Chapter 347: Chapter 347

347: Chapter 127: The 8th Martial God, Part 4 347: Chapter 127: The 8th Martial God, Part 4 Xiang Shan’s fist delicately collided with the center of gravity of a long staff.

Despite the staff containing a fluid of metallic powder that could freely change its own center of gravity, Xiang Shan seemed to have completely mastered these changes.

The moment the staff slipped from his hand, Xiang Shan’s staff was pressing down on his opponent’s shoulder.

Just one move, one release of energy, and this person’s neck would break.

The Hero immediately cried out, “No more fighting, no more fighting!”

“We still need to practice,” Xiang Shan said.

Winter stood up from the ground, “You are too strong.”

Winter and Spring were siblings.

After becoming Heroes, they abandoned their past names.

When they stepped into Jianghu, it was the transition period between winter and spring, so they named themselves after these seasons.

Xiang Shan put away the long staff.

Spring suddenly spoke, “‘Mountain’…

have you recently encountered some good fortune?”

After entering a state of hidden infiltration, Xiang Shan inadvertently revealed his identity.

Both had suspicions about Xiang Shan’s identity, but there was no concrete evidence yet.

Xiang Shan said, “Good fortune?”

Winter’s Prosthetic Eye twinkled, “It seems like it…

your moves today were more relaxed than before.”

Spring also said, “Your behavior… it clearly shows you are very happy.”

Xiang Shan subconsciously rubbed his cheeks—though now he could only feel the metallic shell.

He nodded, “Is that so?”

Whether the two were biological siblings could no longer be verified—they didn’t want to cause a fuss just to take a piece of neural tissue for genetic testing.

The two had depended on each other from a young age until they were discovered by Zheng Lunnao and guided by Xiang Shan to become Heroes.

The brother, Spring, was better at Inner Strength and had reached the stage of constructing the Soth Divine Realm, with specialized language function areas beginning to strengthen connections with facial and motion recognition areas.

He more intuitively read Xiang Shan’s mood.

Winter had an innate perception for External Strength battles.

She sensed the subtle changes in Xiang Shan’s strategic style.

Winter was also very happy, “Ever since coming out from the Shadow Gang, you have always seemed tense.

no, these past few days, I felt you were a bit more relaxed.”

Xiang Shan thought for a moment and nodded, “I encountered strong support.”

Support, that was the only way to describe it.

Zhu Xinyu was providing help to the current Xiang Shan, not because he was “Xiang Shan’s Personality Mask”, but because he was a “Hero”.

Although “Turing” was a dragon glimpsed only indirectly and had become a legendary figure, the legends also mentioned that if a Hero truly sought her help or guidance, she would definitely intervene.

In certain circles, the “Turing Lineage” was already recognized as an established force.

—She also has several disciples now…

I wonder about their talents.

Xiang Shan couldn’t help but think.

The pathway for Inner Strength proposed by Zhu Xinyu differed from the inspiration that Xiang Shan had come up with.

It seemed that although Xiang Shan shared memories and thus had Zhu Xinyu’s perspective, “Xiang Shan’s” worldview and values also profoundly influenced his thinking.

He did not waste either approach—after all, he could practice many different types of Inner Strength simultaneously.

Under Xiang Shan’s brilliant ideas, a new form of Inner Strength was gradually taking shape.

Multiple Personality Masks formed a shadow community, creating dozens of experimental and control groups.

And he could seamlessly absorb the knowledge brought by these Pseudo-personality Masks with brain plugins.

Xiang Shan began to feel that this was the happiest time of “this life”.

He had once again found a clear goal and direction for his effort, sitting at the job he loved most: “developing technology”.

And he also had allies.

Not advancing entirely alone.

In the days to come, Xiang Shan kept discovering new problems and set up projects according to the paradigms of scientific research, managing progress, while placing the unsolvable, or potentially differently solvable problems on the server.

It wasn’t always Zhu Xinyu who visited.

Sometimes, Xiang Shan also sensed others visiting the server.

Xiang Shan even encountered them twice.

However, their way of thinking differed greatly from Xiang Shan and Zhu Xinyu.

The data of this “dream” could not form clear visual images or other perceptions for them; they could see nothing.

From Xiang Shan’s perspective, it was like watching a blurry figure bumping around the house aimlessly like a headless fly, eventually taking away text documents.

It looked just like a ghost film.

Even once, that person tried to solve a problem on the spot.

—Probably her disciples.

Xiang Shan thought to himself.

Xiang Shan occasionally captured the access records of Zhu Xinyu.

For her, this place was also a very precious memory.

She occasionally came to this dream to experience it.

However, it seemed she had neither built nor copied the data for Xiang Shan herself.

Maybe it was because she had experienced an additional two hundred years, she felt an emotion like “fear of nearing one’s hometown” towards this “home” in her memory.

She couldn’t personally construct such a dream for herself—this is how Xiang Shan, who held some of Zhu Xinyu’s views, understood it.

However, she particularly didn’t want to see Xiang Shan.

Xiang Shan did not insist.

From various clues, Zhu Xinyu’s Inner Strength was still much higher than his—no, that was to be expected.

At best, Xiang Shan’s Inner Strength was only slightly higher than that of Martial Ancestor.

Martial Ancestor had died a hundred years ago, while “Turing” had been active until now.

Perhaps Inner Strength had a bottleneck, perhaps brain development had a limit, perhaps the “techniques” themselves also had limits.

But now Zhu’s “limit” was far above Xiang Shan’s level.

What he loved doing now was to deduce Zhu Xinyu’s current status from her answers.

Zhu Xinyu would occasionally respond from the server, sometimes directly sending emails.

From the delay of the former, Xiang Shan calculated that Zhu Xinyu was between 0.4 to 0.7 astronomical units from the server.

Due to AI fuzzy judgment, he couldn’t determine an exact value.

But most likely, it was Mars.

The questions Xiang Shan asked were mainly about cognitive science.

Some of these Zhu Xinyu answered directly, and for some she provided hints, directing him to steal them from certain Scientific Knight Order locations.

Yet, there were some topics that Zhu Xinyu answered outright.

This was beyond the scope of what “Xiang Shan’s known Zhu Xinyu” should know.

“Does she still have contact with other ‘old friends’?

Or has the data she has stolen already been quite substantial?”

Either way, it was good news for Xiang Shan.

“Old friends still being alive” or “Zhu Xinyu is now quite powerful.”

Even seeing how promising Zhu Xinyu’s disciples had become, he felt a kind of old man’s thought, “Ah, that’s really great.”

This period lasted several months.

Soon, that server, due to its orbital period, moved away from Earth and was obscured by other celestial bodies.

The direct connection yielded little benefit and was even riskier.

Thus, Xiang Shan temporarily stopped accessing this server.

Since he guessed Zhu Xinyu might be on Mars, he sought for several space signal stations and heliocentric servers that relayed Earth to Mars networks, but he did not see Zhu Xinyu again.

Not until the following year.

There were traces of modification in the access records of that virtual dream server.

Xiang Shan couldn’t determine the specific access times, but he knew they had definitely been modified.

This made him even more excited.

During this half year, Xiang Shan also accumulated many questions he wanted to discuss with others.

Earth’s Hero circle was suppressed by King Aqini, and many Heroes were discovered, located, and destroyed in a three-hit combo while cultivating their Inner Strength online, leading to generally low levels of Inner Strength.

And the data and ideas Xiang Shan had were not particularly humane.

He didn’t want ordinary people to know about them.

But Zhu Xinyu was fine.

That’s what Xiang Shan believed.

Thus, a year passed, and then another.

The Martial Arts of both Spring and Winter were gradually improving.

They began to plan targeted assassinations against the government.

During one teachings session, Spring exposed the existence of the local Hero forces and was forced to flee.

With the help of Trace, the local Heroes managed to withdraw a batch. ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ novelꞁire.net

Winter still stayed by Xiang Shan’s side.

She felt it was very dangerous here, and Xiang Shan might need a helper.

During this process, the city’s last natural gang also disappeared.

Named “Shadow Gang,” “Hall Assembly,” and “Late Night TV Program,” these three organizations balanced each other out, performing a spectacle of back-and-forth killings acting under numerous Pseudo-personality Masks of Xiang Shan.

Nobody noticed that as these “gangs” rose, the surrounding Green Forest gradually vanished.

The bad seeds in the city found it almost impossible to join gangs.

For some reason, the “open recruitment” by the three gangs had turned into elusive urban legends.

Nobody knew that this was just a group of tough guys who loved literature and occasionally pretended to be gangs to scare people.

Meanwhile, Xiang Shan’s Inner Strength was also becoming more perfect.

Over the years, Zhu Xinyu had limited communication with him, but it was confined to questions and answers.

Moreover, though Zhu Xinyu could relay some of Xiang Shan’s questions to other “old friends,” she never gave Xiang Shan any contact details for “old friends.”

It was as if Xiang Shan was just a minor apprentice she encountered on the road.

But for Xiang Shan, this was miraculously valuable time.

Several more years passed.

The City Lord of Delacruz City had a mental breakdown and went insane from a “Single Thought’s Deviation” while cultivating Inner Strength during the suppression of a spontaneous public event.

It was probably the third year after that event.

One day, Xiang Shan entered the dreamland.

Zhu Xinyu was sitting on the couch, with a projector playing her favorite children’s program.

She seemed to be waiting for Xiang Shan.

Unprecedentedly, she directly answered Xiang Shan’s questions—in this form.

Xiang Shan always felt something was off, “What’s wrong?

Did something happen?”

Zhu Xinyu sighed, “I’m starting to feel that I’m weaker than I imagined, and I still want to come here to see.”

“I might be about to die.”