Chiyoda Prison—on the VIP inmates' golf course.
A man in formal wear, nameplate reading 0081007, turned to face the apostle who had crashed down from the sky with a thunderclap.
No doubt about it: this one was on the brink of descent—per company protocol, an apostle to be expelled on sight.
Like a kettle shrieking at full boil, the other spewed heat, enshrouding the area for kilometers in dark gray vapor. Through the rolling cloud, one could only glimpse a suited human shape walking toward him.
081007 didn't attack immediately—he saw the other's badge.
0791001
"Hey, you're 0791's proxy? We've been looking for you all day. What exactly do you mean by this?"
"Heh."
At the words, the gaseous apostle raised a hand. Cloud twisted without wind—into a vortex, a whirlwind, a twister—and finally, into a spear in his palm.
081007 frowned. "What are you—"
The apostle's voice went cold. "I'm gonna stab your mom."
A gale howled. The spear lunged.
081007 exploded into motion—leveraging the BYB Weiwu Trooper performance to jump from zero to transonic, juking the point at Mach 2.
But the storm-borne apostle pressed in with the spear, man and weapon as one. Torrential true-qi surged as a dragon, crashing down to kill.
"Tch. Looking for death."
081007 brake-slid, heel plowing the concrete into waves. From his suit he flicked out a steel pen and gave his wrist a snap—an ice-forged sword bloomed from thin air. He spun and cut back.
BOOM!
Wind reversed—sheets of icy spindrift poured off the blade, stacking walls of ice.
The tornado-tip spear slammed in—shattering wall after wall. With a deafening roar, the ice and even the prison's perimeter blew apart. 007 whipped sword-flowers, blasting shards like a storm of razors.
The apostle spun spear-flowers in reply. Each thrust cut the shard-storm head-on and birthed a roaring dragon of qi that hammered straight for 007.
Knowing the spearwork was indomitable, 081007 refused a hard clash—leaning on supersonic mobility. The apostle hounded him mercilessly—one thrust after another straight at the face.
They traded dozens of rounds inside overlapping sonic booms, carving the golf course into terraces. As the fight spilled into the cell blocks, spear-qi and sword-rain nearly flattened the entire complex.
Prisoners woke screaming, only to be minced by stray edges into red mist and stars. Sirens wailed. Guards called NCPA for support.
The callout price had hit 4.5 million. The warden refused to pay, so the guards decided to "see nothing" while two supermen wrecked the joint.
At last, 007 found an opening—slipped from the whiteout and stabbed the suit in the cloud.
The suit said, I'm not dying for this, ripped free of its body, and fled.
007's sword plunged into the apostle—and he froze.
No body. No vessel.
Under the suit: wind. Mist. Vapor.
In that instant, storm surged. Gray fog seethed like an ocean. A forest of spears erupted from the gale, cocooning 081007. A thousand points stabbed in.
Even the suit got spooked and tried to bail.
"Bastard! You're going for real!?"
Startled, 081007 redlined to Mach 20, punching through the spear-forest—only for the spears to chase like shadows. A giant hand burst from the cloud, pinched his leg like a flea, and smashed him into the ground. The spear-forest poured in, pinning him immobile.
Then came the slaps—an open-handed pummeling.
"Proxy!? You called me that! You said hey! No one taught you manners!?"
Ten li away on a rooftop, Li Pan stood bare-chested on the parapet—five orifices glowing, gray flames flaring—shadowboxing at the air. He remote-puppeted the prison-self, beating 081007 into the floor.
He was furious. He'd choked down a crate of excrement-tasting sludge, barely kept from going berserk, and come for the meeting—only for 007's first word to set him off.
If you're begging for a beating, fine—let's test the new plug-in.
Hui Wine / Dragon's Blood did work—there was a buff—but small.
After all, this power wasn't self-cultivated; it was a gift from an extradimensional demon—a borrowed dragon—so he couldn't refine it into his own.
His main body still stuck at Refining Form, Third Turn.
But the dragon power wasn't fake.
In Onmitsu terms—after drinking "Dragon's Blood," a "demon" moved in. His flesh became the vessel; a dragon lodged within.
And that was legit: when descent completed at Warehouse 42, those who glimpsed a scale or claw went insane or blind; a swath of Night City went still.
Li Pan himself was fine. Modest gain, modest cost.
Likely because the Nine Yin Scripture had already sculpted his body into a "dragon's shape," making him compatible with the dragon's power.
So he didn't mutate like the seal-breaking ninja—no fur, muzzle, wings, or life-burning backlash.
In fact, after a brief try, he self-taught control.
Okay—not self-taught. More like a manga super-Saiyan tutorial: first "yaa!", then "heh!", then "ha!" …and it worked.
Ahem. With dragon power up, he felt an endless battery plugged into his core—fatigue erased, potential stoked.
Side effects were mild: occasional auditory hallucinations (surf's roar), and a shadow that turned dragon-shaped when lights flickered.
New plug-in unlocked.
Most tangible upgrade: techniques from the Nine Yin Grand Art he couldn't use at "Refining Essence to Qi"—like riding cloud and mist, enlarging form, shaping qi—were now barely castable.
Maybe Heaven's Dao suppressed him—or his realm capped damage. Without invoking a True Dragon Break, output was meh.
At range, he could only pin 081007 and vent a few hundred punches—short of lethal without the finisher.
BYB's frame was tough—ten-tenths slaps and the face wasn't even swollen…
Ashiya and the others called in.
"What?!"
"Boss, is that you pounding 081007?"
Figures—they were watching.
"He disrespected me."
Ashiya: "…May I ask him how he disrespected you?"
"He called me hey."
Ashiya: "Ah… Right. Boss, 081007 is willing to apologize."
Li Pan snorted. "If apologies worked, who needs a Security Bureau?"
Ashiya stressed the tone: "Apologize… with a gift?"
Li Pan paused his beating.
"Fine. Colleagues and all. I'm not petty. The usual—one million will do."
"One—million!?"
Pinned by invisible hands and a spear at his chest—and a relentless open palm—081007 grit his teeth and wired… a hundred… a hundred-thirty-plus million…
The gray fog pulled into a human shape, hauled him up, and even shook his hand.
"Ah, a misunderstanding! But really—coming to 0791 and not paying respects first? Made me beat you for free—whose fault is that?
"Yours! Anyway, I'm magnanimous. Today we fought to become friends. Next time, don't 'hey' people. Rude."
081007 glared, teeth set.
"0791—GEN—ER—AL—MAN—A—GER.
You killed our courier, skipped project meetings, refused comms—then come here and beat me without a word! Who's rude?"
The human-fog spread his hands.
"I said it's a misunderstanding. If I wanted you dead I'd have twisted your head off—why waste time slapping sense into you?
"Enough. After hours—what do you want? Dinner? Or round two?"
081007 drew three slow breaths.
"Business. We intend to harness the Pacific leylines to reopen the Collector's node and divine its location.
"We request—request your aid to hold this central nexus—prevent the Collector from disrupting the ritual.
"You need do nothing else. Just keep outsiders away until dawn."
"Oh, that's simp—"
The figure vanished.
Startled, 081007 raised a guard.
"Again!? Hey! 0791, don't push it! I haven't even drawn my gun—I'm being polite!"
But the mist thinned, revealing a chewed-up plaza, as if gnawed by dogs.
081007 frowned.
"What now? 0791001? Hey? 0791037, do you copy? Hey?"
Comms died.
"What the—"
A flash. Daylight.
He looked up. A lance of white light punched through the clouds and dropped onto his crown. He dissolved in a coruscating wash—and a tiny sun rose from Chiyoda Prison.
WHOOOM—
A mushroom cloud ten li high blossomed. Even the wildest, most illiterate rioter was plunged into ice water—snapped awake from the dream.
Someone had deployed a tactical nuclear weapon in Night City.
"Cough… gurgle… cough…"
Scalding winds tore over the rooftop. Li Pan lay there, coughing blood, staring at the hole through his right chest.
Mother—
He'd focused on 081007.
Some bastard had sniped him mid-chat.
And that shot. That pinpoint spot.
Damn you, Wangshan. That mutt.
Third time.
He lay there under the sky-darkening mushroom, QVN spitting red alerts—network restricted, radiation spiking, variance off the charts.
Right. The Security Bureau had made its move.
The headshot wasn't for a kill. He would've survived anyway.
But that Dragon's Blood had nearly killed him already. He'd burned hot on dragon power, ran off to tune his fists on 007—
Now the rush was gone. Exhaustion crashed in. He wrapped the wound in qi and planned to sleep till dawn.
He hadn't been down a minute when a medevac skimmer arrived. EMTs hit him with a cocktail and carted him off.
He was stunned.
Paradise Group's health plan was insane value. They came without being called? Charged into nuke fallout? Was there a rescue bounty?
He turned—and saw a man with three scars on his left cheek hugging a sniper rifle, cocking his head to study him.
"You—! You son of—!"
He wanted to throttle him, but the anesthetics hit. He couldn't rise.
Cerberus sniper Wangshan stroked his bristly beard and kicked Li Pan.
"Hey. You're sturdy. Non-headshot, won't die, right? Remember that.
"Not my fault. Orders said: shoot you once, then bring you in. Upset someone, did you?"
"Sight! Cut the chatter! Weiwu Trooper! Level-7 round! Two follow-ups!"
The spotter bellowed from the nuke's edge.
Wangshan finger-gunned at Li Pan. "Bang." He blew his "barrel," hefted the rifle, leaned out into the nuclear hot wind, and fired as the skimmer peeled away.
"Antimatter Antitank Cartridge!"
Spotter: "Authorize!"
"Bang!"
"Quantumnerv Annihilate Cartridge!"
Spotter: "Authorize!"
"Bang!"
Wangshan: "Target eliminated!"
Spotter: "Target—eliminated!"
Mad dogs. This would get him killed…
Li Pan's vision flickered.
Then he sat up—throwing off a coffin lid.
He looked at his blood-slick hands, then down into the coffin.
Right—no neural link needed now. Eyes open, eyes shut—he could snap back into Li Blood-Red's body.
He climbed out and checked himself.
The inner-power surge had cooked off his skin oils—he was a man of blood.
The LCL in the prosthetic pod and the chilled plasma had completely evaporated. In the puddle, he fished up neural couplers and implant chips.
The anarch's original internals—melted by the radiation of Core Formation.
The process wasn't done—short of the triumphant "Divine Art—Complete!"—but the body was usable.
Now Li Blood-Red had truly crossed Refining Qi into Spirit—early Core Formation—Dao-breath stage, roughly near Li Qingyun's Fifth Turn.
Sensing inner landscape—meridians, qi-sea—he cycled the law, opened his mouth, and loosed a spray of crimson light—spitting out a glass-marble-sized bead of blood.
The Blood-Refined Divine Core—better known as—
The Blood God Child Inner Core.
As the teacher said, the Sacred Sect walks the slanted blade, against Heaven.
Dao Breath Blood Refinement and Blood-Shadow Divine Movement are prelude to the Blood God Son Method.
Others cultivate one inner core.
In the Sacred Sect, every blood god child is a core.
So long as bead by bead, drop by drop, the blood children are forged—
They cannot be extinguished. Not life, not soul. They endure.
At the limit, when one bead, one shadow becomes a sea of blood, a heaven-blotting demon, that is mastery of the Blood God Son Method—then one returns to forge the body, crafting the undying Dao-flesh.
But progression guides could wait. He had a problem.
He vaulted from the factory—still seeing the mushroom cloud over Chiyoda.
This was bad. Chiyoda sat in the Old Capital District, inside the ring—practically city center.
A nuke in the downtown?
The Security Bureau had guts.
Worse, he'd just fought 081007—now a nuke dropped. It looked like he'd helped target them.
He was on the spear now; no more staying out of it.
Maybe Cerberus could handle the 007s. But what if the three-front operation failed? If the Monster Corp discovered Li Pan robbing his own warehouse, colluding with outsiders, and courting the Bureau for promotion—would 01 spare him?
He could flee to the ends of any world. The Company fleet would hunt him down to vent its rage.
He surged into Blood-Shadow Divine Movement, a streak of crimson bolting for the Pacific District.
Fine.
In for a penny, in for a pound. 007—all of them die.
He knifed over Night City toward the ocean.
Then—a prickle. He had missed something.
Like a tiny lightning kiss on the brow—the feeling wouldn't leave. He wheeled back, spread bloody membranes like a red hawk, threading the clouds for what he'd passed.
Found it.
An optically cloaked skimmer, weaving through the anvils.
He slid alongside, peered through a window—
And saw Huang Dahe in SBS armor, cradling a rifle.
Sensing something, Huang looked up. Their eyes met.
He rubbed his eyes.
When he opened them, the blood man was gone.
"What the—Stress got me?"
Huang had nearly died of fright.
"Fifteen minutes to drop zone!" the pilot yelled back. "Get ready to die, comrades!"
"Hai!"
Huang set thoughts aside, racked the bolt, and pulled on the red Tengu mask.
The battle began.
.
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⚠️ 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."
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