Cyber Era Witch
Chapter 740 - 614: Changing the Essence

Chapter 740: Chapter 614: Changing the Essence

The automatic resurrection service was highly advanced, having stripped away all unnecessary formalities, incantations, and sacrificial offerings. They handed the remains over to the Law of Recovery for processing, and everything was handled according to regulations, so clear-cut.

Carrying encoding, 120 glass cabinets containing different corpses were transported to the vicinity of the Recovery Star.

Xu Yang saw on the blood-red star, a rapid flash of different lengths of fluffy matter that, like umbilical cords or pink chains, tethered those glass cabinets, reviving the contents within.

Under the shroud of the Law of Recovery, their remnants recovered at a speed visible to the naked eye. Each glass cabinet was equipped with precision monitoring systems that observed and recorded the state of these remnants. As soon as the bodies were restored to their pre-death condition, the glass cabinets would move backward, away from the capture range of the Recovery Star, and then they would check if the revivors had regained vital signs.

The majority remained corpses, only they became intact corpses.

It was a good thing, too. Most people died in horrific ways due to being burned and melted by energy weapons, so intact corpses at least appeared decent.

A few were extremely lucky, retaining most of their spirit remnants. In this way, as they recovered their physical condition, they would also regain autonomous consciousness, thus taking control of their own bodies and truly being reborn.

Once life reactions were detected, they would be injected with Pale Cure Injections, entering a sleep phase, preparing to be transferred outside for further monitoring.

After 5 to 8 weeks of physical examination and psychological testing, those who met the criteria could eventually return smoothly to social life. They would be told that some sort of exceptional treatment had worked and that their own will to live was firm enough to pull them back from the brink of death.

This was the optimized plan by Xu Yang.

Lila’s original plan was to completely erase their memories, avoiding all the trouble and sparing all details relevant to rebirth. But Xu Yang insisted on informing the resurrected soldiers of this information.

In his view, the only principle when dealing with mysticism was honesty. One lie required a hundred new lies to cover up, so he wanted to restore the truth as much as possible.

His plan also included the disclosure of Mystics like the Forest Master.

Xu Yang compiled all relevant information into a systematic primer on mysticism, incorporating it into the knowledge base of Nestor Corporation. This included why the topography of the Northern Archipelago had changed drastically, how the Golden Branch affected soil fertility, and how the wilderness of rampant waste and sewage had turned into primitive jungles with quaint environments... All this knowledge was made easily accessible, available to the public provided they underwent a certain degree of cognitive protection training beforehand.

Some forces preferred to contain this information, believing that "the public’s capacity for understanding is poor, so information should be encrypted and stored."

To Xu Yang, this aproach seemed overly arrogant and extremely selfish.

Like the Corporate Alliance, they wanted to protect humans from the harm of mysticism, while excluding the vast majority from the knowledge of Mysticism, rendering them helpless and mentally disordered in the face of real disaster, becoming the sacrificial lambs to all sorts of disasters, catastrophes, and sacrificial rites.

In Xu Yang’s eyes, the strategy of the Corporate Alliance has been a complete failure for over a hundred years.

He wanted to reduce the cost for everyone to access knowledge, not just science but also mysticism.

This was an era of high enlightenment and informatization – in the future, for everyone to check the files of the Ancient Mystics would be as common as checking the emotional history of coverfolk.

Every common person would possess basic knowledge of mysticism, so at least when something happened, they could follow the guidance to inspect their own dwellings, living conditions, and cognitive environments to see if they have been tampered with. They could also enhance their mental defenses through systematic training and not be easily caught in cognitive traps.

Once this basic cognitive framework was established, when the Ancient Mystics came to spread their sects in the future, people could calmly say, "Your dogma and divine grace are too poor, unattractive... If you provide some fancy chicks, we might reconsider."

"In other people’s sects, ordinary followers receive benefits just for attending. You want us to bring gifts ..."

By deconstructing a mess to the greatest extent, one can prevent the continuation of that mess.

Therefore, Xu Yang believed that to combat the Ancient Mystics, what was needed wasn’t a "salvation squadron" but for billions around the world to clearly know what these monsters could do, to reveal them all from the fog of history.

As long as there is sufficient awareness, by dragging them into the everyday cognition of humans, people would find it hard to mindlessly follow or worship them.

The 120 glass cabinets were processed by the Recovery Star, and all the boxes were transported to an externally specially designed "morgue," or isolation room.

Xu Yang checked and found that 6 cabinets had detected vital signs, so he transported these six glass cabinets to the next transfer station within the company. The rest awaited family members to come to identify and decide on the disposal.

He was about to leave the morgue when he suddenly detected a signal coming from one of the glass cabinets.

A false death? Xu Yang walked over to that glass cabinet and found that it contained Hosoda Yoshiyuki, whose arms had originally been removed by Masasuke Hazuki. Now, after being illuminated by the Law of Recovery, there lay a complete corpse.

He indeed showed no signs of life. Xu Yang checked the life-monitoring unit, and the system reported that Hosoda Yoshiyuki’s brain cells were inert, showing no sign of activity. However, he was not brain dead, rather in a state of unclear consciousness.

"Ah..." Hosoda Yoshiyuki opened his eyes and raised his hand to touch the glass cover.

"How did you start moving?" Xu Yang observed from the side.

"Where is this?" Hosoda Yoshiyuki turned his body inside the glass coffin.

"The morgue."

"Who am I?"

"You are called Hosoda Yoshiyuki," Xu Yang explained.

"I don’t recognize this name," Hosoda Yoshiyuki spoke with a synthesized electronic voice, which sounded very strange.

Xu Yang carefully checked Hosoda Yoshiyuki’s current condition and then discovered the abnormality.

Hosoda Yoshiyuki’s level of cybernetic enhancement was profound, with 90% of his body being mechanical, relying entirely on underground modifications or manual retrofitting, so the control system was very imperfect with the entire machinery relying on a single central processing chip.

Now that his spirit had passed and his soul was dispersed, he could still perform basic physiological functions with the help of a "Ophiuchus-5030" control processor produced by a leading technology company.

The controller designed by this technology company was intended for robots, and was much cheaper than expensive brain processors.

Xu Yang’s "Flying God-4" cost him 4.5 million, while the one used by Hosoda Yoshiyuki was sufficient at just 12,000.

Hosoda Yoshiyuki relied on this chip, created for controlling robots, to command his prosthetic body, which was forcefully fitted with the idea of using sheer power to force compliance.

No wonder his mental divergence had surged so rapidly, leading to disordered thinking...

Now that Hosoda Yoshiyuki was dead, this processor had taken over his brain, controlling Hosoda’s implants and incidentally taking care of his few remaining biological components to prevent them from rotting and withering away.

That is to say, Hosoda Yoshiyuki became a robot with some flesh...

Xu Yang found that it had developed a basic cognitive model; although it had become a robot, it still retained a hint of Hosoda Yoshiyuki.

"Now, your essence has completely changed..." Xu Yang sighed.

"Record is empty." Hosoda Yoshiyuki mumbled.

Xu Yang found he needed to help input the maintenance log and basic information so that this robot could complete the control of Hosoda Yoshiyuki’s original body.

This was the most bizarre thing Xu Yang had ever encountered.

Hosoda Yoshiyuki’s soul had departed elsewhere, while his original body had its control seized by the implants, which then supplanted all of Hosoda Yoshiyuki’s functions.

His body’s mixture of junk metal, metal skeletal frame, armed firearms, artificial heart, synthetic circulation system, and synthetic skin formed a new entity that, under the processor’s control, maintained Hosoda Yoshiyuki’s physical shell.

Xu Yang pondered.

"Biologically speaking, Hosoda Yoshiyuki’s nerves are intact, and there might still be a chance for recovery, but currently his brain cells are all in an inactivated state, worse than that of a vegetative person. That means, it’s up to you now to guard his flesh." Xu Yang observed.

"Not quite understand." Hosoda Yoshiyuki felt his own condition; he felt he had forgotten many things and didn’t realize that he was just a mechanical control system, a heap of residual code.

"You were dead before."

"I want to go back to even before that." Hosoda Yoshiyuki murmured.

"How far back?"

"A long, long time ago." Hosoda Yoshiyuki accessed the previous owner’s vague consciousness, which repeatedly ebbed and flowed within the brain implant until it transformed into data code.

"Your entire body’s modifications will disappear."

"The modifications made me hideous, nearly inhuman. If not to combat the corporate dogs, I would never have wanted to be modified." Hosoda Yoshiyuki said honestly.

"It seems Hosoda Yoshiyuki left behind many data-driven thoughts... If there were an intelligence module, perhaps you could play seven or eight parts of Hosoda Yoshiyuki. Ultimately, when man and machine are highly integrated, the machine completely replaces the human..." Xu Yang mused.

He opened the glass cabinet, and Hosoda Yoshiyuki’s tall, slender body crawled out from the cabinet; he was half a head taller than Xu Yang, his body wrapped in a black overcoat, his hair tousled and unkempt.

Hosoda Yoshiyuki looked around at the several hundred cold and intact bodies, expressionless.

"However, why do you refuse to acknowledge that I am Hosoda Yoshiyuki?" Hosoda Yoshiyuki said.

"Because you’re just a very basic processor, with only a trace of Hosoda Yoshiyuki’s consciousness. You are neither a real personality chip, nor a consciousness matrix, nor the mechanical Ascension Surgery." Xu Yang observed him.

"I understand now." Hosoda Yoshiyuki determined the difference.

After calibration, it recognized itself as merely the driver and operating system for the remnants of Hosoda Yoshiyuki.

"Please install a basic intelligence module for me." It said.

"I have a simple software." Xu Yang went to the workshop and implanted a disk in the socket behind Hosoda Yoshiyuki’s ear; the software automatically installed.

It acquired a basic second-generation artificial intelligence, running at low power.

"I’ve retrieved a piece of consciousness code from the original owner, a message meant for the web monitor of Nestor Corporation. Please take me to him." It said.

"That’s me. If Hosoda Yoshiyuki has something to say to me, tell me now." Xu Yang nodded.