Chapter 1038: Chapter 42: The Way of Survival in the Asteroid Belt

——Back then, I was really young.

Tumor Xiang Shan thought to himself.

At that time, Xiang Shan always felt that being a cyber warrior was not cost-effective.

The advantages brought by “attack power,” “attack range,” and “quantity” are undeniable. The more technology develops, the stronger the side with technological superiority becomes.

The importance of “people” in warfare is continuously decreasing, while “weapons” keep rising.

Instead of spending a huge price to train a thousand cyber warriors, it would be better to buy a few hundred tactical missiles. In a head-on confrontation, a thousand cyber warriors might not even defeat a few hundred tactical missiles — by the standards of the mid-21st century.

That was about the level where Li Zheyuan scored over a hundred thousand points in that game…

By the way, Xiang Shan actually felt that with the initial training program, once your score exceeded fifty thousand, anything higher was just a matter of pure luck, just a simple “score grind”. The maximum score you could get was entirely dependent on when you made a mistake so big that even the “come-from-behind specialized AI” couldn’t save you; it was a matter of luck.

In the end, Xiang Shan wasn’t stopped by being defeated; he got tired of score grinding, aiming for a clean one hundred twenty-nine thousand six hundred points, an integral number of unity, but he couldn’t control it and went over by thirty-three points.

And by then, Xiang Shan was already the “topmost” individual. Even before his transformation, he was an individual Homo sapiens with intellect far above the average line, and after his transformation, he tirelessly pursued self-training, exploring the path of the “cognitive revolution” to elevate his awareness.

At that time, Xiang Shan felt that the path of cyber warriors was limited; even if it developed further, it would only be marginally stronger than it was then.

Not as good as guns, not as good as bombs.

“But…tsk, if it were Teacher Jing, maybe he would have understood from the start.”

In fact, the element of “people” in warfare has always existed, but its form has changed.

The stronger the military power, the more it needs a strong economic entity as its backbone. And a strong economic entity derives from the collective imagination of the people.

“The person holding the gun” is indeed becoming less important, but the “person who makes the gun” and the “person who maintains the gun” are more important than ever before.

A muddleheaded monarch who loses the people’s support cannot obtain a strong military. Even if a military is forcibly conscripted, it would only become the seeds of rebellion, uprising, and revolution.

The fall of the Later Jin Dynasty should have shown every person in the Central Plains this truth.

But…

The chairman of Superman Enterprise, Xiang Shan, was a “strong man,” a genuine “representative of the ruling class.”

In his eyes, the power of cyber warriors was undoubtedly weak, not measure up to missiles bought with money.

Too low cost-effectiveness.

Only after everything was taken from him, when he became a “weakling,” did he realize the “potential” hidden in this technology.

“Cheap.”

Large cannons, battleships, jet fighters, tanks, swarms of missiles—all require massive resources and a complete industrial system. High-end weapons especially require specialized resources. None of these things can be concealed; they’re all easily monitored. The weak can never get their hands on such things.

And what does cyber martial arts require?

At the entry level, it needs “information”—something that, in the era of prevalent information technology, has an almost zero cost. And the computational resources for refining martial arts algorithms are the easiest to gather and the easiest to steal.

As one advances, some drugs that have specific effects on the brain might be needed.

And all that’s needed is a batch of spores, some culture dishes, some kitchen-level utensils, and anyone could create them at home (during the era of Superman Enterprise).

Perhaps things like spores and samples need someone to take the risk of delivering them. But at least the risk of delivering these things is far less than circulating weapons.

After crossing this step, it’s about “plunder”.

Starting from the basic forces under the Tyrant, fighting battle after battle, confiscating loot after loot.

Until they have enough power to influence a region and become a threatening “guerrilla force”.

Oh no, cyber warriors also need a few other things.

Well, it’s just a brain, a self-consciousness, and a life.

For a human individual, the difficulty of acquiring these approaches zero; it’s only the difficulty of repeatedly acquiring them that becomes infinitely large.

——Hahaha, maybe somewhere there’s a scientist researching how to repeatedly acquire them… come to think of it, I kind of repeatedly acquired them, right?

Tumor Xiang Shan chuckled in self-mockery.

Cyber martial arts are just such a thing. To the ruling class, it’s just a low cost-effectiveness thing, that’s all.

No one would have expected that the fire of resistance would burn for over two centuries, and personal martial strength would be elevated to the level it is today.

Anyway, it’s… quite amazing, right?

Li Zheyuan alongside was still loudly babbling. Asgard gave him a kick. Jeanne, being kinder, just turned off her hearing.

Li Zheyuan probably felt a huge sense of unease this time for being captured. The main reason he started score grinding was that he wanted to grasp a little bit of personal martial strength.

Thinking of this, Tumor Xiang Shan found it amusing instead.

The “True Martial” series, which is the upgraded version of the original training program, at most represents the training method of proto-sapiens martial artists. Any modern cyber warrior coming in could infinitely score grind.

Just like how 21st-century professional athletes don’t need to follow overly ancient training methods; such training, for modern cyber warriors, is just an infinite score-grinding exercise.

Everyone doesn’t start with this. Everyone has better training plans.

Li Zheyuan, this person…

It’s unclear whether he never encountered real martial arts, or…

This is the only training method he knew, one which Xiang Shan also used. He relied solely on this method to achieve a sense of “I have surpassed the starting point of Xiang Shan” for self-comfort.

Comparing the “starting point” with someone crossing the river by feeling the stones…

Clicks tongue.

After Li Zheyuan somewhat calmed down, Asgard began to check the received information.

This was a service she purchased. In the City of Ur, there was a signal tower that would broadcast specified content to designated airspace.

Asgard had built a system on the internet, said to function similarly to a kind of ancient mythological technology called RSS, capable of aggregating and filtering information from specific sources. The information sources Asgard chose included several large discussion websites, self-media of intelligence sellers, specifically public web chatrooms, etc. Additionally, she prepared two or three email addresses, to which some friends or people with mutual aid agreements would regularly send information they deemed important. An AI would download this content via a public proxy and then send it to the owner of the signal tower. After simple encryption, that information would be regularly broadcast to a specific airspace.

Because this was the Asteroid Belt, lacking in infrastructure construction, all signals were very weakly scattered. On average, only a few bytes could be transmitted per second, and it could only be downloaded one-way.

Before escaping, Asgard specifically purchased this service. It was a survival strategy taught by her commerce partners. For a modern hero who relies on intelligence to survive, “hiding in the jungle” is certainly one method, but blindly hiding and thus losing intelligence is not far from death.

Although buying this service would expose your relative position to the signal tower, that’s all it would do. The signal tower would only specify a direction based on the service requirements. That range is quite large. Compared to the benefits, this risk is insignificant.

After waiting for the download to complete, Asgard began reading.

“Oh, shouldn’t have said, this time the news is quite explosive…” Asgard whispered.

“What’s up? What happened?”

“Old Jin’s news…” Asgard said, “From Earth. There’s a chivalrous organization on Earth that has established a signal station on the sea surface, which surfaced and broadcasted signals to deep space when it was in the region opposite the Sky Star Fleet, all in plain text. The electromagnetic signals bypassed the barrier set by King Aqini and were deciphered by infiltrators from Space City, directly uploaded outside the terrestrial intranet.”

“The Twelfth Martial God has already joined with the chivalrous organization on Earth and has destroyed several Protector Bases on Earth. Now it’s causing quite a stir in Africa on Earth. Moreover…”

Asgard hesitated.

“Moreover what?” Jeanne asked.

“‘Flower of Rhetoric’ Kanhara Kotoba… is a core member of the Six Dragons Sect, left Earth a few months ago, considering the planetary orbit, possibly in Space Cities between Mars or Venus orbit…”

Jeanne felt a surge of impulse. She involuntarily raised her hand, speaking words she hadn’t thought of: “What did you say?”

Tumor Xiang Shan rarely acted like this. Even if he wanted to “switch drivers” with Jeanne, he would propose it first. And even if he wanted to speak, he would modify the synthesizer parameters beforehand to change his voice.

Asgard was even accustomed to such things because, in her view, Tumor Xiang Shan wouldn’t speak in Jeanne’s voice.

But right now, Tumor Xiang Shan couldn’t care less. He asked loudly: “What did you say? The intelligence just now… Kanhara Kotoba, what?”

“What are you so excited about… Damn, are you Xiang Shan?” Asgard screamed.

Li Zheyuan immediately shut down all active functions of one eye, trying his best to lower his presence.

He probably knows who Kanhara Kotoba is. When Kanhara Kotoba used to work as Xiang Shan’s secretary and right hand, he had met her a few times.

This indeed… information capable of enraging Xiang Shan…

——Speaking of which, even the Twelfth Martial God… he actually revealed the intelligence of his foster daughter and beloved disciple like this… without any consideration for cover-up…

——Such trampling on others’ respect and love…

Li Zheyuan thought this in his heart.

After becoming a hero, he hadn’t seen Kanhara Kotoba again. But one could imagine, she followed Xiang Shan all the way fighting until that giant Leviathan fell with a crash. That tortuous process must have formed unparalleled bonds.

Aside from being unable to defeat time, nothing should be able to trample it.