Now was not the time to pass out, much less to go "meet up" with any friends-with-benefits.
If he botched this, Li Pan's Night City tour would be over.
Grinding through the headache, Li Pan swiped his card, forcibly tore the emergency kit off the hovercar, jabbed himself with a dozen cardiac stimulants, and took a canister of oxygen before he finally steadied.
That said—how was it that he, a department manager, still had to pay to use the company's first-aid kit? And what kind of screwed-up world charged three thousand just to lick a blood pack…?
Fine. Not the time to sweat the small stuff. The key was getting Qianji's head back.
He hadn't dared carry "that thing" around on his person—there were cameras on every street corner. How could his cover have blown in a single night?
He'd planned to clock out, swing by for some chemical reagents, scrub his apartment clean of any bio-signatures… and someone still managed to steal the head?
Who did it? East Castle Society? Kotaro? Was it deliberate, or a random hit? Do the Tokugawa know?
…They probably don't. After all, he'd flown straight back to Night City and the Tokugawa siege forces hadn't blasted his hovercar—just let him slip through the cordon into the city.
Back at the office, Li Pan rushed in and hit the landline to check on his people.
Kotaro was trapped in the Tokugawa main base in the Edo District, and Ashiya Shigui had gone to extract him.
01044 and Rama—Old Liu—were still on mission.
Yamazaki remained embedded with the Security Bureau.
Shiranui Wuzi was sunk in depression.
No. 18 was syncing with Orange to help investigate the theft.
Xiao Qī was handling customs declarations and the paperwork for transporting the "monster."
A ship dispatched by 0113 would "knock on the door" within three days, auto-dock to the 0791 Callisto Base.
By then, the other side's logistics staff would tele-commute in via synthetic bodies and link to the ship at Callisto Base. They'd launch, head to the Belt, and clear customs there.
By this math, at most a week from now, 0113's ship would reach Low-Earth Spaceport.
Which meant that within seven days, he'd have to infiltrate Onsen Village again, take back the Taisui, and deliver it at the Low-Earth Spaceport.
Everything was piling up at once.
One misstep, and Monster Corp would be in a shooting war with the Tokugawa—maybe even with all of Takamagahara…
Ding ding ding, ding ding ding, ding ding ding—
Ow—screw the head and the Taisui for a second, I need a doctor!
"Xiao Qī, I'm taking sick leave!"
"Understood. Please take care."
…
"Oh? A headache, is it?"
Master Xian stroked his long beard like an old-school TCM doctor, took Li Qingyun's pulse, narrowed his eyes, and gave his face a quick once-over.
"Nothing wrong with you. What is it—don't feel like scrubbing pots today?"
Li Qingyun hurried to explain:
"No, no—that's not it. It's not me… and it is me. It's me in a dream with a splitting headache."
Master Xian: "Heh."
Li Qingyun, exasperated:
"It's true! I overloaded a magical treasure in my dream—felt like my brain was shivering!"
Hands tucked in his sleeves, Master Xian peered at him.
"Oh? And what 'treasure' did you use?"
"A sword…" Li Qingyun thought. "…ball?"
"A sword-pill?"
The moment Master Xian heard it, he understood. His brows pinched.
"Who gave it to you?"
"I… picked it up…"
Master Xian chuckled, pinched his fingers to divine, and said,
"Picked it up, did you? Heh. That explains it. You caught a glimpse of sword-light; the blade's glare struck your spirit and injured your primordial soul.
"Listen—what you're cultivating is a method that runs both qi and body in tandem, a dual cultivation of life and nature. You've never practiced the Way of the Primordial Spirit—likely by design—skipping ahead, planning to loop back only at the final gate.
"As you neither wield Sword-Flight nor know how to project your soul out-of-body, what are you using to command a sword-pill? How will you steady your Mud-Pill Palace?
"Dream or not, even if I handed you a sword-pill right now—never mind mishandling it and sweeping yourself with sword-light—even opening the sword casket for a peek would shake your soul, shatter your spirit-court."
Li Qingyun: "…So can this be saved? How many years do I have left?"
Master Xian shook his head.
"I said you're fine. It was a dream. What are you panicking for? Stop aiming too high too fast. Go back and refine your pills properly. I'll give you a flying sword in due time."
Li Qingyun bowed in a rush:
"Forget swords and pills—please just save my life now, Master! Teach me sword-riding arts!"
Master Xian was speechless.
"You're asking me for sword-riding?"
Li Qingyun, even more speechless:
"I don't do immortal cultivation—who else am I supposed to ask but you…?"
Master Xian shook his head. Li Qingyun's heart clenched—then he saw the master draw from his sleeve a flat case, a foot long and five fingers wide, like a book casket.
"This volume is called The Supreme Nine-Heavens Dark Lady's Secret Canon for Severing Evil."
Li Qingyun brightened. "Whoa—sword ri—"
Master Xian:
"Put it under your pillow when you sleep—or tuck it somewhere in your bedroom, the meditation mat works too.
"It calms the spirit and anchors the soul. Wards off evil thoughts. Focuses the mind. Fewer nightmares."
Li Qingyun's face fell. "H-huh??"
Master Xian chuckled.
"Things like flying swords depend on lineage and fate. If you try to command a sword with heterodox arts, don't come crying when the sword-spirit gets angry and comes back to take your head.
"This Secret Canon is my Nine True Supreme Sect's town-sect treasure, the Dark Lady's direct transmission, the sect-master's token.
"Eh—not a gift. I'm loaning it to you for two days to steady your soul. If you lose it again, watch how I deal with you."
With a sleeve-flick he vanished—here one moment, gone the next.
Li Qingyun stood there, mutely staring at the book casket in his hands.
Dead horse, meet live doctor—might as well try.
…
"Good morning, Night City! Let's check yesterday's Death Lotto! Whoa—four hundred and seventy-three! Did you lucky ducks cash in? I'm guessing no one did—and that means we all still have a shot! That's the spirit of a lotto, right?
"Anyway, blame East Castle Society—they were hopped up on gunpowder. They hit the whole city except the Core District! Looks like they're trying to claw back every L they've been taking! They even blasted a dozen auxiliary cops into the air! The NCPA is gonna choke on this—but choke they must! Oh, and did you see the 'Whales' at the harbor?
"That's right—the Tokugawa Whale-class are back! I counted twelve Whale-class light drone carriers alone! The Tokugawa claim they're here to help salvage the Space City wreckage? Please—bringing your entire net worth to fish the sky? On behalf of Space City, arigato!"
Li Pan opened his eyes to find himself lying on an operating table with NCHC News chattering on a wall display.
Full anesthesia again, and waking to the morning news—he almost thought time had rewound. He stared at the broadcast for a long moment before it clicked.
It was the same day he'd skipped work to see a body-mod surgeon—the neural jack replacement and graft surgeries had run all day and all night.
At least the headache was gone. Whether thanks to the tech-side treatment or the cultivation-side remedy… hard to say.
He watched the live shot on the news.
In the Pacific's trash gyre, engineering ships were clearing a patch of ocean using magnetic shield fields. Whales surfaced from below, or drifted with the currents, or vaulted skyward to hover—those enormous silhouettes casting shadows across the company's tower.
The Whale-class was an all-environment light unmanned-carrier platform: submersible and airborne. Originally designed toward a cruiser-class starship spec, but late in the war Takamagahara's fleet suffered severe shortages—engines, astronavigators, and spice alike ran dry; factories, power plants, and orbital elevators were hit by alien special-ops raids. Most hulls reached only skeleton completion before being mothballed in terrestrial yards, unable to join the resupply fleets in orbit.
After Takamagahara's surrender and massive demobilization, with its interstellar fleet strictly capped, the Whale-class was driven into the sea—space-grade engines stripped—rebuilt as atmospheric light carriers.
But a Whale's hull and hangars were still starship-grade, its command system military-grade—a battlespace controller capable of running at least three medium drone squadrons, two hundred UCAVs executing coordinated tactics.
Now the Tokugawa had rolled the fleet out to peacock around New Tokyo Bay. The whole of Night City knew: the Takamagahara civil war was over—and the Tokugawa were back, almost unscathed.
You couldn't fault them for strutting; they had the means. Every Whale was an independent drone-command node; add in the line of divisions arrayed outside the walls—if it came to blows, they could clear Night City's garrisons in minutes.
The real issue was that Takamagahara had surrendered. The space fleet had been annihilated, yes, but there'd been no orbital drop operations, no planetary bombardment. Industrial capacity remained; large numbers of local ground forces remained.
Meanwhile, the aliens' synthetic-body transfers into this world—given the Gate's costs—weren't going to ship main battle tanks and SMS junk across dimensions. Now that the war was over, if the Ye Clan wouldn't foot the bill, other corporate militias weren't going to help police Night City for free. The gap showed—starkly.
Most people figured the Tokugawa wouldn't really flip the table—this was posturing, a bargaining chip for talks with the Ye Clan. Li Pan, though, felt they just might go all the way this time…
"Mr. Li, the operation is complete. How do you feel?"
The cyber-surgeon finished his checks. Li Pan blinked and sat up. After a night on the table, the body-mod batch was finally done.
With a decisive battle against the Tokugawa looming, he'd at least gotten his loadout back to peak.
First up was the anti-hack neural jack upgrade. Last time, his Level-4 personal ICE interrupter fried at a single touch—if not for his true-qi bodyguarding, he'd have been brain-burned on the spot. This wasn't where you skimp, so he went straight to a Level-5 personal ICE interrupter, bundled HT ChaosTech's legit firewall—three-month trial plus three more—388,888 all in.
He'd also added an antigravity spinal implant. His Fuxi-15 platform was no longer cutting it—barely enough to power a single Level-6 device. He needed extra RAM and storage to run two specials at once. Thankfully, for those auxiliaries, Level-4 chips were fine: 20,000 for the RAM upgrade, 22,400 for the external storage bus.
Next was a full dermal system overhaul. He chose the mid-tier reinforcement package: repaired dermal fiber bundles, added fire-retardant coating, insulation plating, ceramic ballistic armor, and grafted antibacterial biosynthetic skin. The whole set was only 99,998—not even a hundred grand. Bargain.
This shop's ceramic plates were a bit thinner than his last suit. Technically still Level-5 armor, but with reduced thickness and coverage, it might not fully stop sniper-grade AP rounds. Still, with the added fire- and mag-resistant composites—swapping some kinetic defense for resistances—and a decent package discount, it was acceptable.
Post-op, he checked himself in the mirror. The last set—well over six figures—had been mil-spec: high quality but bullet-efficiency first—thick and heavy. He'd looked like a brown bear.
This set was tuned for bounty-hunter work—better suited for Night City's urban sector. The armor even had aesthetic lines: pronounced muscle silhouette—ape back, wasp waist, mantis legs, and eight razor abs—more sculpted than tanked.
He turned, eyeing the antigrav spine grafted along his back—the one from Imai Shōichirō.
Because Level-6 implants come with native gene pairing, Li Pan—like Orange—had paid for extra add-ons: an external power-cell module that charged the antigrav from the extra load of daily exercise. It looked like a tungsten-gold giant centipede crouched along his spine, breathing lights winking on and off.
He tried powering it up—and his body rose without a sound, as if an invisible hand were tugging him upward by a line tied to his vertebrae.
The system used basic Tesla-coil magnetic triggers and computed local fields to generate gravitational wave pulses. Even in vacuum, so long as there was a radiation system nearby, it worked—like a fish in the sea, diving and climbing at will.
Downsides: power-hungry, energy-hungry, compute-hungry; slow hover, poor acceleration, short uptime. Great for showing off; as a force multiplier, not price-efficient.
Even so, it had niche value: with heavy SBS exos, if the outer metal frame failed, the antigrav could offload the weight. Could be handy for infiltration or escape.
That's Level-6 for you—flashy, low cost-performance, fancy chicken ribs.
The cyber-surgeon sent over the op report.
"Mr. Li, the surgery was a success. Your healing factor is excellent—gene-enhanced, I assume. But there are still risks with this many implants.
"First, that antigrav spine you brought is very high-end; it may put significant load on your body. Avoid overuse or you risk paralysis.
"Also, during surgery I found keratinized hardening in your subcutaneous layer—likely a side effect of your bio gene enhancers. Such lesions carry a risk of malignancy and can be exacerbated by implant irritation. I recommend regular follow-ups.
"Your pineal gland shows obvious swelling and inflammation—possibly from the neural jack burn-out, overwork, or bacterial infection. You should go to a private hospital for further diagnostics, and avoid over-reliance on implants.
"If you must use them, I personally recommend strong immunosuppressants. I have a set of Black Ice, mint flavor—interested? You can take a puff."
He produced an asthma-inhaler-style kit: a black-and-red inhaler, an injector, and six replaceable compressed canisters.
Anyone with implants battles rejection; you mix in anesthetics and stimulants to steady body and mind. Naturally, these drugs are addictive and side-effect-heavy—symptom relief, not cure.
Li Pan wasn't fussed. He knew the "hardening" and "cancer risk" were likely the side effects of Nine Yin Body-Refining. The pineal issue? Sword-pill backlash—so don't use it. As for his mental state—so long as his psych eval kept up, no big deal.
He had heard of Black Ice on the streets. Company wage-slaves, veterans, cyberpunks—implant abusers and cyberpsychosis cases—the standard kits weren't cutting it anymore. On the gray market, only the effective, the not-too-pricey, and the not-too-deadly survive. Black Ice had come out on top.
It could numb pain, boost combat performance, suppress cyberpsychosis—or induce it. Either way, the hit was euphoric.
Loaded with top-tier mods and top-tier issues, Li Pan took a draw. He immediately felt sharper; his vision whooshed—as if drenched in warm blood—turning a vivid crimson. The foreign-body sensations along his spine and left orbital implant vanished. Even his true-qi ran faster. He felt feather-light and giddy; the surgeon, nurse, and the faces on the monitors all bloomed with the same ecstatic smile. Bliss.
"Heh-heh-heh… Not bad—beats the army's little pills. How much?"
The doctor's voice floated through like underwater static.
"A set is 48,000. The inhaler and injector are on the house. You can find cheaper Black Ice canisters on the black market—but below 8,000 per, I advise caution. The baseline formula is already aggressive; swap in low-cost substitutes and you risk poisoning."
Before Li Pan could answer, the surgeon lifted another box of vials.
"A high-potency neutralizer, 3,500 each. If you overdo it and start nausea/vomiting, jab your liver."
"Fine. Two of those."
He could have reset his archive cabinet, but with a possible final battle coming—and the dress uniform still under repairs—he might as well stock up across the board. Better to have it and not need it.
"Interested in a Mantis Blade? Latest hotline blade, a model already discontinued on the market. Paired with a custom frontal-lobe enhancer, it'll shave a hair with every cut—severing a neck feels like slicing warm butter.
"If you don't like blades, I've got new Gorilla Arms. In these hands, starship-grade armor is papier-mâché. You can rip a steel door off the frame and crush it into a ball."
"No need. I can rip doors off and ball them up without those. Ring me up."
Between the enhancements and the OR bill, another six-hundred-thousand-plus flowed out like water.
By his estimate, his physical upgrades were close to capped.
No point chasing more Level-6 toys. With implants, the jump from nothing to something is the biggest. By Level-5 mil-grade, you've basically hit peak. Beyond that, the marginal gains from bespoke Level-6 are painfully overpriced.
It wasn't just cyberware either. His cultivation felt like it had hit a bottleneck.
He'd gone through the Nine Yin Manual across three bodies; he could compare.
Li Qingyun's growth was the fastest by far—his combat power rocketed up. Even that clay doll was strong—just by "breathing," its Body-Refining had climbed to the Third Turn.
But Li Pan's own gains were sluggish. Forget keeping up with Li Qingyun's pay-to-win steroids—even the clay doll was outpacing him…
He'd assumed the qi of this world was too thin. But even after that massive "roaches" absorption and a big rebound, his breath-work remained inefficient.
Whether "digestion" or "enhancement," his training efficiency kept falling. At this rate, Third to Fourth Turn of Nine Yin Body-Refining was basically the ceiling. The biometrics made it obvious—his raw stats were flattening.
He wasn't making excuses; he could feel it. In World 0791, there was an invisible ceiling.
In Li Qingyun's world, no such limit—he could floor it endlessly, power climbing exponentially.
But here, Li Pan's power spiked early and then hit a cap. Looking sideways across the plane—martial artists, swordsmen, ninja, onmyōji—same story. Everyone stuck at the same threshold.
So far, only a few paths seemed to break that unseen shackle.
Borrow a monster—become an apostle or a vessel. Or spend more—money, tech, gear, drugs—turn yourself into a tech-side "monster."
And it might not be just 0791. Across the many parallel Earth-0 worlds, most were likely the same. A Level-5 mil-grade cyborg is "superhuman" anywhere.
By that logic, maybe the worlds he saw in dreams were the weird ones—where even the fish in the sea had Level-5 physique…
Bottom line: in his current state, he could farm gangs with ease and barely scrap with a few ninja—but soloing the entire Tokugawa army plus its Whale-class? Pipe dream.
Alright then. No point angsting on 2,500 a month—file the company war-readiness request.
.
.
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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."
💥 High-voltage cyberpunk. Urban warfare. AI paranoia.Read 30 chapters ahead, only on Patreon.
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