123: Chapter 122 Tacit Understanding (Part 1)

Lin Yi exited Cyberspace, his body lying in the hotel bathtub.

This was to test the physical load and temperature fluctuations when diving into Cyberspace after merging with Bai Ze; the bathtub was filled with cold water and ice cubes to improve heat dissipation and maintain efficiency.

Lin Yi opened his eyes. There was no abnormal reaction from the neural slot at the nape of his neck. Songbird's deep-dive interface was closing one by one, switching to standard standby mode, running sub-modules passively.

The water in the bathtub was still ice-cold, but the sparse ice debris remaining indicated he had stayed in Cyberspace longer than anticipated.

He propped himself up in the bathtub, water cascading down from his shoulders.

The conversation between Europa and Akira still echoed in his mind, like having just listened to a piece of garbage symphony, where every section was chaotic and doing its own thing. Europa's words were clear enough, but that Akira spoke in riddles.

He picked up the bath towel from the rack, walked into the living room while drying his hair, and sank into the sofa.

"Little Beidou, Songbird." He stared at the fire sprinkler on the ceiling, his lips moving silently, "Is this the corrective force of the main storyline's destiny?"

He remembered it very clearly.

In the game, Songbird was the core test subject for Militech's Blackwall-related technology, capable of accessing the Blackwall Protocol. She was used by Myers as a tool until she was on the verge of collapse, finally taking a gamble by contacting Hansen to plot the hijacking of the president's vehicle.

That was the main storyline of the DLC 《Phantom Liberty》.

Now, this main storyline was advancing along its established track—Songbird had still rebelled, Myers was still trapped in Dogtown, and Hansen was still calculating his own moves.

But unlike the game, this time there was his intervention, the addition of Europa and the Guixu affair, and the infighting among the Transcendentalists.

Why did Zorro want to tip off the Rogue AI? Was he really just a prankster? A Transcendentalist helping a group of Rogue AI to attack another Transcendentalist—there must definitely be something else behind this.

"And the second thing Europa mentioned. Last time it was activating the fusion between Bai Ze and me through the Land of Guixu, what would it be this time?" He draped the towel over the sofa armrest, crossed his Hands over his abdomen, and continued trying to sort out his thoughts.

The first activation was after the Voodoo Boys incident, where Europa forcibly shoved a bridging protocol into his brain, allowing him to establish a rudimentary connection with the Guixu entity.

The result of that activation was that he could call upon a portion of Guixu's computing power, transfer neural load directly, and initially master the data storm.

If following the logic of the TCP three-way handshake, the first time was SYN—establishing a connection.

Then the second time should be SYN-ACK—performing a synchronization confirmation, and finally starting substantive data transmission.

Transmitting what data?

Guixu's complete capabilities?

Or the consciousness of Guixu itself?

If it was the latter, would Europa's statement, "You are Guixu," be more literal than he had previously understood?

"And Akira..." He closed his eyes, recalling the unfinished sentence the kimono-clad girl said when she saw him— "Hmm, it really does look quite similar." Similar to what? Similar to Guixu? To Europa? Or to some existence he didn't know about? Akira was a Transcendentalist AI; she shouldn't be saying meaningless things.

That half-sentence must point to some important information, only now the fragments he had were not enough to piece together the complete picture.

He rubbed his temples and decided to put this question aside for now, marking the priority as "Intelligence to be supplemented."

There were more pressing matters to deal with right now.

"There hasn't been any progress report yet, it seems things aren't going very smoothly on V's side. I'll go back and see if I can help out." He stood up, threw the towel into the laundry basket, and picked up the pistol on the table, tucking it back into his holster.

He straightened his collar, pushed open the door, and walked out.

At this moment, on the other side of Dogtown, V was crouching behind the hood of an abandoned car, bullets whizzing over her head, splashing gravel against the concrete wall behind her.

"Damn it! Jackie, what the hell did you say to that idiot from the Animals?"

Her voice cut through the whistling of bullets and the swearing of the Animals members in the distance.

Her power assault rifle was still slung on her back, she hadn't had time to take it off—there were too many enemies, and the gap while reloading would be enough for them to turn the whole street into a sieve.

She could only crouch for now, waiting for a gap where the enemy's firepower was slightly thinner.

"Maldita sea!" Jackie was crouching less than three meters away from her behind an overturned van, clutching his power shotgun with both Hands. The expression on his face wasn't fear, but a helplessness of "Why the fuck did I get into this mess again." "I was just saying hello! Looking at that big guy's appearance, it turned out to be a woman—no, biologically she used to be a woman. I'm not too sure, anyway, she said she was transgender."

"And then? It can't be just because of this that they sent so many people to chase us, right?" V pulled her tech pistol from her hip, took advantage of a gap in the enemy's firepower to poke her head out, and precisely took down two Animals thugs who were reloading.

The tech bullets drew two faint blue arcs in the air, emitting a crisp cracking sound the moment they hit the targets.

"Of course not! That person happened to be the boss's girl, and she insisted that I was hitting on her! Chica, you know me, I would definitely reject someone like that immediately—I have Misty, how could I hit on someone else!" Jackie said while taking advantage of the firepower gap to turn and vault behind another relatively sturdy broken wall.

His bulk was unexpectedly agile when vaulting the wall, his tactical boots scraping a sharp friction sound on the gravel ground as he nimbly transferred behind cover.

"And then? Guess what happened?" Jackie's voice came from behind the new cover, his tone already carrying the absurdity of "I can't believe this shit actually happened."

"Stop fucking beating around the bush!" V took down two more Animals members who had rushed too far forward.

"That idiot said I was discriminating! Looking down on transgender people! And then it turned into this situation!"

V hid behind the hood, her tech pistol still pointing to the side, but her brain went blank for a full second.

She had been an agent for Counter-Intelligence, a street mercenary, and had seen countless gunfights caused by money, turf, or a wrong look.

But being chased through three streets by an entire gang because "you refused to hit on our boss's transgender girlfriend so you're discriminating against me"—this was the first time she had encountered such a thing.

It was like a Groudon appearing on a rainy day, instantly clearing the weather.

"Damn it, I thought it was something serious. If it's just some bullshit, then take out the weapons and finish it quickly, so Lin Yi doesn't laugh at us when he finds out." She sighed, returned the tech pistol to her hip, and took the power assault rifle off her back.

With the stock against her shoulder, the aiming interface in her Kiroshi optics automatically calibrated to the nearest heat signatures, point-blank headshots.

Then V directly activated the Sandevistan.

The moment Apogee was activated, the entire world seemed to stop.

The flying bullets turned into metal flowers slowly drifting in the air, each dragging visible ripples of air.

The ferocious expressions on the Animals members' faces were stretched into comical slow motion—someone was opening their mouth to curse, the shape of their mouth frozen halfway; someone was changing a magazine, their fingers on the magazine catch, moving so slowly it was like unwrapping a package that didn't want to be opened.

V stood up from behind cover, the Monowire popping out from her wrist; that wire, thinner than a strand of hair, was still as fast as lightning in the slow-motion world.

She moved through the line of fire, her steps light and precise, each step landing exactly on the points she had planned.

The Monowire danced in her Hands like a golden snake wildly dancing on the battlefield—each lash precisely shredded an enemy, each retraction bringing up a spray of metal fragments and blood mist.

The Animals didn't even see when she stood up from behind cover; they only saw their own guns suddenly snap in two, and in the next second, their cyberware lost response, and they collapsed like machines with their power pulled.

Jackie saw V going berserk and grinned—to grin while being besieged by dozens of people, only a guy like him who grew up on the streets of Heywood could do it.

He slung his shotgun onto his back, the hydraulic system of his Gorilla Arms emitting a low hum, his metallic knuckles sparking as he clenched his fists.

He jumped out from behind cover and punched the chest of the nearest Animals thug.

The thug flew at least three meters, hit the wall with a dull thud, and then slid down the wall, motionless.

Another person lunged from the side, holding a baseball bat welded with iron nails, shouting some kind of battle cry that sounded more like a wail.

Jackie activated his Sandevistan, his figure instantly disappearing from in front of him, and the next instant, his Gorilla Arms took advantage of the momentum to grab the opponent's shoulders, lift him up entirely, and then toss him into a trash can on the other side like trash.

The trash can overturned, and the enemy's compressed parts were embedded directly inside it.

In less than three minutes, the battle was over.

The members of the Animals who had come to pursue them—seventy or eighty in total—all turned into scattered Gundam fragments, strewn across the entire alleyway.

"Tsk, this kind of enemy is the most troublesome; they stick to the ground and you can't even shovel them up." V looked at the mess and retracted the Monowire into her wrist.

The moment the Sandevistan closed, the normal flow of time slammed back in, and a slight fatigue from the adrenaline receding spread from her limbs.

She ran her fingers through her hair, which had been messed up by the wind, and tucked a few loose strands sticking to her face behind her ears.

This bizarre encounter, from start to finish, had taken less than ten minutes.

If Lin Yi knew the cause of this, he could probably laugh until tomorrow morning.

She had already rehearsed the scene in her mind—Lin Yi leaning on the sofa, wiping tears of laughter from the corners of his eyes, while saying in that infuriating tone: "No way, Jackie, you were chased by the entire Animals gang just because you refused to hit on a girl?"

"Let's go, Jackie, once we finish the job for that Mr. Hands, we'll know where Songbird is." V slung the power assault rifle back onto her back and checked the remaining ammunition.

The tech pistol needed a new energy cell—those two shots just now consumed nearly forty percent of its energy, but it wasn't a big problem; she still had three spare energy cells.

She stepped over an Animals member still twitching on the ground and walked towards the alley exit.

"Coming, coming." Jackie patted the wall dust and blood stains off his tactical jacket and followed with big strides.

His Gorilla Arms were still humming, the hydraulic system automatically entering cooling mode after the battle, the metal surfaces at the joints slightly glowing red.

He used a rag he picked up from the side of the road to wipe the blood off his knuckles, "It's the sports academy where we investigate those teenage soccer prodigies, right? Let's go."

"Right, but we have to go contact the hacker Hands arranged to handle our identities first." V said while taking the portable terminal out of her pocket, opening the job-related records Hands had sent her earlier.

The holographic projection looked a bit blurry in the midday sun, but the text content was still clearly legible—access permissions for the sports academy, forged identity information, and a name and coordinates.

That name was a local fixer in Dogtown, and the coordinates pointed to a private booth on the second basement level of the Heart-to-Heart bar. "Without a legal identity, we can't even get through the front door of the sports academy. That place is one of the few in Dogtown that's hard to crack; there are biometric scans at the entrance, armed patrols inside, and people who get in either have official identification or a strong enough fixer to vouch for them. Hands arranged the former for us."

"And the hacker?" Jackie asked.

"Should be in place already." V put the terminal into her pocket and quickened her pace.

Outside the alley was the main street of Dogtown. The gunfire just now had already attracted the attention of passersby—some were peeking out of windows, some were packing up goods from their stalls preparing to run, and two Wraiths soldiers were whispering at the street corner, their gazes sweeping in their direction.

But they clearly didn't intend to intervene in the private feud between the Animals and the two out-of-town mercenaries, and looked away after one glance. V lowered her voice and continued, "Mr. Hands said this person used to work in Arasaka's network department, but was laid off for some reason, and now makes a living in Dogtown by taking on some jobs. He's skilled and fast; as long as we provide the basic information, he can generate a set of fake identities that can fool the sports academy's security system within a few minutes."