The Neuro Heart Method
Ash was being completed.
An old torso and a left leg. Then the right arm. A few days ago, the right leg as well. Now only the left arm remained.
That didn't mean he could roam about freely. Cables for power and system diagnostics were connected all across his body — in Akina's words, Ash was currently undergoing "optimization settings." Because of it, he couldn't leave his rig, but he was undeniably different from before.
He now possessed something that could be called a body.
In a world where everything was chaos, he had finally acquired a frame he could call himself.
And so, Ash found himself wrestling with a single question.
Could inner power exist in this machine body as well?
It was a body of steel stitched together from salvaged parts, yet his mind remained that of a martial artist — so yearning for a profound inner strength was, in a sense, pure instinct.
No one could answer that question for him.
Which meant there was only one thing to do: try it himself.
He marshaled everything — his past-life memories, the Underland's data, all of it — searching for a way. It was no help at all. His body moved as his own had, but its essence was mere machinery. A cold lump of metal, replaceable at any moment. No mysterious, profound inner power could possibly reside in such a thing.
An inevitable conclusion, and a bitter one.
But Ash did not give up. Had it not looked impossible, once, when he swore to destroy the Demonic Cult?
He recalled the formulas of every cultivation method and divine art he knew, and attempted to gather his qi.
The Three Talents Heart Method.
The Lesser Clarity Divine Art.
The Jade Clarity Forging Art.
The Grand Clarity Divine Art.
And at last, the hidden treasures of the Kunlun Sect themselves — the Dragon-Slaying Divine Art and the Supreme Clarity Formless Divine Art!
Not one of them had any effect.
No — to be precise, he couldn't even attempt them.
The reason was absurdly simple: he had no respiratory system.
Every cultivation method and divine art he knew was built upon the breath — inhaling pure qi, expelling turbid qi. But this mechanical body had no need for breathing as a phenomenon at all. He couldn't manage even the most basic circulation and breathing exercise, let alone the full formulas.
Utterly useless.
Ash felt a crushing sense of loss. It was as if the very foundation of the martial way — everything he had been — was being denied.
Yet he did not despair.
Because he had discovered something new.
A few days earlier, while Akina was hooking up his right leg, Ash had asked her a brief question.
"Ah, young lady. Might I ask you something?"
"Huh? You've never asked me a question before. What is it?"
"How is it that I move?"
"What kind of question is that?"
"I mean, what is the source of the power that moves this body?"
Akina answered as if it were nothing.
"Electricity, obviously!"
"Electricity? What is electricity?"
"Uh... you don't know what electricity is?"
"My learning is shallow, to my shame."
"No, that's not what I— ugh, geez. How do I even explain this? Okay, so... you know lightning, right? The kind that strikes from the sky? Just think of that flowing inside your body."
"Ho. You harness the lightning of the heavens? And it flows through my body? Truly, the Underland is the Underland!"
From that moment, Ash's mind fixed upon a single thing.
How can electricity be wielded as inner power?
If he could not accumulate inner power, then he would replace it with something else. That was the conclusion Ash reached.
There was only one problem: electricity and inner power were different in their very nature.
Inner power was like flowing water. It coursed and refined itself according to the practitioner's will, gathered in one place, and could be directed however he wished.
Electricity was different. It scattered and leapt wherever it pleased, and vanished the instant you thought you had it — like mist. Fine, incomparably fast, and utterly untameable.
Powers of completely different character.
Even so, he had once tried to force condensation — on the battery pack attached to his torso, no less. He did it while imagining his dantian.
The result was disastrous.
His temperature spiked amid a flood of shrieking warnings. The electricity he had forcibly gathered surged erratically, then dispersed beyond all control, and his artificial neural network screamed.
The battery pack could not become a dantian. It was merely a vessel for holding charge — nothing like inner power, which could be refined, condensed, and stored.
A total failure.
But I gained something, too.
He had failed to accumulate, but he had succeeded in control.
The electricity had clearly obeyed Ash's will, flowing toward the battery pack. He had managed to direct it — to make it move as he intended.
And so, in the present.
Ash had prepared something else entirely.
First, he seated himself. He couldn't leave the rig, but that much he could do. Then he crossed his legs. Interlacing two mismatched mechanical legs felt awkward beyond words, but it was passable.
Circulating the qi — and, since accumulation had failed, what of the small heavenly circuit?
He had already learned to control the electricity, and the artificial Neural Matrix reminded him of the Eight Extraordinary Meridians. In theory, it looked possible.
In theory, that is.
Steadying his mind, Ash shut off his optical sensors and sank into deep meditation.
This time he did not try to gather the electricity into one place. Instead, following the thickest, most vital-looking main stream among the neural pathways spread across his entire body, he guided the flow of electricity as though tracing the small heavenly circuit.
As expected, it was not easy at first. The wild, rampaging current seemed to mock his will, leaking off into unrelated circuits or crackling with tiny discharges.
Each time, the crimson light filling the workshop flickered.
Occasionally danger found him too. A current accelerating in an instant would convulse the neural network and send a jolt of vertigo through him.
Unconsciously, Ash began to chant.
"When one can keep ever clear and still, heaven and earth and all creation return to them..."
As if displeased by the chanting, his brainpower, its voltage surging, slammed into Ash's main core.
His body lurched as though gagging, but Ash never stopped.
"Celestial Worthy of the Nine Heavens, Thunderous Voice of Universal Transformation..."
The humanoid, legs crossed and cables running into every limb, kept pouring out his chant, half-lost in electronic static.
How much time had passed?
After a long tug-of-war of pushing and pulling, the first signs of change finally came. The electrical energy circulating the neural matrix began to form a steady, stabilized flow. Like a wild stallion entering the racecourse, it started to accelerate furiously along the path Ash intended.
And as the cycle continued, something strange began to happen.
A sense that the quality of the electrical energy circulating through him was subtly changing. At first he thought it mere imagination, but with each revolution the feeling hardened into certainty.
It burned.
And it blazed.
One by one, notifications burst from the data pads scattered around Ash.
A short while later, every monitor surrounding Ash turned green, announcing that his optimization was complete.
Scrap built across different generations, by different corporations entirely, had been bound into one beneath Ash's focused will. It was a unity beyond all comparison with before — so seamless it felt like an illusion, as though he had returned to his original body. The joints that had creaked now moved so smoothly they left no trace of friction, and the faint lag caused by weak signals had vanished completely.
Ash returned from deep meditation to the real world. Reconnecting his optical sensors, he raised his hand and spread all five fingers wide.
CRACKLE—!
Above his palm of steel.
A blue lightning-glow, like an arc discharge, flared up like a spark and vanished in a flash.
A mysterious power, something like electricity yet changed into something else beneath Ash's will.
"...A new path has opened."
And this was the birth of Ash's unique cultivation method — the Neuro Heart Method.
It was still feeble.
But at the same time, it was the seed of a new martial art.
Rising from his cross-legged seat, Ash reviewed the experience so as not to lose hold of that flash of insight. A stable energy circulation. A perfect body sync rate. Blue lightning manifested through focused will. He was grasping the principle of his new power and searching for a way to refine it further, when—
BANG!
A gunshot rang out.
It was very close.
Deep in the night.
"Khh—!"
Akina tumbled down between heaps of scrap into a dark, damp corner. She had thrown herself to dodge the bullet and hadn't had time to check what lay below.
"Hey! Over here! Over here!"
Shadows fell over her. The men who had chased her down like rabbits in a hunt, all clad in shabby leather jackets.
They were equally grimy and disheveled, but they shared one thing in common. A yellow patch bound around the shoulder.
An emblem of three interlocking gears, and beneath it, a single line of text.
⚙⚙⚙
R.E.S.T.
Hyenas of the city, who looted and murdered without hesitation, sheltering behind their "Sanctum Management Office–Certified Resource Recovery Permit."
"Well, well!"
The one who seemed to be their leader jogged down the scrap mound like he was out for a stroll and kicked Akina.
"Ugh—!"
Akina collapsed, unable even to scream properly. That seemed to please the man; he grinned, baring teeth stained black-yellow.
"Evening, missy. What brings you to our turf at this hour?"
Gasping for breath, Akina barely managed an answer.
"N-nothing... I was just... picking up some scrap... khh!"
But he had no intention of listening. Before she could even finish, he kicked her in the side again.
"Hah! You think I'm really asking because I don't know? You're that little rat, aren't you? Eh? I've had my eye on you twice already!"
"It-it wasn't me..."
"Like hell it wasn't!"
The man reached down with a rough hand, seized Akina by the collar, and hauled her up. At the same moment, the bundle she'd been clutching to her chest dropped to the ground.
A mechanical arm — old, but serviceable enough.
"What's this."
The man flung Akina aside where he stood, then picked up the fallen cyberware.
"No! That's mine!"
The girl, cowering until now, lunged at him — and was knocked sprawling by a kick all over again.
"Mine, my ass."
The man whistled as he turned the cyberware over.
"Came out here scavenging scrap, and you're carrying something worth more than the junk? Where'd you get this, huh? Eh. Well, doesn't matter now. It's mine."
The REST-men who had gathered around murmured among themselves.
"Isn't that an Apex Arms?"
"Looks like it. Where the hell'd she get this?"
"Damn. You know what that's worth?"
"Shut up, all of you! It's mine!"
The yellow-toothed man flashed Akina a sinister smile and gripped her chin roughly.
"And obviously, this one's mine too."
Greed, lust, and violence writhed together in his greasy eyes. Akina glared at him through tear-filled eyes — and spat in his face.
"You son of a bitch—!"
The REST-man raised his hand.
Akina shut her eyes tight in fear.
But the pain she expected never came.
She cracked one eye open to find the man gripping her hair, staring entranced at something.
It wasn't just him. Every REST-man who had been threatening her wore the same expression. Following their gaze, Akina turned her head too.
A scrap mound draped in heavy, brooding darkness. And atop it—
Something in the shape of a human stood tall, like a ghost prowling through a moonless night.
And it was watching them.
Radiating a piercing cyan glow.
"What the hell is that...?"
"Uh... looks like a humanoid?"
The REST-men muttered at the sudden apparition. Honestly, a single humanoid appearing shouldn't have rattled them. But the thing before them felt wrong, somehow.
Bleak. Unsettling. Yes—
It felt exactly like meeting a monster.
Then the humanoid spoke.
"Ah, young lady. It seemed you were running late, so I came out to meet you."
A voice laced with static — and yet, strangely, so antique and courtly it was almost unsettling.