied and sent a message to Qiu Lianglongzhi: "Tell your people to go easy on us, so the client doesn't overthink it."

Inside the metal cage, Suger regained his footing, his tone not one of frustration, but rather one of barely suppressed eagerness.

"try again."

Lu Ze received Qiu Lianglongzhi's message, frowned, glanced outside the arena, and then beckoned to Su Ge.

"Then hurry up and come on."

Suger moved his shoulders and leg joints around in place for a while.

His consciousness began to waver again, yet the senses transmitted by the Gu Diao were so clear, and this contrast gave him the illusion of mental derangement.

Lu Ze impatiently walked over without even adopting a defensive stance.

Just as he approached Suger's inner circle, Suger suddenly moved. He took a half step with his left foot, spun around with lightning speed, and kicked out with his right foot, aiming for Lu Ze's shin.

The speed of the movement surprised Lu Ze.

Lu Ze quickly raised his calf to block Su Ge's kick and retreated out of Su Ge's attack range. Then, he quickly took a few small steps, swaying his body slightly as he advanced to distract his opponent's judgment. In an instant, he closed in on Su Ge, blocking two of Su Ge's probing straight punches. Then, he threw a fierce uppercut with his left hand, aiming for Su Ge's jaw, which was covered by Su Ge's silver mask!

But this punch was merely a disruptive attack.

He concentrated almost all of his power into one point. He pushed off the ground with the balls of his feet, and at the same time, his waist, abdomen, and thigh muscles pulled hard. All his prosthetics worked efficiently, allowing his raised knee to accelerate to 30 meters per second in an instant. If it hit his opponent, it would be almost comparable to a head-on collision with a car traveling at 120 mph!
Lu Ze didn't realize that he had completely forgotten Qiu Lianglongzhi's instructions.

Suger's probing attacks have already put Luze into a fighting stance.

However, Su Ge easily dodged Lu Ze's feint uppercut by turning his head. Almost the moment Lu Ze raised his knee, Su Ge stepped back with his right foot, lowered his body and turned to the left. The fierce knee strike almost grazed Su Ge's face and flew into the air!

As Suger dodged the attack, he leaned to the side and raised his right foot, kicking Lu Ze in the back of the left knee!
when!
Lu Zezhi's left leg bent forward, completely losing his balance. His right knee struck only air, and the enormous inertia carried him to the ground, rolling twice before finally stopping when he hit the edge of the metal mesh cage.

He looked at Suger blankly, forgetting even to get up; he didn't understand how Suger had done it.

The audience was quiet. Shen Ke watched the scene unfolding inside the metal cage, the cigarette ash she had forgotten to brush off falling silently from her fingers.

Qiu Lianglong stared intently at Su Ge. The scene just now stirred up ripples in the stagnant depths of his memory, and he once again remembered the heroic figure of the Gu Diao on the battlefield.

"Good fight!"

Juan Martinez's applause broke the silence, and he simultaneously sent a message to Qiu Lianglongzhi:

"This trainee acted quite well. How long has he been with you?"

Akira Ryuji ignored Juan Martinez, slowly walked into the metal cage, and climbed onto the ring.

Lu Ze was terrified. Losing to a half-baked exoskeleton user was not only a disgrace to him, but Qiu Lianglongzhi only glanced at him and said "Get down," without any intention of blaming him.

Lu Ze paused for a moment, then suddenly realized that he hadn't used his full strength. As he mechanically got up and left the ring, Qiu Lianglongzhi's instructions to go easy on him kept replaying in his mind.

Akira Ryuji stood opposite Suger and said seriously, "I'll give it a try."

Reason told Suger that he had tested the exoskeleton's functions and could stop now.

But a slight tremor ran through him.

He still remembered the futile kick he had delivered to the doctor atop the Yama Tower, a kick as weak as an ant trying to shake a tree. He remembered lying on the ground, helpless and at the mercy of others. He had no power to resist anyone in this era. Now, he had defeated a cybernetically enhanced individual head-on.

He straightened up and looked at Akira Ryuji through the mist forming on his mask from his hot breath.

"Come."

……

Akira Ryuji reminisced about the past.

At that time, like most young people around him, he regarded special forces soldiers as heroes. Those soldiers wore individual exoskeletons and fought against steel bodies with their flesh and blood for human freedom.

He had personally witnessed the Gu Diao dealing with those cybernetically enhanced individuals.

Now, Gu Diao stands on the opposite side, his body covered in implants, just like the enemy from back then.

The scene was ironic, and it left him deeply moved.

But he will soon show this young man that life will always evolve in a more powerful direction; this is the law of nature.

He walked toward Suger, raising his fists to protect his chin, his trapezius muscles bulging like hills, the strong fibers obscuring the nerve bundles in his neck. With each step, he slowed down, as if accumulating some kind of potential energy, as if even the air had become viscous.

Just as Su Ge's treatment of Qiu Lianglong was so slow it was almost frozen, he suddenly burst out, instantly rushing to Su Ge's side, reaching out his right hand to grab Su Ge's neck!

The moment Akira Ryuji exerted his power, Suge saw the afterimage of his next move and his mind prepared a countermeasure. However, Akira Ryuji was too fast, and Suge's reaction time was not enough to avoid being hit.

But the Gu Diao moved, pulling his right hand forward to grab, and Qiu Lianglongzhi's wrist seemed to willingly be placed under his palm, where he held it tightly and pressed it down.

At the same time, he shifted his body to the left in advance, twisting Akira Ryuji's arm behind his back.

This movement was enough to dislocate a person's shoulder, but it didn't have much effect on the prosthetic body. Akira Ryuji's shoulder rotated half a circle, and the power of his waist and legs propelled his left arm to deliver a swift punch.

Su Ge had no choice but to release Qiu Lianglongzhi's wrist to dodge the punch. Qiu Lianglongzhi's next punch followed immediately, one after another. The waves and dragons on his skin surged with his muscles, and the attacks were relentless.

Sug saw countless fist shadows, his brain was burning, and the scene before his eyes and the sounds in his ears became somewhat blurry, but the perception conveyed by the Gu Diao remained stable and clear, guiding him to accurately avoid every attack.

Gu Diao was also analyzing Qiu Lianglongzhi's weaknesses in real time. Some attack methods appeared in Su Ge's mind, but he did not have the conditions to implement them, whether it was EMP impact, neural interference, or firearms attack.

As Akira Ryuji fought, he became increasingly shocked. He had initially thought the fight would end in two seconds, and he had held back at first, but now he was using all his strength. However, his opponent was like a feather in the wind, and the harder he tried, the less he could touch him.

This is the Gu Diao.

Akira Ryuji suddenly realized that this was what he had longed for when he was young.

This thought flashed through his mind in an instant; he had already cornered his opponent in the metal cage, and victory was just a grappling move away from him.

He bent down to hug Sug's waist, but his hug found nothing.

The moment Su Ge retreated to the corner, the bionic bristles on the palms and soles of the Gu Diao unfolded. He turned around, stepped on the cage wall twice, and used the momentum to leap into the air. He gracefully flipped over Qiu Lianglongzhi's head, like a petrel skimming across the waves.

As he landed, he draped the hunting jacket over Akira Ryuji's head.

Akira Ryuji's vision was blocked. He was about to take off his jacket, but a strong sense of crisis made him turn around to defend himself immediately.

His prosthetic eye not only has an optical unit, but can also perceive the environment using ultrasound. However, under the perception of sound waves, every detail of the arena was displayed in Akira Ryuji's eyes, while Suger disappeared.

The Gu Diao can absorb sound waves—just as Qiu Lianglongzhi realized this, the back of his neck was gently pinched.

That's where the fiber optic nerve bundles connecting the brain and spine are located, the most vulnerable part of his entire body.

Qiu Lianglongzhi's body stiffened. His nerve control was not damaged, but the outcome was already decided.

He gave up struggling, slowly took off his jacket, and the scene from just now echoed in his mind.

He was right beside him, yet he vanished from his senses—that was the Gu Diao.

……

Suger felt his cerebrospinal fluid almost boiling. He disconnected, but his emotions hadn't cooled down. His heart was pounding, and his heavy, hot breaths bounced back from the mask, mingling with the smell of sweat.

This was the first time he had felt so strongly alive since waking up from hibernation.

Akira stood there, looking lost and bewildered, muttering, "How did you do that?" How did you do it?
Suger's chest heaved violently as he examined the exoskeleton on his body.

He also wanted to know the answer.

Several apprentices in the training ground gathered around—the news that the gym leader had been defeated by an exoskeleton user could not be kept secret, but at least the relevant footage must not be leaked.

Shen Ke gave Juan Martinez a look, indicating that this situation should be handled by a middleman.

But Juan Martinez was also dumbfounded; who could have predicted this outcome?

Shen Ke glanced at him, walked straight into the arena, and stood in front of Su Ge.

"Senior Qiu Liang, now that the goods have been inspected, the transaction is complete. If you still want to fight, I can help you schedule another one?"

Akira Ryuji remained silent; he couldn't accept this defeat.

The apprentices outside the ring began to stir.

After a tense silence of more than ten seconds, Akira Ryuji finally said, "Then let's do it next time."

"Contact me anytime."

Shen Ke smiled, grabbed Su Ge's wrist, and left.

Her strength was greater than Suger had expected.

Just as the two reached the edge of the ring, Akira Ryuji suddenly said, "Wait a minute!"

Socrates turned around.

Qiu Lianglongzhi examined the exoskeleton on his body and instructed, "Initially, it needs a certain period of adaptation. For the first two weeks, use it for no less than ninety minutes and no more than two hundred minutes each day."

"Thanks."

Suger nodded and turned to leave.

……

Qiu Lianglongzhi watched Su Ge leave the martial arts school from afar.

The outline of the Gu Diao overlapped with another figure from his memory.

The mission was to infiltrate the Neko Corporation's data center outside the Arctic Circle and destroy a nascent god. When he was discovered and attacked by the enemy, he was wounded in his first battle and lay crying by a shell crater. A Gu Diao (a type of mythical creature) pierced through the dense stray bullets, picked him up, carried him to safety, and returned to the battlefield.

This is the Gu Diao, which has wings but no feet, and can only fly, never stopping.

Akira Ryuji almost became that kind of person, and now he has become the one he once rebelled against.

This is inevitable; the evolution of life towards greater strength is a natural law.

Now he has lost, as if defeated by his counterpart in another parallel universe who became the Gu Diao.

He felt an emptiness in his chest, and a strange feeling was brewing within him.

However, his prefrontal cortex has been cleared of areas of weakness and negative emotions, and his tear ducts have long been replaced with lubricating tubes for his prosthetic eye.

He watched the figure walk toward the exit, looking utterly lost, and put on his jacket.

The things that died within him came back to life in another body.

……

Outside the bar, next to the graffiti wall, Juan Martinez was still relentlessly trying to sell to Suger.

“I told you the goods were fine. Look, you haven’t even fully utilized its capabilities yet, and you’re already going to be evenly matched with Aki Ryūji. He’s dressed in all high-end stuff.”

He suddenly stopped talking mysteriously and sent a message to Su Ge.

[The normal operating mode is already this powerful. How about we try to activate the combat mode? I can help you get an active-duty military ID; it should cost around 600,000. Then you can run the exoskeleton in combat mode offline.]

Although Su Ge was exhausted, he realized what kind of trap the middleman had set. The Gu Diao's combat mode required connection to a supercomputing platform and could only be used with the support of massive computing power. Running it offline was practically useless.

But he didn't expose the middleman's ulterior motives; he just smiled and said, "Next time, I'll contact you if I need anything."

As he left the bar, Shen Ke examined the outline of the exoskeleton under his jacket and smiled, "This thing is nice, it suits you well."

"Thank you."

Suger subconsciously clenched his fist; this abundant sense of power was somewhat addictive to him.

Walking along the narrow alley between the buildings, the two passed through the piles of abandoned buildings and headed towards Izumizu-do.

While avoiding the cardboard boxes and shards of glass on the ground, Suger's mind wandered.

After using his superpowers last time, his thoughts were chaotic and dazed, yet also very active.

Why am I able to activate the Gu Diao's combat mode?

He did not have permission to activate combat mode.

Even if it is activated, its powerful functions still require a supercomputing platform to function properly.

Could it be that my brain is acting as a supercomputing platform?

How can it be?

The supercomputers that Socrates saw before his hibernation all had massive cooling systems attached, and some were even built directly underwater.

Putting aside the fact that his brain couldn't possibly provide powerful computing capabilities—unless his brain is superconducting, the heat alone would be enough to cook him—he'd be overheated.

He suddenly remembered that the Vision was actually just a monitor, without a CPU of its own. It ran on cloud computing power, consuming his currency in real time.

I need to check my balance.

He endured his headache and used his monocular vision to retrieve the account details.

The bill was shot in the face.

Aside from the transfer for purchasing the Gu Diao, the expenditure on the computing power consumption of the devices under the Vision Connection suddenly increased by a huge sum of 5394!
Gu Diao did indeed use cloud computing power. He only used it for two minutes at most, but it cost more than five thousand yuan!

Suger felt dizzy and his vision went black.

"what happened to you?"

Shen Ke turned around and looked at Su Ge.

"Wow, 42 degrees? What is this...?"

"fine."

Suger wanted to rub his temples, but his raised hand was blocked by the mask.
"Should I take you to the hospital?"

Shen Ke hesitated for a moment.

"It looks like an acute immune response. The fever is mainly in the head. You'd better get a scan."

"Row……"

After agreeing, Suger suddenly realized that he dared not have his brain scanned.

But after saying just one "no," he lost consciousness.

(End of this chapter)