The night before the promotion

Chapter 4 Mechanical Attraction
"No! No!"

Luo Yong scratched his body like a madman.

He tried to tear off his fragile and pale skin, destroying the flesh and bones underneath it, as if this layer of skin was a kind of restraint that imprisoned his true self.

The steel self.

An increasingly frantic roar rang out from the speakers of the incarnation's body, and the sharp cry echoed through the night, but it was soon drowned out by the hustle and bustle of the city.

Zhou Si jumped high from the incarnation's body, grabbed a railing on one side, and flipped onto an air-conditioning outdoor unit. There was a constant rumbling sound of collision below.

When Zhou Si exposed Luo Yong's false fantasy, the moment he faced the reality, his Lishi disease broke out completely.

The incarnation body controlled by Luo Yong seemed to be in collapse, indiscriminately attacking everything around it, while Zhou Si watched coldly with a blank expression.

Luo Yong didn't understand.

Luo Yong didn't understand why his body was replaced by such a disgusting, cowardly body. Look at these slender arms, the skin that could be scratched with a little force, and the incomprehensible, deformed and hateful five fingers...

Luo Yong felt so disgusted that he almost vomited out his soul.

From a philosophical perspective, human beings have always faced three ultimate questions: where did we originate from, where are we going, and the most profound and essential question - who am I?

For Luo Yong, the issue has now become chaotic and distorted.

Deep in Luo Yong's soul, that incarnated body has become his true self, and the past as a natural person called "Luo Yong" has become a horrible memory that he must escape from, haunting him like a nightmare.

Even though Zhou Si had dealt with many similar situations, he still couldn't help but sigh softly when he witnessed it again.

"How sad..."

This is dissociative illness, a negative condition caused by using an avatar body.

Although the detailed explanations of this disease are complex, Zhou Si was able to summarize its core in one concise sentence:

All those who suffer from the disease of dissociation will reject their original flesh and blood bodies, and driven by an indescribable "mechanical attraction", they desire to become a part of mechanization.

Unfortunately, humans are born with flesh and blood, and the mechanized transformation of the body is fraught with dangers. Therefore, most patients with dissociative disorder can only load their consciousness into the body of an avatar to seek a little comfort.

When Zhou Si revealed this fact and pointed out Luo Yong's alienated nature, his consciousness was instantly shattered like a beautiful dream that had been awakened.

Just like the rejection reaction caused by organ transplantation in medicine, the original cognition of the self, that is, the cognition of the flesh and blood body, conflicts with the cognition of the mechanized self caused by the disease of alienation.

The underlying code of the organism itself began to reject the foreign body of mechanization. The fragile self-consciousness could not withstand such an impact and could only be trapped in the cold cage of the incarnated body like a captive slave, unable to escape.

Zhou Si has treated some such terminal patients, but few of them could be saved. Most of them could only be injected with large amounts of psychiatric drugs and spend the rest of their lives in a mental hospital.

Luo Yong fell into complete frenzy, roaring and screaming like a madman.

Zhou Si detonated the graphite grenade, and the graphite cloud evenly covered the body of the incarnation. The sound of sparks from the electric current continued, like the sound of corrosion after strong acid was poured on it.

The incarnation's restlessness became even more intense, like a manic eight-armed mechanized giant spider, rampaging through the narrow alley.

The walls on both sides were shaking slightly, and dense cracks were crawling on the walls. Zhou Si had no idea whether the buildings on both sides would become dangerous buildings after all this trouble, and he had no time to care about it.

Finding the right moment, Zhou Si jumped down from the air conditioner outdoor unit. He accurately avoided the waving mechanical arms and landed heavily on the incarnation's body.

Zhou Si felt like a fighter riding on an angry bull. He grabbed the incarnation's body with one hand to make sure he would not be thrown off, and with the other hand he repeatedly swung the short axe, leaving shallow scratches.

The scratches pieced together to form a fatal scar.

He picked up the nail gun, put the muzzle against the horrible scar, and felt the position based on his past experience. After a brief thought, Zhou Si pulled the trigger.

The clanging sound of iron and stone echoed throughout the night.

The rivets pierced through the fragile metal plates like sharp arrows, but the incarnation's body remained restless. Unlike humans, it did not have a neural network spread throughout the body. It could feel it clearly even if a hair pierced through the gap between its nails.

To the incarnated body, Zhou Si's existence was merely an annoying noise source that continued to make iron sounds, but what it could not ignore was that this noise source was gradually weakening its power and threatening its existence.

Amid the violent tremors, the two mechanical arms bent back and pounced towards Zhou Si like wild beasts, but fell into the trap he had carefully laid.

Zhou Si's body flashed and he spun nimbly to avoid the heavy attack from the mechanical arm. With the help of inertia, one of the arms coincidentally hit the old scar on the incarnation's body.

The metal collided with a sharp squeak, and the mechanical arm smashed a dent in its body. The metal that had been repeatedly pierced by rivets cracked fragilely, exposing the complex and precise components inside.

Without any hesitation, Zhou Si swung his short axe and slashed into the crack, destroying the internal mechanical components, circuit boards, etc. In an instant, the movements of the incarnation body became sluggish, one mechanical arm lost power and drooped weakly, and the others also began to show signs of losing control.

Zhou Si then inserted the nail gun into the crack. With his rich experience and superb skills, he quickly locked a key position.

Trigger pulled.

The rivets penetrated the internal structure of the incarnation's shell like a rainstorm, approaching the core step by step until the last layer of protection was completely pierced.

Destroy it together with the thought storage core below!
All avatar shells have such a thought storage core, which is used to temporarily store the human consciousness uploaded into the mechanical body. It can be regarded as the operating core of the avatar shell, like an alternative brain in a vat.

Penetrating the mind storage core is like killing the soul of this cold incarnation - if it really has a soul.

Zhou Si severed the connection between Luo Yong and his incarnation's body. Faintly, he seemed to hear an illusory wail.

The movements of the incarnation's body became sluggish, and Zhou Si pulled the trigger again. The rivets were like sharp swords, completely drilling through the steel and circuits, completely expelling the illusory soul.

Zhou Si guessed that at this moment, somewhere, Luo Yong must have woken up from his bed with a look of horror on his face.

Under the almost overlapping iron sounds, the incarnation's body became completely quiet and fell to the ground. The flickering lights went out one after another, as if it had bled out and turned into a huge corpse.

Zhou Si climbed down from its body and stood in front of the huge steel corpse, like a priest praying for it.

Li Weiyu's voice sounded in the headphones.

……

"Doctor Zhou, I have located his body and am trying to capture him," Li Weiyun added, as if he knew what Zhou Si was thinking, "I have sent you the location. See you later."

As soon as the call with Zhou Si ended, Li Weiyu tightly grasped the electromagnetic rifle in his hand and coldly calibrated its shooting power.

In non-lethal mode, Li Weiyun calmly aimed at the door lock in front of him and pulled the trigger.

There was no deafening gunshot, only the subtle buzzing sound as the electromagnetic coil accelerated and pushed the metal bullet to fire, and the sharp tearing sound as metal collided with each other.

The lock core collapsed instantly under this silent attack. Another team member quickly approached, swung the door-breaking hammer, and destroyed the shaky security door with one heavy blow.

The space behind the door was dark and deep.

Li Weiyu stepped in without hesitation, kicked open one barrier after another, and searched each room vigilantly. In the innermost bedroom, Li Weiyu caught a glimpse of a faint light.

Breaking into the bedroom full of garbage, Li Weiyu pulled back the covers on the bed, but underneath was not Luo Yong who was waiting to be arrested by Li Weiyu, but an empty neural docking helmet that was still in operation.

Li Weiyun hesitated for a moment and whispered, "Doctor Zhou, I found Luo Yong's residence and his neural docking helmet, but I didn't find him."

Looking around, he added, "There were no signs of the doors or windows being opened, and no one else was searching for him."

After a few seconds of dead silence, Zhou Si's voice rang out in the headset, "I just forcibly cut off his consciousness connection. His mental state was already worrying, and he must not be able to run far after such a mental shock."

Li Weiyun had a gloomy face. Suddenly, he noticed something. He picked up the dirty neural docking helmet. Inside the helmet, he saw a device connected to the circuit.

A chill filled Li Weiyun's heart, and he instinctively warned loudly, "Doctor Zhou! There is a virtual signal transmitter in his neural docking helmet!"

"We were deceived by him!"

……

At the end of the dark alley, Li Weiyu's voice came into Zhou Si's ears with a sharp sound. Almost at the moment of hearing this information, Zhou Si looked at the fallen body again.

Zhou Si smelled a sweet scent of blood in the air.

The extinguished indicator light lit up again, and the incarnation swung its mechanical arms and propped up its body high. This time it exposed its abdomen to Zhou Si. In the obscured shadow, Zhou Si saw the flesh and blood body sewn together with the machine.

Ominous, hateful, dark.

Zhou Si’s pale figure was reflected in the scarlet and poisonous eyes.

The sound of blood dripping continued.

　Tomorrow's update will be during the day, so I have to go to bed early at night.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)