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Chapter 15 is out on patreon
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The woman stepped into the interrogation room. Taking her seat, she tapped the face of her watch, projecting a 3D holographic screen into the air between them.
The hologram displayed the profile of a young Asian man. His eyes were pitch-black, as deep and hollow as the void of space, casting a heavy, brooding shadow over an otherwise handsome and bright face.
Beneath the photo was a block of personal data. She merely skimmed it; she had memorized the file long ago. More importantly, the man in the photo was sitting right in front of her.
"Lu Li, correct?"
The man sitting opposite her was bound tight in a heavy-duty straitjacket, completely immobilized from the neck down. With a wild, overgrown beard and matted, filthy hair, he looked like a far cry from the clean-cut youth in the hologram.
"Is there anyone else in this corporate black site getting the VIP treatment like me?" Lu Li let out a wry chuckle, the sound dripping with self-deprecation.
The woman didn't take the bait. Tucking a strand of vibrant purple hair behind her ear, she maintained a rigid, professional composure. "You can call me Nefer. I am here to take your final statement. I expect your full cooperation. If you comply, I can put in a word to get you whatever you want for your last breakfast."
Lu Li fell silent. A distant look crossed his eyes before he let out a soft sigh. "The kind of breakfast I want... probably doesn't exist in this era anymore."
Nefer didn't pry. Indulging his nostalgia wasn't in her job description. Glancing at the time, she shifted straight to business. "Before your execution commences, there are still a few loose ends to tie up."
With a swipe of her finger, the holographic projection shifted to a grisly crime scene photo. It showed a middle-aged man clad in a state-of-the-art combat exoskeleton, lying dead in a pool of his own blood. The chest plating was completely shattered, a traditional spear driven cleanly through his heart.
"Grandmaster Lin Zhengdong. Did you kill him?"
Lu Li raised his head, staring at the corpse in the hologram. He scoffed. "Grandmaster?"
Nefer furrowed her brows. "Answer the question. As you should know, there are many ways to conduct an execution."
Pulling his gaze away from the projection, Lu Li locked eyes with the woman. She was a textbook "New Era" human. Her physical traits had already drifted from the baseline of the Old Era—her striking purple hair wasn't dyed; it was an expression of genetically modified traits.
Under his intense stare, Nefer felt a sudden, inexplicable wave of unease. She forced herself to remain calm, though her voice rose a fraction of a pitch. "I've reviewed your previous transcripts. You confessed to the crimes, but you never explained how you carried them out."
Lu Li leaned back, rolling his neck to stretch out the stiffness from being bound for so long. "I already told your people exactly how I did it. It's not my fault you refuse to believe me."
A flicker of doubt crossed Nefer's eyes. It was true—the man had thoroughly explained his methods during previous interrogations. The problem was that his explanation was pure fantasy. It was biologically and physically impossible.
Just as she was trying to figure out a new angle to crack him, Lu Li stared up at the ceiling and began reciting a list of names.
"Lin Zhengdong. Wang Luo. Ning Feige. Murong Gu. Liu Huabo. Hong Wu. Ma Huguo. Li Xiao. Tian Huahu. Cheng Lu."
With every name he dropped, Nefer's frown deepened. These were all world-renowned martial arts grandmasters.
Personally, she despised the archaic martial arts of the Old Era, viewing them as nothing more than fraudulent parlor tricks that crumbled before the sheer might of modern technology. But even she had to admit, those men possessed peak physical conditioning. Paired with corporate combat exoskeletons, they were terrifyingly formidable by any individual human standard.
Yet the man sitting before her—without the aid of a single piece of cybernetic enhancement or technological weaponry—had slaughtered all ten of those grandmasters.
Human flesh was frail; this was an undisputed universal truth. The greatest strongmen in recorded history maxed out at deadlifting a few hundred kilograms. But with an exoskeleton, even a sickly patient could easily heave a four-hundred-kilogram boulder. For martial artists who had already pushed their natural bodies to the limit, equipping an exoskeleton allowed them to output well over a thousand kilograms of raw force.
"How did you do it?" Nefer finally blurted out. Extracting his secret was her mission, but now, her own morbid curiosity had taken over.
"Is it really that hard to believe?" Lu Li smirked. "I didn't think killing them was all that difficult."
"It's physically impossible. And don't give me that garbage about your martial arts being superior. I've done my research. Why do you think Old Era boxing had weight classes? You weren't even in the same stratosphere of combat."
Leaning forward, Nefer locked eyes with him. "If you confess right now—tell me exactly how you discovered and exploited the vulnerabilities in our exoskeleton software—the Corporation might reconsider your execution. Depending on your cooperation, we could even offer you a lucrative internal position."
Lu Li blinked in genuine surprise before the realization finally hit him.
So that's what this is about. These corporate suits actually believed he had hacked the exoskeleton's operating system to bypass the grandmasters' strength. No wonder the Corporation had kept him alive in a black site for so long. They were terrified that their flagship product had a fatal software flaw.
"Looks like I cost you guys a pretty penny in stock value," Lu Li sneered.
"I need your answer," Nefer demanded. He was right; that was the Corporation's true nightmare.
The scandal had blown up massively. Even with their iron grip on the media, rumors had leaked that ten exoskeleton-clad grandmasters were beaten to death by a man using only his bare hands. Public confidence in the Corporation's products plummeted, and even the military had canceled a massive bulk order. Until they knew the truth and patched this theoretical exploit, they couldn't just throw Lu Li into the incinerator.
"Have you ever read a manga?"
"What?" Nefer was completely derailed. She knew what manga was—some archaic form of illustrated entertainment from the previous century. But what did that have to do with their interrogation?
"When I was a kid, I read this manga called Baki. There was a guy in it who claimed the title of the strongest creature on earth. I always thought his combat philosophy made a lot of sense," Lu Li mused, leaving the corporate interrogator staring at him in utter bewilderment.
"Mr. Lu, I suggest you take this seriously," Nefer warned, her tone turning glacial. She was convinced he was just toying with her.
"It really is impossible to talk to you corporate types. Let me dumb it down for you." Lu Li shrugged as best he could in the restraints. "Simply put... when you face someone with more raw strength than you, you beat them with technique. And when you face someone with better technique than you? You crush them with overwhelming brute force."
A feral grin stretched across his face. "Your exoskeletons might be a great crutch for boosting power, but their techniques were absolute garbage."
"You're trying to tell me that a twenty-something nobody has superior technique to grandmasters who have spent half a century perfecting their martial arts?" Nefer stared at him in disbelief. "So superior that it bridged an absolute gap in physical strength?"
Never mind the grandmasters—even if Lu Li had killed a young child wearing a corporate exoskeleton, she would have found it impossible. The human body was simply too fragile to withstand that kind of mechanical force.
"Think whatever you want." Lu Li closed his eyes, completely shutting her out.
Before this purple-haired corporate drone showed up, he had already sat through interrogations with over a dozen torturers, hostage negotiators, and psychologists. None of them got the answer they were looking for.
He had told them the exact truth. But nobody believed him, because people only believe what fits into their worldview. Even in this futuristic age, human nature hadn't changed a bit.
The Corporation was utterly convinced he had found a back door into their servers, bypassing their combat algorithms to effortlessly execute the ten grandmasters. They wanted the bug report, and they wanted the names of the rebel factions backing him.
But the truth was far simpler: he acted alone. And he had already made his peace with the end.
He knew Nefer was the Corporation's final olive branch. Over the past half-year, their patience had evaporated. By now, they had likely rolled out a massive software patch to reassure investors, and the societal outrage over the grandmasters' deaths had faded from the news cycle.
Nefer was nothing more than a boot the Corporation had shoved in his face. If he licked it, he might get to live. But Lu Li was never the boot-licking type.
"Let me phrase this differently then. Why did you kill them?" Taking a deep breath, Nefer continued the interrogation, resigning herself to just going through the bureaucratic motions.
"For acting as the Corporation's attack dogs. For betraying their martial roots. For getting my master killed... I have plenty of reasons, all of which you people already know." Lu Li yawned lazily, eyeing the time on the holographic display. "Can we just get to the execution already?"
Nefer frowned. She had seen men who weren't afraid of dying, but this man's indifference was something else entirely. It wasn't bravery; it was boredom. He looked like he was completely sick of this world. Like a lonely king standing at the peak of a freezing mountain—an ancient Eastern concept came to her mind: the absolute solitude of the invincible.
Standing up, she deactivated the hologram. "I'll take you to the execution grounds."
The interrogation audio would be archived. But because Lu Li was a high-profile target, Nefer's duties as the final record keeper meant she had to personally film the execution and attach it to his death certificate.
Escorted by two heavily armed guards in tactical exoskeletons, Lu Li was quickly marched out to an open-air execution plaza. He squinted against the harsh, blinding sunlight, his eyes slowly adjusting as he surveyed the area.
"You guys really have a sick sense of humor. I genuinely don't know what you mean by 'human progress' when you're just regressing back to the dark ages." Lu Li sneered as he stared at the center of the plaza.
There, sitting atop the platform, was a massive, motorized execution apparatus. He would be strapped to the metallic table while industrial-grade robotic arms clamped onto his limbs, revving up to pull him apart piece by piece. In ancient times, it was called being drawn and quartered by five horses. To the Corporation, it was just another day at the office.
To ensure no last-minute heroics, the circular plaza was entirely locked down by heavily armed mercenaries. Up on the towering perimeter walls, a handful of shadowy executive figures stood looking down, waiting for the show to begin.
"For a terrorist like you, a harsh punishment is necessary to serve as a warning to the public," Nefer said, walking alongside him. "Any last words?"
Marched up the platform steps, Lu Li spoke softly. "I just remembered something my master used to praise me for when I was a kid..."
As he spoke, the guards unbuckled his straitjacket. One guard pinned his neck down with a hydraulic arm, pressing a rifle barrel directly against his temple, while the other began clamping his arms and legs into the cold steel restraints of the machine.
Nefer couldn't fathom why he was bringing up childhood memories at death's door, but she couldn't help but ask. "Did he praise you for being a martial arts prodigy?"
Immobilized on the execution bed, Lu Li tested the tension of the massive robotic arms clamping his wrists and ankles. He flashed a feral grin at the corporate executives watching from the high walls.
The robotic arms were manufactured by the Corporation. Whether by coincidence or sheer arrogance, they were the exact same model series as the exoskeletons worn by the grandmasters he had slaughtered. Glancing at the camera drones buzzing around the plaza, Lu Li put the pieces together.
The Corporation was staging a live PR stunt. They were going to use the very same model he defeated to rip him limb from limb, publicly proving their hardware was flawless. It would demonstrate that their tech could easily crush the human body. As for the dead grandmasters? The company narrative would just spin it that the users were weak, completely absolving the hardware of any fault.
Furthermore, if Lu Li truly possessed some backdoor hacking exploit, the threat of impending death would force him to use it. Obviously, without a terminal, the Corporation didn't believe he could hack anything natively—what they were really waiting for was his supposed 'rebel organization' to launch a rescue operation to save him.
Corporate bastards sure know how to kill two birds with one stone, Lu Li mused. Under normal circumstances, this setup guaranteed a win-win for the executives: they either cleared their PR disaster or smoked out a rebel cell.
But today, the Corporation had severely miscalculated. And Lu Li had won the gamble.
Up on the high wall, an elderly executive in black robes adjusted his sunglasses, looking down at the prisoner with a smug, reassured smile.
Lu Li smiled back. Baring his pearly white teeth, he threw his head back and burst into maniacal, unhinged laughter. If he wasn't bolted down to the table, he would be rolling on the floor in absolute hysterics.
The executioner threw the main switch.
Instantly, terrifying mechanical torque locked onto Lu Li's four limbs, pulling outward with immense force. His neck remained unclamped—by design. The whole point of this medieval execution was sheer agony. Snapping his neck or choking him out was too merciful. The Corporation wanted him completely dismembered, left to scream on the table until he eventually bled out.
Lu Li marveled at their cruelty, though internally, he was incredibly thankful to whichever executive designed this exact execution method. Laughing wildly, he flexed.
Under the shocked stares of everyone present, his muscles coiled tight, meeting the immense kinetic pull of the industrial hydraulic arms head-on.
"My master... didn't praise me for being a martial arts prodigy..."
Lu Li's voice started out slow, turning into a savage, guttural snarl as he pushed back against the machine. The veins across his limbs bulged like twisting serpents, his swelling muscles radiating an explosive, volcanic power that defied all logic.
Over the high-pitched, grinding screech of the failing mechanical servos, the man's final whisper echoed across the plaza like a demon crawling out of purgatory.
"He said... there's a terrifying beauty to my raw stats."
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