Legend of the Cyber Heroes
Chapter 776 - 22 From Mars to the Asteroid Belt

Chapter 776: Chapter 22 From Mars to the Asteroid Belt

At that moment, Jeanne had grown accustomed to Tumor Xiang Shan’s "This is a wise decision."

Over the years, no matter what she decided to do, Tumor Xiang Shan would say, "This is a wise decision," and then analyze the pros and cons in her mind, detailing the benefits and drawbacks based on her decision.

Instead, she would have preferred if Xiang Shan would not be so... blunt in front of choices that "any normal person would make."

The difficulty of traveling from Earth to Mars was incomparable to the difficulty of traveling from Mars to the Asteroid Belt.

The primary cause of this difference was "gravity."

The gravity on Mars is much less than that on Earth.

Therefore, the cost of escaping Mars’s gravitational pull is also much less than that of escaping Earth’s gravitational pull.

On Mars, spacecraft need less power to enter space. Moreover, the construction and maintenance costs of space elevators on Mars are much lower than those on Earth.

Additionally, Mars serves as the base for Scientific Knights, which has its own unique benefits. Ordinary people can acquire "experimental materials" at low cost here—materials whose reliability even Scientific Knights cannot guarantee. You can use them to build something and report back with the data periodically.

Due to the indeed low cost, there are even many space elevators built by civilians on Mars. Some large wilderness settlements have them.

Some Cybernetically Enhanced People simply take a can of compressed air into space, use a small burst of jet propulsion to adjust their direction after leaving the planet’s gravity, and drift to the nearby Satellite City during their long hibernation.

For Cybernetically Enhanced People, such a feat is about as difficult as "swimming across a large river."

There is a possibility of accidents, and it’s not low.

But many people, with little to hold onto in life, opt to do this.

It is even said that there have been instances of drifting from Mars directly to the Asteroid Belt.

Towards these space elevators, the government adopts a laissez-faire attitude.

By stark contrast is Jupiter.

Inside Jupiter’s atmosphere are floating cities. These cities are like gigantic airships, with every building mounted on numerous independent gasbags, floating at the top of Jupiter’s troposphere.

From these floating cities, many extraction devices extend downward. Together with the outer space stations, they form the chain through which the government collects Jupiter’s resources and transports them externally.

Huge warships such as deep space warships, if recklessly entering this zone, would be captured by Jupiter’s gravity and would require immense energy to escape.

Escaping from Jupiter’s gravitational pull consumes a large amount of energy, hence the government’s stricter control over such activities.

When leaving Earth, Xiang Shan and Jeanne had almost discarded all their weapons and used psychoactive drugs to suppress their internal strength reactions—a technical task. To perfectly calibrate medication to suppress the neuronal activity of inner strength without affecting normal functions is not something everyone can achieve. Yawgmoth always detested addiction to psychoactive drugs, which also posed a risk if discovered.

It was fortunate that in this era, one couldn’t just take a blood sample to check for addiction; others had to judge from one’s behavior whether a person showed signs of addiction to psychoactive drugs.

Luckily, Xiang Shan was quite familiar with the brain.

As long as one was careful in identifying the type of drug that had a significant effect on the higher functional areas and allowed Tumor Xiang Shan to control the body, they could deceive their way through.

After all, tests targeting inner strength always stimulated the higher cortex.

Selecting the right type of drug could ensure "Jeanne’s higher cortex is numbed, while Tumor Xiang Shan is still sharp."

All of this sounds simple, but Tumor Xiang Shan and Jeanne had planned for a long time on Earth, gathering necessary elements including banned drugs, before they could officially leave.

For Xiang Shan and Jeanne, breaking away from Earth was such a perilous affair.

But leaving Mars was much simpler.

Without much trouble, Jeanne arrived at the space city "Chaldea".

Chaldea was one of the neutral city-states in the Asteroid Belt, established after Ur. Its predecessor was half of the War God King’s fleet, which had been destroyed here by the Seventh Martial God. The battlefield was likewise left uncleaned.

Essentially, the cities in the Asteroid Belt all shared this kind of origin, either related to the Sixth Martial God or the Seventh Martial God.

Space city Chaldea was considered one of the more active cities within the Asteroid Belt. The late activities of the Seventh Martial God had altered the trajectories of many small celestial bodies. In an effect similar to the butterfly effect, the motion of small bodies in this region became somewhat disordered; the government-maintained Lightspeed Highway had to detour around this area, and large deep space warships seldom came here.

Over time, Chaldea became a mix of dragons and snakes, a place where those tired of the Jianghu affairs would hide, Green Forest members would trade goods, and Mobile Cavalry would pursue criminals.

This city was a place where hidden dragons crouched and tigers leapt.

Shortly after Jeanne arrived at the space city Chaldea, she caught onto the faint traces of the Six Dragons Sect.

After that, she had several face-to-face encounters with people from the Six Dragons Sect.

Under the guidance of Xiang Shan, Jeanne also became aware of what the Six Dragons Sect was doing here. They seemed to be meddling in the manufacture and distribution of drugs.

These secret drugs, all acting on the brain, could assist in Internal Strength Cultivation, or temporarily enhance focus for lower-level Internal martial artists.

"Perhaps the Scientific Knights need more ’volunteers’ with Inner Strength." Tumor Xiang Shan suggested this.

He had some understanding of this system as well.

Jeanne also learned to monitor the local underground drug distribution to trace the Six Dragons Sect’s activities.

Throughout this process, Jeanne moved from the space city Chaldea to the space city Zion.

In Zion, a merchant caught Jeanne’s attention. The drugs he was selling included some that couldn’t be found anywhere else. Subsequently, Xiang Shan analyzed that the pharmacology textbooks that came with these secret drugs were pure nonsense and hardly matched their actual effects. This led Jeanne to believe that this guy was also from the Six Dragons Sect.

Jeanne then decisively detained the merchant.

But after waiting a long time, Jeanne did not see anyone from the Six Dragons Sect come to rescue him. Nor did the merchant show any signs of committing suicide for his faith.

Lately, Tumor Xiang Shan found a bit of "interesting" content in the merchant’s records.

"Girl, there’s hope for your illness," he said, his expression very strange. It was an emotion Jeanne had never seen before...

Actually, it should be said that Jeanne had never experienced this kind of emotion shown by this parasitic being.

"A biologist, likely of a neutral stance, probably with decent skills..." Xiang Shan said, "You could capture him. No need to be conscientious with this kind of person, how about it?"

For the first time in years, Xiang Shan proposed a suggestion.

Thus, the two of them arrived at Ur, the largest neutral