Yamafu Military Affairs

Chapter 341 Yangzi
Skyscrapers several thousand meters high greedily intercept the sunlight which is as precious as gold, leaving only eternal darkness for the people at the bottom of society.

It was drizzling, and the neon signs and round-cornered lanterns on Guiliu Street dyed the falling rain a dark red. Shirtless muscular men walked hurriedly, swiftly crossing the neon-lit streets.

The rain was in a mess, and various signs such as "Big Bird Bar", "Casa Rosso", "Extreme Club" and so on were piled up randomly. The buildings submerged in the darkness in the distance were even more entangled and wildly grown.

This is the west side of Liuxing Street, at the junction of Bukit and Timah districts.

Although Xinma Port is a self-governing city-state, its layout follows convention, and is divided according to the stars like most cities in the Pan-Asian People's Republic. It is because of this convention that Liuxing Street and Guiliu Street, as well as many streets in the southern part of Xinma Port, are named after the seven southern stars of the Twenty-Eight Stars [Jing Gui Liuxing Zhang Yizhen].

However, although the blocks are divided by stars, people living on the lower floors of the city cannot see the starry sky. Only the damp ground reflects the neon lights, which is better than nothing.

Through the ubiquitous information network, Qin Huai also used the [external electronic brain] to query the general information of Bukit District and Timah District.

The Bukit area is occupied by religious oligarchs. Among the skyscrapers on top are three Huagu Taoist temples and countless temples and Taoist temples. The Timah area is home to many giant conglomerates including the Whale Song Company. This border area serves as a buffer between the two urban areas.

Qin Huai looked up at the sign in front of him that was emitting a brilliant blue and purple light, with a rather strange expression on his face.

【Night City Club】

On the advertising screen under the sign, the faces of handsome and strong men kept changing.

Deep V-neck, shiny jewelry, full and powerful chest and abdominal muscles, and clearly defined mermaid lines.
In addition to men with different temperaments, there are also women who are dressed in seductive clothes, have facial features adjusted through plastic surgery, and are full of charm.

In Night City, there is a gigolo club on Guiliu Street, famous for its high quality, low prices, and long-lasting sex.

Well, it’s also a men’s business, which is the main business of the Split Claw Gang.

"Here we are. You've just joined the gang, so you probably haven't been to the headquarters yet, right?"

The man with the cockscomb haircut led the way in front. People entering and leaving the club would nod and greet him and call him "Team Leader Cui" when they saw him.

"No, I was in the dormitory yesterday choosing renovation plans, but before I could come to the headquarters for the operation, you called me out to collect the debt."

Qin Huai responded while watching the screens on both sides of the corridor flashing various cross-dressing gigolos, coquettish Shamatte hairstyles, exaggerated sexy tattoos, huge prosthetic tools...
"Alas, I originally wanted to recruit you as a DJ and gigolo, but I didn't expect that when I was collecting debts, I met a fanatic believer of the Four-Faced Buddha, and he even unlocked [Telepathy]. In the end, the brothers all capsized in the gutter, so your brother took action to pick up the spoils and made a lot of money."

The cockscomb-headed man looked at Qin Huai's sturdy natural muscles, and said with some resentment: "Tell me the truth, did you guess that the target would resist the debt violently, so you notified your brother to follow him and be prepared to respond to the situation?"

"Well, as compensation, you guys don't have to pay me back for the medical expenses I owe you."

Qin Huai understood the implicit meaning of Ji Guantou's words, and immediately asked to waive the bill for the thugs. It was just a small amount of money to him anyway, so there was no need to care.

"I said I didn't make a mistake in recommending you to the guild!"

The cockscomb-head was very happy and immediately took two bottles of beer from the bar: "From now on, all your drinks will be charged to my account!"

"Team Leader Cui, I heard from Old Man Guan that you don't have much balance in your account, and you can't even afford the medical fees? You've been in the gang for a long time, and you can work in the Spirit Realm, so how come you can only save so little money?"

Qin Huai took the beer and took the opportunity to ask about the financial situation of Ji Guan Tou. Compared with those insignificant cold numbers, his purpose was to get more words from this small leader who had obviously been in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong for more than ten years.

"Spiritual Realm? Work? You mean the open-minded data?"

The man with the cockscomb head led Qin Huai and the other man upstairs, his face hidden in deep shadows.

"Unfortunately, that's just the rhetoric promoted by corporations and religions in public nursing homes. You have to understand that not everyone's brain is valuable."

The cockscomb-haired man suddenly sighed, paused and continued, "Some people have congenital immune diseases and cannot install brain computers. Some people's thought data is polluted, and their access to the Internet is restricted. There are also people who want to ascend to heaven and make themselves neither human nor ghost. Most people in this world will be polluted after opening their thought data for a few months, and will be abandoned by the spiritual world, and finally can only survive in reality.

We wild dogs have never been freed by them from labor, even if it is just physical labor."

Chu Qing remained silent, he didn't know what to say.

Qin Huai did the same, and the two of them followed him up the stairs step by step.

"Here, the boss is inside, go in."

The man with the cockscomb led Qin Huai and the other man to the top floor of the club, lifted a door curtain with a painting of ocean waves and a red sun on it, and motioned for them to go in.

"Thanks."

Qin Huai and Chu Qing looked at each other, thanked him, and then went in one after another.

Behind the door curtain is a small living room. On one side is a bar filled with various fine wines, and on the other side is a large workbench with many robotic arms installed. There are thick optical shock-absorbing pads underneath. Astronomical instruments, superfluid ornaments, hexagram copper coins and goat-horn holy grails are cluttered on the workbench.

There was a large leather sofa in the back of the living room opposite the door curtain. A woman was lying on it. She was wearing a jet-black cheongsam with the characteristics of the era, with a ferocious claw mark embroidered on the collar.

Seeing Qin Huai and the other man come in, the woman put down the mercury-wire pipe in her hand, bent her white thighs slightly, and sat up. Her narrow eyes narrowed, and half of the sleeve of her right hand holding the pipe was rolled up, revealing her mauve forearm.

"Are you the boxer who killed the walker? The Red Blooded Thug? Or the Tyrant Who Stops War?"

The woman looked at Chu Qing's fists which showed no signs of mechanization, exhaled a puff of misty smoke, and asked.

"Whatever, I came here today to do business with you."

Chu Qing took out [Qi Lu] and [Jing Bo], not caring at all about the woman's exposed private parts.

"content."

"Find me a good hacker. I need help on a job."

"What kind of job? I need to know the specific content of the job, otherwise the probability of me getting the agency fee is too low."

The woman kept pursuing him, asking one question after another.

People in this era can choose to hand over most of their thinking to brain-computers, which will not only improve their efficiency in work and life, but also help them reduce the death of neurons and live longer.

The woman in front of me seemed to be a typical New Age person who relied on brain-computer thinking, so every time she finished speaking, new questions would burst out from her red lips like a string of cannonballs.

"Help Ah Hu complete the full set of transformation and introductory steps to become a cyber hacker, and then help us enter the spirit realm to collect samples. It's that simple."

"he?"

The woman paused, and Ah Hu's identity information suddenly appeared in front of her eyes.

"Cyber ​​hackers, like nightclub kings, require special talents and abilities. Judging from the characteristics he has shown so far, I cannot guarantee an absolute success rate."

"Whether I succeed or not is not your concern. I am sure of myself."

Qin Huai lowered his head and looked directly into the woman's gray eyes that were like the dark mist in the abyss.

The fiery red curtains and lanterns around swayed slowly, setting off the colorful paintings decorating the walls.

Soon, the woman knocked on the gilded bowl and nodded without comment: "Let me introduce myself again. My name is Yangzi, the boss of the Claw Clan, and the second-level hacker of the Yin-Yang Family [Dream Eater]." "Aniu, according to what you said, I should be considered a fifth-level warrior who believes in physical fundamentalism, [Holy Fist Martial God]."

Chu Qing introduced himself in a low voice, but Yangzi soon treated it as a joke and didn't take it seriously at all.

Come on, even a three-year-old child in a public nursing home knows that there is no such thing as a fifth-level warrior in this world, let alone a fifth-level warrior who believes in physical fundamentalism.

Even Ang Martinez, who is known as the king of black boxing, whose whole body has been transformed into mechanized prostheses and who is invincible with his nuclear fission punch, is only a fourth-level warrior [Jiuzhou Wukui], not to mention Aniu, the newcomer in front of him who is only famous in Borneo.

"Ah Hu, I don't have any prosthetics at all, but fortunately I still have a brain."

Qin Huai shrugged his shoulders, and after confirming that Yangzi in front of him was the hacker who volunteered to take over his business, he walked into the bar in a familiar manner, picked out a few drinks and base liquors and planned to have a drink.

"Since you have decided to cooperate, I need to know what you are going to get from entering the Spirit Realm."

Yangzi withdrew her gaze from Qin Huai and continued to stare at Chu Qing in front of her with a sharp gaze. She was still more interested in this mysterious and dangerous man.

"A set of ascension methods is considered Xiaoyaoke's ultimate method."

Chu Qing's tone remained the same, but Yangzi's expression suddenly became extremely wonderful, as if a 10,000-ton nuclear bomb exploded in her ears.

"How is this possible?! How could those immortals allow such things to circulate in the spiritual realm? Could it be that evil spirits were behind this?!"

Yoko's tone was very shocked, as if her cognition had collapsed.

"Snakes have their ways, rats have their ways. If you know too much, you will die."

Qin Huai walked up to the two of them with three cocktails, glanced at Yangzi who was performing very lifelike and trying to trick them, and changed the subject.

"You already understand our situation pretty well. Now it's our turn to test you."

Chu Qing picked up the [Whale Wave] that was removed from the walker's head, with a look of oppression in his eyes.

"Decipher this walker's memory. I want to know how it ended up on the black market."

"No problem. Come with me to the [Deep Diving Room] first."

The three of them walked through the hall and into the next room.

The so-called [deep diving room] is a room with a closed somatosensory cabin. Yoko walked to the table, adjusted the equipment parameters with ease, and picked up two black eye masks.

"Do you want a VR view?"

"No need, we all have brain computers."

Chu Qing waved his hand, indicating to Yangzi that they had the means to enter the spiritual realm on their own.

"Come on, my consciousness anchor code has been shared in the local area network."

Yoko lay down in the opened somatosensory cabin, lifted up the artificial scalp behind her head, revealing a huge brain-computer interface, and plugged the data cable directly into it.

Qin Huai followed suit and turned on the [Signal Transmission] mimicry, then picked up the data cable and fitted it tightly against his skin.

"Neural data is 100% synchronized. You have been connected to the LAN channel [Night City]."

After the cold mechanical electronic sound, Yoko's somewhat hoarse female voice came out.

"I checked the sales records and activated serial numbers of major [Whale Song] branches in Southeast Asia, and I can be sure that this [Whale Wave] was not purchased from a formal channel. To find out its specific acquisition channel, we need to enter the dark web and find the walker's memory backup."

"There are many channels for Singapore and Malaysia to access the dark web, but the unknown channels are very risky, and the channels in Night City cannot accommodate too much data access. So this time I will give you a one-time code, and use Luohou Xingjun as a transit to open a temporary access channel."

"Rahu Ketu, Purple Qi Moon?"

Qin Huai raised his eyebrows. As a monk who made a living by reading myths and legends, and a former doctor of astronomy and physics, he was naturally very familiar with this name.

Rahu is a fierce god who devours the sun and the moon. After his death, he split into two: the upper body turns into the eclipse star Rahu, and the lower body turns into the ominous star Ketu.

At the same time, in the field of astronomy, the position of Rahu can also refer to the astronomical intersection of the Earth-Moon orbits. As for Ketu, it is a comet, and like Ziqi and Yuebei, it is one of the four remaining stars.

"What does [Rahu Star Lord] have to do with the dark web?"

"The safest way to access the dark web is through the satellite base station controlled by Luohou. Luohou only has a location in the real world, but no entity. If there is any entity, it is the invisible satellite base station operating in low-Earth orbit."

Yoko opened her eyes, stretched out her right hand from the somatosensory chamber and snapped her fingers. The steel plate covering the ceiling of the [deep diving room] slowly opened, revealing high-strength transparent glass and a radio frequency generator.

It was almost noon, but the light at the junction was still dull and dim.

The consciousness of the three people turned into neural data and high-energy electromagnetic waves, flying up into the fragmented sky from between the buildings, passing through the flowing clouds under the glazed tiles of the temple, the golden prayer flags with tassels hanging, and the gray-feathered falcons making high-pitched screams beside them.

The lush rainforests that have existed in Southeast Asia for thousands of years have been submerged by an iron-gray rust tide. With nowhere to go, they can only adapt to the more brutal steel jungle.

The next moment, Qin Huai and the other two entered darkness. Countless white spots looked like floating noise on the screen of an old-fashioned TV, or like stars in the boundless universe.

For no reason, Qin Huai suddenly remembered something he had heard from a professor of astronomy at Peking University: From the moment the universe was born, which is what we usually call the Big Bang, the heat of this Big Bang was initially super-high temperature X-rays. As the temperature slowly dropped, the wavelength was stretched, and then became microwaves, and finally became radio waves. This radio wave is floating in the universe all the time. After being captured by the antenna invented by us humans, it appears on the TV as snowflakes. So, that is not an ordinary snowflake, but the afterglow of the birth of the universe.

The space was boundless, the afterglow shone all over the sky, and the white spots quickly enlarged and expanded from far away to become countless pages floating around the three people. To be more precise, they were windows to different worlds.

Countless images flashed in the window:

Old streets, posters and paintings, a cinema with peeling white walls, a woman in a cheongsam lighting a cigarette between her fingers;

Golden summit, white frost blade, taro tree crown, old Taoist dancing with sword bathed in lightning;

Green trains, crowded crowds, all kinds of life, and lamas humming along with the prayer wheels in their hands.

These images are quiet and peaceful, yet reveal something indescribably weird.

There were tentacles swaying between the colors depicted in the poster next to the woman, a golden-crowned beast showed a ferocious smile under the lightning, and the Sanskrit sounds of the prayer wheel were mixed with bursts of crying.

There were endless scenes like this. Qin Huai saw Kunpeng fighting with the king of gods Zeus. At the top of the Kabbalah, there was a golden crow transformed into the sun, and at the root, there was a python opening its huge mouth, fighting for its tail with the giant python of the mortal world.

A feeling of chaos and confusion swept over my body like a tide.

Qin Huai is caught between business and religion, feeling depressed and suffocated. The air is filled with the smell of a mixture of neuroleptic drugs and strong alcohol. At the same time, the history and legends of ancient and modern times are repeated and integrated in his eyes.

“Welcome to the dark web.”

Yoko's voice sounded in his ears, saying exactly what he was thinking.

(End of this chapter)