Legend of the Cyber Heroes
Chapter 381 - 25 Memories of the Past

Chapter 381: Chapter 25 Memories of the Past

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When Babbitt started his broadcast today, Xiang Shan was sitting outside, watching the distant sunset.

Despite being a Great Hero, Babbitt had the integrity of a true Broadcasting Client. To ensure the quality of the program, he would not open the door while broadcasting. Xiang Shan felt it would be inappropriate to go in.

However, the signal here was incredibly strong.

Babbitt was telling a story.

The story was roughly about a family in a Wilderness Settlement. The protagonist’s uncle, lazy and gluttonous, had taken a portion of his brother’s inheritance, making himself despised by the whole family. Unable to stay in the settlement, the uncle went to the city to work and then sent a message claiming he had struck it rich, joined a gang, and become a respected Double-Flower Red Stick. But one day, the uncle suddenly sent a video saying his gang was turning into Green Forest Men and would be heading into the Wilderness, so he would lose contact.

The protagonist’s family had mixed feelings about this. They were glad to have such a powerful figure in the family but also worried because they had heard that the Green Forest Men were completely inhumane, so they weren’t sure if they could stay in touch. Even so, that last video message from the uncle became the family’s greatest source of spiritual support. Whenever they had disputes in the settlement, they would play the hopeful recording. Everyone in the settlement feared the Green Forest, so they all made way for this family, and thus the protagonist’s two sisters caught the eye of the village’s finest men.

One day, however, while the protagonist’s family was traveling to the city, they unexpectedly saw a man who looked very much like the uncle at a charging station on the city’s outskirts. This man wasn’t the fully cyberized person from the video recordings but rather a normal man whose arms and legs were still in decent condition.

The protagonist’s father did some digging and learned that the uncle had indeed joined a Martial Arts School but had never achieved much success. He then got involved with a gang, and it was during that time he acquired his decent limbs. However, he soon got caught up in a Lord’s crackdown on the gang. The uncle made off with a high-performance metal battery and gradually accumulated some solar panels. Now he made a living by charging batteries for passing vehicles and handing out power banks.

As for the "instantaneous communication with a fully prosthetic body" that had convinced the protagonist’s family, it was actually just a small plugin the uncle wrote himself. The uncle had been slick-tongued in his youth and was mistakenly seen as very smart, so he was trained for a while as a White Paper Fan and Straw Sandals. But he never truly entered the door of Inner Strength, so he could only write basic things and couldn’t participate in the modernized internal struggle.

And so the uncle was no longer the "pillar of the family" or the "notorious Green Forest figure." Instead, he reverted to being the "lazy deceiver" the family spoke of. Yet the protagonist’s family never acknowledged their connection to the uncle. They took the fully charged batteries and returned to the settlement, continuing to play the video that gave them hope.

The whole story was basically a modern version of Guy de Maupassant’s "My Uncle Jules."

You have to admit, Mr. Babbitt can really tell a story. He adeptly adapted the tale, and his narrative was of such a quality that most people could easily follow along.

The only thing that felt a bit jarring was that this Broadcasting Client still remembered that metal battery which Xiang Shan had blown up.

——His grudge sure ran deep...

Xiang Shan couldn’t help feeling a little helpless.

The collision at that time was simply the "tactically most viable" strategy he had deduced. For a few seconds, he was forced to face the barrage from the Mobile Cavalry.

Having a moto block it for a moment was the optimal tactic.

And he even got back about ten isotope batteries!

Such opportunities are rare. Mobile Cavalry mostly operate alone. Even during the battle three years ago when the major Lords joined forces to encircle Tao Enhai, the Mobile Cavalry joined the army as "elite forces of the Protector’s side."

Squads comprised purely of Mobile Cavalry could only be formed by the Kings’ direct squads or by Scientific Knight Orders with related projects.

Such harvesting opportunities really were rare.

But then again, Xiang Shan could probably understand the situation as well.

Three and a half years ago, when he was first excavated by Yuki, he didn’t even have access to high-quality metal batteries.

Xiang Shan was cradling a staff, seated upon his own vehicle. It was a motorcycle that he had ridden out from Delacruz City.

In the three years since then, he had also upgraded the hardware of his prosthetic body. Importantly, he had installed the fission reactor that the Eighth Martial God had not used.

To block the radiation from the fission reactor, he had to make the torso that housed the reactor core much larger. If the torso were to match a three-and-a-half-meter giant, it would be just right. But Xiang Shan’s prosthetic body was still only two and a half meters, which made it seem a bit disproportionate.

There was no choice, though. If the shielding layer was too thin, radiation would penetrate through. It was a secondary concern that his whereabouts would be exposed; the primary issue was that the prosthetic body’s internals couldn’t withstand it. High-energy particles would cause Total Ionizing Dose (TID) damage, Single Event Upsets (SEU), and Single Event Latch-ups (SEL) to electronic components, leading to reversible or irreversible damage and functional failures. Xiang Shan’s biological brain had decent radiation resistance, and the exquisitely designed life system, augmented by intelligent design, had a substantial self-repairing capability. However, the delicate central processor couldn’t withstand the excessive radiation. Radiation would also accelerate the degradation of the hard disk—even Homo sapiens had slightly better radiation resistance than precise computers.

But Xiang Shan couldn’t restrict the fission reactor and shielding layers to just the torso either.

Xiang Shan had not yet acquired suitable arms and legs.

However, the advantages were clear enough.

Xiang Shan could now do without solar panels. As long as he carried spare parts, he could roam freely across the world.

The motorcycle even charged the spare parts itself.

So Xiang Shan sat and listened to Babbitt’s broadcast, watching the sunset slowly sink.

Then, a crescent moon rose from the east.

Xiang Shan’s thoughts scattered like moonlight.

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This was the Moon in the year 2334. It looked much the same as it did in 2029—apart from the roads visible to those with prosthetic eyes, the Moon seen from Earth only showed traces of buildings around its periphery.

After absorbing the memories of the Eighth Martial God, Xiang Shan finally understood how the current era was calculated.

The end of the Sublimation War was marked by him charging into enemy lines, facing off against Hartman and Yawgmoth. After his defeat, Yawgmoth declared that Xiang Shan had been executed. Yawgmoth believed that this time point symbolized the destruction of all of the old civilization in this war and that civilization would enter a whole new world; therefore, official history referred to it as the "Sublimation War."

The Gregorian calendar, with its complicated ties to "religion," was completely abandoned.

From then on, humanity discarded everything from its past.

Then, another two hundred and nine years passed.

In the 209th year of the New Calendar, his head was dug out from a rubbish heap.

Recycling Station Town was said to be the ruins of the Battle of Sublimation, but before and after the War of Heroes, humans had already begun their conquest of the Solar System. At the end of the Secret War of Heroes, Xiang Shan and Yawgmoth reclaimed the authority that had been stolen, slaying the great thief who had tried to steal the country.

But Yawgmoth didn’t return the "great power" to the people.

Because that "great power" was indeed too easy to steal.

The behemoth, built around Superman Enterprise, wove the authority that in the past had been concentrated in jade seals, crowns, scepters, and thrones into a series of codes. It was an unprecedented power to command life and death.

It was no longer something "that those who are unworthy cannot bear." With it, one could dictate life or death.

This was the "technology" that Xiang Shan had once believed in.

Technology is a thing without a stance. It inherently has no stance, only siding with objective reality, neither good nor evil. A good person can hold it, and so can an evil person. It doesn’t think "I must benefit mankind."

Because technology is just technology.

With the help of internal strength masters like Zhu Xinyu, Anatoly, and Ingrid, Xiang Shan and Yawgmoth won that battle.

As for the specifics, Xiang Shan really couldn’t remember.

The only certainty now was that he lost the subsequent battle, and his fortunes took a sharp downturn. Anatoly had disappeared long ago. Then Yawgmoth recruited that dog who had once stood on the tyrant’s side. "Aqini" had become the nightmare of the world since then.

Hartman helped Yawgmoth rebuild the defense. The codes that could decide over human life became something beyond Xiang Shan and his group’s cognition.

The Sublimation War lasted a long time too. Xiang Shan had won and lost.

But right now, Xiang Shan simply couldn’t recall what happened on the eve of the Sublimation War.

—Such an important memory...

That’s what Xiang Shan thought.

When he was first attacked, Xiang Shan actually hesitated a bit about Yawgmoth. Those locks represented by the codes were not something that could be undone in an instant. The Sword of Damocles that loomed above humanity’s head would exist for a long time. It was an objective fact. Anyone who touched it might become the new tyrant. Perhaps Yawgmoth was just too aggressive in his methods.

Xiang Shan had to admit that the long war had turned that generation of heroes into deities and demons, unbound by regular laws and untouchable by conventional means.

To make society function again, it was necessary to constrain these heroes whose abilities were already worlds apart from ordinary people.

But...

The anger and hatred Xiang Shan felt at this moment were absolutely real.

In fact, a philosopher in the nineteenth century had already left a cryptic message about destiny—that an end achieved by improper means is not legitimate.

Three years were not enough for Xiang Shan to recover all his memories. But Xiang Shan didn’t need memories; looking at the world now was enough to understand.

Xiang Shan’s staff wavered in his hand, then he thrust it towards the Moon as if venting.

"Hartman..."

The hatred of the "Martial Ancestor," the fury of the "Eighth Martial God"...

"Hero Noname?" At this moment, Babbitt had just finished broadcasting and came out. He saw what Xiang Shan was doing and asked somewhat puzzled, "What are you doing?"

Xiang Shan thought for a moment, "Reflecting on the past."

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