Legend of the Cyber Heroes
Chapter 722 - 366: The Man of Contradictions [Part 1]

Chapter 722: Chapter 366: The Man of Contradictions [Part 1]

The Ninth Martial God struggled out of the asphalt, freeing himself from his memories.

It was nothing more than a file sealed in his hard drive being unsealed. It suddenly flowed into the superficial layer of his consciousness, and that was all. The entire reading process was very fast.

However, the Ninth Martial God felt the world spinning.

The subsequent history was not complicated.

King Aqini had been an accomplice to the Usurper of the State for quite a long time. It was only towards the end of the Secret League War that Hartman came across more and more evidence that could prove the Usurpation. He chose to defect only at the end of the war. From then on, he was under strict surveillance.

The war had already ended by the time he cleared his name of being a spy.

Yawgmoth survived from a secret base on the Moon. He declared that Xiang Shan and Ingrid had died in battle, but the Usurpers were also extinct.

This, of course, failed to convince everyone. Merely three days later, this serious doubt had escalated into a blaze of conflict. Zhu Xinyu attacked Yawgmoth.

But Yawgmoth took advantage of these few days to win over King Aqini.

It was weeks later when Xiang Shan and Ingrid crawled out of the wreckage using their spines.

And during this time, Yawgmoth managed to do a lot.

Exporting Big Boss’s memory files was not accomplished overnight. Therefore, although Xiang Shan forcibly remembered a part of "Absolute Authority," this part constituted only one-tenth of the total volume.

Well, considering that a large part of "Absolute Authority" could easily kill a billion people, having access to one-tenth of it was enough to deter the entire human world.

But even this short part was counteracted by Yawgmoth as much as possible.

While Yawgmoth recorded the Big Boss memory files, he also recorded the time of entry. Yawgmoth could use this information to guess the content of "Absolute Authority" that Xiang Shan controlled during the week.

This authority actually included two different aspects, targeting both machinery and biological systems. The biological backdoor mostly targets neurons, enabling specific electrical signals in the brain to produce specific effects. On the other hand, the mechanical aspects were varied, but generally revolved around "direct control of mechanical parts" or "causing brain-machine interface devices to emit specific electromagnetic waves."

The latter was a prerequisite for the rapid establishment of the former.

If one was not fully cyberized and instead was a zero-modified Benchmark Man, then this brain-machine interface designed "backdoor" would be meaningless to him. The special proteins on the surface of these children’s brains would just be proteins.

Only when these two factors combined could they produce the result of "a thought that instantly annihilates a million-strong army."

Hartman quickly released a patch specifically to block the backdoors that Xiang Shan controlled.

And Yawgmoth timely promoted gene therapy, which could prevent the expression of another part of the genes or suppress their activity.

The "Authority" in Xiang Shan’s hands was quickly being dismantled.

Of course, that bit of authority still held some deterrent power. At first, Xiang Shan could still forcefully order some of the military forces left by the usurpers to remain neutral.

But as time passed, Yawgmoth continuously discovered methods to counteract the backdoors left by the usurpers.

Until a specific moment, a delicate "equilibrium" was completely broken.

After that, came the legendary "The Only Defeat," and the entry of the Martial Gods.

And more than a hundred years had passed since then.

The Ninth Martial God stared at Yawgmoth.

"That’s it?" Yawgmoth’s eyebrows lifted slightly, "Is that all the reaction I get?"

The AR model crouched in front of Yawgmoth: "Is that your reaction? Stand up. Stand up and continue your tirades against me. Enthusiastically declare how my actions just violated morality. Come on."

"You..." The Ninth Martial God’s breath nearly stalled. He thought for a long time, then finally spoke, "Why..."

"What do you mean? Is there something you still don’t understand? About your incitement ability? Ah, that’s easy to explain. To my past self, Xiang Shan was undoubtedly a top-notch orator and agitator. He could easily stir up emotions and reconcile the interests of various parties. Something my past self could never do..."

"This persona includes some of my own longing, jealousy, and envy. Of course, I could tell at a glance, this also contains my personal emotions—the real Xiang Shan might not be like this. To make this ability seem more genuine, I also used Adolf Hitler and many other renowned agitators as material, feeding them to the AI for deep learning to create a set of gestures and movement-based ’plugins’."

Yawgmoth said this.

The Ninth Martial God was already overwhelmed by a sense of nausea.

It turned out that the source of this persuasiveness and infectivity was not only human culture, but even more so...

Luckily, Cybernetically Enhanced People have no digestive tracts.

Fortunately, Cybernetically Enhanced People do not need digestive tracts.

Thus, the Ninth Martial God still asked the question, "Why did you choose to base my creation on your memories...why?"

If it was just to create a "doomed-to-fail Xiang Shan," then Yawgmoth had no need to use his own memories at all.

"Oh, that’s easy to explain. Only ’Xiang Shan from my perspective’ could be considered as my inner demon," Yawgmoth chuckled softly, "In some respects, it’s more terrifying and more difficult to deal with than the real Xiang Shan... I need to actually face you once to conquer my own fear."

"Lastly... I also occasionally wanted to see what it would be like to be a member of the League of Heroes—if that day, I hadn’t made this choice, I probably would have been like this."

Yawgmoth snapped his fingers, and a new AR model appeared in front of Xiang Shan.

It seemed to be a massive man-made space structure.

"Ark... my genetically screened babies, the most valuable part of the Gene Tax. Some of them will serve as the templates for cloned babies, to be produced along with some of next year’s babies, and sent to various human settlements on Earth. But most of the babies will enter into hibernation."

"And during the lengthy hibernation, there are always some people who are not well-suited to human cryotechnology, with uncontrollable growth in their body and nervous system—not that it’s uncontrollable, but it’s not possible to suppress their growth without ensuring their health."

"These people will leave the Ark, entering a project named ’Mirage.’ Their blank brains will become part of an online VR space. These individuals, whose minds have never been tainted by humanity, will live within AR."

"Another purpose of Mirage is historical simulation."