When in doubt, pop the cheat.
A cheat won't solve the problem—
…but it'll sure solve you.
Cheating is a blast for a moment; cheating nonstop is a nonstop blast.
Truth is, before and after the whole worlds-hopping thing—game or "real life"—Li Pan had been wrecked by cheaters more than once.
So now he'd made his peace with it.
If you can't beat 'em? Join 'em.
Pop it. Pop the damn thing.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
Dash. Punch. Erase.
Handkerchief transformation + Nine Yin boost + full-power Superman haymakers—what Iga ninja was going to stand up to that?
They broke. All of them broke.
From a third-person camera, this wasn't even a fight—no, a massacre you couldn't follow with the naked eye. If you had to describe it, picture a Mach-5 superhuman sprinting shuttle runs down a corridor.
Repeated charges inside the keep turned the hallways into a piston engine—compression, implosion. The alloy skeleton of the fortress held, but the tatami, floorboards, walls—and bodies—didn't. They went to pieces in the shockwaves and pressure snaps.
Iga didn't even get to call their jutsu names before they were dust. Skin flechettes, meat, organs, implant shards, severed limbs—a red-black paste spattered across panels and stone.
In blinks, the field was clear. Li Pan dropped through the ninja crawlspace beneath the mats and did a quick lap of the lower levels.
Layer after layer of rooms, cage-like cells. Inside: young women in thin shifts, a visor clamped over their eyes, lying in expensive immersion pods, lost in digital dreamland—Tokugawa's concubines, by the look of it.
And all those Iga just now? Also kunoichi. Which meant inside this whole castle, the only person "with a handle" was the one young man he'd pinned earlier.
Strict gene management, huh.
He doubled back for the Tokugawa grandson.
"Ng—ng—nnn—AAHH—"
Pinned through the mouth by the sword, the kid could only wail. The earlier shockwaves had tossed him like a rag, the debris pelting him like buckshot and grinding him along the walls.
That close to the blast, even with supertech shelling, the internals—eyes, viscera—had burst.
Thick plasma jetted from every opening, dried on skin and fused with flayed scraps—a half-cooked slab of meat glued with scum in a pan.
Li Pan walked up and gave him a punch.
A little love tap to the sternum.
The shell cracked. Before it could auto-seal, he jammed a hand in, pried the ribs, ripped the synth-hide—clean corn-shuck from clavicle to hip, a one-pull degloving.
He'd only bagged one, but that turtle-shell counted as a level-6 orange drop. Worth a key, easy.
He worked the kid like a lobster: peel, crack, separate—down to pink "shrimp" strips—then tore the kerchief from his face.
He hooked a finger through the spinal column like a handle, tucked the rolled hide under one arm, and lugged the Tokugawa scion out.
Outside, it was all wailing—howling that scraped the sky, like a whole troop of monkeys.
Well, if you order seppuku, you at least let 'em scream. Courtesy.
Across the city, Eighteen had "woken" the samurai out of the datasea and had them draw EM or hot-wire blades and open themselves—one cut straight, or a cross, or a triple-stroke 王, or a neat little 中, or a 草… Eighteen was getting creative, apparently.
For the record: yanking your guts out doesn't kill you instantly. Proper seppuku needs a second to take your head.
Li Pan considered himself merciful, really—softhearted, even.
He had no personal blood feud with Tokugawa. He just wanted the family to cut their bellies, apologize, and show the company some respect.
And hey—he'd read on the toilet that samurai trained for this from childhood; they get a wakizashi at their coming-of-age, to be ready for the day.
Dreams fulfilled! He was helping, right? Win-win.
Whether 01 would take this performance piece as an apology—who knew. But a whole city worth of intestines ought to move the needle.
In the old days, humans sacrificed to their gods by tormenting the victims—louder screams, deeper piety.
Given the gulf between Monster Corp and these bugs, accepting an offering wasn't exactly gauche.
"Eighteen, try this one."
He lobbed the Tokugawa kid up to the roof. The spider pounced like a predator, clamped the "shrimp" and zizz-zizz-zizz drilled open the back of the skull. Monofilament poured over him like a net, biting every port and socket for a hardline.
The red camera-eye pulsed. An ICE knife-fight later, a steel spine slid into the brainjack.
Eighteen chirped.
"Done! Whoa, boss—you bagged the Tokugawa patriarch."
He'd guessed the kid was important from the Iga screen, but "patriarch" was a surprise.
"Isn't Tokugawa's head that tanuki-faced old man? Tokugawa Nagamatsu? New chassis?"
"Not him. Logs say this head inherited half an hour ago. Prior handle: Takechiyo, from the West Citadel. If the paperwork's that fast, he was already the designated heir."
"Half an hour?"
Li Pan frowned, skimmed his missed calls—Dozens from Ōkubo. He tapped one back.
"Yeah? What shell game are you playing?"
This time Ōkubo sounded humble.
"Manager Li, we're ready to reconcile. One word from you—our side assumes full responsibility and compensates your losses."
Li Pan rolled his eyes. "What, you don't want respect anymore?"
Ōkubo knew words were useless. He dove into the vid channel, full prostration, head-banging the floor.
"Gomenasai! Please, be magnanimous—spare us this once!"
Professional manager of Takamagahara—the man had world-class form.
Stone-faced, Li Pan said, "Where is Tokugawa Nagamatsu?"
"Former lord has resigned and retired in atonement. All was my miscommunication. I assume full—"
"Heh. You must have a death wish."
Even now, the bait-and-switch? Toss a son or lackey under the bus and hope the real culprit slips away? You offend the Company and think you get to run?
He hung up.
"Eighteen, find me the source of this mess. Until that dog dies by my hand, a thousand slit bellies won't mean jack."
"But boss, I've swept Night City with the public spy sats. No trace of Nagamatsu. Even Yatsu's side is only sending retainers to the talks. No way he's walking around without guards. If he's not in Edo Castle… maybe he's not even in Night City. You want a planetwide sweep?"
Li Pan thought.
"No. He just cut a deal with Hashiba—he won't run far.
"You can toss 'patriarch' as a title, but most shares are still his. Board seats don't matter mid-civil-war, but military commission does—and you can't transfer that under the table. He won't dare leave the army's umbrella. He's hiding in some division HQ outside the city.
"We go drag him out. A-Qi, status?"
A-Qi: "Boss, I've linked up with Ashiya. The Seal-Breaker got out on his own. He's dueling an Iga right now."
Oh? Ninja duel? Worth a look.
Iga's legend was huge; just now he'd "paid them respect" by deleting the squad before they could even finish their move names—so honestly he hadn't seen Iga ninjutsu do much.
He called the skiff, swapped gear, and arrowed to A-Qi's ping.
From afar, two ninja were trading leaps across rooftops, shouting "Hanzo—!" "Kotarō—!" Childhood friends? Old partners? Frenemies?
He flipped his aug-eye on. Ninjutsu battlefield, now loading.
How to put it… meh?
No flashy FX—no fire release, wood release. Not even a mezzy water spout like Shiranui Muko's party trick.
Kotarō and that Hanzo were playing it straight: some kind of yin-yang arts to form qi-armor and qi-blades—like Nine Yin's body-guarding, just convergent evolution. Keep distance, blink-step reposition, trade infused kunai and shuriken at mid-range.
You throw, I dodge; I shoot, you feint. All skill, little spectacle.
The pace was fast—Level-5 bodies at least. Li Pan had to push dynamic radar to keep perfect track.
Overall? Kinda dull…
He scanned the rest.
Ashiya and A-Qi were holding the line at the periphery, facing off with a dozen Iga. Average aura put them around Shiranui Muko's restored level, a hair under Hōga's headmistress after her "recharge."
Seal-marks off, upper-rank shinobi—male, hence not trapped in the Tokugawa harem.
They weren't eager to crash the grudge match. They perched or crouched, striking poses on eaves and let Hanzo vs. Kotarō have their king's-duel, lovers'-quarrel thing.
On the other side, A-Qi and Ashiya were outnumbered—but Li Pan saw two giants flanking them: one azure, one crimson—oni.
Ashiya's art, likely. Two towering devils with tusked faces: one sheathed in blue flame, one drenched in blood-light. Qi poured off them; they stood six meters tall, mid-SMS size, palms open to carry A-Qi and Ashiya like dolls, muscles flaring, bat-wing ribs spread to form shields.
Radar saw nothing; cameras saw only two people hovering as if on antigrav. But the Iga, like Li Pan, could sense the red and blue oni; they arced a cautious ring and held.
Li Pan eyed the neat coils of intestine in the streets, then the rooftop audience.
"Eighteen, why are Iga still moving? Why aren't they opening themselves like the rest? The program can't touch them?"
"They're not Tokugawa hereditary retainers; no slave contracts. The Court Guard is dissolved; ninja aren't Takamagahara 'assets' anymore. Tokugawa hires them short-term, probably with poison/doping for loyalty."
"Doping for a contract?"
"Takamagahara paranoia. In hacker camp they didn't use personality governors on us—too much thread and RAM. For hackers they used addictive stimulants."
"Pay people more and give holiday bonuses—is it that hard? Cheaper than killing them…"
He toggled the skiff's PA.
"Hey. Listen up. Don't get it twisted—this is corporate war. Corporate war.
Get serious. We're exterminating the Tokugawa line. All non-parties—scram. Or I salt the earth."
The Iga glanced up. A short bald one popped his mask and biu—lobbed a plasma globe.
The skiff juked, kicked chaff and magnetic decoys, and bent the bolt off course.
Li Pan almost face-planted the glass. He snarled.
"Oh, we're doing this? Kotarō! What are you waiting for? Three minutes. Put up a big one and wipe them all. Do I have to do everything myself?!"
The boss barking lit a fire. Kotarō bounded to a tower roof and flew through hand-seals like string-figures.
Hanzo mirrored him, settling in to charge.
Hmm. Both qi fields were swelling—visible to the naked eye. So ninjutsu had a cast bar after all.
A red and a blue oni spread their rib-wings and lofted off, answering the tempo.
The bald Iga biu again, lining a shot at the red oni holding A-Qi—
—and the oni just batted it away like a tennis serve.
Iga blinked. The oni set A-Qi and Ashiya safely in the skiff's hold, then crouched left and right on the wing struts like door guardians.
You can spike a plasma bolt? What even—
Ashiya smiled. "Parlor tricks. Boss—watch. Fūma-kun's about to use the real thing."
Li Pan tore his gaze from the two slips of paper in Ashiya's fingers and back to the field. Kotarō's seals snapped shut.
From his body a tide of demonic force erupted. Muscle and frame grew before your eyes. In a blink he was two zhang tall; tiger-stripe scarlet sigils crawled his skin; golden horns speared from his brow. A storm of red hair—more sunset than hair, more mantle than mane—blossomed down his back.
…You too? Second-stage transformation?
And not fake. In seconds his power surpassed that roach, the Golden Buddha's apostle; this was near-descent of a true demon god.
Might even go a round with the Handkerchief Knight…
"What the hell is that?"
Ashiya's smile deepened. "As expected—not his first unsealing…"
She explained, unhurried:
"That is the demon my house's ancestor entrusted to the Three Ninja Clans of the Court to seal—one of the three great yokai.
"Fūma's lineage guards it across generations—the demon-god of Ōeyama, Shuten Dōji."
Li Pan flicked his aug to search. "He's close to full descent, right? If he loses control, how do we put him down? Shuten Dōji… get him drunk and take his head?"
Ashiya laughed.
"No need to worry. Though they were ordered to seal them, shinobi have always cracked them in secret to train—each line has techniques to control oni-fication and wield borrowed divinity.
"I spoke with Fūma-kun; he has the talent. He won't snap quickly. And even if he did… he may have his own way back."
Demon-mode ninjutsu—cheap but effective way to break the world's ceiling.
Of course, the enemy was ninja too—same roots, same means.
Right on cue, Hanzo transformed as well—grew a head taller, bulls-thick, with a pair of black crow-wings razored like knives, four meters tip to tip, and his face twisted into a demon mask Li Pan had seen all over Night City.
"…Wait. Is that the real deal?"
He glanced at Ashiya; she nodded.
"Indeed. A tengu. The tengu are ancient outside-the-six-paths demon gods. Though the Court and my house purged that heresy, eight great tengu remained too strong to kill and were given to the Forty-Eight of Iga to keep.
"That man is this generation's Hattori Hanzō—I'd say he's the current human pillar for Buzenbō of Mount Hiko, one of the eight."
"Oh… Shuten, and a Tengu…"
Li Pan skimmed a fan-wiki. "So you onmyōji farmed out the three big yokai to the three big ninja clans to seal.
"That means Kōga got the Nine-Tailed Fox, huh?"
Ashiya chuckled and nodded. "Quite so. I expect Kōga's present leader—the headmistress of Gosha—is keeping the Nine Tails."
Neat. Which means, rounded up—he could brag he did dual cultivation with the Nine-Tailed Fox.
.
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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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