CHAPTER 1056: CHAPTER 65: ASSASSIN

Amipako knelt powerlessly on the ground, with only relief in his heart: "Thank goodness it’s not us..."

Before him lay a base that resembled ruins. It was as if a behemoth wreaked havoc here, with scattered parts floating around, unable to fall.

Then, there were several prosthetic bodies torn open from the inside, similarly floating mid-air.

This was a base for a certain intelligence agency. Much like Amipako’s small mutual aid association, this agency was also interested in Internal Martial Arts, thus forming a cohesive force. If they further constructed a communal imagination among sects and engaged in Jianghu, they could rightfully be considered an Inner Sect.

Sadly, they were dead.

No, strictly speaking, not all of them were dead, not everyone was always online. This small organization likely still had a few members not online. It was a rotating system where, at all times, there were a few who restricted access to their servers.

Due to this system, they were not completely wiped out.

However, this small organization was scattered. Even if they were to rebuild, it would take several years.

There was a line of text on the wall, likely engraved with a laser.

"Six Dragons bear fire, burning the cosmos."

Very classic text, using only a few ideograms from current script (that is, the Chinese characters).

Now, everyone knows who did it.

The people in this small mutual aid association died so tragically that no one dared to come in and investigate for the moment.

Even Amipako was kneeling at the doorway.

Due to connections with this civilian intelligence agency, Amipako’s mutual aid association also had three casualties.

The first victim had always been connected to this base’s server, ensuring smooth communication between them.

Luckily, one of his brothers acted swiftly, smashing the server the moment trouble began, preventing further damage.

Even so, Amipako’s mutual aid association was severely weakened.

Everyone left had to replace their motherboards. With a temporary shortage of high-end components, their martial arts would be reduced by a level for a short time.

The only ones untouched were three people, including Amipako, who were offline at that time.

These three were the only ones in the mutual aid association with combat capability now.

Currently, the other brothers in the association were seeking shelter with various Great Martial Halls.

They conveyed this through familiar Martial Artists by word of mouth. Until they completed motherboard replacements, they dared not go online out of fear of triggering latent Gu within them that could ignite the motherboard and harm the brain.

Amipako narrowly escaped being among them...

He profoundly felt the fear.

Jeanne nudged him aside with her foot, then walked into the room on her own.

"How is it, old man?"

Of course Jeanne was asking Xiang Shan.

Tumor Xiang Shan possessed strong observation and reasoning abilities. He could collect various details from the scene and backtrack the process of the fight.

But Xiang Shan’s old face frowned: [I’ll be straightforward, I hate a non-gravitational environment]

If it were on Earth, when you kicked a Martial Artist to death, the body would fly out and eventually fall to the ground, bouncing only once or twice at most.

The final result is always fixed, as gravity remains stable.

This makes it easy to backtrack.

But a non-gravitational environment is different. When you kick a Martial Artist to death, the body keeps floating, bouncing off walls repeatedly. Air slowly absorbs the body’s kinetic energy, but the rate is slow and not necessarily stable. If air convection exists, it introduces many variables.

If on terrestrial planets, Xiang Shan could rely solely on his neural network to complete backtracking, then for this crime scene, Xiang Shan had to rent a supercomputer after collecting data.

[First, we can confirm that all attacks on instruments and furniture were intentionally added by the assailant later, and not caused by the aftermath of the fight.] Tumor Xiang Shan analyzed, [From a Martial Artist’s perspective, the Six Dragons Sect’s Martial Artists have solid basic skills this time.]

Jeanne and Asgard had just released some drones to scan the surroundings. Hearing this, she asked: [Did you recognize anything?]

[All victims from this civilian intelligence agency were subdued by a single move.] Tumor Xiang Shan said, [Judging by the traces, it should have been a mech-breaking technique dissolving joints, destroying movement ability, then Gu forcibly turning off cooling, burning the CPU to excessive temperatures to kill the brain. If we arrived ten minutes earlier, we might have saved their lives.]

Of course, it would merely be saving their lives.

The neocortex would lose many neural cells due to high heat, leading to either cognitive impairment, martial studies degradation, or even loss of self-consciousness in worse scenarios.

Jeanne shivered: "But, no one came to save..."

[Perhaps they dared not.] Xiang Shan shook his head: [He didn’t even cover up which route he took.]

He pointed to the only open door aside from the one Jeanne and the others entered.

[Also, the whole process showed no signs of firearm use.] Tumor Xiang Shan added.

From a purely technical perspective, he even found a touch of admiration for this young man from the Six Dragons Sect. In such a bizarre era, remembering "cyber martial arts is assassination techniques" truly is rare.

"Into a room, then..." Jeanne paused: "No, he opened it. If his goal was to kill everyone quickly, why didn’t he just... why didn’t he use a gun to sweep the place?"

Tumor Xiang Shan said: [Confirmed the internal layout, huh? He needed to ensure no survivors.]

[But he could open the door... he’s using some inner strength technique...]

[Oh, this unfortunate and unprofessional agency.] Tumor Xiang Shan sighed, [I just found online that they didn’t even have a dedicated reception area or public window. This is the main base and also handles external affairs. That assassin could easily open the door and claim he came to deal — "I have intelligence on the Six Dragons Sect, summon someone to speak to me."]

[Well, this also resolves the issue of "why no firearms were used" — this agency at least knew to have incoming people hand over their firearms.]

Honestly, in the era when cyber martial arts were born, such rules hold limited significance.

Humans cannot be separated from machines. This is the origin of the assassination technique called "cyber martial arts".