It was deep into the night, and all the lights in the households had gone out.
Only the dim streetlights and narrow, deep paths remained.
Zheng Yuandong blocked one man's path.
The middle-aged man across asked, "Kunlun Zheng Yuandong? It must have been hard to find me."
Zheng Yuandong slowly walked toward the man, curiously asking, "I've investigated you, a month ago you were just a maintenance worker from the Outer World, and a month later you began to serve the Jindai loyally—so, are you still yourself?"
The middle-aged man smiled, "Does it matter who I am?"
"Let me guess," Zheng Yuandong said, "Someone once said that the Jindai Family Master has always been the same person, six hundred years ago and still today. I spent a month investigating this matter, and I finally found the written notes of the Jindai Family Master from six hundred years ago. The handwriting is indeed generally indistinct from today's. Logically, even a cultivator in the Inner World shouldn't have such a long lifespan. I think the Jindai family has actually mastered the technology of neuronal interconnection between people and can even use it to rewrite the brain, right?"
The so-called neuronal interconnection technology first appeared in Qing's Family, used for controlling nanorobots.
Once controlled, those little guys could travel in the bloodstream to remove blood clots, non-invasively and painlessly.
Latterly, various conglomerates made breakthroughs in neuronal interconnection technology, and so this technology was widely applied in various fields, such as controlling cyberdogs and drones.
For example, connecting mechanical limbs.
Then, some tried using neuronal interconnection technology in reverse to upload their consciousness to the network, aiming to achieve mechanical immortality.
However, this technology failed because everyone found that no matter how they uploaded, the consciousness would immediately perish once it appeared on the network.
Some said it was because the network's data flow was too vast and would quickly assimilate the uploaded human consciousness.
Some said it was because the technology was not mature enough.
But to this day, no one has found the reason.
Only a few people know that it was Yi's brother who hunted down all human consciousness in the network.
Latterly, as uploading consciousness didn't work, some conducted even more cruel experiments: erasing a person's consciousness and then overlaying it with another's consciousness using neuronal interconnection technology.
From that moment, the body became a temporary shell, while the consciousness would live forever.
This was a sort of reverse time travel, although people from the Inner World couldn't come over, their consciousness could cover the Time Traveler, allowing themselves to become the Time Traveler.
This was also the method suggested by Li Yunshou to the old man, although the old man himself felt that too long a life would also lose its meaning, hence he refused.
The old man believed this to be the dirtiest aspect of human technological civilization's development to this day.
The middle-aged man across didn't speak.
Zheng Yuandong calmly said, "Let me guess again, the neuronal interconnection technology overlaying another's consciousness might require much from the 'covered', we all know that the brain is the most fragile organ in the body, hence it needs a tough skull for protection. In the Inner World, many hackers use their brains as servers to carry out protocol invasions, often becoming vegetative by their forties due to brain shrinkage."
Zheng Yuandong continued to speculate, "These hackers caring little about brain shrinkage have their today but no tomorrow, but surely the big shots of the conglomerate do care, and an ordinary person's brain could probably only bear one overlay but couldn't undergo another interconnection. Therefore, only those above B-Class could become qualified vessels, right? I checked a lot of informations related to the Jindai family and discovered that every once in a while a B-Class Expert would suddenly disappear and then reappear a year later."
The middle-aged man laughed, "A secret that so many haven't discovered, and yet you did. Since you are so interested in the Jindai family, why not join us?"
Zheng Yuandong shook his head, "Different lands under different skies are not to be served under the same heaven."
"Then I can only make you keep this secret forever," the middle-aged man said with a smile.
The next moment, his pupils suddenly emitted a silvery light.
Zheng Yuandong felt as if everything around him had become a double image.
It was as if a person with 300 degrees of myopia and astigmatism suddenly took off their glasses.
The dim light by the road turned into rings of halos, making it impossible to see the world in its true form.
Yet, Zheng Yuandong remained calm, drawing his long knife and tossing aside its sheath.
Then he closed his eyes.
The middle-aged man curiously asked, "You didn't even bring a firearm, although they are useless in our fight, they are still better than this long knife."
Zheng Yuandong replied, "Everyone is asleep, it might wake many people and cause a disturbance."
"You worry about gunfire waking up the residents in a fight between experts?" The middle-aged man was somewhat astonished. "Cold weapons from the Outer World, when hacked into the muscles of a B-Class Expert, will get stuck, and chopping a few more times might even blunt the blade. Isn't it a bit childish fighting me with this thing?"
"It's enough," Zheng Yuandong said.
The next moment, the middle-aged man's legs suddenly burst with immense power, covering the ten-meter distance in a single leap.
Yet, as if he could see everything, Zheng Yuandong with his eyes closed, swung his knife forward in a slash.
The two separated as soon as they made contact; this time Zheng Yuandong actively met the challenge, the long knife in his hand like an agile bird, extremely nimble.
With a tearing sound, before the middle-aged man could react, the blade had already sliced through the membrane gaps between his arm muscles.