…Cold, trembling…
Feng Xue gradually woke from his daze. The first thing he felt was not quite suffocation, but a sensation as though something were blocking his mouth and nose. He wanted to raise a hand, yet could not feel the existence of his body at all; he wanted to open his eyes, yet he was utterly powerless.
“Sleep paralysis?” The thought surfaced in Feng Xue’s mind. As his brain gradually regained clarity, his memories also began to return.
He was a full-time writer. Recently, he had just finished his old book and was preparing a new one when he received a commission for a custom piece. The content was simple enough: the currently popular extraction-shooter genre.
In order to take the job, he had downloaded several games and studied their points of appeal and common features, trying to see whether he could write something like that. Then…
His memory cut off there. Feng Xue suspected that he might have fallen asleep face-down on his desk, but just then, a beam of light struck his eyelids, making his eyeballs instinctively want to dodge.
“You actually managed to survive. Your flesh-type talent is quite high!”
An aged voice came from his right ear. Feng Xue wanted to frown, but felt only a wave of weakness.
Before long, however, a strange sensation came to him, as though something had been inserted into his neck—yet there was no pain at all. Along with threads of warmth spreading through his head, Feng Xue’s eyelids finally gained a bit of strength. He tried opening his eyes, and a mixture of astonishment, shock, and a trace of disbelief rapidly spread through his mind.
What appeared before him was a rather disorderly mechanical workshop. In the workshop, an old man with Einstein-like exploded hair, a white lab coat draped over him, and lines on his face gleaming with a metallic luster—practically overflowing with the aura of a mad scientist—was propping up his chin with one hand and staring at him with a peculiar look.
Only then did he notice that he seemed to be locked inside a glass container…
“What’s going on? Did I transmigrate? Did I become a mad scientist’s test subject?” Feng Xue was greatly alarmed and tried to raise a hand, only to discover that he still could not feel his body at all.
The mad scientist glanced at a nearby screen and sighed.
“Stop wasting your strength. Right now, all you’ve got left is a severed head. Seriously, I just don’t get it. You haven’t even undergone cybernetic modification, so where did you get the guts to run into the junkyard? Now look, someone chopped your body off, didn’t they?”
“I don’t really understand what you’re talking about,” Feng Xue said, yet for some reason, he felt as though the voice had not come from his mouth.
Hearing this, the old man dragged a full-length mirror from some unknown corner and stood it in front of Feng Xue. Seeing in the mirror the severed head connected to strange mechanical tubes and wires inside a large culture tank—the kind often seen in sci-fi movies—Feng Xue nearly fainted again.
“Don’t get worked up, don’t get worked up. I see no traces of modification on your pons, so you should be from a wealthy family, right? Hurry up and give me a contact number. I’ll have your family come pick you up! It’s only because I’m kindhearted, otherwise you’d have died in the junkyard! Sigh, you youngsters, reading a few adventure novels and getting all hot-blooded!”
That was what the old man said, but his eyes were filled with anticipation. Feng Xue frowned, then in the end shook his head.
“I don’t have one. Other than knowing my name is Feng Xue, I don’t know anything.”
“Uh…” The smile on the old man’s face instantly froze. He turned to glance at the screen and frowned.
“You’re not lying? That makes sense too. Cerebral hypoxia can indeed cause functional damage. Amnesia… this is going to be troublesome…”
The old man sighed, his brows knitting together.
He had thought he had picked up some rich young master and could use this to make a profit. Who would have thought the boy had actually lost his memory? This investment was probably going down the drain… Just maintaining the survival of a severed head cost quite a bit every day!
He thought for a moment. His gaze lingered briefly on Feng Xue’s brown-black eyes and black hair, then he glanced at the DNA analysis on the screen before finally saying,
“Judging from the logic of your speech, the only damaged area should be the memory region… So, can you understand the current situation?”
“…Barely,” Feng Xue wanted to nod, but with only a head left, he clearly could not perform such a movement.
The old man obviously did not care about that. Hearing his affirmative answer, he said,
“Even if you possess flesh-type source energy, in your current condition, you can’t leave the life-support device. I plan to sell the cochlea from your left ear and install the lowest-grade full-body prosthesis for you to ensure your basic survival. But in exchange, you’ll need to work here for me until your family finds you or you recover your memory.”
“Isn’t that basically charity?” Feng Xue’s eyes immediately lit up. He was not an ungrateful person. His life was in the other man’s hands right now; never mind one cochlea, even if the old man sold his frontal lobe and cerebellum together, he would have no ability to resist.
Thinking of this, Feng Xue immediately said,
“No problem. But what is source energy? And what does flesh-type mean?”
“Uh, you even forgot that?”
The old man revealed an utterly speechless expression and sighed.
“Fine. I’ll find some teaching materials for you. Read them first. Use voice commands to turn the pages. If there’s anything you don’t understand, ask the AI or just use a search engine. I’ll go look for a buyer…”
The old man grabbed a screen and fiddled with it for a while, then fixed it onto a mechanical arm and aimed it at Feng Xue before leaving in a great hurry. Only then did Feng Xue realize a problem—
“Wait, shouldn’t you… Oh, no wonder I haven’t been able to hear anything from my left ear! So it’s already been removed?”
Feng Xue muttered inwardly, but did not dwell on it. At least the man had not plucked out one of his eyeballs too, right?
“From what that old man said, I have some kind of ability? So this is a world setting like cyberpunk plus futuristic superpowers?”
Thinking this, Feng Xue turned his attention to the screen. Looking at the densely packed letters, he had not even had time to feel troubled before he was drawn to the square spiral icon in the upper-left corner of his vision. The main color of the icon was so dark that it was only when he saw the glowing screen that he noticed this incongruous trace.
“What is this?” Feng Xue very much hoped it was a cheat, but after all, this was a cybernetic world where even a severed head could be kept alive. Having some sort of neural implant seemed quite normal too.
With a bit of anticipation and doubt, Feng Xue tried focusing his attention on the icon. The next moment, a window suddenly popped open before his eyes—
It was a rectangular, semi-transparent panel. On the left half, a fully armed soldier advanced warily, with the words [Battlefield Selection] written in metallic-style artistic lettering. The right side was divided into upper and lower sections. The upper section depicted a box filled with gold bars and bullets scattered beside it, with the words [Exchange] written in golden font. The lower section showed a half-finished prosthetic limb full of mechanical texture, with the words [Crafting Bench] written in characters that looked as though they had been pieced together from machine parts.
“Combat, shop, and equipment? How easy to understand!”
(The AI just threw it together randomly, as long as you get the idea.)
New book released. Please recommend, please collect, please support in every way!