The copper coin rang as it hit, bouncing along the corridor and tumbling down the stairwell—vanishing from sight.
Li Pan waited a moment, peered over the edge, then looked up at the invisible figure approaching him.
"Hold on. This technique might have a delay—needs a casting bar… Bro-ther!!"
The other side was rather gracious about it, waving for him to continue.
Li Pan showed no grace at all. He stepped in rudely—nose to face—and slashed straight for the opponent's wrist, aiming to sever the tendons.
The other man was careless—or rather, completely unconcerned. With a top-tier body, he didn't even try to dodge, clearly relying on his anti-violence defense to catch Li Pan's blade bare-handed.
Li Pan's sword neatly chopped off his right hand.
Optical camouflage collapsed, revealing a gorgeous metallic wrist. It flopped to the floor like a dead fish, twitched twice, bled milky cell fluid and gene slurry, then lay still.
"Well now…"
Back when he'd seen the fish-man body's durability—comparable to those hundred-million-credit BBAs—Li Pan had suspected the Monkey Sword-Qi buffed his attacks quite a bit.
He hadn't expected it to be this sharp. With Catherine's Sword carrying sword-qi, even a nano-mesh membrane could be cut?
Both men fell silent, glaring at each other. Then Li Pan grinned.
"Company tech not so hot, huh?"
The invisible man gave a sharp shake; bio-fluid sprayed from the wound. He clearly expected the severed hand to fly back and reattach.
But the hand lay there like a dead fish, unmoving.
Li Pan seized the moment, gathering sword-qi again. A pale-cyan streak shot from his tip straight for the throat.
This time the invisible man didn't dare posture, yet he still stepped in, ducking under to snatch back the hand while slipping the sword-qi—relying on stealth and cybernetics.
Even without a clear outline, the narrow stairwell and the dust pluming from his motion told Li Pan enough. He read the lanes and angles by intent.
With his first stroke's momentum fading, Li Pan rolled his wrist, depressed the tip; pale-cyan light reversed in an arc—falling like a meteor—closing once more on the man's face.
A violent twist saved him, but not cleanly—the sword-glow scraped a long gash across his neck with a metallic zing, white fluid spraying as conduit lines flashed into view.
The strike was still a bit off. Catherine's edge carried Monkey Sword-Qi; that pierced defenses. Li Pan's flesh did not. Too close, and the nano-filaments would counter-cut. Seeing his SBS plates getting sliced, he had to yield space.
Even so, the invisible man managed to reclaim the severed hand and back-step, pressing it to the wrist. Liquid metal knitted rapidly—nanobot field repair, most likely.
Li Pan wouldn't let him reset. He lunged, pouring every ounce of strength into Monkey Sword-Qi; the blade flared over a meter long. With the neck-wound as a marker, he aimed dead center—straight for the face.
The invisible man braced, lifting his newly "reattached" right hand to—
Clack.
The hand fell off.
Invisible man: shocked.
Li Pan: delighted.
Gotcha. Anything the Monkey cut becomes "dead."
With no time to evade, the man thrust up his left hand to cover his face—fwoom!—a blossom of light burst from his palm, plasma or high-energy laser about to street-nuke the place—
The splendid plasma curtain parted like a waterfall, split by that pale-cyan sword-light. The blade tore through the screen, through the plasma, through every layered defense—piercing the palm and head in one shot.
The invisibility dropped, revealing a metal humanoid.
It opened its mouth and screamed in the warped shriek of bending steel, a monster's death-cry. It lashed out—its lower leg launching like a missile.
Li Pan twisted serpentine; not quite enough. The kick clipped him and a blast flowered behind him, sending him tumbling. He rolled a dozen meters, strength bleeding off. His thigh was fractured; his back and shoulders mottled red and blue. A normal person would have been shredded by the shockwave.
The cyborg, one hand gone and the other skewered through the face, didn't fare better. Teetering on one leg, it hopped twice and crashed, motionless.
Little Spider-Type.18 skittered to his side.
"Boss, boss—can I open my eyes now? The local net's down; with eyes closed I can't see anything!"
Li Pan snapped his leg straight, gulped down a handful of enhancers, analgesics, and stimulants, then knelt to regulate his breath and force-heal.
"Go check if that mutt's dead. Whose make is it?"
"On it!"
Spider-Type spat out a drill—zzzz—boring into the metal skull.
Before Li Pan could catch his breath, a blood-red big-headed infant crawled from the stairwell in the flicker-shadow.
"Such handsome technique. Beichen Sword-Qi—shatters sky and earth, subdues demons and breaks spells—truly worthy of the name."
Crap. Exposed.
Cold sweat beaded his brow.
He wasn't stupid. After studying so many Daoist texts at Shangzhen Palace and reading so many chapters of the Blood Register Heaven Book, he'd seen that proper noun more than once.
He could guess: the green-robed weirdo who'd taught him the Monkey Sword, the one who'd given him the flying sword to behead ghosts, and the one who'd taught Li Heitu the sword manual—they were all enemies of his "Church," fellows of the orthodox Xuanmen—the all-world butcher sect: Beichen Sword Palace.
In the heat of battle he'd thrown every tool he had and forgotten about factions. A chill crept up his spine. When he lifted his head, Duan Kecheng was already before him, big amber eyes fixed on him.
"I knew it. To wield a Palace absolute so well… Big Brother—you've been killed by them many times, haven't you?"
Li Pan: "…uh… huh?"
The blood-infant patted his shoulder, consoling.
"It's alright, Big Brother. I understand. Your mind's not all there—this forgotten, that missing—but in this degenerate age you can flick divine arts like second nature. You must be a veteran cultivator, shattered and reborn many times. Another disincarnation—landing in this filthy realm—left you a little foggy, that's all.
I've only heard of Beichen Sword-Qi—seen a glimpse in the divine light projections of our Church's protectors—but never in person. Yet you performed it complete. Your insight into sword-qi must be deep.
No doubt you've suffered much under the Palace's hand."
Li Pan: "…Brother! My heart aches!"
Blood-infant: "Hah, Big Brother—don't fret. Escaping them at all is remarkable! And this dump has nothing worth a fart; the Sword Sect won't chase here."
Li Pan: "Brother!"
Blood-infant: "Brother!"
Spider-Type.18: "Boss, why are you crying so hard? Are you hallucinating from pain? If you're sick, get treatment…"
Li Pan reined it in, rubbing his leg as he stood.
"I'm fine. Emotions—momentary. Anyway, is the trash dead? Whose unit?"
Spider-Type.18: "No QVN signal—looks like they hard-cut the link. The frame's an AlphaGolem S-class heavily modded. Purchased then black-market reworked; production serial erased. No ownership trace.
What's odd is—just these couple sword wounds shouldn't down a frame at this price. Weapons and power still read green. Why not fire a couple volleys and bail?"
Li Pan limped over, twirled Catherine's Sword into a flower. "Because my swordsmanship is awesome?"
Blood-infant cut in:
"Of course not. Beichen Sword breaks all methods, sweeps all demons, unmatched under heaven. What ghoul could survive a glance of that light?
Truth be told, a proper Palace fiend wouldn't need a second stroke to kill such a scrub."
Li Pan glared, split the puppet's head in two, pocketed the core chip, checked the Grail in his coat, and continued up the stairs.
"More pursuers are coming. If we can't slip them, I'll act a bit—you finish them quietly. No witnesses."
Blood-infant thumped his chest.
"Trash like this? One slap each! Rest easy, Big Brother—one comes, one dies; two come, I kill two!"
Li Pan: "Good! I'm counting on you. But keep it clean—no gore. Wait for my cue; I don't need people calling me a psycho."
Spider-Type.18: "Boss, are you now talking with your imaginary friend? How long have you had these symptoms?"
Li Pan: "…and I don't need people calling me insane!"
Blood-infant promised,
"Leave it to me! But Big Brother, why aren't you cultivating under this fine moon—raising more blood-shadow clones—rather than playing with riff-raff?"
Li Pan rolled his eyes.
"Money. Sure, I can survive on cold wind, but I'm a vulgar man—I want wine, meat, and the good life! And I want to wreck anyone who offends me!
Also, tone it down. They blew up my blood-puppet clones, remember?"
Blood-infant crawled along the wall, wagging his head:
"A single clone—hardly rare. There's no perfect Way. The heavenly paths worth keeping all follow nature. Destroy one blood-seed, so what? Only one who can erase billions of my seeds shows real skill.
But body without spirit is the devil's road. People here call us heretical—but if you ask me, this realm's natives are the real devil-walkers.
All their clever contraptions and constructs—yes, they have merit—but however gaudy, in the end they're just wedding robes for another."
Mid-rant, the blood-infant pounced into a shadow and vanished—then walked out of the corridor in a transparent human body, hand outstretched.
"See? Like that."
"AHHH! Incoming! Incoming!"
Spider-Type shrieked, spewing a cloud of fly-like smart bullets. The barrage pinged off the figure; a breeze snapped Spider-Type's barrel, disarming her.
Li Pan: "…"
The figure bowed deeply, thrusting its neck to Li Pan.
"Big Brother, please."
Li Pan obliged—gathered sword-qi—and lopped off the head.
The body spasmed white electro-fluid; the blood-infant crawled from the rolling head's mouth and nose, hopping to Li Pan's left shoulder.
"These soldier-puppets are interesting. Even Demon Mountain's Heavenly Demon Soldiers might not compare. But their souls are nothing. Our Church breaks them casually. When the army comes, no need to over-prepare—bag a few and use them."
Li Pan blinked. "Huh? You puppeted that fast? No hacker interference? A centipede with hundreds or thousands of eyes, maybe?"
Spider-Type hopped to his other shoulder.
"Another hacker helping us? Hundreds of eyes? Boss… are you not insane after all—have you actually met Argus?"
Li Pan glared at her as he descended.
"I'm not—…Forget it. What's Argus? Is it like a long centipede lying on your back chewing your skull, with a string of eyeballs down the spine and a tail chained into the void…"
Spider-Type: "Hearing this, maybe you are sick, Boss."
Blood-infant: "Yes, yes."
"Hey! You two, enough!"
Spider-Type draped a feeler over her lens, shaking her head.
"Sigh… Boss, your condition is severe…"
"Damn it!"
Li Pan's blade flashed—pale-cyan lightning dancing in the dark hall. The lightning flowed with his wrist-flowers—white-night thunder, dragons and snakes leaping, crack-boom!
That mad, ape-like, leaping cadence—cut a volley of lasers racing down the corridor in the same instant.
Not deflected. Severed.
High-energy plasma beams, sliced as if they were water drawn apart by a blade—snuffed in a blink.
"Wha— the—"
The shooter in the dark never finished the thought—blood-infant snatched, and the man convulsed into sight.
Before he hit the floor, Li Pan vaulted, cleaving his spine—two pieces.
Spider-Type clung to his shoulder, aghast.
"Huh? What happened—how'd you kill another? Lucky swing?"
The blood-infant rubbed a filament of lamp-flame between two fingers and snuffed it, the smoke curling into his nose.
Li Pan worked by habit—behead, pull chip, soul to the infant, chip to Spider-Type for data.
"Not luck. Night-combat specialty. Don't interrupt. So—what's Argus?"
Spider-Type:
"ARGUS Tech—sensors, radar, detection, monitoring. Their 'Argus' is the top virtual net intrusion suite—one of the few that can find backdoors and roam between worlds in QVN under HT Chaos-Tech.
Crucially, they're not Security Committee, no exclusive contracts—purely commercial. Pay enough, and they'll sell to anyone—Tax Bureau, Security, heavenly corps, illegal hackers, Akatengu, street scum—with support.
Takamagahara didn't buy."
Li Pan: "Eh… Argus. Why didn't they?"
Spider-Type: "'Eyes' are core. Unsafe if someone else holds them. Takamagahara wanted rebellion—build their own. Yamata-no-Orochi was part of that.
Our hacker training included red-team vs. Argus. Many comrades saw visions of hundreds or thousands of eyes."
Li Pan: "Oh? And then?"
Spider-Type spread her feelers. "Then they died."
Li Pan: "…"
The blood-infant eyed her curiously, then tapped the drone's "head"—er, the bay above its chip.
Spider-Type jolted, jumped off his shoulder, circled three times, camera sweeping 360°.
"What the—? Something dirty? Am I poisoned?"
Li Pan glanced at the infant. The big-headed baby was pinching fingers—not chewing them—calculating.
"What is it?"
Spider-Type:
"Dunno. Suddenly felt… nauseous. Maybe a brain can issue."
Li Pan frowned at the infant.
"Brother, hands off Eighteen. Without her, I go bankrupt."
Spider-Type sniffled. "Boss… even in your condition, you think of me!"
The blood-infant licked his fingers and shook his head.
"Of course not. I simply recognized what your pet is."
Li Pan: "?"
The infant smiled. "A Zhān (魙), right? Rare where I'm from—but you have many here. A local specialty, perhaps."
Li Pan: "…??"
He didn't elaborate. Instead, he pointed rightward.
No time for chat. Li Pan sprinted, scooped Spider-Type onto his back, burst through an apartment wall, and exploded forward along the infant's line.
A figure parkoured across rooftops, illegal add-ons, poles, billboards, eaves—then slide-kicked through a window into an apartment.
Inside: a whole family throat-garroted by nano-wire at the dining table.
A "space-man" had cleared the rooms and transformed his cyber-body into a household artillery platform—just about to fire—when his eyes went dull, rolling like a drunk imbecile, and he collapsed.
Li Pan grabbed a napkin, wiped blood and tissue from his blade, and moved to take the head.
"Big Brother, wait."
The blood-infant leapt atop the cannon-man's head, both hands digging into the skull, muttering an incantation as his fingers probed—then pulled out a thin thread from seemingly nowhere.
Li Pan could see it clearly: not a thread but a chain of bloody script glyphs, end to end—like lock-links, like fuses—stretching into the void. Some trailed into the night-soaked city; others shot skyward toward moon and stars, destination unseen—save one that linked straight into the cannon-man's brow.
"What is that?" he asked.
Spider-Type hopped up for a look.
"Whoa—humanoid rail-accelerator. Looks like a miniaturized SAS platform—ship-killer class maybe…"
The blood-infant wagged his head and chanted:
"The Canon of Nether and Bright says:
Man dies and becomes a ghost;
Ghost dies and becomes a zhān (魙);
Zhān dies and becomes xi (希);
Xi dies and becomes yi (夷);
Yi dies and becomes micro (微);
Micro dies and becomes formless.
And the Great Way says:
'Seen not—yi;
Heard not—xi.'"
"Look, Big Brother. I stand here, yet they can't see me. That is, they are missing three souls and seven spirits—between xi and yi.
Because we are human—and they are ghosts."
Li Pan blinked. "What do you mean?"
The infant smiled.
"Exactly that. I think the people of this world… may have already died once.
No—died and lived and died again, more than once or twice.
Now they walk soulless, neither slave-spirit nor true ghost—only this thin residue remains…"
He spread his hands and blew across the thread.
Candle-light flared; a cold wind hissed; the threads ignited at once and then snuffed out.
Silence. The infant dusted ash from his palms.
Li Pan turned—and the living cannon beside him gouted white fluid, eyes rolling back, and neatly, cleanly—
died.
.
.
.
⚠️ 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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