Chapter One: Song Shi

“According to Article Four of the Volunteer Medical Trial Service Agreement you signed, the relevant compensation of 150,000 credit points for this medical trial will be transferred to your designated account within seven days. Please take care of it as soon as possible.”
“Note: This contract fully complies with the standards of the Ethics Committee. If you have any objections, please submit an appeal within two days...”
“In summary, please report to the Third Institute of Psychomental Studies at Palosser three days from now to undergo the final preoperative maintenance in preparation for this medical trial.”

Song Shi closed his eyes.
The “Volunteer Medical Trial Service Agreement,” which had been projected directly onto his retina via an ocular implant, now faded away.
Perhaps it was the shock of returning from the dead, or perhaps it was the discomfort of inhabiting a frail body after losing the formidable psychic power he once possessed, but at this moment, Song Shi’s feelings were complex.

He steadied his breath and slowly opened his eyes.
The room was small, spotlessly clean, the walls a sterile white that induced unease. The lighting from the ceiling was gentle enough, but it could not ease the heaviness in Song Shi’s heart.
He was seated on a row of chairs against the wall. To his right, separated by a single seat, sat a man in a suit, with short brown hair, fingers interlaced, head bowed in silence.
They were the only two people in the room.
No—that wasn’t entirely accurate.
Song Shi glanced at the door. Though it was tightly shut, he knew there was an armed security guard standing outside. Not long ago, it was this guard who had escorted him here.
The guard’s only responsibility was to ensure that “volunteers” like himself didn’t succumb to pressure and attempt to escape just before the medical trial began.
With all their cybernetic implants locked down and their network access sealed off, a single shock from a stun gun would bring recalcitrant “volunteers” swiftly back in line.
Of course, in such situations, live ammunition was out of the question; injuring or killing a carefully selected volunteer would be tantamount to maliciously damaging corporate property—an accusation few could withstand, even if the offender was just a company security hireling.

But none of that mattered right now.
Song Shi sat up a little straighter.
Although his name and biometric certification were clearly visible at the bottom of the “Volunteer Medical Trial Service Agreement,” and the signing process had been recorded in full compliance with the principle of informed consent, Song Shi still felt he might have some grounds for appeal.

Because he was not truly “Song Shi.”
Or, at least, not the “Song Shi” of this body—this person, for some reason bearing the same name as himself.
He was a Fourth-Ring Psychic of the Path of the Great Source, a freelance bounty hunter, the man who had assassinated a member of the Imperial family.
Not an orphan who’d grown up in a welfare home in the city of Palosser, within the corporate territory known as the Enterprise Alliance.

Of course.
Gazing at his right hand—modified, with an implanted data port and visibly part-cybernetic—Song Shi understood that now, the difference between the two was negligible.

“…Tch.”
He didn’t have to close his eyes; the memories of a moment ago still burned in his mind.
For assassinating an imperial prince—not just any scion, but a legitimate heir, third in line to the throne—he had incurred vengeance on an unprecedented scale. Facing perhaps the mightiest nation in the world, even as a Fourth-Ring Psychic, capable of changing the landscape for miles with a single blow, he still could not resist.
And so he died, seven days after the assassination, in a barren wasteland far from civilization, hunted down by the fanatical zealots of the empire.
Song Shi was certain: against a Fourth-Ring Psychic’s final, desperate strike, his body had been shattered, his soul annihilated, his psychic path destroyed—dead beyond all hope, reduced to ashes.
Even if his brain had been preserved in a vat to create a simulated consciousness, it would have been impossible.
Yet the next moment, when he opened his eyes again, he was here.
From the theocratic and imperial heart of the world, the Holy Empire of Vanpusta, he had arrived in the western domain of the planet, ruled by the Enterprise Alliance—a coalition of nine corporate giants.

Two utterly different realms.
Even his body was not the same.
No, perhaps “the next moment” was too simple a phrase for it.

Deep in his brain, there was a faint, tearing pain, as if his skull might be split in two.
He didn’t even need to close his eyes; before him, like split screens, two realities overlapped and flickered, as though a road had suddenly forked, leading to separate worlds—

He looked to the right.
The first time he set foot on the street, the brawl in which he awakened his psychic powers, the first time he wielded this supernatural force. Early days spent assembling weapons from scrap in junkyards, earning his first payment, upgrading his implants, delving ever deeper down the path of psychic mastery…
Learning, fighting, bounty hunting, power.
Twenty years passed. By the time he reached the apex of the Fourth Ring, both as a bounty hunter and as a Psychic, he was a force none could ignore, even a player on the global stage.
Ultimately, the famed bounty hunter Song Shi was hunted down and killed for successfully assassinating an imperial prince.

He looked to the left.
From an abandoned infant on the street, swaddled and left to die, to a poster child for the United Government’s “Social Placement Program,” lucky enough to be admitted to the Romond Welfare Home—not freezing to death at night, not being scooped up the next morning to be boiled down for protein paste or turned into a wax display.
But once the publicity faded, funding for the welfare home dwindled.
No one cared about public relations efforts that drew no attention.
In the ten years since its founding, in the city of Palosser—ruled by the Enterprise Alliance—the fate of the vulnerable was far less interesting than, say, the mass unemployment following the explosion in the old industrial zone, or the corporate war between Southern Heavy Industries and Chrono Transit, whose feud for rare minerals in the suburbs nearly destroyed half the city.
Thus, though the welfare home was a United Government initiative, its situation grew more dire every year. Even after relocating from the wealthy White Gate District to the Deep Moss slums, it was barely scraping by.
The government turned a blind eye.
And those who left the home, entering society, seldom fared well enough to help—it was a drop in the bucket. In two years, the welfare home would likely be sold off in its entirety.

“So this… is why you came to this institute as a ‘volunteer’—to exchange yourself for the medical trial compensation?”

The two realities tangled and swelled in his thoughts, leaving Song Shi uncertain who he truly was.
But the feelings bound to those memories—
—The shock after his first kill, the thrill of his first bounty; the pride of breaking through to the Third Ring; the resolve for vengeance after seeing his homeland turned to ash, and the exhilaration of beheading the prince who caused it.
—The kindness and care he received at the welfare home; the helplessness when he overheard Aunt Nancy and the old director discussing the home’s desperate financial straits; seeing the strict old director, whom the children all feared, break down in tears; the fear and hesitation as he secretly became a trial volunteer, hoping to save the home with his compensation.
All these feelings, beating in his heart, were undeniably real.

Was all this merely another’s memory, or his own lived experience? Had the “bounty hunter Song Shi” been reborn here, or had the “welfare home Song Shi” inherited the former’s memories?
He drew a deep breath, rapped softly on his chest, and forced the welling emotions down.

His head still ached, his heart filled with doubts and wariness about this “rebirth,” but now was not the time to dwell on it.
Yes—rebirth.
In the upper right corner of his retina, projected by his ocular implant’s personal terminal, the current date and time were clear:
Universal New Calendar, 2150, November 23rd, 21:20.
Twenty years before his death.
Twenty years ago, at this very hour, the artificial intelligences lurking in the abyss had yet to launch the Second Revolution of Freedom; the Purification Crusade proposal of the Holy Empire of Vanpusta had probably just crossed the Emperor’s desk, not yet become the fearsome juggernaut that would sweep the world; the corporate gods of the Enterprise Alliance still looked down upon the world with disdain; the ideal nation of Eden had not yet fallen—

But none of that concerned Song Shi now.
He turned his gaze from the security guard outside the door, surveyed the room again, and finally settled on the silent, head-bowed man beside him.
—His primary task now was to escape this place.

He had just reviewed “his” signed “Volunteer Medical Trial Service Agreement.”
The trial’s target was “Implant-Induced Psychomental Disorder”—
Better known as Cyber Psychosis.
In this era, where bionic augmentation was commonplace, in the city of Palosser, videos of cyberpsychotics committing murder appeared on the streaming feeds every day.
This institute, run by the corporate giant Emerald Pharmaceuticals, had gathered a group of carefully selected volunteers for clinical trials of a new suppressant drug.
This drug was meant to treat “cyber psychosis.”
And the cyberpsychotics?
They were right here.
According to the memories and the contract, the trial, which paid the handsome sum of 150,000 credits, would first forcibly induce “cyber psychosis” in volunteers, then test the experimental drug on them.
The compensation was less a payment and more the purchase price for total ownership of your person.

From the moment a volunteer entered the institute, regardless of whether they survived, they were under its complete control—stripped of all personal rights, reduced to a commodity.

So, he needed to prepare for a strategic withdrawal.
Song Shi thought to himself.
No matter the reason for his “rebirth,” whether it was real or a ploy, he had no intention of being someone’s lab rat—
Least of all one turned into a cyberpsychotic.

He had seen too much of the corporate giants’ depravity in his previous life to expect decency from their boardroom gods.
He’d even killed a few of them.
But that was then.

Staring at the “Implant Overview” on his personal terminal, Song Shi couldn’t help but feel helpless.
His limbs and internal organs were all original, pumping blood, not oil or coolant.
The only real “bionics” were his right hand, modified with a data port and reinforced skin, and a neural interface.
That was it.

An orphan from the welfare home, barely of age, would never be outfitted with a full suite of implants.
The most valuable thing on this pitiful list was the government-issued personal terminal chip.
In fact, one reason the institute had selected Song Shi for the cyber psychosis trial was precisely because he had “some implants, but not many”—they needed a range of volunteers as test subjects.

As for psychic power, he didn’t even have the first level of Awakening—just an ordinary person.

Material power was weak, and spiritual power was nonexistent.

The trial would begin in twenty minutes.
In these circumstances, even if Song Shi possessed a vast array of psychic techniques and implant combinations, it would be impossible to fight his way out of the institute alone.

Could sheer willpower stop a barrage of high-caliber armor-piercing rounds from a smart rifle?
Well, yes—if you followed the Path of Consensus and had reached at least the Third Ring, where thought could influence reality.
But that was not the case.

In short, to get out of here, he needed an ally.

Song Shi looked at the silent man in the suit sitting not far away and greeted him.
“Hey there…
Still clinging to your company image even now? Isn’t it time to shed that skin?”