"Master! Master! Kill me, just kill me, but please spare Xiaoyu!"
"Silence, you wretched child! I raised you from infancy, fed you, taught you my divine arts, passed on to you the righteous seal—how have I ever wronged you? And yet you conspire with that demon witch, betray your own sect, turn your blade against your own kin! It's an offense to Heaven, unforgivable!"
"It's—it's my fault! All my fault! Master, take back everything you've given me if you wish! But Xiaoyu… Xiaoyu is already with child… Please, I beg you, show mercy and let her go."
"Fool! Wretched fool! She's pregnant, is she? Then I'll give you one last chance! Two lives, is it? Then take her life yourself and end it here!"
"What?! Master!!"
"Nianlang, you don't need to beg him anymore! After all these years, haven't you seen it clearly? What 'righteous sects'? These so-called orthodox cultivators are nothing but cold-blooded, hypocritical villains! They scheme endlessly, kill without blinking, and never leave a threat alive!
"You old, white-bearded thief! Nianlang treated you sincerely—he heard you were near your end and beset by enemies, and risked his life to return to the Central Plains to help you! And all along, it was just a ploy to lure us in so you could kill us both!
"Ha! You just want the Blood Seal Heavenly Tome, don't you? Well, it's not here! Even if you kill my body and destroy my soul, you won't have it! Never! Nianlang, remember our vow—don't waste your breath on him! Let's die together and meet again in the next life!"
"Xiaoyu! Yes! Together, in life and in death!"
"Heh! You wretched slut! Death is too easy for you! You've fooled this fool over and over, ruined my plans again and again, shamed me before the entire Yuntai Peak—and you still think you can die so easily? Still dream of reincarnation, of another life together? Bah! Dream on! Soul-Sealing Fiend Transformation!"
"Aaahhh!"
"Xiaoyu! M–Master! Y–You know demonic arts of the Death Gate?! Then who… who killed the other disciples?! What have you done?! What have you done?!"
"Hmph! You understand far too late, fool! You wanted to be together, didn't you? I'll grant your wish! I'll refine you, your woman, and your unborn child into Iron Fiend Corpses cursed to eternal damnation, never to know rebirth! You'll be together forever! Hahahahaha!"
"AAAARGH! Old thief! I'll never forgive you! Never!!"
…
Li Pan's eyes snapped open. He found himself lying on the archive room floor—he must have dozed there all night.
It felt like a hangover, his skull pounding as though a crowd was screaming inside his head. His whole body ached, like he'd been taken apart and put back together wrong.
"What the hell… bugged out? The archive cabinet didn't work…?"
He looked at his left palm—the ballistic coordinator was still there. He touched the back of his neck—the neural jack was intact. Sitting up, he pulled open his collar.
There, over his right chest, was a dark purple palm-shaped bruise. From that mark radiated a chilling cold that seeped into his lungs with every breath, stabbing like needles.
Still, at least he wasn't coughing blood anymore. The broken bones and damaged organs seemed partly mended—maybe the archive cabinet had worked a little, but the injury to his chest had stopped it from fully resetting him.
So this was… what they called an internal injury?
Scratching his head, he remembered: in The Nine Yin Manual, internal injuries were a thing—and supposedly curable with the right techniques. Worth a try.
He sat cross-legged and began to circulate his qi. Maybe it was just in his head, but the icy pain did seem to ease a little.
Some time later, someone knocked.
Li Pan opened his eyes to see Mr.007 at the doorway, holding up a sign:
Are you alright?
"Oh, I'm fine… Damn, forgot to clock in."
After straightening his clothes and punching in, Mr.007 brought him a coffee.
"Thanks."
He drained it in one gulp, the warmth seeping into his chest as his cultivation guided it to push back the cold. It really did help.
Great—back to work… God, he could cry.
The board meeting was tomorrow, and even half-dead he had to prepare files, write reports, and drown himself in coffee.
The worst part? He'd written himself up in the report—'Killed two zombies, contained a containment breach, protected the company's reputation, upheld the board's prestige'—but his requests for medical coverage, sick leave, housing stipend, and a company car were denied. Not even a silver key as a reward. Apparently being hunted through the night by zombies and slammed into a wall was just part of a general manager's duties.
If HQ hadn't at least approved the repair expenses—covering damages from the zombies' rampage, the cost of restoring the neighborhood's power grid, and repairs to his apartment—nearly a million in total—he might have quit today.
…Living is such a damn grind.
Since the company claimed the incomplete reset wasn't the archive cabinet's fault, no sick leave was granted. So Li Pan spent the day chugging coffee, meditating, and hammering at his keyboard.
And when he got home—bad news again. The apartment still wasn't fixed. The maintenance crew wasn't half as efficient as the cleaners; even though he'd paid, the doors and windows were still gaping open, the 45th-floor wind cutting through and making him shiver.
Damn it…
"Whoa—did you get hit by artillery? Who'd you piss off this bad, Mophead?"
Huang Dahe had come to gawk.
Li Pan sighed, too tired to explain. A day away and half his stuff was gone—junkies had cleaned him out. Not that he owned much worth stealing, but someone had even used his bathroom and clogged the drain with shit. Unbelievable.
"Hey, come stay at my place," Huang offered.
"Don't want to trouble you—"
"Oh, come on. You can't stay here. Fifty bucks, sleep in the living room."
"Fifty? That's steep! Cut me a break!"
"Get lost! I'll throw in a soda."
So Li Pan ended up at Huang's, playing co-op games, eating garbage takeout, and relaxing a bit. Then Huang popped some pills and climbed into his biocapsule to study.
Yes—study. These days, the most valuable currency was knowledge. Money wasn't based on gold, energy, or credit anymore—it was pegged to intellectual property.
Bullets, for example—material costs were negligible. It was the tech that determined the price.
Level-3 civilian rounds cost mere cents each—good for training, pest control, or street punks. Level-4 military-grade with armor-piercing tips cost several dollars per shot; a magazine could be over a hundred. Level-5 smart munitions cost thousands, affordable only to corporations. If you held a unique, irreplaceable patent, you could name your price.
The same applied to people.
To a corporate board, there was no real difference between an average human and a robot—one made of steel, the other of flesh. Their worth depended entirely on the knowledge inside.
Gangs like the Whirlpool Crew were obsolete; retraining them cost more than starting fresh. They were like outdated factory machinery—scrapped and replaced.
Huang, though—he was the latest model. A tech-university student directly under the Ye Corporation, loaned a custom VR capsule to work remotely on engineering experiments for corporate projects. Officially a student, but really a low-tier research grunt, working for free in exchange for course credits.
And if you thought top students had it good—forget it. They spent their best years and sharpest minds feeding the corporate machine, so some board member's kid could buy another luxury star-yacht.
Even if they developed something groundbreaking, the patent belonged to the company. They might get a couple of 'credits'—never dividends.
And if, after graduation, the company didn't hire them, they were finished. Accounts closed, neural chips reclaimed, credits wiped, and bound by non-compete clauses so no rival firm could hire them. All those years of specialized education—gone.
Some unlucky ones were even sabotaged—mind hacked, struck by cursed AI, their intelligence permanently crippled. Add in the drug habits from years of concentration enhancers, and many ended up like the corpses in the hall.
Yes—everyone in this apartment block was either climbing into the company, stuck at the gate, or already cast out.
That was the price of survival—climbing out of hell, over the bodies of others, up the spider's silk… only to end up in the corporate web.
From Huang Dahe, to Li Pan, to the rotting husks outside—they were all the same.
Maybe that was just fate.
His chest throbbed again. He shook his head, kept drinking coffee, and, too sore to sleep, continued cultivating Nine Yin Manual in the living room.
Somewhere in his meditation, he drifted into a blurred dream—half waking, half sleeping. He was in Huang's living room, but also back at the distant Zhongshan Temple.
This time, he wasn't looking up at the altar—he was sitting on it, looking down.
The doors opened.
A man and a woman—shadowy, indistinct—entered, supporting each other, and knelt before him. They spoke, but he couldn't hear the words.
He nodded once. "Granted."
They bowed in thanks, then dissolved into two streams of black and white energy that swirled into his mouth.
The doors opened again.
Orange walked in—covered head to toe in dried, dark-red blood, like some specter from a gore-soaked hell. But unfortunately, still alive.
She peeled off her blood-caked bio-suit, kicked off her boots, and, without noticing him on the couch, undid her bra and walked into the shower.
Water rushed in the bathroom.
Li Pan swore he meant to greet her—but he couldn't move.
And stranger still, though he saw her clearly, the dream-temple vision remained.
The black and white energies poured through his meridians, melting the icy blockage in his chest and running along unseen channels, winding through his bones and blood.
Meanwhile, Orange finished her shower, towel-wrapped her hair, chugged a cold beer, and collapsed onto the couch—her head landing squarely on Li Pan's lap. Exhaustion claimed her instantly.
On one side of his vision: a freshly bathed, sleeping woman, her warm breath brushing his thigh and belly, carrying the faint scent of cheap shampoo—reminding him of the taste of icy jelly from the night before.
On the other: a moonlit mountain range beneath a vast, starry sky.
Two dreams, two visions, one body—parallel paths crossing at last.
Ice and fire merged in his dantian.
His sight soared upward—past dust, past peaks, past clouds—until, in a cosmic burst, he beheld a vast, radiant purple moon.
All fell silent as moonlight, boundless and pure, reflected in his pupils.
In a flash, the purple light surged through his neural network, igniting the tangled knot of true qi in his chest.
A faint crack sounded in his skull. Something deep in his spine began to flow—like a full-body renewal—bones and muscles singing in unison.
The chains that had bound him for so long… were gone.
"Hhhhhh—haaahhh—"
His breath streamed out in a three-foot ribbon of white mist, curling in the air like a dragon's exhale.
Now—he was awake.
.
.
.
⚠️ 30 CHAPTERS AHEAD — I'm Not a Cyberpsycho ⚠️
The system says: Kill.Mercs obey. Corporates obey. Monsters obey.One man didn't.
🧠💀 "I'm not a cyberpsycho. I just think... differently."
💥 High-voltage cyberpunk. Urban warfare. AI paranoia.Read 30 chapters ahead, only on Patreon.
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