Cyber ​​Ghost Record

Chapter 76, Section 75: Invitation

The young man with white hair wore a white jacket and had light pink scars on his face from burns and knife wounds that had healed.

These days, removing scars is as easy as wiping oil off your hands; his scars are like medals he deliberately preserved. His eyes are also natural, with pupils that are a pale pink, like rock salt—the pupils of an albino. This congenital genetic defect should have been screened out at the fertilized egg stage, and he would never have left the nursing home. Clearly, he is a purebred undocumented person.

He glanced around, his pink eyes finally settling on the empty seat opposite Qian Yun. The guest waiting for that seat hadn't arrived yet.

He swaggered over and sat down, ignoring the fact that everyone in the room had drawn their guns. Qian Yun frowned, but gestured for his men to put away their weapons.

The young man smiled dismissively and waved behind him.

A man in a wheelchair was pushed into the room; he had no limbs and seemed to have grown out of the wheelchair.

“My friend,” the young man glanced at the man in the wheelchair, “became like this after taking the medicine you sold.” As he finished speaking, someone waved their hand in front of the man’s face, but the man’s expression remained blank, showing no reaction.

“Yesterday, right here in this bar,” someone nearby said. “He took a pill, and then his brain went haywire. They stripped him of all his valuables.”

"I didn't know that happened," Qian Yun said.

“Now you know,” the young man said.

"How do you want to solve it?"

"That's what I should be asking you." The young man leaned back in his chair, a smile playing on his lips as he scrutinized Qian Yun. "How do you plan to resolve this?"

Qian Yun hesitated for a moment, not intending to ask about the cause and effect. The other party was obviously deliberately choosing this time to cause trouble. Only a fool would believe that he came to seek justice.

“I’ll give him 20,000 yuan to get him a new prosthetic body.”

"Wow, twenty thousand!" The young man's eyes lit up, his mouth almost stretched to his ears. He looked at the man in the wheelchair, "Did you hear that? He's offering twenty thousand."

Suddenly he looked at Qian Yun and sneered, "I'll offer 50,000, how about it? 50,000 yuan, and I'll take off your legs and arms. Oh, and your brain too." He pointed to his temple with his index finger.

The young man had barely finished speaking when the bartender next to him raised his gun and pointed it at him. The young man raised his eyebrows, but stared at the bartender with great interest.

"You want to shoot?"

The bartender's chest heaved, his finger gripping the trigger tightly, but he made no further move. Suddenly, the young man pulled out a pistol, pointed it at the bartender, and said with a smile, "If you don't shoot, I will."

He pulled the trigger, and with a bang, the bartender was shot in the arm. This shot completely broke the stalemate. Qian Yun's men drew their weapons in unison, but the enemy was faster. Pulse batons swung in the neon lights, creating high-voltage arcs that pierced the air, and the two men at the door fell to the ground.

A brawl broke out, sparks flying, metal clashing, bottles shattering, and shouts of abuse filling the air. In less than a minute, all of Qian Yun's men were on the ground, and he himself was dragged onto a sofa. The white-haired young man stared at him, his gaze sending chills down one's spine. Qian Yun, panting, asked, "What exactly do you want?"

"Lugu Group..." the young man sneered, "What, planning to do business with big companies?"

Qian Yun's chest heaved. He glanced at his men; the bartender was covered in cold sweat, thankfully not fatally wounded. This attack seemed like just a warning, but even if it was just a warning, the ruthlessness and madness of the attackers terrified him.

On the black marble tabletop, a half-burnt hand-rolled cigarette, soaked in beer, lay beside the wall. The young man took one out and tossed another to Qian Yun.

"If you do less stupid things, maybe we can be friends." He glanced at the demented man in the wheelchair. "Don't let my appearance fool you, I'm very loyal to my friends."

He lit a hand-rolled cigarette, took a puff, and the taste of the natural drug made him frown. He spat and tossed it away.

The hand-rolled cigarette landed in front of the bartender. His prosthetic eye reflected the red glow of the cigarette butt. He was breathing heavily when he suddenly roared and raised his gun to shoot the young man in the calf.

But the young man was faster. Just as the bartender pulled the trigger, his high-top military boots moved with lightning speed, stepping on the bartender's wrist.

Bang! The bullet struck the bottle, and the shattered glass cut a thin gash in the young man's face.

The young man wiped away the blood with his thumb, and his smile vanished.

The bartender gasped for breath, trying to pull his hand back. The military boot slammed into him, and with a snap, the bartender's prosthetic hand broke. He looked up and saw the young man pull out a gun, the black muzzle pointed at him, finger on the trigger. "Wait..." Qian Yun shouted, trying to stop him, but he knew the young man wasn't one to show mercy. He instinctively tried to close his eyes, but no shot was fired.

The young man turned his head, and two figures appeared at the doorway.

Ryoko Chiba stopped at the doorway. Behind her, Su Ge surveyed the room. His gaze passed through the crowd, landing on the disheveled Qian Yun on the sofa, and finally settling on the young man.

"I think I've come at an inopportune time," he said.

"Su Xing?"

The young man's cold expression immediately turned into a smile, an expression that revealed a sense of self-righteous cruelty, easily reminiscent of children who torture and kill frogs and sparrows.

"Do you know me?" Sog asked.

“Now we know each other.” The young man saw Su Ge examining the injured man on the ground and immediately lifted his foot, as if he had only just remembered that he was still stepping on someone. “It was just a minor scuffle, but everyone knew their limits.” He looked at Qian Yun, “Did I disturb your business, Mr. Qian?”

Qian Yun met the young man's gaze and remained silent.

The young man smiled victoriously, holstered his gun, and led his group of modified individuals away from Suger, leaving behind a trail of blood, alcohol, and metallic scents. Suger remained unmoved, maintaining his detached stance; he had no desire to get involved in the gangsters' conflict.

After the thugs had gone, Su Ge asked Qian Yun, "What happened?"

"It's just a misunderstanding."

Amidst the chaos, Qian Yun picked up his broken brown-tinted glasses and sighed.

"Let's talk somewhere else, Mr. Su."

……

The powdered medicine was pressed into tablets, and the dimly lit workshop was filled with the smell of disinfectant and herbs. The busy workers moved like zombies, and it was hard to tell whether they were machines or natural people.

Socrates was surprised that ancient medical practices were still prevalent here. The advent of brain-computer interfaces has diminished the significance of education; people in mainstream society can become experts in various fields with almost no learning cost thanks to brain-computer interfaces, but the marginalized society inhabited by the lower classes is more ignorant than it was two centuries ago.

"His name is White Ghost, and he's a kidney-draining patient."

On the second floor of the illegal pharmaceutical factory, Qian Yun looked down at the workshop through the glass.

“He robs people of their prosthetic bodies, sells organs, and has partnerships with wet parts factories. If the Deer Valley Group moves in, many smuggling channels will be squeezed, which would be like taking away their livelihood.”

“I don’t care if a few thugs jump out and block my way; I’m interested in the market here.”

“The market demand here is huge. Yingchuan City is an autonomous city-state, a country within a country. Almost all the unregistered people in the country flock here. Any kind of psychotropic drug is in short supply. A bottle of vitamin tablets, as long as it is labeled as an anti-immune drug, can be sold for hundreds of times the cost price.”

“The group has already investigated these situations,” Suger said. “Besides pharmaceuticals, we also plan to promote bio-modification services here. The biggest problem isn’t the troublemaking gangsters. I need to know if there’s fertile ground for the bio-modification industry to grow here. No one can deny the superiority of brain-computer interfaces and prosthetics, but phagocytosis and various immune reactions are real. Many people suffer from transplants, and we want to relieve them from this suffering, provided that they truly believe that bio-modification can make them better.”

When he uttered the word "salvation," Soger paused for a moment. These words were prepared in advance and perfectly aligned with the fundamentalist ideology of the Spiritualist Church, but when he actually said them, even he felt they were too grandiose.

But Qian Yun was not offended. Su Ge's words stirred something within him, as if a grand business blueprint was unfolding before his eyes.

Do you know about the Spiritual Society?

"Spiritual Society?"

“If you attend our gathering,” Qian Yun said confidently, “you will definitely see a huge market.”

(End of this chapter)